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Aspyr Media has released the October edition of their monthly newsletter and in it they announce several things, including that the Tom Clancy tactical shooter Ghost Recon is now shipping. In Ghost Recon you command an elite team of U.S. Army Green Berets through a series of demolitions, search and rescue missions and all-out fights for survival. Select, train and lead the offensive spearhead as the first team deployed and the last team to leave.

Here's a snippet from the newsletter:

Aspyr™ Media, Inc. announced today that Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon™ and the Ghost Recon: Desert Siege™ Expansion Pack has shipped for the Macintosh. Carbonized conversion was done by Kevin Parichan and Phil Britt.

Developed by Ubi Soft's Red Storm Entertainment studio, and published for the PC by Ubi Soft Entertainment, the amazing combat experience Ghost Recon and the Desert Siege Expansion Pack come together to turn your Macintosh into a pivotal wartime control center. In Ghost Recon, Russia has fallen to ultra-nationalistic leaders driven to rebuild the Iron Curtain. In the Desert Siege Expansion Pack, a 60-year conflict boils over as Ethiopia invades its smaller neighbor Eritrea, threatening the world's most vital shipping lanes. Whenever there is a military conflict, the Ghosts are the first in action!

PowerMac with G3/G4 Processor

450 MHz or faster Processor

128 MB of built-in RAM (256 MB if running Mac OS X)

1 GB available hard disk space

ATI Rage 128 with 16 MB of VRAM (or better video card)

IMG Preview: Ghost Recon

Aspyr Newsletter

Aspyr Media (add to watch list)

Red Storm (add to watch list)

In our continuing effort to keep our loyal MacGames CD subscribers informed, we thought we'd pass this little bit of information along. Yesterday we began shipping out the ninth MacGames CD to subscribers, so be on the look out for the CD soon.

What's included in the MGCD? Hot new demos of Bugdom 2 (the full 120 MB), Jinni Zeala, Combat Mission, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, and more. Plus we've included dozens of new updates, shareware games, and much more.

As an added bonus, we're offering a FREE copy of Fallout, Escape from Monkey Island, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, American McGee's Alice, or Rune & Heavy Metal FAKK 2 with every new subscription (all you pay is the shipping and handling).

If you haven't subscribed to the MacGames CD, there's still plenty of time to subscribe. Be sure to visit our IMG Web Store for more details on ordering a subscription and exclusive special deals just for subscribers.

Inside Mac Games (add to watch list)

For all of you out there who are wondering why we Mac Gamers don't get demos very often, MacCentral has posted an article that may shed some light on the subject. The article contains interviews from many different members of the Mac development community. Some of the reasons they site include PC developers not saving demo source code, demo source being based on pre-release code, and cost of distributing demos.

Here's a sample:

The availability of a PC demo is generally acknowledged by publishers and developers alike as the number one factor in whether a Mac demo can be made. If there's a PC demo, there's a chance it can be done for the Mac, depending on the quality of the code involved.

"If there is no PC demo then there won't be a Mac demo," explained e.p.i.c. interactive's Thomas Steiding. e.p.i.c. is a German Mac game publisher whose library includes Earth 2140 and Knights and Merchants. "Even if you could spend the extra time and effort to create a demo version in all likelihood the license holder might not be too happy about that."

But simply because a PC version of a game demo exists doesn't mean the Mac version can be conjured into existence immediately. Westlake Interactive president Glenda Adams has overseen the development of more than 50 major commercial games for the Macintosh since her company's inception in the late 90s. Adams told MacCentral that only about 10 - 20 percent of the time is a PC game's demo code useable enough to craft a Mac version without major reengineering.

MacCentral: Mac game makers speak out on demos

Matt Loria of MacPlay dropped by the IMG forums Tuesday morning and was kind enough to post an update to several of the games in MacPlay's roster, including Aliens vs. Predators 2, Soldier of Fortune II, and No One Lives Forever:

The only thing I have to say regarding AvP 2 is that it IS on its WAY, and it WILL rock. OmniGroup does fantastic work and we are all very glad to be working with them on the sequel to this awesome game.

The 1.02 patch for Soldier of Fortune will include Punkbuster (courtesy of Even Balance) and a number of bug fixes in the single and muliplayer versions of the game. Rest assured my friend, we've promised you the 1.02 patch, and you will get it. We are very close. It will be released once it has passed all testing procedures.

NOLF is VERY close to being done. Your wait is almost over.

(Even Balance) is doing the port specifically for SOFII but it will be usable (if they so choose) in other games... (Punkbuster) is being provided on the Mac as a library, same as on other platforms. There should be nothing tricky about using it in other games.

realMyst: The Radeon 9000 does not let the application launch properly. We are currently testing a patch that will fix this issue. Jinni Zeala Pinball: The 1.1.9 patch is being prepared for release.

IMG Forum: Unofficial MacPlay Update

MacPlay (add to watch list)

Fans of Bungie's classic shooter Marathon will be happy to know that a new carbon build of Aleph One has been released. For those of you unfamiliar with Aleph One, its an open source version of Marathon based on the Marathon 2 source code, which includes many improvements including OpenGL rendering and support for 3D models. For those of you who don't know what the name "Aleph One" means, its the number that comes after Infinity.

Here's a list of improvements in the update:

-*A major speedup. Software rendering is almost usable, and we will continue to speed it up.

-* TCP/IP networking. It doesn't work very well at the moment, but it's usable.

-* Improved FPS display (no more ugly smears in terminal mode), and many more that I can't list because I forgot what they are.

This is a solid improvement over even an internally released preview version that is only a week or two old. If you have Mac OS X, you'll appreciate this Carbon Aleph One.

Download Aleph One

Aleph One Website

Bungie Studios (add to watch list)

Marathon Infinity (add to watch list)

NVIDIA announced recently that it was teaming up with indie developer, and developer of the cross platform Torque Engine, GarageGames to present IndieGamesCon 2002. IndieGamesCon is a conference for independent developers, where they can learn more about the business by meeting with many other indie developers from all over.

Here's a snippet of the press release:

“Playing video games has become a large part of our leisure time, growing into a $10 billion industry with millions of people from around the world playing games on their computers, consoles and other digital devices,” said NVIDIA’s Director of Developer Relations Bill Rehbock. “IndieGamesCon 2002 presents a great platform for the independent game development community to show-off their creations, while learning about next-generation technologies. This combination will help shape the future of the gaming industry.”

The three-day conference will include presentations, roundtable discussions and a ShowOFF center for developers and sponsors. In addition to working with XFX to provide more than 25 PCs, each equipped with NVIDIA’s GeForce4 Ti 4600 graphics processors, representatives from NVIDIA will also be to deliver a presentation on Cg, the high-level programming language for content creation developers designed to speed the programming of special effects to enable real-time cinematic-quality graphics experiences in 3D gaming.

NVIDIA Attending IndieGamesCon

NVIDIA (add to watch list)

GarageGames

ATI wrote IMG late yesterday with word on a new version of their October driver update which fixes some issues users were having with the previous release. Readers may remember problems reported with the Radeon 7000 when the drivers were first released in early October, particularly with Warcraft III. An informational page has been set up at ATI's web site with details on what this update fixes. Here's a rundown from their email:

The main item addressed was a Mac OS X 10.2.x RADEON 7000 lighting issue that affected Warcraft III, Maya 4.5.1, LightWave 7 and Jim Sachs' Marine Aquarium screen saver.  More than likely other titles with similar code paths would also have been affected.  Some tweaks/fixes were also made to a couple of OS 9 files.  The OS X 10.1.3-10.1.5 files were left unchanged since the initial October release.

October 2002 ATI Retail Update for Mac OS

ATI (add to watch list)

A recent press release sent out by Zuxxez Entertainment has announced the development of a title by the name of ChickenShoot for several platforms, including the Mac. A self-described "classic fun shooter with adventure elements," ChickenShoot is a mission-based game that allows players to shoot chickens and collect items, and lists features such as 4 player internet play, 25,000 hand-drawn chicken animations, and point-and-click steering.

Here's a clip from the official press release:

ChickenShoot is the ultimate Arcade Game for everybody who likes fast fun. Boasting more than twenty thousand hand drawn cartoon animations in fantastic landscapes and locations, created by ToonTRAXX over the last 20 months in a game designed for PC, PS2, X-box, GBA, Game Cube, Mac OS and Linux. The graphics take you into a world of fantasy through several levels on a multi platform ensuring many hours of highly addictive fun complete with gimmicks galore!

ChickenShoot

Zuxxez Entertainment - ChickenShoot Press Release

Hot on the heels of yesterday's Dungeon Siege progress report, Mac game porting house Westlake Interactive has updated their web site with more exciting news.

First off, the Mac port of Sony Online Entertainment's popular massively multiplayer online role playing game EverQuest has reached Alpha:

EverQuest for Macintosh has reached the Alpha stage, and is looking great. The graphics engine is being tuned for maximum performance on OS X using Jaguar extensions, and work continues polishing up networking and integrating sound.

Also of exciting news to Mac gamers is the addition of two new ports to Westlake's Current Projects page. Writer's Block #1 and Writer's Block #2 are listed at Alpha and First Playable, respectively. Whether or not the aliases hint at the games' real names or Westlake's inability to dream up increasingly clever names is anyone's guess.

In an email to IMG staff, Glenda Adams had this to say about the names of the new ports:

We did run out of ideas to come up with code names for these, although there still could be a link :)

Stay tuned to IMG for more news regarding EverQuest and these two new ports as they develop.

Westlake Interactive: EverQuest at Alpha

Wetlake Current Projects Page

Westlake Interactive (add to watch list)

Sony Online (add to watch list)

Buy EverQuest

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