Last night on The Gamesome Mac, the Mac gaming radio program, featured guest Stan Ossias, senior product manager at ATI Technologies, revealed that ATI will be announcing a retail version of the Radeon 9800 Pro for the Mac.

Yesterday morning at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple Computer had announced that the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro would be available as a build-to-order option in Apple's new Power Mac G5 computers.

The retail version of the Radeon 9800 Pro will be similar to the OEM version from Apple as well as to the retail version for the PC, but unlike Apple's build-to-order card for the Power Mac G5, which is incompatible with older Macs, the retail card from ATI will work in a Power Mac G4.

The Radeon 9800 Pro sports AGP 8x bus support, a 128 MB frame buffer, a 256 MHz memory bus, and twice the number of pipelines and vertex engines found in its little brother, the Radeon 9600 Pro. The retail version will feature DVI, VGA, and TV-out connectors.

The Radeon 9800 Pro replaces the Radeon 9700 Pro in ATI's planned retail lineup.

For more information on the Radeon 9800 Pro and on ATI's other offerings for the Mac, listen to The Gamesome Mac's interview with Stan Ossias, available at the link below.

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Our friends at MacPlay have recently begun to take pre-orders for Aliens vs Predator 2, the sequel to the incredibly popular sci-fi first-person shooter. According to MacPlay, the game is getting "very close" to shipping.

Here's some more info on the pre-order:

Aliens vs. Predator 2 is the even more frightening sequel to probably the most scary game ever. Pre-order this game now and receive one of four 8-inch action figures designed by Todd McFarlane: Dog Alien, Predator Hunter, Alien Warrior or Predator. These collectable action figures are available only while supplies last!!!

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For the last few weeks, IMG's Chris Ritchie was able to take EverQuest for the Mac for a spin during its last few days in beta testing. Today IMG has posted a preview based on the final beta.

Here's a clip from the preview:

As the genre suggests, EverQuest is massive. The number of items, spells, foes and quests is enormous, and to take full advantage of all these various game components a firm understanding of the game system itself is necessary. As well as a huge item database, EverQuest also sports a political system that makes for interesting tensions between races. For example, a Dark Elf will be killed on site if spotted by a member of another elf caste and will not be able to enter into a human or elven city to shop or find quests. The designers of EverQuest have done an excellent job creating a world that is always evolving, and never exactly as it seems.

IMG Preview: EverQuest

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Those trying to access id Software's Master Servers in order to find Internet multiplayer games for some of id's titles may have encountered a few problems during the connection progress. Users reported an error message that read "Destination Net Unreachable". Activision sent a recently message to the community regarding the issue at hand. Here's the official word:

We wanted to update you that id Software's Internet server is currently down and therefore all master game servers are currently down.  The guys are working to restore connectivity, which is intermittent presently.  They intend to resolve the issue entirely and restore order fully as soon as possible.  They wish to thank everybody for their patience in the meantime.

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With official word that the game is now shipping, the website for the Mac version of Sony Online Entertainment's hit MMORPG EverQuest, is now live. The website has a Apple.com look to it and provides much information to help new players out.

Here's word from the official announcement:

"Supporting the Mac platform is a logical step towards growing our online community and building the most complete, interactive experience for gamers," said Scott McDaniel, Vice President of Marketing, Sony Online Entertainment. "Combine the power and stability of Mac OS X with Apple's outstanding desktop systems and you've got an incredible gaming environment that'll take full advantage of EverQuest's huge and seamless 3D world."

• PowerPC 600 Mhz or higher


• 128MB RAM


• Mac OS X 10.2.4 (Jaguar) or later


• 32 MB Graphics card that supports hardware T&L


• 2 GB of free hard disk space

EverQuest for Mac Shipping

Everquest Mac Website

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iDevGames has posted a news article outlining the planned release of a commercial game engine for the Mac. Though the engine is not named in the article, the lead GFX programmer, Nicholas Francis, divulges details on it as well as some screenshots.

The shots include an attack helicopter in action as well as an in-game editor, which Francis notes can be used to edit the parameters of a game in realtime. Some of the listed features include the following:

• Data-driven/component based design where levels are streamed in as you play
  
• Chunked Lod Landscape engine with texture splatting
  
• Full 6DOF dynamics
  
• Scriptable Shaders
  
• Integrated Python Scripting
  
• Dynamic geometry pipelines

iDevGames - Image Spotlight - New 3D Game Engine for the Mac

Mac users interested in doing a little game programming may find the recent release of iGame3D Pro to be of interest. Developed by Tobias Opfermann and William Griffin, iGame3D Pro is a freeware OpenGL development tool that allows for the creation of games, presentations, and whatever else users may come up with.

With their first display made in the title Antack, which was entered in the uDevGame 2002 competition, Opfermann and Griffin's main goal is to allow Mac developers a chance to create games in a realm normally dwarfed by large corporations. Some of iGame3D's featuers include the following:

The Editor features support for importing, editing, posing and saving 3D models in the affordable Meshwork format (from www.codenautics.com). Apple Quicktime image formats for textures, animations, and sound. FMOD support for support of Ogg Vorbis sounds. Particle effects, field of view, game speed, fog, and direct saving of screenshots are some of the features. The games are controlled and generated by an easy to learn custom scripting engine that uses plain text files.

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