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With the much-anticipated Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast almost out the door, IMG's Chris Barylick recently sat down with Aspyr's Amy Torres to talk about what is easily one of the most anticipated releases of the fall season.

Here's a clip from the interview:

IMG: What elements of the recent Episode II film have found their way into Jedi Knight II?

Aspyr: All the acrobatic light saber battles are definitely something that is Episode II-esque. Once you've played the game and gotten the hang of it there are some really cool moves that you've always dreamed of doing that are fun to see.

IMG: What was the porting process like and did Jedi Knight II provide any additional challenges over previous ports?

Aspyr: The game is currently near FC. The porting process has gone smooth. The best part is that we've got a ton of folks testing, for Westlake and here in the office. I think Mac gamers are going to be very pleased with the end result.

IMG Interview: Jedi Knight II

IMG Preview: Jedi Knight II

Aspyr Media

Westlake Interactive

Raven Software

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

Buy Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

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A brand new feature was recently released for the criticially-acclaimed online roleplaying game, Neverwinter Nights, known to gamers as the Guild Registry, a system in which players can find other players to play with, based on their common interests and hobbies. What's more, Neverwinter Vault has posted an exclusive interview with three of BioWare's finest, web developers Robin Mayne and Dups Wijawawardhana, and of course, BioWare's infamous Community Manager, Jay Watamaniuk, in hopes of answering some questions gamers might be having concerning NWN's newest addition. The interviews consists of tons of info, from signing up to a Guild, to actually playing with fellow members. BioWare even hints at future enhancements NWN may be sporting in the near future.

Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Some of the cool features are the ability of guild owners to post news and have their own separate forum. What other features do you think make this system interesting to players.

We think the ability to see what servers your guild members are playing on at any given time from the website is one of the coolest features. Imagine how useful that would be for locating particular people and joining a game with them? Other features that are extremely useful are the guild calendar to schedule events and the ability to search for a variety of types of people including players, scripters, module makers, DMs and so on. There are lots of features to the system and we would recommend that you explore this useful tool to learn it’s full potential.

Guild Registry Interview

Neverwinter Nights

Buy Neverwinter Nights

Apple has posted a new article in their gaming section looking at Infogrames and the many children's games they publish for the Mac. While the company is known for its Mac label MacSoft, they also have a number of kids' titles under their belt from talented game houses like Humongous and Stunt Puppy Entertainment. Here's an interesting except about one title which they describe at "a kids' The Sims [with] trains:"

“You can play with several main characters [in Thomas & Friends: Building the New Railroad Line], and you put together a new line for the Island of Sodor,” she says. “Then we have built into the game various events that occur at random, which are a lot like the stories and videos: the oil barrels spill onto the track, a cow wanders onto the track, etc. After you build your track, then your line comes to life, and you can drive around. And along the way, you have these little adventures that pop up. These are the kind of things that are very familiar to Thomas viewers: the track breaking, something’s on the track, a train gets dirty, and more.”

Apple and Infogrames' Children's Games

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Video gaming website GamersClick recently had the opportunity to sit down with Maxis producer Kevin Hogan and have a little chat regarding the much anticipated SimCity 4, the next installment in the popular series.

The exclusive Q&A covers many aspects, including the game's progress (and what it took to get there), some of features the game will include, and even the current minimum system requirements (subject to change, however, and for PCs only).

And now, a sneak peak of what's inside:

GC: Sim City 4 sees the implementation of 3 definite mods: God, Mayor, and Sim. Could you please tell us a bit more about these and how they will work?

KH: God mode allows you to make grand changes to the terrain of your city. In addition to that, if you are a vengeful god, you can destroy your city with the disaster tools that we provide. In mayor mode you grow your city, make decisions about where police stations, power plants, water pumps, etc go, and manage the budget. In My Sim mode you can import Sims from the Sims, move them into neighbourhoods, and get feedback from them about what they think of your city. As the lives of your citizens improve, the life of your Sim improves. Anything that can happen to your residents can happen to your Sim. So be careful where you place that tornado.

SimCity 4 Interview

Buy SimCity 4

A helpful poster to the IMG forums pointed out that Beenox Studios has a new mystery game title in their games section. It seems the company -- known for their powerful game cration tool the Coldstone Game Engine and its first title Pillars of Garendall -- is now working on porting a game to the Mac.

While no details are known at this time, "Project X" as it's called will support both OS 9 as well as OS X. If you've got any ideas about what the title might be, feel free to shoot them out in the forums. IMG has contacted Beenox for additional info and will bring you any news as it is released about the title.

[Update]: Beenox president Dee Brown has confirmed with IMG that while they can't reveal the game yet, it is a "very well known commercial game," and that it's work for a Mac publisher. Brown also doesn't know exactly when the game will be announced, but expects it could be sometime in the near future. Stay tuned to IMG for the latest.

Beenox Games Page

IMG Forum: New Game Being Ported by Beenox

Beenox

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MacPlay's status page has been updated with news of two new patches for their popular titles Aliens versus Predator and Incoming. Both updates address a number of small issues in the game, though the Aliens versus Predator 1.0.9 patch also adds in full support for the GameRanger 3.0 matching service. Here's a list of changes:

• Full support of Gameranger 3.0
  
• Full-screen Anti-aliasing
  
• Fixed audio related crashes
  
• Fix several key-binding issues
  
• Fixes MouseWheel up and down to be the same in Mac OS 9 and X.
  
• Fixes remapping menu response time.
  
• Gameranger Libraries update.
  
• Fixes issues between Aliens vs. Predator and Mac OS X 10.1.2.
  
• Fixes flickering of cursor.Fixes gaming going into window mode in 10.1.
  
• Fixes stuttering with rapid mouse movement and mouse buttons 4 and 5 work in OS X.
  
• Fixes OpenGL failure.
  
• For systems that cannot start the OpenGL renderer in OS X, the game will switch to software rendering.
  
• Minor code optimizations

Omni Group

MacPlay

Logicware

Fox Interactive

Aliens vs. Predator: Gold

Download Incoming 1.0.4 (1.5MB)

Download Aliens vs. Predator 1.0.9 (3MB)

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The German-based group Fruitz of Dojo have released a new patch for their cocoa version of the original Quake. The update fixes a number of issues, as well as adding support for impressive new features such as Full-Scene Anti Aliasing (FSAA), implementing an in-game visual options menu, and fixing networking code with Windows versions. Here is a full list of changes:

Added support for FSAA (10.1 or later for NVidia boards, 10.2 or later for ATI Radeon boards).

ATI Radeon users may change FSAA settings on the fly (see "video options" dialog).

Added texture RAM check. An error message is thrown out if out of texture memory.

Added support for multitexturing under MacOS X v10.2 or later (see "video options" dialog).

Added option to switch between normal and overbright gamma (see "video options" dialog, OpenGL only).

Added option to show the OpenGL startup dialog only when pressing the Option key.

Added textfield for command-line parameters to the startup dialog.

Added startup dialog for command-line parameters to the software renderer versions.

Added support for AppleScript.

Added the command-line tool "vispatch".

New help.

F12 key will no longer eject medias if you bind a command to it.

Fixed network compatibility with the Windows versions of Quake and GLQuake.

Fixed an issue with the console for display-ratios other than 4:3 at GLQuakeWorld.

Many minor changes.

Download Quake 1.0.8 (1.9MB)

Fruitz of Dojo

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Infogrames have announced the 25 winners of their matching contest for Master of Orion III, the upcoming strategy title in development at Quicksilver. The contest required fans of the series to match characters from the game with the appropriate race. The lucky few are listed on fan site Apolyton now, and all of them will be able to take part in a closed beta test of the game.

Master of Orion III is currently expected for release later this year, and MacSoft will be publishing the Mac version. We expect to heard more from them about the Mac version in the coming months. If you won the contest you should have already been contacted by Infogrames.

Apolyton

MacSoft

Quicksilver Software

Master of Orion III

Buy Master of Orion III

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