In association with their Mac Card Game Week, Freeverse Software has released 3D Hearts Deluxe 7, the latest installment to their top-of-the-line hearts game for Mac. The new version adds support for GameSmith, Freeverse's online gaming service, as well as native OS X support and other improvements over previous versions.

Here's an an excerpt from the full press release:

With novice and advanced skill settings, support for all the most popular rule variations, and built-in rules to help you learn, (or re-learn), 3D Hearts Deluxe is the undisputed best Hearts game for the Mac. Easy Internet play and the ability to quickly and easily place your face into the game round out the awesome experience.

Freeverse Software Releases 3D Hearts Deluxe 7

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3D Hearts Deluxe

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Under Ground Online (UGO) has a two part preview of Civilization III: Play the World developed by Firaxis and published by Infrogrames. The preview written by Jonah Falcon goes into detail with networking and multiplayer options.

Here is a little of the preview:

Falcon: Civilization III has quite a few multiplayer modes in its arsenal - play-by-email, hotseat, classic turn-based, simultaneous, and turnless. The first two are self-evident, and don't require an Internet connection. The next three do, and Play The World makes them extremely easy to implement. Clicking on "Multiplayer" on the main menu brings up a Battle.net-ish chatroom.The main part of the screen features a list of servers with games currently available on the Internet or a LAN. A panel to the left includes the self-evident options "Host", "Join", "Refresh/Cancel Refresh", "Location", "Internet/LAN" and "Filters". The bottom part features a chat area.

Jump on over to UGO to the rest of the preview.

http://www.ugo.com/channels/games/features/civ3ptw/default_2.asp

Firaxis Games

UGO Civilization III: Play the World Preview Preview

MacSoft

Civilization III

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New reports from the Shadowbane closed beta have been published recently, giving a glimpse of how this massively multiplayer online role-playing game will function. A new war report is up at the official site, along with a second article detailing the recent happenings in the Asian beta. A number of in-game shots have also been posted, showing the new improvements in the 3.0 build of the title's engine.

Both reports tell of the massive struggles already underway in the world of Shadowbane, as well as the nations forming out of the many player guilds within the game. Many cities are rising based on ethics of freedom and democracy, while other stay in power largely because of their authoritarian rule. Here's an interesting portion from the Asia report about a nation's reach for more power:

The Elite planned to raise the conflict to a new level, leaving only a token force to defend Eville, the Inner Council resolved to travel north, not just with an army, but with builders, engineers, and numerous townsfolk. Their plan was to sweep through the north, sending the northern armies scurrying into their towns. Then, they would build a new outpost in the heart of the north, an outpost from which an attack on any of the northern cities could be made....

The seed was planted and around it, builders set to work constructing walls and buildings. Knowing that his words would surely find their way to the northern leaders, Romp issued a proclamation. Its aim was twofold: to give courage to his army and to strike fear into the hearts of the men of the north

Shadowbane War Journal

Shadowbane Asia War Journal #2

Shadowbane 3.0 Build Screen Shots

Ubisoft

Wolfpack Studios

Shadowbane

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The Unreal Technology page has been updated with new information on querying available servers for Unreal Tournament 2003. While this not may be directly applicable to Mac gamers yet, since the Mac OS X port is still in early development, it will give any aspiring developers of server-finding applications to prep themselves for its release. Here's the scoop:

We have made server lists available via HTTP for both demo and full version UT2003 servers so that 3rd party server query tools can add UT2003 support.

* http://ut2003master.epicgames.com/serverlist/full-all.txt
* http://ut2003master.epicgames.com/serverlist/demo-all.txt
These URLs contains a tab-separated list of server IP, game port and query port for all servers in our master server. The query port is the port number the server is listening on for UDP queries. The query format and response is exactly the same as UT 1.  The source code to the game server's query responder is in the UdpGameSpyQuery UnrealScript class.

Unreal Technology

Digital Extremes

Unreal Tournament 2003

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