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The Mac page at Strategy First's official World War II Online site was updated recently with new details on how the open beta will wrap up with the release of the full game later this month. According to the site, the Mac version of this massively multiplayer war sim should be in stores next Wednesday, November 13, though beta testers will be welcome to play until the 17th.

Here are details on making the transition:

- Anytime starting the 13th, you can purchase a retail copy of the game and use the CD key to convert your account from Beta to Premium subscription
- Converting to a Premium subscrioption will retain your gamename and stats
- You can create a new account after purchasing a retail copy if you do not wish to keep your Beta account info

World War II Online Mac Page

Strategy First

Cornered Rat Software

World War II Online

IMG has taken an in-depth look at Apple's low end tower, the Power Mac G4/Dual 867. Senior Editor Andy Largent covers the dual 867's gaming abilities in detail, with comparisons of ATI's Radeon 9000 Pro and NVIDIA's GeForce4 MX and GeForce4 Titanium. The review also contains benchmarks from Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Elite Force, as well as FSAA screenshots from Jedi Knight 2. Here's what Largent had to say about Apple's latest tower:

With the Power Mac Dual 867, I now know what OS X is supposed to feel like. My beige G3 is going to make a great OS X server, but the eye candy was just too much for its outdated architecture to handle. It's like I had a taste or OS X's potential, but I wasn't really experiencing its full glory until now.

Now applications usually open in one bounce, I can run iTunes while playing games on a 21" monitor, and I have yet to experience a hitch. While the review will focus mostly on game performance in a variety of scenarios, let me just say that there's nothing the 867DP shouldn't be able to handle in most non-gaming situations.

IMG Review: Power Mac G4/Dual 867

Power Macintosh G4/Dual 867

Apple

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The latest Apple game preview article is up, and this time around they look at the fantasy turn-based strategy game Heroes of Might & Magic IV. In Heroes IV, players control heroes who recruit soldiers and traverse the land of Might and Magic doing battle with their enemies. Developed by 3DO, and ported to the Mac by Contraband, the game features a brand new game engine, and re-worked gameplay that makes several changes from the previous games in the series. These include the ability for your hero to fight in battles and of your armies to travel without a hero leading them.

The Apple preview goes into the many different features of the game. Here's a sample:

Strategy and More
Heroes of Might and Magic IV is billed as a turn-based strategy game, but many argue that this description is far too narrow. The game features several distinct forms of game play, including resource management, role-playing, and of course, strategy.

Over the course of the game, you develop armies composed of specialized hero characters and troops of creatures. You’ll move these armies over both land and sea, seeking natural resources, creature nurseries, power-ups that increase your skills, and treasures that increase your wealth. The game features six massive campaigns and over twenty individual scenarios that further the storyline. Capturing towns is the objective of many scenarios, and for good reason — towns that have succumbed to your wrath supply you with new hero characters, creatures, magic spells, and gold. Unlike previous titles in the series, however, it’s possible to successfully complete a scenario without having conquered any new towns.

To go along with this preview, Apple has also posted a trailer of the game. Both the trailer and preview can reached from the below links. Also, you can pre-order Heroes IV from the IMG Store.

IMG Previews Heroes of MIght & Magic IV

Apple Heroes IV Preview

Apple Heroes IV Trailer

Heroes of Might & Magic IV

3DO

Contraband Entertainment

Buy Heroes of Might & Magic IV

Calum Robinson, one of the many programmers involved with the DooMLegacy project, recently released an update to his Mac DooMLegacy for OS X software package.

DooMLegacy is a multi-platform endeavor aiming to enhance and continue development of the classic game of Doom. Based on id Software's original source code for the game, the DooMLegacy programmers are enhancing the Doom gaming experience by keeping the engine operational under modern hardware and operating systems and adding new technological features while keeping the gameplay unaltered and true to the original version.

Robinson's recent update, which brings the version number up to 1.40, address issues dealing with OS X version 10.2 (Jaguar):

DooMLegacy 1.40 for OS X (10.2 required) [has been] released. What's new:

* Based on the Cocoa version of Quake from fruitz-of-dojo
* More stability improvements
* Save games & config files & screenshots stored in ~/Library/Application Support/
* FSAA via a console variable (vid_fsaa)
* WAD files in the games resources directory

MacGameFiles: Mac DooMLegacy 1.4 Download

iDevGames: MacDoomLegacy Website

id Software

GarageGames has posted an article on their website summarizing some of the events of IndieGamesCon 2002, which occurred over the weekend. IndieGamesCon is a conference for independent game developers to meet, share techniques and collaborate on projects. The article goes over some of the highlights of this year’s event.

Here's a clip from the article:

We saw some awesome games in the ShowOFF center:

Realm Wars running on all three platforms and looking awesome!!
Chain Reaction and Marble Blast have been very well received at IGC and are looking ready for launch. Playing ORBZ - From 21-6 Productions has been one of the highlights of IGC and Bravetree's first glipse in a preview of ThinkTanks is very fun and always in play over the network. We've had some great additions from other studios just a couple have been White Knuckle Games' - Reality's Edge and Trash a game from Inhuman Games and Tork.Zenkel has sent us a great avi of Project: C.A. for viewing as well as some screenshots. We have been playtesting Torque engine games Legends, Trakers and Metal Drift as well and there are many more we've gotten a chance to see demoed.

IndieGamesCon Report

IndieGamesCon

GarageGames

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The latest patch to Blizzard Entertainment's popular real time strategy game, WarCraft III, has been released. Currently the only way to obtain the patch is by connecting to Battle.net, but Blizzard notes on their website that a stand-alone patch will be available as soon as possible.

Here are the technical fixes in the patch:

-Fixed an issue related to full-shared unit control and allied play that could cause one or more players to lose the ability to train or upgrade their own units.
-Fixed an issue that caused the experience point bars in Battle.net profiles to improperly reflect recently gained or lost points.
-Fixed a graphic issue related to the ladder profile and the scroll bar.

IMG Review: WarCraft III

WarCraft III 1.04 patch fixes

WarCraft III

Blizzard Entertainment

Buy WarCraft III

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