ABC.com has released the Mac OS X version of Alias: Underground, the free computer game that allows players to take on the life of Sydney Bristow, star of the "Alias" TV show, and complete various spy missions. The game's developers claim that the game will be finished in a "Charles Dickens"-esque fashion. Every five weeks or so, the games developers will release new missions to test players' skills. There are currently four missions available.

The Games section of Apple.com has taken the time to post an exclusive article on the game, outlining some of its features and backstory. Apple talks to some of the leading individuals responsible for the game, including the show's producer/writer/director, J.J. Abrams.

Here's a brief excerpt from the full feature:

If you’ve never watched the show, though, don’t worry: Alexander and Abrams both note that you can enjoy the game without having seen a single episode.

The training mission, which you must play first, immerses you in the world of Alias while showing you how the controls work. Like in the Tomb Raider games, you view the main character from a third-person perspective as you move him/her through the game, interact with the environment, and take out the bad guys with a few well-placed kicks and punches.

Alias: Underground

Apple: Becoming a Double Agent in Alias Underground

Download: Alias Underground

Download: Alias Underground Missions

Today, IMG has posted an in-depth review of NVIDIA's highest end video hardware, the GeForce4 Ti. Written by Andy "frag'em high" Largent, this review covers the card's various specs, performance in 3D games and is chocked full of charts and graphs.

Here's a clip:

According to Apple's documentation, the GeForce4 Titanium is equivalent to the high-end GeForce4 Ti 4600 on the PC. With theoretical numbers like 1.23 trillion operations drawing 87 million triangles and 4.9 billion textured pixels per second, you may start to wonder how much of this is relevant, and more importantly, how it applies to real-world performance. Some key things that are important to note on the card include support for Full Scene Anti-aliasing (FSAA), as well as what NVIDIA has dubbed the "nfiniteFX II Engine."

We'll get more into FSAA later, but a quick translation of the nfiniteFX engine means support for Vertex and Pixel Shaders. These aren't used to any great degree yet in the current generation of games, but upcoming titles like DOOM III will mark the beginning of a new era. Instead of pushing video hardware to draw more and more polygons per second, games will soon have models with fewer polygons but a number of shaders to greatly increase the realism of games.

IMG Review: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti

NVIDIA

GeForce4 Ti

British Mac publishing company Feral Interactive recently made a complete overhaul of their website. The new design is much easier to navigate, with links to all their games, divided by genre, on the left, links to recent items such as patches and trailers on the right, and a language selector on the top right.

Here's what Feral has to say about the new design:

We’ve changed our looks. Conscious that this site was in danger of becoming the scruffy kid on the Mac games block, we have overhauled it, pretty much from top to bottom. The equivalent of a digital face lift. The bad news is that given the chance we still charge for our games, but the good news is it’s a lot easier to find what you are looking for and once you have done so it is much easier on the eye. This redesign has taken the site a long way, but it’s not finished (it’s never finished) and we will continue to try and improve it’s looks, feel and functionality and any gripes, plaudits, slams or toasts will be received with interest and replied to (with interest) at your-site-is-fantastic-but@feral.co.uk.

Feral Interactive

A helpful forum poster recently reported that 3D Realms' classic shooter Rise of The Triad has been ported to OS X. This release comes only 11 days after the source code for the game was released. ROTT is a classic shooter in which players must to go to a remote island to stop an evil madman from killing millions of people. The game features dozens of single player missions, loads of different weapons, and modem and network multi-player for up to 11 players.

Here's the storyline of the game:

You are part of an elite group of operatives called HUNT (High-risk United Nations Taskforce), and you must stop a maniac cult leader from killing millions of people. While scouting a remote island, you are suddenly surrounded by enemy troops with guns blaring. In the distance you see your boat--your only chance to escape--explode into matchsticks. In front of you is a huge fortress monastery, and your only chance to stop the madness. You are e quipped with awesome, high-tech weaponry like heat-seeking missiles, split missiles, and the Flamewall cannon, which leaves a trail of charred skeletons in its wake. You'll also find magical instruments and weapons so incredible they defy description.

IMG Forums: Rise of The Triad for OS X

Rise of The Triad Source Code Released

Rise of The Triad

Click to enlarge

Prolific aviation-simulation developer Laminar Research has just finalized the latest update to their general-aviation flight simulator, X-Plane. The new version, 6.50, adds a number of user-requested features to the extensive simulator, as the website explains:

Scenery

• FINALLY! You can easily exchange custom scenery in a single folder! There is now a "Custom Scenery" folder which contains as many causton folders as you like.


• New auto-gen type: FOREST... do MANY MORE TREES than possible with individual trees!


• REILs now have strobes.


• Some people got an uneasy feeling when half the cars on the road were cops or fire engines, sirens flashing... OK, now the emergency vehichles are more rare


• RIVERS AND STREAMS!


• Smoke from custom objects scales to the size... so cooling towers put out huge puffs, while little house chimneys put out less...


• Cumulus puffs at the top of the thermals to help glider pilots find those thermals!

Flight Model Improvements

• New afl format! Now you get raw columns of cl, cd, and cm for the entire range of -180 to 180 degrees!


• Total foil performance can now be set!


• Thanks to Yvves Cuttat we now have better control effectiveness accuracy and wing-stall and adverse yaw from sloppy control input espeicially at high-alpha.


• Better computation of Oswalds Efficiency for drag and lift reduction.. this increases accuracy in the lift and drag slopes and efficiencies.


• More accurate physics in the sideslip... The wing now has more induced drag thanks to a high effective span-loading.


• New improved reverse-flow over the airfoils for those tailslides, helos, and autogyros


• Enter the coeff of friction (rolling and max) for the tires in the landing gear section of Plane-Maker... get those friction coefficients perfect!


• Ridge-lift is better... It tops out at a height above the mountains, not a height you specify in the thermals screen.


• Go to the landing gear screen... you can now enter tghe SPRING CONSTANT for those nosehweels and tailwheels
  that have a SPRING LINKAGE to the rudder command input from the pilot...


• Motorgliders with retractable props now possible!


• Engine and prop RPM modelled seperately now to get those auto-gyro pre-rotates, helo clutches, helo auto-rotations, and helo engine-failures with needle-split on the tach just right.


• Better mixture control... the airflow and fuel flow are both considered to get the EGT indications more accurate...


• Helo flight model improvements... more efficiency as the baldes mover forwards into undisturbed air on the advancing hald of the rotor system.


• You can specify which of each engine has a pylon.

General Enhancements

• Better joystick support Mac OS-X... use more sticks and buttons and hat-switches.


• New asi mode: aircraft pitch to hold speed!


• Mixture on the turboprop is upper 25% for flight idle, lower 25% for shutoff, in the middle for ground idle.


• ADF needle parks at 90 deg when no station is tuned.


• 5000 logbook entries allowed (was 1000) and clear message to replace it when full (not scanning error).


• As alway: more UDP IO: fuel pump, starters, generators, and inverters.


• DME offset: DMEs now have an offset for some ILS DME uses.


• Runway headings adjusted slightly for round-earth... World-Maker and X-Plane should be perfectly in sync now.


• OBS now can control your heading to any GPS fix... select the OBS ANY panel instrument in plane-maker to get this.


• Set press and temp to english or metric independently to suit the wxr data you havce access to.


• Now you can specify what elements of what foils change incidence with thrust vector or even ailerons...
  
• World-Maker: You can enter the airport or navaid name to get to it quick now.


• Piston helo start is right.. there is a clutch you disengage for starting.


• Winch and tow hooks for gliders: Enter position in Plane-Maker.


• AI can now control the aircraft and the views seperately... they are both items in the Special menu.

Check out the new F-35 in the VTOL folder! Realistic lift fan and thrust-vectoring, just like the real plane... ONLY WITH X-PLANE! Not too bad!
New Instruments

• New instrument: Speed trend line... an arrow that points up or down on the efis asi to indicate acceleration.


• New button: Igniters. Leave them on for those turbopoprops if you want the engines running.


• New instrument panel option: General Aviation IFR


• New artificial horizon: electric. Now you can have both vacuum and electirc horizons, as well as vacuum DG's and electirc HSI's...

ATC Stuff

• You are no longer limited to getting the weather by radio at ATIS... now AWOS is avail as well!


• When you call for vectors to the tanker you get his heading and speed to help you plan your intercept.

Laminar Research

X-Plane 6

X-Plane 6.50 Update

X-Plane 6.50 Demo/Full Version

As part of their recently announced partnership, Macintosh game porter; OmniGroup and popular puzzle game developer, PopCap bring Mac gamers another high quality puzzle game, Big Money Deluxe.

Below is a brief description of the game from PopCap's webpage:

Grab all the coins you can in this exciting puzzler! Action mode satisfies adrenaline junkies, while Puzzle and Strategy modes will thrill players looking for a more relaxed pace. Greed is good!

Download: Big Money DELUXE for Macintosh

PopCap Macintosh Games

iDevGames, home of the recently ended uDevGames 2002 Macintosh game developing contest, has just posted the Kiki the Nanobot postmortem onto their website. The game took winner for three different categories, Best Graphics, Best Originality, and last but not least, best overall. The postmortem gives players and developers alike an inside look at what its like to create a computer game. Here's a snippit from the full article:

The Tools

I knew I wanted to reuse some of the code I wrote for my previous project, mainly some basic vector, matrix, quaternion, and projection utilities. I also wanted to avoid long compile times and do some rapid prototyping in Python. After evaluating some systems to bridge between C++ and Python, I chose SWIG, which I can highly recommend. I've never written a program with sound output before, so I tried the SDL_mixer library, because I already appreciated the well done SDL framework. There was no need to look for other solutions, since the sound system I hacked together in a few hours worked perfectly for me and I felt no reason to touch it again, despite it's probably quite naive implementation. Compliments and thanks to the author for this very nice library.

Kiki the Nanobot Postmortem

iDevGames

Click to enlarge

NCSoft, makers of the popular Mac/PC Online RPG, Lineage: The Blood Pledge, has announced that a new server has been added to the game, Lands of Aden, designed to help newer players grasp the basics of online play, in an easy and friendly environment. Here's what NCSoft has to say about it:

Experience the tradition of adventure and exploration that made Lineage the world’s most popular online game – on a new game server designed specifically for new users! If you have never played an online game, or have tried but been frustrated by the experience, the Lands of Aden experience is for you.

The Lands of Aden server is designed to allow easier transition from lower gaming levels to the excitement of high level play. We’ve included new tutorials, new quests, and new items for lower-level players among other game changes. In Lands of Aden, you’ll be playing – and having fun – faster than ever.

Lands of Aden

Lineage

Sign up to Lineage

Click to enlarge

TenebraeQuake, an open source project that alters the original Quake engine to enable advanced graphical options, similar to those of the upcoming Doom III, has just been updated to version 1.0.3, the Mac port's first non-beta release. Here's a short description from our sister site, MacGameFiles:

TenebraeQuake is an enhanced Quake client with more advanced graphic algorithms like stencil shadows and bump-mapping. It is much more hardware demanding than the original Quake.

Download: TenebraeQuake 1.0.3

Fruitz of Dojo

Developer GameHouse has released Super Collapse II, a sequel to the best selling Tetris-inspired puzzle game Super Collapse!.

GameHouse describes what is new about their latest Collapse title:

"We've stuck to the basic, simple concept of the original Super Collapse!, but now it offers a greater variety of challenges and rewards," says Garr Godfrey, president of GameHouse. "People that liked Super Collapse! will love Super Collapse II, and those that loved Super Collapse! are going to go nuts," concludes Godfrey.

GameHouse

MWNY 2002: GameHouse Opens its Doors to Mac Gamers

Richard Bannister, responsible for many high-quality Mac emulator ports, has released updates for RockNES (NES emulator), Boycott Advance (Gameboy Advance), ViBE (Virtual Boy), and ROM Organizer (a ROM sorting utility) over the holidays. All three emulator updates add joystick support under OS X (Blitter Library also required), as well as the following individual changes:

• Boycott Advance v0.2.7 - In sync with the latest code for Windows.
  
• RockNES v2.40 - In sync with the latest PC version.
  
• ViBE v1.0b2 - Serious compatibility improvements, thanks to Gil Pedersen. ViBE now runs 18 out of 22 known Virtual Boy games.
  
• ROM Organizer v1.0.1 - adds more than 7,000 more ROMs to the database, and adds MSX support.

Bannister has also released a brand new port to an emulator for Bandai's Wonderswan, titled Oswan. The developer notes that sound support has not yet been enabled, but compatability of WonderSwan games is high, with only a few not working with the emulator. Here's a short description from Oswan's webpage:

Oswan is the first Wonderswan emulator to be released for the Mac platform. While it does not support sound, it has very high compatibility, with only a few titles that do not work correctly. Additional video modes can be added to this emulator via my Blitter Library plugin.

Bannister.org

Download: Boycott Advance 0.2.7

Download: RockNES v2.30

Download: ViBE 1.0b2

Download: ROM Organizer 1.0.1

Download: Oswan 0.7.0

Video gaming site, Computer and Video Games has just posted an interview with Kenn Hoekstra, Director of Support Services at Raven Software, popular first-person shooter game developer, responsible for such hit titles as Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, and Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix. The interview focuses on Hoekstra's views of the FPS genre; what sort of games have redefined it, what he thinks would make an ideal first-person shooter, his take on the recent "merging" of genres in video games today, and more. Here's a small excerpt from the interview:

Online gaming is still in its relative infancy, and we haven't really seen all that that side of videogaming is capable of. What's your own view on how the Internet will impact both singleplayer and multiplayer first-person shooter action in the coming years?

Hoekstra: The time will come when the vast majority of people on the Internet have broadband connections as opposed to 56k modems. When that happens and developers can design their games with cable and DSL bandwidth in mind, you'll see a huge jump in what multiplayer online games are capable of. As it is, I don't think it would be profitable to design a multiplayer only game for just broadband users. Maybe in a few years, but not quite yet... When that time comes, I believe the market will divide into single player only and multiplayer only games with very few titles, if any, offering both. When broadband Internet becomes commonplace in American homes, you're going to see a revolution in gaming.

Interview: Kenn Hoekstra Tells it Straight

Raven Software

Click to enlarge

Mac game developer, Strange Flavour has released the network beta to their popular shareware hit, Airburst. The network edition of the game allows registered users of Airburst to play the game over a network, either on a LAN, or using Freeverse Software's GameSmith. Here's a short description from the game's homepage:

Airburst Network is an add on for the current version of Airburst, and can only be played by registered users of Airburst. Each player will need their own registration to play (we will be doing some form of limited LAN play with a single registration, but haven't found a good way to implement this yet).

You can download Airburst and Airburst Network both in one easy .sit file. Note that you must be a registered user to play Airburst Network, and that a 30 day trial is available for the regular version of Airburst, after which, the game costs $9.95. A link to the download has been attached to this article.

Download: Airburst 1.051 (Includes Airburst Network 1.051N beta)

Airburst

Strange Flavour

Click to enlarge

Avsim, developer of many popular PC flight sims, has released the Fly! II final patch 2.50.240 for both PC and Mac. The final patch fixes many stability problems, as well as adds other various improvements. Below is a full summary of what the patch does, directly from Avsim's website:

Richard Harvey has just announced the release of Fly! II Final Patch 2.50.240. This latest and final patch to the FLY! II, for both PC and MAC, comes out after months of development from Richard and his beta team and brings many improvements and corrections. Here's what Richard says in his post: "If you want to prepare your machines for the patch, here's what you need to do. For PC users, you need to already be patched to version 2.00.210 or higher (so, all of those already on patch 230 are fine). If you are a Mac user, you simply need to have the boxed retail version of Fly! II installed (since there are no previous Mac patches). Now, before everyone gets there hopes up, this patch release is not nearly as "extensive" as the 230 patch was (though, it is inclusive of all the 230 changes). Whereas the previous patch had hundreds of changes, this patch has a smaller set. I would argue, though, that this patch is probably more significant in that the majority of fixes made have greatly improved the stability of the product. Throughout testing, we found very ugly and serious crash situations, and eliminated every situation we could find. This was particularly prevalent while using ATC or computer aircraft. Alot of progress was also made in the weather system, and you should be pleased to see a much more accurate correlation of weather to the imported METAR reports. There are also some long overdue fixes that affect things like PMDG aircraft models that are included.

Download: Fly! II Final Patch 2.50.240

IMG Forum: Fly! II patched. Has anyone tried it?

Fly! II

Buy Fly! II

Click to enlarge

Apple.com has recently posted another article in their Gaming area, featuring the upcoming Mac skateboard sim, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. The article delves deep into Tony Hawk 3's gameplay, showing off the game's numerous improvements from previous installments, as well as some of they key features that PC and console users are raving over. The article even includes a few words from the game's developers and producers, even the Hawk himself. Here's a sneak peak of what to expect:

For Skaters and Non-Skaters Alike
“Non-skateboarders will not get lost in this game,” says Kevin Mulhall, Tony Hawk co-producer at developer Neversoft Entertainment. He points out that his team added a tutorial to the game specifically so that non-skateboarders could learn the basic tricks as well as the sport’s terminology.

“Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 shows how much fun the skateboarding sport can be,” he adds. So even if you’ve never ridden a skateboard in your life, you can still experience the thrills of pulling off 360-degree ollies with a few kick-flips and melons — and a one-foot japan — thrown in for good measure. Best of all, you won’t have to experience any real pain if you push a trick too far and fall flat on your face.

Apple.com Article: The Legend Returns: THPS3

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

As reported from Aspyr Media's December newsletter, the latest expansion set to the hugely popular The Sims series, The Sims: Unleashed is now shipping:

Great news for Sims fans, The Sims™ Unleashed is shipping for the Macintosh! Mac gamers now have a chance to be a proud parent of a furry friend, well at least a simulated friend, with The Sims Unleashed, the Maxis game licensed from Electronic Arts, is coming to the Mac. Conversion was done by Westlake Interactive.

As fans of The Sims know, there has always been something missing from their virtual neighborhoods... pets. In The Sims Unleashed, players can now add furry friends to their Sims' families. Teach Fido some cool tricks or hire an efficient Pet Trainer to do all of the work. Let your kitties and canines strut their stuff in the local Pet Show. Are you ready for the responsibility?

Visit a pet store and bring home a variety of creatures, from dogs to lizards, your choices are endless. To make room for these furry additions, the Sims community will be equipped with bigger neighborhoods. Forty all-new residential and community lots featuring new homes, lush parks, a hip new café, cool shops and a farmer's market are available for Sims to explore. Visit the local garden store and grow a variety of vegetables in their own garden plots.

Time for a career change? Send your Sims down five new career tracks with 50 new jobs. Enter the world of fashion, take care of the neighborhood’s pets, or run away and join the circus. With 125 new objects, redecorate your Sims' home for the new pet's arrival.

December 2002 Aspyr eNewsletter

The Sims: Unleashed

Buy The Sims: Unleashed

Scott Kevil, creator of the popular GameRanger matching service, has released version 3.1.1 of the client, fixing a few bugs and adding some features. Below is a list of changes from the update:

Added comprehensive customizable game groups for controlling which games are shown in the game list

Miscellaneous minor improvements

In order to download the latest update, players simply need to run GameRanger to start its built-in auto update option. If you have not yet downloaded GameRanger, you can follow the link attached to the bottom of this article. Mac OS X 10.1 or higher is required.

GameRanger

Click to enlarge

Ambrosia recently announced it would be publishing the hacker game Uplink by Introversion, that is currently being ported to the Mac by Contraband. Uplink is a unique game in which players play hackers hired by corporations to hack into competing company’s databases to steal research, for sabotage, and to hack into the stock market and police systems.

Here's the description from Ambrosia's Website:

You play an Uplink Agent who makes a living by performing jobs for major corporations. Your tasks involve hacking into rival computer systems, stealing research data, sabotaging other companies, laundering money, erasing evidence, or framing innocent people.

You use the money you earn to upgrade your computer systems, and to buy new software and tools. As your experience level increases you find more dangerous and profitable missions become available. You can speculate on a fully working stock market (and even influence its outcome). You can modify people’s academic or criminal records. You can divert money from bank transfers into your own accounts. You can even take part in the construction of the most deadly computer virus ever designed.

Ambrosia Publishing Uplink for OS X

Ambrosia Software

Contraband Entertainment

Uplink

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