Mac game developer and publisher Aspyr Media announced on Monday that both the PC and Mac versions of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 have reached gold master status. Here's a summary of what the game has to offer:

Players take on the role of legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk and 13 other athletes as they skate through enormous free roaming levels, choose from 190 progressively harder goals and build their skills to perform 14 of the greatest skateboarding stunts of all time. The game's enhanced career mode allows players to earn respect and the chance to take on all new pro goals by conquering a skater-specific Pro Challenge based on each skater's personal history.

Features:
All new tricks-skitch behind cars, skate on moving objects, and transfer over spines.

Play up to 8 player online in all new modes like Goal Attack and Capture the Flag!

14 of the World's top pro challenge you to prove your skills.

THPS 4 Goes Gold

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

Aspyr Media

Beenox

IMG Store

Buy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

Gamers yearning for a Mac version of the popular Korea-based MMORPG Ragnarok Online may be interested to know that a small, open-sourced community (calling themselves YARE, or Yet Another Ragnarok Emulator) working on an alternative server clone for the game are also working on a matching multi-platform client. This client includes support for Windows, Linux, and soon Mac OS X.

On the community's messageboard, a user has posted a screenshot of what appears to be an OS X window displaying the game in action. While it is too early to confirm that YARE is indeed coming to Mac, things appear to be looking up for those hoping to play the game on their computers without the use of emulation.

We'll keep you posted on any further news regarding the quite possible Mac OS X client of Ragnarok Online. In the mean time, you can check out the links below for more information about the game, and the project that might be bringing it to the Mac.

YARE Board: Mac OS X Client?

Ragnarok Online Preview at GameSpot

Ragnarok Online

Project YARE

A recent press release from Snood.com has revealed that popular shareware game Snood has reached version 3.0, and is now available in Mac OS X, OS 9, and Carbon flavors. The latest version adds 2,800 puzzle levels, a custom graphics option, and a new "Magic Snoods" feature. Here's the official press release:

Calabasas, CA, July 29, 2003 Popular shareware game Snood announced today the release of Snood version 3.0 for Mac OS X, OS 9 and Carbon now available at www.snood.com. Version 3.0 also adds a variety of game features including 2,800 puzzle levels, custom Snood graphics and Magic Snoods.

Snood author, Dave Dobson, stated, "Snood began as a Mac only game and we are very happy that all of the new Snood features are available for our loyal Mac customers".

Download Snood 3.0 Mac

Snood

Fans of the classic Tetris will be pleased to hear of a new clone of the popular title available now for OS X. Entitled Descender, the game features colorful graphics along with a 2-player battle mode.

Here's a full description:

Descender is a modern Tetris-style arcade game. It features great 1-player puzzle-crunching action, with an additional 2-player battle mode for heated versus showdowns. Watch out for the fluidly moving pieces, polished 16-bit graphics, and professionally recorded surf-rock soundtrack.

- PowerPC running MacOS 8.6+ or MacOS X.
- CarbonLib 1.1
- QuickTime 4.0 or higher

Descender for Mac OS X Released

Click to enlarge

Last Thursday, Aspyr Media announced that they would be publishing Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, an action adventure game featuring everyone's favorite original tomb raider, Indiana Jones. While the game's developer still remained a mystery, we contacted Aspyr shortly after the announcement and received valid information that the Mac version's developer is TransGaming.

In addition, Aspyr has also sent over some high resolution screenshots of the game for your viewing pleasure. The screenshots can be found at the link below. Be sure to stay tuned to IMG as we keep you posted on the game's status.

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

Aspyr Media

TransGaming

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

Screenshot 3

Screenshot 4

Screenshot 5

Buy Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

Recently, Out of the Box Entertainment posted a message on their website asking for OS X developers within the Mac community to help port their Cypher Engine to the Mac. Here's the message:

As the development for the Cipher Engine grows, OBE realizes the importance of great support for our great engine. Cipher is currently only for the PC, however, OBE has plans to port this engine to Mac OS X. Previous work has been done when Cipher was part of Synaptic Soup, thus the developer of the Mac version will take on from there.

For this development though, we are asking the OS X community to come out and help join this development. We need to make this engine work well on OS X and any additional help is greatly appreciated as our own projects continue to progress. Additionally, the Cipher Community has expressed a great deal of interest in the development of Blender and Maya tools for Cipher OS X. OBE will coordinate the creation of these tools and will release the tools to the community.

Developers that are interested in participating in the port of the engine and/or the tools should direct themselves onto the forum sign up and e-mail or message us at obe@outoftheboxent.com.

OS X developers that have an interest in the Cypher Engine can reach OBE's forums with the provided link.

OBE's Forums

Out of the Box Entertainment

OBE

Click to enlarge

On Tuesday, Blizzard updated their Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne Tournament Page. Here's a summary of what has changed:

We have improved our main tournament site. It now features an easy-to-read format and includes a link to the calendar page. We have also created some new animations based on each tournament type. The animations turn from black and white to color when the tournament is live. Also, you can use the calendar to find the results for older tournaments or take a look at upcoming tournaments. We hope you enjoy the changes!

Blizzard Entertainment

WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne

Blizzard Tournament Page

Blizzard Tournament FAQ

Buy WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne

Click to enlarge

Recently, the Myth Developers updated their website with the Final Beta release to Myth II for the Mac and PC, version 1.4.1. Here's the press release:

Ok gang.... this is your last opportunity to speak up and be heard on the issue of Myth II for some time. The 1.4.1 patch is now available as a release candidate. Unless there are critical errors, this will be certified gold on August 5th, 2003.

Download the update installers using the links below. If you have any bugs or problems, please report them to the MythDev bug report area at:

http://www.mythdev.com/report_bugs

Be sure to read the "ReadMe" file with the installer for information on any and all changes.

To ensure the best testing, we're going to do PMA GAMES every night the rest of this week. I'll be online hosting up 16,000 point PMA games beginning about 10pm central time every night. It's an easy way to get some big points in ranked. But you have to have the release candidate to play. This time around we will also be playing WW2 as part of PMA Games.

Bungie Studios

Myth II: Soulblighter

Myth Developers

PlayMyth News

On Monday, Silicon Graphics and the OpenGL Architecture Review Board made up of twelve members including Apple unveiled OpenGL 1.5 to the public. Sporting the new OpenGL Shading Language 1.0 and Vertex Buffer Object technology, version 1.5 will have many of the new features that OpenGL 2.0 will be based upon. Here is a brief summary of what's new in 1.5:

The OpenGL 1.5 specification evolved with input from the OpenGL ARB -an
independent consortium- and interested participants to reflect predominant trends in the graphics industry. The ARB's process of enhancing OpenGL includes jointly developing specifications of features proposed by ARB members, to be incorporated and officially supported within the API. In OpenGL 1.5, several additional features and functions have been ratified, including the following:

* Vertex Buffer Object: vertex arrays for higher performance
rendering
* Shadow Function: additional comparison functions for shadow
mapping
* Occlusion Query: asynchronous occlusion test for better culling
* Non power-of-two Textures: for more efficient use of texture
memory, including mipmaps
* OpenGL Shading Language v. 1.0: as official extensions more
specifically, shader objects, vertex shaders, and fragment shaders,
all for use of programmable shader hardware

Introduced 11 years ago by SGI, OpenGL is the premier environment used by software developers to create interactive 2D and 3D visual applications for computer systems ranging from consumer PCs to graphics workstations and supercomputers. OpenGL is the industry's only graphics API with support for virtually all operating systems.

OpenGL

OpenGL 1.5 Press Release

Recently, Exult was updated to version 1.1 Beta 1 for the Mac, with a PC release to follow soon here after. For those of you who do not know what the project Exult is, here is a brief summary:

Ultima 7, an RPG from the early 1990's, still has a huge following. But, being a DOS game with a very non-standard memory manager, it is difficult to run it on the latest computers. Exult is a project to create an Ultima 7 game engine that runs on modern operating systems (including Mac OS X and 9), capable of using the data and graphics files that come with the game.

Exult Website

Exult 1.1 Beta 1 Download

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