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Brad Oliver's latest blog entry talks about the details of the latest beta patch for the RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This patch should be of particular interest to those who have ATI Radeon 8500, 9000, and 9200 cards.

Brad has this to say about the patch:

If you are the owner of a Radeon 8500, Radeon 9000 or Radeon 9200 (i.e. r200-class cards from ATI), you'll definitely want this patch. The main (and pretty much only) improvement so far is to address performance on that line of video cards. In my benchmarking here, framerates have pretty much doubled across the board for those cards.

If you don't have one of those 3 cards, odds are you won't notice any improvements - that's mainly due to the unusual and fairly long series of misadventures that was crippling the r200-class ATI cards, so there's not much benefit left to go around for all the other cards. I'm sure the details of what I did to optimize it for the r200-class cards will make for a very interesting blog entry in the near future.

The Brad Hole - New Knights, Old Republic

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Aspyr Media

BioWare

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As the Macworld 2005 Expo in San Francisco comes into view, UK development house Feral Interactive has announced that they will make their presence known.

Feral had this to say about what to expect from them during the largest Macintosh trade show:

We’ll be located at the heart of the gaming area, so head on down and enjoy a hands-on experience with all of our latest releases, complimented by the latest Logitech force-feedback steering wheels and joypads. Get to grips with Bionicle, engage in a battle of wills against a real or artificial opponent with Chessmaster 9000, or challenge a friend (or complete stranger) to nitro-fuelled split screen Ford Racing 2 action.

Feral Interactive

Feral Interactive - News

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The forums over at PlanetDOOM contain some information regarding an upcoming Doom 3 expansion, currently titled Resurrection of Evil. The information comes courtesy of Game Informer magazine.

-RoE takes place two years after the events in DOOM 3
-You play as a different marine this time around
-Sent to assist Dr. Elizabeth McNeal in investigating a strange beacon on the planet
-Betruger sends three demonic hunters after you when you discover a weapon known as the "Artifact"
-When you defeat each hunter, their abilities are transferred into the Artifact
-The abilities resemble, berseker, slow-mo and invulnerability and are all "stackable"
-Roughly one half to two thirds as long as DOOM 3
-Having the story revolve around two characters may bode well for co-op

PlanetDoom Forums - More Expansion Details

id Software

Aspyr Media

DOOM 3

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Blizzard has posted an Under Development section to their World of Warcraft site that details upcoming changes to the game. The section is broken up into 3 parts: changes coming with the next patch, planned changes coming with future patches, and planned features to be implemented over the next year.

Details concerning the current upcoming patch are as follows:

* New Dungeon: Maraudon (40+ Dungeon in Desolace)
* New Flight Paths
* UI Improvements: There are now interface options that let you not display your helm and/or cloak on your character. This will allow a player to wear a cloak or helm, but not have it show up in the game world.
* Class Improvements
o Warrior - New Ability: Pummel
o Druid -- Bear form and Dire Bear form will receive armor increases

Changes planned over the next year include the addition of Hero classes, siege weapons, and more high-level content.

WoW - Under Development

Blizzard Entertainment

World of Warcraft

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According to an announcement on Yahoo!, Digital Eel and Jollygood Games will be working together to distribute four titles for the Mac platform. The games, which are available now, include: Dr. Blob's Organism, Big Box of Blox, Plasmaworm and Strange Adventures In Infinite Space.

Here's more on Dr. Blob's Organism from the press release:

Dr. Blob's Organism is a shooter where players blast feisty one-celled organisms as they try to escape from a petri dish! Each level in the game introduces new power-ups (like freeze, lightning and multiguns) and special organism abilities (like force field, regeneration and frenzy) to increase the fun and toughen the challenge throughout the entire game. Dr. Blob was Independent Games Festival 2004 winner in Innovation in Audio and Visual Art categories.

Yahoo! PR release

Jollygood Games

Digital Eel Games

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