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Petri Jarvhilehto Interview
 Universal Gaming has another in their series of interviews online. This time it's with Max Payne producer, Petri Jarvilehto. This interview focuses on a few things seen in the Max Payne E3 video (which you can download for yourself if you haven't seen it). Here's a tidbit:
Max Payne is a story of revenge, but as is conventional for stories of this genre, Max Payne is also a roller coaster ride of cliffhangers, plot twists and surprising revelations. As the story progresses the player's goal is constantly shifting as new truths (and lies) come into the light.
Make sure and check out the entire interview over at Universal Gaming. For more information about Max Payne, check out the Official Max Payne site at http://www.maxpayne.com.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Dallas Gaming Scene
The "American City Business Journals" web site has an article online about the gaming industry in this area, and they credit the founding of the entire local industry to Apogee. Here are a couple of tidbits from what they had to say in the article..
People in the industry trace the genesis of the computer gaming industry here to Garland-based Apogee Software Ltd., a maker of shoot-em-up arcade games. Scott Miller founded the company at his house in 1987 and kept it there until 1990.
Miller says Apogee also contributed funding that helped launch id, Rogue Entertainment and Terminal Reality, a Lewisville maker of games for Microsoft.
You can check out the entire article here.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Lon's Apogee Page Updated
 Lon Matero, long time Apogee fan has updated his Apogee page.
About a month ago, he refocused his site from being an Apogee/3D Realms news site to an "Apogee Classics" site. He is now profiling older games of ours one at a time. His new update includes a profile of Pharaoh's Tomb, and old CGA game written by George Broussard (Duke Nukem producer).
Go check it out - it's a cool update. This is his second profile, the first one being on 1992's Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Download Update
As long time followers of Apogee have known, we have gone through several install programs over the years for our products. For the last few years, we have been using the same install program on our downloadable files (we called it the Crane Installer), and very recently we noticed a problem with it.
Any of the really speed demon computers (Pentium II 400Mhz+ in particular) were having a problem where you'd run the install program, and you'd get a runtime error. This was very bad, as it meant that anyone with this kind of machine couldn't install anything.
Well, we've gone ahead and fixed this problem. Over the last week, our webmaster Joe Siegler has redone all of our downloadable files (shareware, patches, & misc files) that used this old install program in a newer install program that doesn't have this problem. These files are all available now from our web site. When you go to a game in our Product Catalog, the links are all now to the new files. If you were having any problems similar to what we describe here, make sure and try again - this might solve your problem. For the curious, this is the same install program we've been using on DOS installs for our registered CD-ROM's for some time now.
One other thing about the files. For some time now, we used to distribute "split" versions of our shareware. Effective immediately, all of these split files are pulled from official distribution. These days with warp speed modems, and CD-ROMs, and larger disk storage, the reason for creating these in the first place (14.4 modems and 3.5" floppy disks) is effectively moot. If you have these on an FTP site of yours or a BBS, it's still OK to distribute them, but we will not be offering them on our official download areas anymore.
If you're having problems downloading, you might want to check out our FTP help page. It's got some good background information on downloading.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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A Piece of Apogee History
 Joe Siegler writes... "The other day I was going through some videotapes of mine, and found this little tidbit of Apogee history. It's a 2.5 minute long interview with Scott Miller & George Broussard done in the summer of 1992. It aired back home in Philadelphia in November of 1992 on the NBR show that is on PBS. It was a report on Apogee (and id Software) and how we were changing the face of computer gaming."
This interview was done in the post Wolfenstein 3D hysteria (as Wolfenstein is all over this video), and also has an interview with John Romero (now of Ion Storm). In addition to Scott, George, & John, you can also see some others in the background (but don't talk) - our own Steve Blackburn, as well as Jay Wilbur, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, and I believe Kevin Cloud of id Software.
If you want to download this, you can do so by clicking on the snapshot to your right. It's a RealVideo file that's been zipped, and the download is about 6.2Mb. If you don't have the Real Player, you can download it here for free.
Again from Joe.. "Sorry about the fuzzy quality of the tape, but this was an old videotape, close to 10 years old, and this was taped in 1992. This was stuck in-between a few episodes of Married With Children I also had on the same tape. :)"
NOTE (May 2005): This was encoded back in 1998 when RealPlayer used a much older and different video codec. To play this now, I believe you have to install a legacy plugin for the current RealPlayer to read their old format, which doesn't work stock out of the box in their current player. Real's website should have further information on this.
UPDATE (May 2006): Now that Google Video exists, we can stream this thing on the website now for you to look at. Here is the video below. The full size video is also available on Google video, but due to the original source not being great, it dosn't look all that good full screen.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Duke Nukem: Time to Grill
It's summertime, so what does that mean? Get out the cookware, it's "Time to Grill"!
No, it's not a new game, it's part of a promotional item cooked up (no pun intended - really!) for the forthcoming Duke Nukem: Time to Kill game. This won't be an item available to the public (we only have one ourselves!), but we thought you'd like to see some pictures of this item.
It's a Styrofoam cooler packed with several Duke Nukem cookware items, such as paper plates, hot sauce, an apron, etc... If you'd like to see some pictures of this, click here.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Duke Nukem Time to Kill & Zero Hour Updates
As many of you know, there has been a Duke Nukem original game underway for the Sony Playstation for some time. It's called "Duke Nukem: Time to Kill". It's due out this fall "when it's done".
GT Interactive (the distributor) has a page up for Duke Nukem: Time to Kill on their web site. Our own Duke Nukem pages are under construction, and we're waiting on some materials from the game developer before our site is released. Look for that soon.
In other news, the other original cartridge game is now starting to have some information trickle out about it. This original game is being done for the Nintendo64, and is called "Duke Nukem: Zero Hour". 3D Portal has alerted me to some links that have popped up about this new Duke Nukem game (slated only for the N64 due out in 1999). You can check them out at:
1. IGN64.com's Zero Hour Report - Has some game info and a few screen shots.
2. Videogames.com's report on Zero Hour - Very little text, but does have some (different) screenshots.
Update Aug 2006: Links removed, as they're no longer on the net.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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More E3 Commentary
The August issue of Next Generation magazine has an E3 wrap-up report, and they list what they consider to be the 15 most promising games (across all platforms, not just PC games). Two 3D Realms' games made the list: Max Payne and Prey.
For Max Payne, they say: "Hard-hitting action, a fast engine, and tons of 3D Realms' trademark attitude." (Note: Remedy Entertainment is the game's primary developer, with 3D Realms acting as a secondary co-developer.)
For Prey, they wrote: "Prey has come out on top. Featuring 3D Realms' new portal-based engine, spectacular lighting effects, and a story that actually matters."
Duke Nukem Forever didn't get mentioned. Duke is not happy.
--------
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Duke Nukem Action Figures Update
 Back in April we reported on the enemies in the Duke Nukem Action Figure Line. The Resaurus Web Site has larger versions of the enemy action figures online now, along with the second of "Duke Nukem" figures (called Nightstrike Duke).
Visit the Resaurus Alien Index Page on their site for more photos of the alien action figures.
We also have some of our own photos of the Nightstrike Duke Nukem Figure on our web site. In June, we received the final prototype of the figure, and took some pictures of it. Make sure to check those out.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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3D Mark Announcement
Markus Maki of Remedy Entertainment (Max Payne, Death Rally) updated his plan today with this text:
Final Reality's "follower", 3DMark, has then now been officially released. If someone's interested, the press release is at http://www.futuremarkcorp.com.
It's gonna be cool.
Futuremark could also use a good full-time producer / graphics "lead" with a vision what looks cool. Because I don't have enough time to give. Or alternatively Remedy could use an Operations Manager so I could focus on producing... You can also check out the other jobs from Futuremark's site. But you need to be GOOD :)
We're thinking of using MP3 file format in 3DMark.
If anyone knows a good, free (cheap?) & lighting fast MP3 player lib / source that is or can be ported easily to Win32 platform (Visual C++ 5.0), is possibly a DLL or lib, e-mail [email protected]!
More specifically we need:
* no actual "player" interface, no sound card interface etc....
* just something that would decode MP3.
* it would need to be able to seek to locations in the middle.
* no encoder
* Uses max. 4% of CPU time on a P2-266 while playing a 128kbit stream
* Good quality, preferably adjustable (->if more speed is needed).
What we can offer -- that's largely negotiable. Name in the credits and a *large* audience at least. All offers answered :) - so e-mail me!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Keith Schuler in Unreal Design Contest
Our own monkey man Keith Schuler recently entered the Unreal Level Design contest over on Planet Unreal. His level was titled For Whom the Bell Tolls, and you can check it out on Planet Unreal's Contest Pages. You can also download Keith's level there as well.
George Broussard also had this to say about the map...
"Duke Nukem Forever map designer Keith Schuler recently made a deathmatch map for Unreal called "For Whom the Bell Tolls". He made the map to get familiar with level design using the Unreal engine (since we switched to Unreal from Quake 2). Keith submitted the map to the UDC level design contest over at planetquake.com. He won 2nd place with an entry that only took him 3 days to complete.
The Snarf Unreal Map Emporium (http://www.unrealed.com/sume) keeps a daily list of the top 20 most popular maps available for download. "For Whom The Bell Tolls" is currently number one! Great job Keith. We look forward to your Duke Nukem Forever maps."
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Lon Matero's Apogee Pages Overhauled
Lon Matero (long time Apogee fan) has overhauled his web pages. His is one of the older Apogee related sites on the web. He used to run an Apogee/3D Realms news related site, but with the recent rise of other such sites, he (unfortunately) took his own site down.
Anyway, his page is back, redesigned with a new look. His new focus will be on one classic Apogee game every couple of weeks or so, and he launches his site with our 1992 classic, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure. Click on the logo here to be taken to his site.
See Lon? I told you I'd get the Apogee logo back on the front page of the site eventually.
In other Apogee site news, I just happened across a new site devoted to us and our games entitled "The Apogee Temple". This is a relatively new site (at least to me it is). Chris Ivarson runs this - make sure to check this out as well, there's some really nice sections on Commander Keen & Dopefish. :) Click on the logo to go there.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Max Payne Development Update
From Markus M�ki's .plan file comes the latest Max Payne related development news:
Remedy's benchmark subsidiary, Futuremark, opened new web pages. Go check them out at http://www.futuremarkcorp.com. They're still quite limited in content but it will increase over time.
Slowly but surely DX6 beta finds its way to all computers here at the office. We're now again in the "are there any new drivers" period... Fortunately our technology transition is going quite smoothly, with minimum impact on Max Payne (as it is not in such a hurry to get DX6 stuff implemented). Unfortunately that is not true with Futuremark's products... They need DX6 yesterday.
If it would just be the DX6 stuff, life would be extra easy. We have a new geometry pipeline, and a new material system, both needed to get most out of 3D accelerators. With tight release schedules, it all gets into a nice mess which takes a few meetings to sort out.
Anyway, after today's meeting I'm feeling very confident that we'll get everything done in time, and in the right order.
Anybody getting to keep any summer vacation? Not me. Maybe a day here and there but nothing more extensive. Welcome to the world of games development and responsibility.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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