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Guns, Girls, & Gasoline
Also up on the Mad Onion site is an article about 3D modeling and texturing for real-time stuff (ie. games) entitled "Guns, Girls, & Gasoline". It's a good read for anyone that's considering a job as an artist in the gaming industry. Want to know a bit of what goes on "behind the scenes"? Check out these quotes from the piece..
I cannot emphasize enough how important the research phase really is. All time used on research will pay off later when the actual modeling and texturing starts. "Head first" attitude gets something sooner on the screen but it also gets you in trouble when the lack of proper planning surfaces it's ugly head.
Creating graphics for real-time use means making lot of compromises. You just have to know when and how to do them. Often the work isn't exactly fine art in artistic sense... there are so many marketing and technological reasons that affect the work, as well as moral ones. It would be cool to do only naked big breasted chicks with huge weapons and a lot of bloody monsters, but more often than not this can't be done.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:00 PM
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A Game with Guts
Here is another new Max Payne preview online today - this time from actiontrip.com. In their article entitled, "A Game with Guts", they cover several areas of interest regarding Max. They hit the usual things like atmosphere, technology, & weapons (as well as screenshots), but they also have a quote from Markus Stein of Remedy about the media blackout on Max. Here's a bit from the preview:
The game will ship with three editors: MaxED, ActorFX and ParticleFX, which will allow you to customize just about anything in the entire game world. The map editor should be easy to use because you'll be able to simply drag & drop objects and texture onto the map.
The most intriguing thing that I have read about the game was that it isn't going to have a multiplayer mode (!?!). It was initially supposed to exist, but then the publishers simply decided that there were plenty enough good multiplayer games out there already, but the single player genre needs great games as well.
Remedy Entertainment (with some help from 3D Realms) takes a great noir crime story, makes it realistic enough to be believable, yet unrealistically frantic enough to keep your adrenalin pumping, introduces the hero - an urban desperado with much to avenge and nothing to lose; and there you have it - a good game.
They talk a lot more about Max Payne, so make sure and head over to the preview today and check out the screenshots while you're here!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:05 PM
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Checkout(.com) Max Payne
The gaming site checkout.com has a new preview of Max Payne online today. Instead of just telling you what they wrote about, check out their own words...
Most action games are not known for their story-driven atmosphere, but Max Payne hopes tochange all that with an interesting new approach Max Payne features the most stunning game engine I've ever had the pleasure of seeing, sporting one cinematic effect after another that simply would not work in multiplayer. Frankly, with so many quality multiplayer games on the market, the world could use a great single-player experience and Max Payne shows every sign of delivering.
Max Payne seems destined to wow an eager audience and the love Remedy has put into this game is obvious when you see it actually running.
There is a lot more to this preview besides this quoted text - make sure and check it all out.
They also have some screenshots up in the preview, too. There's some more screenshots and a video download over at the Official Max Payne site, which can be reached by clicking on the image below.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:15 PM
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An Evening of Payne
A quick check of the Remedy site turns up a report of an evening of celebration in honor of Max Payne! In their own words, here's a description of the happenings..
A few days back Remedy invited some friends and partners out for an "Evening of Payne", a little event to celebrate the success Max Payne had been getting in the press lately. In other words, the plan was to have a little fun for an evening.
The event took place at the restaurant Kaivohuone in southern Helsinki. This was a chance for the guys in Maxteam to take it easy for an evening and just chill after the crunch of finishing the latest milestone and the E3 demo. Many friends, associates, press people and colleagues from the Finnish game industry were also invited. More than 200 people were present and since many of the guests had not seen the our game-in-the-making, this was a unique opportunity to see what we've been doing all this time.
The Remedy site has more about the event, as well as some photos from the festivities! For a report on the happenings, head on over to the Remedy Web site, and check out their events page for all the details (and photos!).
Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:30 PM
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Computer Software Piracy
Gamespy today is starting a three day article about Computer Software piracy. The first part is out now, and it focuses on (in their words) "An overview of the problem and a look at the terminology. We provide statistics from leading enforcement agencies and take a look at some of the things being done to stem the problem." Here's a small piece from the article:
Even in the United States and Western Europe, where the issue is addressed very seriously, the average piracy rate averages 30%-40%, rising up to the 75% range in other regions. Russia and Asia have the most active pirate markets, with peaks of up to 90% of all the their software being illegitimate copies. In 1994, Vietnam and China led the list with astounding 100% and 97% rates respectively. Those rates have since declined over the years (a 1999 survey estimated them at 98% and 91%), but Asian markets are still plagued with enormous piracy rates. Former Soviet countries are also high in this list.
This is an awesome article, make sure and check it out today! Also, on Saturday & Sunday, they'll be posting parts 2 and 3 of the article. Here's some text from their site about what Parts 2 & 3 will be about:
*Looks in-depth at enforcement, from chats with Microsoft on how they are dealing with piracy, to a comprehensive interview with Terry Anslow, chief investigator for ELSPA, the European Leisure Software Publishers Association.
*The final day offers the juicy stuff: getting in with the pirates, surfing their boards and newsgroups for details, as well as a chat with a pirate who calls himself Long John Silver.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:30 PM
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Camera Captioning Contest #100
Our Camera Captioning Contest has been updated - a bit late. Last week's contest ran an extra week due our webmaster being sick. Anyway, the new contest posted today is the 100th contest we've run. The first one was done back on May 28, 1996! - We've been running these contests now for over four years straight.
For those who don't know, the contest is where we take a (usually) silly picture involving some 3D Realms employee, and put it up on the site. You send in your entries, and the one we pick as the winner gets a free $35 gift certificate for use on Apogee/3D Realms games, as well as a Duke Nukem: Time to Kill T-Shirt.
Those are the normal rules. However, given that this is Contest #100, we've decided to spice it up a bit. Normally, we only give away a prize to the #1 winner - this time we're giving out prizes to Winners 1-5 (with #1 getting the best prizes). Furthermore, the rules for submissions for this contest are slightly different. Here's the stuff we're giving away:
1. First - Duke Nukem Forever E3 T-Shirt Autographed by Scott Miller & George Broussard, a Duke Nukem baseball cap, plus a Duke Nukem pen & coaster set
2. Second - Choice of Duke Nukem Forever T-Shirt or a Duke Nukem hat plus a pen & coaster set
3. Third through fifth - Duke Nukem pen & coaster set
In addition to these prizes, all the winners will receive with the usual coupon we give away for every contest. The picture itself is shown above (click on it for a larger version). However, the rules for submission will be slightly different than usual. Normally, we don't give guidelines as to what you can submit, but this time it will be a little more challenging. If you look at the picture, some pretty easy (and obscene) captions come to mind. The rule this time is send us your best non-obscene caption for this picture. The best winners from this batch will be selected as prize winners.
That's about it for this special contest. A big thanks go out to the folks who regularly enter the contest and those who just do it once in awhile. A few times over the four years we've thought about canceling the contest, but the pleas of the folks who enjoy it keep it going.
Thanks for visiting our site, and make sure to tell a friend!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:30 PM
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Rise of the Triad
PC Gamer, Vol. 7, No. 6 (June issue), in the column by Colin Williamson, entitled "The Killing Box," writes:
"It's time to hop into the Way-Back Machine and pull out 3D Realms' Rise of the Triad. Don't deny it, I know you have a copy...Included in this game is "Dog Mode," the most brilliant power-up in the history of computer gaming. When you pick up this item, you're transferred into a Doberman, and can leap onto your opponents and rip their throats out...Just imagine the canine equivalent to Kingpin..."
We'll leave it to our gentle readers to read the rest of Colin's interesting column! If you're interested in checking out Rise of the Triad, you can download the shareware episode from our downloads page, and it can be ordered online through our new online store, too!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:45 AM
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If you remember the story we ran last month about the Duke Nukem model in the Sims game, you'll get a kick out of this story. The site that the skin was obtained from (