Videogame Violence (Again)

The annual report card on videogames was released by the National Institute on Media and the Family, and this time, we were not on it! The annual lists gives the top 10 games that are recommended that should be avoided for children, along with the top 10 games that ARE recommended for children.

Click here to check out the full report on videogames as well as both Top 10 lists.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:45 AM

Rise of the Source Code

And you thought it would never happen...

Today we're doing something I bet most everyone out there thought we'd never do. No, it's not Duke Nukem Forever, but something some folks on the net have been asking us to do for ages. Today we're releasing the source code to Rise of the Triad! The source is being released under the GPL license, and we still retain copyright on the game (plus we still sell Rise of the Triad), but folks have been asking for something like this for a long time, and here it is.

We are dedicating the release of the Rise of the Triad Source code to our late friend and Rise of the Triad programmer William Scarboro, who died tragically back in early August of 2002. I'm sure if he were still with us, William would be happy to see this out there, and see what folks might do with the code.

In the archive are some thoughts about Rise of the Triad by Tom Hall (the game's producer), and Scott Miller (Apogee/3DR CEO/Founder). You can check out the readme here before downloading the entire archive. In addition to this file, we have several other ROTT related downlods available - check out our ROTT page for the full list.

The folks reading this who aren't programmers probably won't have any interest in this, but those who are programmers might want to check it out. You can download the file (which is roughly 4Mb zipped) here.

Enjoy! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. See ya next year!

UPDATE #2: A new section has been created in our forum for discussion related to the release of the source code. You can also discuss various mods and projects that spring from the source code. Check it out, but the paint is still wet!

UPDATE: Just realized that 8 years ago tomorrow (the 21st) was the release of v1.0 shareware of Rise of the Triad online. This source release was released almost 8 years to the day that we originally released the game in the first place!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:45 AM

New Fan Stuff

Today we went through the mailbag, and have updated our fan stuff page with the latest fan submissions. There's some good stuff in this update, including a couple of paintings of Duke Nukem, a 3D Realms wallpaper, and a skin for the chat client Trillian. There's more, so check out the fan stuff page today over at http://legacy.3drealms.com/fanstuff/index.html.

If you have anything you'd like up on the fan stuff page, send it to us at [email protected] - and it will be used in the next update!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:55 PM

We're Still Here

Yeah, we're still alive. We've gotten a few emails lately asking if we were not here anymore because there hadn't been an update to the site in quite some time. Well, part of that is due to the fact that the team is busy working on DNF, as well as myself busy working on some other projects. Couple that with our "When its' done" and "Area 51" stances on Duke Nukem Forever information, and sometimes there isn't much to talk about.

But we're most definitely still here. No worries there.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:55 PM

Virus Information

Just a quick notice about some viruses currently making the rounds. Please take a moment and read this. As 3D Realms is a fairly popular website, our URL and various email links contained within are stored in a lot of folks' browser caches everywhere. Some viruses (like W32.Sircam and W32.Klez) will scan your computer's internet browser cache and look in the files for email addresses to spread themselves to. They will also masquerade as other people so the virus isn't always looking like it's coming from you. Anyway, when they find something to send to, they'll use email addresses in your browser cache to fake sender IDs and scan HTML files for pieces of text to use as the subject line. This has the effect of making the virus infested emails look like something from a friend of yours (or you) - and something you're likely to open and further infect yourself (or the poor sap you sent it to).

As a popular gaming site, we get a rather large amount of these things all the time - and it would help us (and the rest of the world too, for that matter) if you can take some time and scan your computer for viruses and help kill the Klez virus (as well as any others that might be on your machine). Below are some links to info about the Klez virus at McAfee & Symantec.

* McAfee
* Symantec

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM

Never Say Never

It's funny that our news piece a few days ago said "We're still here" when some game magazines think we're dead. That's what it appears we are to Computer Gaming World. They have a monthly section in their magazine called "Pipeline" where they talk about their "educated guesses" on game release dates. As everyone knows (or should know) by now, the release date for Duke Nukem Forever is "When it's done".

Last month we were labeled "Never", and now we're labeled "RIP" by the article's author Rich Laporte. Be curious to see what Rich has to say when DNF is released (When it's done, of course).

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM