The chilling conclusion to The Nerd’s Christmas adventure. Will he have a happy holiday season after visits from his past, present and future?

A little while back I posted about the possibility of GarageGames developing a Tribes-like shooter for their new InstantAction.com project. It appears that a few alpha-level videos were discovered in unprotected directories on the InstantAction website which show some early footage of their new shooter, and it does indeed look very much like Tribes. According to ShackNews, “A source close to GarageGames stressed that the videos–depicting Tribes-like combat on an alien world–represent early work, and were meant for internal use only.” But even in an early alpha state, the game looks pretty awesome.

Now that 3D Realms has released a new teaser for Duke Nukem Forever, there are probably a lot of people out there that are going to try to play Duke Nukem 3D again, and I am one of them. The last time that I played this game was probably back in 1997. Computer hardware and software has changed a lot since then, and this is going to cause some problems. So I decided to go ahead and write up a real quick guide to getting Duke Nukem 3D working on Windows XP.

Steps:

1. Download Duke3d_w32. This is a port of the Duke Nukem 3D Build Engine to Windows. Once it is download, extract the file to a folder.
2. Because Duke3d_w32 is a port of the engine, it does not include the game files. So we need to copy a file off of the Duke Nukem 3D CD. Locate the file “DUKE3D.GRP” on the disc. Copy and paste the file into the “bin” directory that was created when you extracted Duke3d_w32.
3. You are done! To run Duke Nukem 3D, click on “RUN-fullscreen” in the bin folder.

You can change the keyboard mapping and screen resolution by editing the “DUKE3D.CFG” file, however you might want to make a backup copy of it first. To edit the file you will need to open it in notepad.

I was hoping that I would get one of these e-mails this year:

Tis’ the season for giving and we’re giving players a chance to come back to PlanetSide to experience all the excitement of the latest game updates and holiday cheer in the world of Auraxis!

From December 19th, 2007 at 11:59PM PST until January 20, 2008 at 11:59PM PST all former PlanetSide accounts in good standing that have been inactive for sixty (60) days or more are invited to return to PlanetSide for fourteen (14) consecutive days. Check out the game’s additional vehicles, weaponry, enhanced combat engineering and latest updates – but only if you have been nice this year!

PlanetSide has been taken over by the holiday spirit with festively decorated trees, hats, and empire specific presents to replace back pack corpses left behind by fallen soldiers. In addition, scavenger hunts have been scheduled so that players can gain special items to be used during the holiday season.

The holidays won’t be around for long and this trial reactivation period is only fourteen (14) days, so make sure to log in now and get your goodies before the nanites wear off and it’s over! The holidays are a great time to reconnect with friends & family and there is no better way to celebrate than by pwn’ing someone you love! We’ll be looking for you in PlanetSide!

Happy Holidays from the PlanetSide Team!

Well, I know what I will be doing for the next two weeks.

No way! Could DNF actually be getting closer to release? I honestly never thought the game would get to this point. I was certain that the whole game was just a terrible hoax. The fact that this game might actually come out has me questioning all of my beliefs. What the world be like if this game actually came out? Who will take the top spot on all of those Vaporware lists?

Last Saturday we had our annual company Christmas party. It was a lot of fun as usual but it featured one special surprise. It turns out that several people had been secretly working late nights and into the wee hours of the morning preparing a special video for those at the party. They created a short teaser for Duke Nukem Forever.

After seeing the teaser we thought it was something we should share with all of you and while it’s just a teaser, rest assured more is coming.

- George Broussard

The Nerd returns just in time for the holidays and does what he does best - Takes a look at games from the past… and maybe present and future…

A little while back, Gamespot published a short preview of Shred Nebula by CrunchTime Games. What got me excited about the game is that James Goddard (CrunchTime Games’ Founder) noted that they a lot of inspiration was drawn from SubSpace in the creation of Shred Nebula, including multiple ships with different abilities and the similar flying mechanics. Other than that, not much is known about it except that it’s confirmed to be priced at 800 MS Point when it releases in early 2008.

This news should make a lot of PC gamers very happy, myself included. If you never played SubSpace, you can still check it out by using the Continuum client.

Don’t know what SubSpace is?

SubSpace is a two-dimensional space shooter computer game published in 1997 by Virgin Interactive Entertainment (VIE) which was a finalist for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Online Game of the Year Award in 1998. This game, now freeware, incorporates quasi-realistic zero-friction physics into a massively multiplayer online game through the Continuum game client. It is no longer operated by VIE; rather, it subsists by support from fans and players of the game, who provide servers and technical updates. The action is viewed from above, which presents challenges very different from those of a three-dimensional game. The game has no built-in story or set of goals; players may enter a variety of servers, each of which have differing objectives, maps, sounds, and graphics.

Although falling short of modern standards, SubSpace is widely considered an early entry in the massively multiplayer online genre due to its unprecedented player counts, as well as lead programmer Jeff Petersen’s apparent coining of the term.

- Wikipedia

In the very wee hours of tomorrow morning (2 a.m. Pacific) the Heroic Map Pack will be available on Marketplace. The map pack contains three new maps: Standoff, Foundry and Rat’s Nest. The new maps will go for 800 Microsoft Points ($10) but Bungie will eventually release these new maps for free sometime next year if you are willing to wait. To get you ready for the new maps, the guys over at Red vs Blue created a video preview:

A new update is now available for Bioshock on both PC and Xbox 360. What each patch does is specific to the platform, but both fix a good number of issues. There is also some new downloadable content which includes some new plasmids and tonics.

Full list of updates, fixes, and features for both the PC patch and the 360 Title Update:

PC PATCH UPDATES, FIXES, AND FEATURES

• Added the following plasmids and gene tonics: Sonic Boom, Sonic Boom 2, Eve Saver, Machine Buster, Machine - Buster 2, Vending Expert, Vending Expert 2
• Added an Option to disable the Vita-Chambers for added difficulty
• Added support for a walk toggle keybind
• Added Horizontal FOV Lock option
• Fixed mouse acceleration issues
• Fixed reserved keys not functioning properly when keys are unbound
• Fixed multiple cases of keys not allowing a rebind
• Re-added the Human Inferno tonic
• Changed behavior of subtitles so that inappropriate queuing does not occur
• Changed functionality of keybinding lookup to only search in the current input context when finding bindings for in-game display
• Added rendering support for TripleHead2Go
• Atlas VO volume increased for German releases
• Fixed issue of subtitles not clearing correctly occasionally
• Fixed issue causing long hitches or hangs when accessing certain interface screens, machines, and the hacking minigame
• Fix for a potential situation in Recreation where taking a picture of Cobb is impossible if his body gets stuck behind a fallen pillar
• Fixed subtitle timings to more accurately match the on screen audio
• Fixed issue causing stuttering audio when using Windows Vista
• Fixed issue with characters squirming and wiggling after death
• Fixed blood decals and other projectors not showing up on ATI hardware
• The “Enable EAX” option is now greyed out when EAX-capable hardware is not present
• Fixed audio issues stemming from having a Speaker Setting in Windows that was invalid for the current sound card
• Removed erroneous “Reload” binding in a no-weapons context
• Fixed incorrect Training Message concerning bots who are friendly to enemy AIs
• Fixed incorrect Training Message when shooting a Mimic
• Fixed refresh rate being locked at 60hz in DX10 mode
• Fixed VSync disabling in DX10 mode

XBOX 360 TITLE UPDATE FIXES AND FEATURES

• Added widescreen option: Horizontal FOV
• Fix for rare case where a partial cache is not cleared
• Increased Atlas’ volume in German
• Fix for GUI sounds not playing during heavy action
• Fix for not being able to take picture of Cobb in Rec
• Possible fix for pauses or hangs when opening flash bink movies
• Fix for switching difficulty breaking achievement
• Fix for small texture streaming bug
• Fix for rare hang when a lot of things are going on at once

XBOX 360 DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT

• Added Disable Vita Chamber option
• Plasmid Pack is included in this DLC (Machine Buster 1 & 2, Vending Expert 1 & 2, Sonic Boom 1 & 2, EVE Saver)
• 100 point achievement for beating game without Vita Chamber called “Brass Balls”

How to get the new achievement:

• Must beat game on Hard
• Must not use a Vita Chamber (you can always roll back to an earlier save)
• The Vita Chamber Disabled option can be on or off as long as you don’t resurrect