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3Dfx broadens commitment to the Mac
SAN JOSE, Calif., - August 5, 1999 - 3dfx Interactive® Inc. today announced that it has broadened its commitment to the Apple Macintosh market with the release of new Voodoo3™ developer drivers, available today at http://www.3dfx.com/view.asp?IOID=306. The new drivers will enable leading game developers to create Macintosh versions of their best-selling Windows® PC games and harness the power of Voodoo3-based graphics cards for the Mac.

3dfx also announced that Mactell Corporation and other leading Mac market board makers have licensed the award-winning Voodoo3 graphics accelerator chips for use in new Macintosh graphics boards. The boards are expected to be available later this year, and will deliver the fastest 3D graphics ever available for the Macintosh platform.

"Voodoo3 products have been very successful on Windows PCs, and today's announcement extends the reach of this powerful graphics technology to millions of Macintosh systems worldwide," said Bryan Speece, director of marketing, Macintosh business development at 3dfx. "These new drivers are part of our larger, strategic effort to broaden the market for our hundreds of 3dfx developers, to grow the presence of our Glide® API, and to attract more cutting-edge 3D titles to the Mac platform."

"By building graphics cards based on 3dfx Voodoo3 technology, we plan to provide Mac users with the truly immersive, realistic experience for which 3dfx is known worldwide," said Roy Stocker, president of Mactell Corporation. "We expect these boards to be extremely popular among the growing legions of Mac gamers and consumers."

Unreal Tournament enters beta
Westlake Interactive reports that Unreal Tournament has entered the beta stage:

Unreal Tournament Mac has now gone into beta testing (the beta list is closed, please don't email!)!

The game is shaping up very nicely, and has some incredible maps. The level design and variety of levels is really amazing.

Unreal Tournament has all new levels, new weapons, new game modes (Assault, Domination, Last Man Standing, etc) and a new interface. It includes both multiplayer modes and a full single player game.

For those of you wondering about updates to the normal Unreal, we do still plan at least one more update (hopefully non-beta) to clean up what remaining issues we can. Our work on Unreal Tournament is directly applicable to Unreal, since many of the engine features (and Mac specific code) are similar. As we stabilize Unreal Tournament through the beta test period, we will note fixes that can be rolled back into Unreal.

Total Annhilation enters beta
Westlake Interactive reports that Total Annhilation has entered the beta stage:

Total Annihilation Mac is now at Beta. All features except the final networking code are working. The game has been delayed a bit due to some problems replacing the DirectPlay networking with NetSprocket, but the rest of the game is looking great

We're currently hoping to get the networking all wrapped up and fix any bugs reported in beta in the next few weeks, so we can have it all ready to ship around the end of the month.

Beta test for Total Annihilation is being handled externally, so please don't email asking to test.

GameRanger Beta 3 Released
GameRanger Beta 3 has been released...

A bunch of new features; Klingon Honor Guard now supported; bug fixes. Perhaps most important, its now very stable. If you had checked it out before and were turned off by occasional crashes, they suggest you take another look.

Changes since Beta 2:

• Fixed voice crash bug
• Fixed a couple of minor bugs leading to debug warning alerts
• Fixed banner flickering on some systems
• Added a plug-in for Klingon Honor Guard
• Players that you have ignored now show in the player list with a line through their name
• Added a Clear Chat command
• The player info window has been revamped. From this you can send a message directly to a player. The room they are in is shown. If they are in a game, it shows the name of the game they are playing, and you have the option of joining that game
• The player list in a game room now shows which players are in the game
• You can no longer create a game room with a maximum number of players of one :)

Unconfirmed Voodoo 4 Info...
The German Mac site www.macgadets.de has reported the following about Voodoo 4 technology. Sorry for the translation, it was the best I could get.

"The first graph accelerators with the Voodoo 4-Chipset are from the beginning to be compatible with the Macintosh and offer a significantly higher rate than Voodoo 3. The new processor can up to 64 MByte graph memory administer and by the new t-Buffer-technique anti- Aliasing without geschwindigkeitsverlust execute. Already for Voodoo optimized plays are to be able to use the technology without additional drivers. T-Buffer is to have beyond that a set of new effects, which could be represented so far only by software under large cost of computation. 3dfx wants to communicate further details to Voodoo 4 at a later point in time."

Note, this is completely unconfirmed so take it with a grain of salt...

Info on MacTell's Evil Eye
EvilEyeA 3500 will have video capture as well as TV and FM radio tuning capabilities. This makes a great (and cheaper) alternative to gamers to ATi's line of VR cards.

For more info visit MacTell's website.

ThrustMaster Sells out
ThrustMaster sells controller business to Guillemot Corporation of Carentoir, France for $15 million in cash. Guillemot plans to continue the ThrustMaster brand name and to build on its reputation for innovative, high quality products. ThrustMaster will focus on communications products that allow voice interaction over the Internet.

This sale could mean increased support for Mac Gamers, with TM under new control...

Details: http://www.thrustmaster.com/