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News
Playback.demAnother month, another recap of the news on the Gaming world, community, along with a status report on our gaming network! Frag-Net Status ReportThere was a minor hiccup early in the month, where the master server froze unexpectedly. We made a change to the service so that it peforms a little bit of ‘self-maintenance’ to prevent this from happening. Gaming NewsBlue’s Stories of NoteHere’s what our favorite gaming news site, Blue’s News has listed as the top stories for April 2024 that you should be aware of, list is oldest to newest:
A jam packed month! BlizzCon is canceled, Gearbox is bought after leaving Embracer who are splitting up into three companies! SEGA has layoffs and is parting ways with Relic while Atari brings back Infogrames, and many new releases. Wow! The news of SEGA & Gearbox was last month but was included because the news wasn’t in our last Playback. April FoolsAs is tradition in our region of the world, every April 1st is the day of pranks and all sorts of tomfoolery. Blue’s News compiled a great list of the gags you may have missed this year. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 respectively! Here’s some highlights:
We were sadly too busy this year for our own prank, but you never know what we will be up to next year… ;) Accused Farms launches Stop Killing GamesRoss Scott of Accused Farms fame (Freeman’s Mind, Civil Protection) has launched a campaign about video game preservation called, “Stop Killing Games”. Anyone who has followed Scott knows he has been very vocal about this issue in the past, but this is his biggest effort yet at bringing awareness and a way to tackle the problem. This handy website helps give you clear and easy ways of contacting government organizations, signing petitions, and updates on legal actions regarding preservation efforts such as a lawsuit aimed at Ubisoft regarding “The Crew”. This is an issue we take very much to heart here at Frag-Net. We as archivists ourselves have seen first hand how much has been lost and have been victims of copyright abuse ourselves. Please checkout the site and FAQ for more information and take some time out of your day to help change law. Here’s a snippet from the website:
Thanks to Blue’s News and Gaming On Linux Microsoft Releases MS DOS 4.0 Source CodeSpeaking of preservation, Microsoft has given the public the source code to version 4.0 of MS DOS. They did this a few years back with 1.25 / 2.0 but they were under a restrictive license. This time however, they have release 4.0 under MIT, along with re-licensing the other version to MIT as well! While DOS has been heavily studied, reverse engineered, and even rewritten from scratch, it’s still great to have this for preservation efforts. It’s one of those rare times we can actually say, “Thanks Microsoft!” Grab your copies here. Wine 9.7 and 9.6 Releases Along with Proton 9For those non-Windows gamers, Valve partner in crime CodeWeavers have released two new versions of WINE! In case you don’t know, WINE is a layer for Linux and other systems that allows Windows software to run like a native program. Valve also contributes to the project as Proton is powered by it. Here’s the changelog from the releases this month:
See your local operating system’s package manager for installation or checkout WineHQ if you like it the hard way. For users of Proton
Round ’Em UpAnd here’s a bunch more new we couldn’t fit but felt was worth sharing!
Gaming News: CommunityAnd of course we have to highlight what’s been going on in the community! Fallout London Gets BBC CoverageThe drop of the next-gen update for Fallout 4 has affected the very popular mod “Fallout: London”. It’s an extremely rare occurence that mods are covered by the mainstream press, and to our knowledge there has never been a report on a modification breaking due to software updates. Battlefield 1918 20th Anniversary Edition ReleasedNear the end of March the classic WW1 themed Battlefield 1942 mod “Battlefield 1918” has received major updates. This special update features new maps and a new army, the fearsome Force Publique! Read more here. Grab a full copy here or upgrade your current version here! Thanks ModDB Round ’Em UpAnd here’s a bunch more new we couldn’t fit but felt was worth sharing!
Thanks ModDB All in AllAnd that’s it! We hope you enjoyed our first entry in this new series. Writing these articles will help us document the things that are happening and select info will go right into our game event & anniversary calendars. If you have any news you think we missed, should share on Frag-Net, suggestions, or even complaints, let us know. You know where to find us! Happy Fragging
Playback.demWelcome to a new mini-feature on Frag-Net, where we try to have a round up of interesting news on the community along with a status report on our gaming network. Frag-Net Status ReportAnd as we mentioned before we have been working on new site features, here’s a couple we’ve recently revealed! New Games on Frag-Net
We added two new game pages, Hell Denizen and Nazi Zombies: Portable. You may have seen these games show up on our tracker, and we wanted to provide some proper info so people could buy, support, and of course play these awesome titles. Check them out now! Preview of New ArticlesIt’s been a bit silent on Frag-Net, but that’s because things have been so busy in the background and our own lives! Don’t fret however, as we have been working on a few articles for the site! What can you expect in the next couple of months?
Updates to Our Archive.org PageFor those of you who don’t know, we have an archive.org page where we try to build the ultimate upload page for a mod, like how our Scientist Hunt page has everything that was created by the authors and community (well at least what we have). Anyway, we had a few important mods up with pages but in a Work-In-Progress state for quite some time. We decided that it was time to update these pages. Some of the highlights include:
We hope you take advantage of our uploads! While they will also help power the Frag-Net network’s in-game addon backend, it’s ultimately there for the community. Past & Manuals
Finally, we have started hosting copies of HTML versions of manuals
for modifications and archived websites providing a ‘wayback machine’
layout for them (i.e. always prefix a site with
We also have a smiliar layout for manuals, with
As mentioned above, we are hosting the Clan Cthulhu / Quake THINGS! website along with Fantasy Quake’s amazing manual, check them out! The latter is definitely a must for when you play Fantasy Quake. Gaming NewsBlue’s Stories of NoteHere’s what our favorite gaming news site, Blue’s News has listed as the top stories for March 2024 that you should be aware of, list is oldest to newest: Another remaster of a beloved classic arrives, Apple gets sued formally by the United States’ Department of Justice, and Embracer’s empire seems to be shrinking as fast as it was growing. What a month! While those are some big stories, we have some more news in the gaming world worth talking about! GDC 2024The annual Game’s Developers Conference, Game Developers Choice Awards, and Independent Games Festival Awards happened the 18th to 22nd, here’s some highlights of the event:
Congrats to the winners of the award shows! To learn more about the GDC and related conferences, click here. Thanks to Blue’s News and Slashdot PAX East 2024In addition, PAX East also had their annual event this 21st to 24th. Besides the hundreds of games showcased at the event, Games Done Quick also was there showcasing their bhoping skills! Be sure to check out more and sign up for PAX West and next year’s PAX East! LAN Parties - New Book on Deathmatch HistoryA new book called LAN Parties by Merrit K released earlier this year, but it was recently brought to our attention by some of the latest press on the book. Here’s a small blurb from the store page:
We thought it was worth mentioning here as fragging friends is one our favorite pass times, be sure to purchase a copy here. Story sourced from CNN Copyright ObjectionNintendo has used the legal system to shut down the popular Switch emulator, Yuzu. Alternative emulators, like Ryujinx were not affected by this. Right away forks started appearing. First people flocked over to Suyu (which was removed by GitLab right away), others are observing the fork Sudachi. We can only wait and see to determine if any particular fork wins out or if they all diverge into their own niche. Gaming News: CommunityAnd of course we have to highlight what’s been going on in the community! The Dark Mod 2.12 ReleasesThe Dark Mod, the famous Thief inspired fan game, has a new release! The news post on ModDB boasts of a few new important additions and fixes:
Grab a copy here! Call of Duty Mod Goes Retail, and 16 Years of FrontlinesIt’s hard to believe that Call of Duty is over 20 years old now. While the rest of us are wondering where the time went, the modders and fans of the series are busy celebrating the 16th anniversary of Call of Duty Frontlines. In addition to the milestone, a spin-off mod of Frontlines titled Call of Duty Rio is going to become a standalone game. The recently announced Commando Rio can be found here. As some of us have made the jump from modders to developers, we wish Hajas Game Studio the best of luck! Keep an eye out for more news from the team. What Happens in CS, Stays in CS!
Fellow retrogamer and enthusiast ESCalation has put out a new video detailing the complicated history of de_vegas! Did you know that most people never got to play Vegas online when it released, or that the Sphinx used to be completely modeled out? Check out the video here! And for the classic port of de_vegas to Counter-Strike: Source that is mentioned in the video, you can click here. New FreeHL VideosFrag-Net’s own eukara did release two videos in regards to FreeHL: There’s more videos coming down the line, focusing on more mods, games and various internal improvements. All in AllAnd that’s it! We hope you enjoyed our first entry in this new series. Writing these articles will help us document the things that are happening and select info will go right into our game event & anniversary calendars. If you have any news you think we missed, should share on Frag-Net, suggestions, or even complaints, let us know. You know where to find us! Happy Fragging
John Romero hosted a livestream on id Software’s 33rd Anniversary the other day, surprising fans by inviting John Carmack, Tom Hall, and David L Craddock along for the event! The stream was mirrored to YouTube by Romero and we recommend you check it out. Long live id Software!
Early last January we were sadden to learn that former developer and activist Jennell Allyn Jaquays passed away, with her funeral concluding yesterday. Jennell had a long career as an artist and video game developer, working on some of our favorite games such as a level designer for id Software working on Quake II & III as well as an artist on Age of Empires. Her Dungeons & Dragon’s modules were famous, known for their pathbreaking or non-linera designs. In fact, her contributions were so influential that “Jaquaysing” has become a verb for a dungeon scenario with “myriad paths”. She was inducted into The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Hall of Fame in 2015. Later in life she came out as a transgendered lesbian, spoke out about agin conversion therapy, was a freelance artist, and married other former video game developer, Burger Becky. Along with her funeral, an obituary by the New York Times was written about her yesterday, we suggest you check it out here. Thanks to Blue’s News for the link. We like to leave the last word to the dead, so here’s a short but fun interview with Jennell from Quakeidge back when she was working on Quake III. Her level design advice is still solid today. Rest in Peace.
Frag-Net is turning 5 years old! To celebrate, we’ll be getting together on this Friday, at 3 PM PST/6 PM EST to play some QuakeWorld. We’ll be playing on the QuakeWorld server at idtech.space. See you then!  - Older news are in the Archive |
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