Pete

Apologies for my disappearance, but I've had a few problems with my new computer. Anyway, now it's all sorted, I'll post the news Olav sent me whilst I was offline: we have an unofficial UFO:Aftermath IRC channel. To enter this channel, you have to do the following. Go to http://www.mirc.com, download mirc, and start the program. Then go to file->options, choose connection, and make the following choices: IRC Network: EntertheGame EntertheGame: Random server Then fill in the personal information, either fictive or real, and click join. When you are connected, choose Commands->Join channel, and type #UFO:AFTERMATH. I will not always be there, but when I'm there, you'll know me as olly_no. And be advised, ChanServ is not a person, it's a bot. So he will naturally not answer any questions Full information for the channel: Description: EntertheGame: Random server IRC Server: irc.enterthegame.com Port(s): 6667-6669 Channel name: #UFO:AFTERMATH Administrator name: Olav Lognvik Administrator nick: olly_no Administrator mail: [email protected] In the end I want to thank ALTAR for letting us have this channel. And know that you are always welcome in the channel. I wish to have a chat with you in the ALTAR team a night in not too distant future, but I need to know there's an interest for the channel first. So I'll come back to that later. Nothing more to say than welcome to the channel! Greetings from Olav So there we go! Get downloading and get in there!!

The four new screenshots that appeared in one of the last interviews are up in the gallery for all to see now! I've also taken the time to put up all three current developer's diary entries that were originally posted over at Gamespy. Thanks to Jiri from ALTAR Interactive for the help on both of those!

Hmm... onboard sound seems to cause problems with quite a few games that are coming out nowadays. In the UK, I think a decent Soundblaster card is about £28, and if you're even thinking about playing games like GTA3 (well worth the money ) then onboard sound seems to conflict terribly with it. I think I got GTA3 working for a week, the sound was a bit iffy, then I downloaded the divx video codec to see the aftermath movie and downloaded some other video drivers, the sound went funnier and now GTA3 won't even load up It's off to the shop for me tomorrow. There's no point sitting here with a speed machine that doens't play speedy games with kickass sound now is there?

That'd be because I didn't tell you then But yeah, that's where the new page gets it's content from. No point posting stuff twice! I appended your original post to add a little more info about it - didn't actualy say more about the interview itself as it's a bit same-y and the intro is incorrect, but the images are interesting!

I recommend downloading the hi-res version, as you can make out much more of what's going on, though it's still a bit blurry because of the amount of compression involved. Still, it does look smoother than I had imagined. Very nice indeed

Calling all visitors! A new UFO:Aftermath 2 minute preview is now available from Bonusweb! Click HERE to visit the page at Bonusweb and download either the low or high resolution version (6MB or 21MB). Whilst you're there and waiting for your download to finish, take a bit of time to comment on the piece over at the Bonusweb downloads page, or comment on it here, as the chaps at ALTAR are always eager for your input! For those of you who missed the link the first time round, here it is again: http://english.bonusweb.cz/trailers/ufoaft...mathfotage.html

Martin likes BattleTech! I love Martin! :inlove: (Just kidding, tho BattleTech is what I grew up on on my old Commodore 64 when I was a wee laddy Racing around in my Locust and battling the evil Draconis Combine... those were the days!). I think you'd probably get away with Phoenix Regiment. There's nothing too BattleTechy about it, as it's quite (but not totally) different from the Phoenix Hawk LAM - the 'Mech you see at the end of said game. For those of you who are unfortunate enough to not know to what me and Martin are referring, check out my article over HERE on said game Phoenix Cluster Phoenix Squad Phoenix Guerillas... Then we're off into things like: Regiment of the Flaming Phoenix (sounds a bit more meaty to me, whilst at the same time somehow corny... ) I'll think up some more soon enough

As ludicrous as it seems, that's correct, which is why it's cheaper if you live in the US The alternative is t get a pretty big wishlist (3 or more I reckon) of games you want and get them all at once. Then it becomes cheaper again. If you can find it in the UK or on the shelves anywhere it'll probably be cheaper as it's getting old, but I have to go with the sources I can see

I'm getting there mate on my new AMD XP 1900 (2000 was to fast for the rest of the parts ) 512MB RAM 60GB HDD GeForce 2 64MB Graphics Card Some 100% Soundblaster Card (They're all the same nowadays) 32 x CD Writer (even though CD's can only currently take 24x... 3.5 minutes to write a whole CD kicks ass tho!) Real nice DVD ROM drive too...

Answer to your first question: Yes PC's are exactly the same the world over where games are concerned. Besides, most of the parts are from US manufacturers anyway. It's only video's that you have to watch out for from the US as they're awkward and use a different system Secondly, I don;t actually have the games. If you click the link,you get taken to an online shop and it'll tell you how much postage you need to pay. I think it works out at about 3 or 4 pounds on the cheapest scale, but cos they're form the US, when you do the conversion into pounds, you still get it mega-cheap even with postage slapped on Go, buy and be merry!

Topic being closed, as it's gone off-topic. PLEASE... for the love of Tammy keep all these deviations in the off-topic section I nearly hat a fit this morning when I saw the post count! And Warlord, please don't unpin it to get the last word in

Well ya see, being administrators means Warlord and myself are exempt from the flood control limiter Therefore nobody should try and beat Warlord in a posting spree, as he'll win hands down

Bwahahahaha! I control the flood control I can set it to anything, but it's best not to overload the server. Besides, it stops spamming :devil: The first JA isn;t on the list because it's not available as Bastiaan has guessed. There's not point me adding a game to the shop section that can't be bought at that particular shop

Normally I'd post this in the site announcements section, but it's far too exciting for that! I've re-done the old shop section from my other site, cleared out all the links to games that are out of stock and added some more games which are squad-based strategy games. Feel free to take a look and if you can think of any more similar games that I've not listed there, then why not send us an e-mail?

Well I've got my interview questions back with the response form Martin Klima and Jiri Rydl from ALTAR, and there's some damn intereting reading there! I'm sure this will answer quite few quesions and raise some more, but it will doubtless give us food for thought for the next few months. Head on over to HERE to read all about it, and feel free to spark up a debate or two in teh forums!

No doubt we shall get on topic again in a few hours when I post up my new interview with the team. For now though, you'll have to wait as I'm off to see the girlfriend Now, do as Emperor Alan says, or he'll use his Force Lightning to make your lives very uncomfortable!

Indeed... I don;t even know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow (other than working on ANOTHER bank holiday ). The fact that I can't remember what I was doing five minutes ago is rather obvious as I'm male, so that's no surprise Anyway, UFO:A, nice story so far (I think), we'll take it!

I'm sure it's not having too bad an effect on their work, and hopefully we will hear some more about it soon

Indeed. The picture in the gallery of the world seems to have an interception in progress. If you look at the bottom-right of the picture, there's a little movie clip playing where an Earth-based craft is firing on a UFO. No controls have popped up, so I'm guessing it's automated. If you're going to compare it to X-COM, hen you're really not losing much by taking some controls out, as you almost always eitehr shot it down, blew it up or ate it's dust, so I reckon this will be similar but with a nice movie clip instead of a panel with a few controls and come green blips on it

Yup. It's a dead giveaway really innit?

Part 3 of the developer's diary by Martin Klima is now online and you can se it by clicking HERE!! This time around, Martin talks about the combat system, which is called the "Simultaneous Action System" (SAS). He clears up a few of the vague bits in this area, and goes on to mention E3 a little, and make it all quite mysterious as well Enjoy!

Hehe, I'm getting the new speed-machine tomorrow AMD XP 2000MHz 512MB RAM 40GB Hard Disk CD RW Drive DVD ROM Drive Network Card (the most important component for LAN games ) GeForce 4 64MB Graphics Card Sure I've missed something out... sound card may not be up to scratch, but they're all the same these days and dirt-cheap, so I can get something flashy if needs be. I decided to over-spec so that I won't have to upgrade for a few years Bring it on! Now all I need is to move house to somewhere I can get Broadband and I'm sorted

Well, I can't see it being too difficult to upgrade. Most vid cards support higher than 800 x 600 nowadays, and most will support up to 1280 x 1024 I should think. Whilst I think maybe one resolution lower than this would be good, I don;t think there's too much need to bother with 800 x 600. Most Windoze games nowadays refresh your screen size to the appropriate resolution before starting their programs, so as long as you can scrpe the minumum, I can't see that there would be too much hassle involved. That's my opinion anyway... perhaps Altar are thinking along a different track entirely ???

Firtly, thanks to Matryx for suggesting the creation of this forum. Kinda makes sense really Now, what's the opinion on Altar's recommended system requirements for the game?

Indeed, after chatting with one of the guys involved with the original X-COM game a few months back and from a process of deduciton, a bit of it was based on a hit 70's sci-fi show called.. wait for it... "UFO"! The earth based craft were called interceptors. There was a group set up to combat the aliens. It was all very cheesy with flying saucers and the such, but Evan's right, it's not original I do, however, feel that now you've mentioned it Evan, they should go with the cream-pie-smothering story!