MacEdition ProNews : April 13, 2003

by MacEdition Staff (feedback)

All work and no play (makes this column a dull read)

May date set for Tony Hawk 4

Loyal Mac skate dudes aren’t going to have to wait while players on other platforms perfect their tricks with the next version of Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

Aspyr Media Inc. will release the new version of the popular game on the Mac alongside Activision when the game hits the streets in May.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 lets players take on the role of legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk and 13 other professional skateboarders as they skate through enormous free roaming levels, choose from 190 progressively harder goals and build their skills to perform 14 of the greatest skateboarding stunts of all time.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater(R) 4 delivers the deepest and most challenging gameplay experience in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. The game’s enhanced career mode allows players to earn respect and the chance to take on all new pro goals by conquering a skater-specific Pro Challenge based on each skater’s personal history.

The game will retail for US$39.99 and require a 733Mhz system equipped with an NVIDIA GeForece2 (or comparable ATI Radeon) running OS 10.1 to meet the game’s minimum requirements.

Warbirds raid Japan

iEntertainment Network has released the Pacific Theater of Operations add-on module for Warbirds III, the company’s World War II on-line massive multiplayer war simulation game.

The WarBirds, PTO takes the action to the Southern Philippines. The new water and island terrain is generated from 100-meter resolution satellite data, which allows stunning depictions of actual topography from the Pacific region.

WarBirds, PTO includes new Japanese fighter/bombers the B5N2 Kate, the D3A Val, and the G4M1 Betty as well as awesome new 3D cockpits from numerous German and US fighter/bombers. If that’s not enough to get the excitement running through your veins, you can opt to roll in the world famous M4A3 Sherman take capture airfields in exciting tank battles!

The update, like the game, is free to download but on-line play costs US$24.95 per month. Those who don’t wish to download the 200MB file can order a copy of the game on CD for US$9.95

The Net to the shelves

GameHouse, the makers of the well-played Internet game SuperCollapse has inked a deal with MacPlay to bring that title to a retail shelf near you.

“The mass market appeal of a game like Super Collapse! is what first attracted us to pursue it as a distributor,” says Mark Cottam, President of MacPlay. “The popularity of this game cuts across all the demographic groups.”

Super Collapse!, along with other web game hits Super Nisqually and Super Glinx!, are now available in retail software outlets across the US on a single CD-ROM. The retail version of the games include many features not found on the Internet versions, including full screen play, greater music selection, high resolution graphics and high-score posting.

The game is expected to carry a retail sticker of $29.99 and should be available in most stores.

Sailing into version 1.5

OK, it’s not a game, but Salling Software’s Sony-Ericsson Clicker has been such a neat piece of geek chic that would couldn’t let this update slide for too long.

“Within just a few days of its initial release in March, thousands of Macintosh users had downloaded Sony Ericsson Clicker with some of them already starting to contribute action scripts to the community, furthering the capabilities of the software,” said Jonas Salling, software artisan and Salling Software’s creative force.

“Sony Ericsson Clicker’s innovative marriage of Bluetooth and AppleScript allows users to extend and modify the built-in functionality. The updated version allows for much more sophisticated phone based user interfaces and easier ways of updating and sharing their action scripts.”

The US$9.95 Bluetooth enabling software – which lets you use a Bluetooth phone as a remote control for your Mac – has moved to version 1.5, adding the ability to build widgets into the phone’s display, contains more AppleScripts for iTunes, DVD Player, Keynote, PowerPoint, and now has the ability to download new and upgraded scripts with an added emphasis on installing third-party offerings to the program.

Everybody likes a good laugh

If you’re one of those people who can’t get enough of a humor fix from our weekly Parting Shots, then point your browser to itrolls, a new comic offering from Greg Maddux, known to some as Geek Culture’s GMx.

iTrolls, a comic about Macs with a trollish edge, began as a joke by Greg Maddux, Known as GMx, a frequent poster at the Geek Culture.com forums and contributing editor at MacMerc.com. It all began as a sort of apology to his first posted thread called, “Why Do PC Users Make You Want To Strangle Them.” It was named “The Joy of Troll” in tribute of Nitrozac and Snaggy’s “The Joy of Tech.” It proved popular, so being a geek with plenty of time, he decided to take it much further

The comic follows Leet, a 1337 h4x0r and his girlfriend m0b0 through their life in the Mac world. Sometimes other characters show up such as Bill, an evil software company owner, Ballmer his second in command, Mullet, Leet and m0b0's redneck neighbor and Steve, a software/hardware company owner whose arch-enemies are Bill and Ballmer.

Meet the gang

Well the emergence of the Internet, among other factors, might have dealt a severe blow to Mac user groups in the late ’90s, but it seems like fate and circumstance can’t kill a good idea altogether.

Some residents of Berkeley California have band together to form a new East Bay Macintosh Users’ Group which kicked off with its first meeting last Thursday evening.

The group intends to continue holding their monthly gatherings of Mac togetherness in the city’s main library downtown every second Thursday of the month. Anybody interested in doing a little personal Mac networking can get some further information by hitting the ebMUG’s Web page.

And if you just gotta talk shop

Mac OS X Web slingers (and other folks who dabble in the art of Web design) have a new Web-based watering hole where they can hang their hat and talk shop.

If you're like me, you build web sites for a living and you regularly need assistance, help and counsel from other like-minded individuals who also build advanced web sites so that's why I started the WebMaster Village, a forum where we can discuss everything related to building great web content, using Mac OS X.

Become a member today (for free, of course) and exchange information regarding 4D WebSTAR V, Tenon's iTools, Apple's Mac OS X Server, PHP, MySQL, WebDNA and more. You'll likely master the firewall, DNS, web, FTP and E-mail as well as markup languages (from HTML to PHP) a lot faster. The idea is to have a place where we can discuss these Mac OS X web serving matters.

The new hang out is at http://webmaster.mbnx.net/macosx/

Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.

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