April 2001

Q: Are you guys working on an Expansion Pack for Tribes 2 or starting Tribes 3?
A: We have already begun design work on an expansion pack for T2. Exactly what will be in the expansion pack is still in flux but we'll certainly include a new vehicle, new maps and missions, and basically broaden the depth of T2.

Changes for 22460:
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- **GAMEPLAY CHANGE** Spider clamp turrets need more surface area for legal deploy space now

- Minor tweak to improve long-term server stability.

- A new voice codec, 'GSM' was added to allow voice communication between Linux and Windows users.

- Minor sound system tweaks and fixes.

- Minor BOT navigation and seeking improvements.

- Fix removing BOTs counting toward the Vote Meter representation.

- Improvement for vehicle physics, particularly instances when vehicles would get stuck on their edge.

- Fix for BOT's skins not dynamically updating to correct team skin, when Admin team changed them.

- Fixed bug where certain cases would cause cursor to vanish when it should not.

- Minor server query improvements.

- Fix players can be added to the 'Admin List'.

- No more voting to BAN, only Super ADMIN may now BAN.

- Various GUI improvements, notably the Voice Com. elements in the Lobby, and some minor pointer icon improvements for certain cases.

- Linux 'Penguin' symbol added for Server List Screen when joining, so users may identify Windows and Linux servers at a glance.

SAN DIEGO, CA - April 18, 2001 - Sony Online Entertainment announced today its new expansion pack, "EverQuest: Shadows of Luclin" for the Internet's most popular role-playing game, "EverQuest®." The new expansion pack will introduce EverQuest fans to an enchanting moonscape packed with new adventure zones, new items, creatures and spells, a new playable character class and more. Supported by a complete graphic overhaul, "Shadows of Luclin" will allow EverQuest players to witness their world in unprecedented splendor.


"'Shadows of Luclin' will give EQ fans a beautiful uncharted territory to explore," states Jeff Butler, Producer, Sony Online Entertainment. "Whether you're a devoted long-term fan looking for new challenges or just discovering online gaming for the first time, 'Shadows of Luclin' is filled with enough captivating adventures to support all levels of EverQuest players."

"The Shadows of Luclin" takes voyagers to a satellite hovering ominously above the world of Norrath. An area of great mystery, magic, and perplexity, Luclin is divided into a land of light, ruled by Discord, and a land of shadow, ruled by Order. Each side of this amazing world will present many new secrets, treasures and unique monsters.

"Shadows of Luclin" key features:

* New adventure zones, including a new starting city
* All new, highly detailed player-character models
* Massively enhanced 3D graphics engine
* An all-new player character race
* Challenging new quests, items to trade and sell, NPCs and more

"EverQuest: The Shadows of Luclin" is due to ship in Q4 2001.

**SIEGE GAMEPLAY CHANGE**: When attacking a base, you will see red waypoints on the generators. When those generators are destroyed, the waypoints will change to green. If the generators are repaired thereafter, they will return to red. If you are on the defender team, these colors are reversed (green normally, red if destroyed, green if repaired again). This will help teams coordinate attack and defense more easily.

**FLARE GREANDE GAMEPLAY CHANGE**: Each flare will only attract ONE missile now. When the missile hits the flare, the flare will be destroyed. Only the first missile fired after the flare is thrown will be fooled by that flare. Other missiles must be attracted by other flares in order to be avoided.

*There was a problem where emails were getting cloned multiple times for some folks. This is fixed now and no longer occurs.

*There was an issue where the single player game type was not being properly cleared for folks when they left single player and went to other games. This is fixed now.

*A stray underground generator was removed from Caldera.

*The name column will no longer jump to the top when folks leave and join a room, thus making it easier to stay focused on a particular player's name.

*If you steal a vehicle, the vehicle's sensor radius will not switch to the stealing player's team. In otherwords, the sensor of the vehicle will still report to the original team's sensor net...not the team that stole the vehicle. That's as design and is one of the drawbacks of using a stolen vehicle.

*Bounty & Hunter: The player icons on the command maps are now the correct colors.

*More items have correct names and tags on the command map and in the HUD. There were instances like "East Generator Generator". Those have been eliminated.

*The last patch accidentally eliminated the "PlayerXXX joined YYYY game. Click here to join." links from the CHAT. This has been resolved and is now available again.

*Players are no longer able to squeeze in under the tires of vehicles and play Superman by lifting them off the ground. ; )

*Bots were getting stuck in Riverdance when the fell in the water near the bridge. This has been fixed.

*Added more filtering options so that the filters for the server query (JOIN) screen are more powerful and flexible.

*Added a Linux indicator so users can tell whether they are joining a Win32 or Linux server. (Shouldn't make any difference to game play, but we felt you'd like to know.)

*Fixed a small texture leak on 3Space objects.

*Added an underwater satchel charge effect. Slightly increased the delay time between activating the satchel and the time that it actually explodes (this was as designed...a minor bug was causing it to explode too soon).

Although the 11-man team is only about 10% of the way into the development process, the parts that we caught a glimpse of certainly stirred the nostalgia bug in us, and we're confident that Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown has a good chance to be just as much of a classic as the original was. Graphically it's certainly looking pretty at this point, and most of the art we saw was early placeholder art, so we can only imagine what it's going to look like when the game is released.

In order to anti-alias an 800x600 screen, the GeForce3 actually only draws an 800x600 screen, but it records a color value twice for each pixel and determines each pixel's color from a total of five color samples. The quality is about the same as 4-sample AA (you have to study static screenshots to notice any difference) but incurs a much smaller speed penalty. We compared the GeForce3's Quincunx AA to the 4x mode on a GeForce2 Ultra, and there's good news all around. Quincunx AA looks about the same, works better with more games, and runs as much as twice as fast. With current games, you can turn on quincunx AA and just leave it on in every game you play—and that doesn't mean running them at 640x480, either.

Tribes 2 is an ambitious follow-up to the game that single-handedly led the charge of multiplayer-only action games into retail. The deep teamplay that you can find in large matches is incredibly addicting and offers some interesting opportunities to cobble together team strategies. The game takes advantage of skills developed in twitch shooters like Quake, but its slower pacing requires a more deliberate and diverse range of tactics. In the end, this will help give Tribes 2 tremendous longevity, especially considering that the original Tribes still rivals both Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena as one of the most played multiplayer action games. Tribes 2 isn't easy to master, and it won't play well on every gaming PC, but when you're up and running it's a tremendous amount of fun.

When I mentioned a "Friday Patch" (on various forum sites) that was a bit of a misnomer.

The Dev Team *will* have a patch completed and submitted on Friday, but QA and CPC approval probably won't be completed until at least Tuesday night next week. That patch most likely won't be in your hands until Wednesday morning of next week.

Sorry about the misinformation. We do things this way to help ensure that we don't create new bugs with patches.

P.S., A very small patch is slated to be released tonight that will fix the "Redjack" problem.

***4/2 PATCH ITEMS***

1) Auth servers are handling load well now.
2) Fixed an Unhandled Exception that involved people not having the proper AVI codec to play the intro movie. This should no longer occur. If you don't have the proper codec (most people do have it), then the movie will not play at all, but you won't crash.
3) Resolved a problem with the autoupdater so that patches are applied correctly. Previous to this fix, if the user had run the game BEFORE getting a patch (i.e., played single player or LAN), then their DSO files were not being properly patched and this caused many issues for the user. This will no longer be a problem. It's very likely that this was the cause of one of the Unhandled Exceptions that people were getting.

Additional information:
a) We *just* fixed (minutes ago) the Redjack issue. We should have another patch in the next day or so with that fix in it.
b) We're a good way toward getting the rest of the community up and running again (EMAIL, FORUMS, and BROWSER). But it will still be a day or so before that happens.

Meanwhile, the News feature will keep you updated, the Chat is available, and of course, so is the Game. Go play!

1) Redjack...we fixed it today...but too late for tonight's patch. It will be in the next patch.

2) Joystick support...it's in now...but we're improving it for Friday.

3) The Direct IP Connect is slated to go in. I have to talk to the programmers some more about it, but it's an "oops". We honestly and simply forgot to put it in. (I know...VGE...but sometimes that stuff happens.)

4) Stopping a refresh will be possible on Friday also.

While I loved the vehicles in the first game, the ones in Tribes 2 are a little difficult to control. It's not unusual to see players flying upside down into a mountain. The main problem is that the controls for all of the vehicles are sluggish and unresponsive. Some of the vehicles have gunner platforms that add to the sense of teamwork. The ground vehicles that everyone was so looking forward to are pretty interesting, but there's no getting around the fact that the Tribes maps are covered in hills and valleys. Driving a motorcycle over a constantly undulating landscape is much more disorienting than it's worth.

I've been in the forums for over 8 hours today and I'm a tad frazzled. However, I still have a bunch of work to do tonight, so I need to quit while I have a brain.

A brief synopsis of what has happened today:

1) Got the chat servers interacting with each other again so people can find their friends on-line inside the game.

2) Fixed **one** of the two UE errors (but we know there is still one more to go). The workaround (until the patch arrives) is to run the T2 intro movie in Windows MediaPlayer and that utility will download the codec for you if you need it. Thereafter, you will be fine. If your UE error is AFTER you see the movie, then this fix will not resolve your problem. (That's the *other* UE we still have to fix.)

3) Resolved a problem with the autoupdater so that patches are applied correctly. (If you're having problems then don't wait for the patch...uninstall, reinstall, and patch BEFORE YOU PLAY.)

4) We're a good way toward getting the rest of the community up and running again (EMAIL, FORUMS, and BROWSER). But it will still be a day or so before that happens.

5) We warned people to NOT use OpenGL when running Voodoo3 cards. That is an artifact of having outdated drivers and they should a) update their drivers, and b) not use OpenGL inside the game. (Use D3D with that card...OpenGL can cause crashes and UEs.)

6) We have not fixed the "redjack" issue yet, but it's on top of the list and we hope to have it fixed ASAP.

That's most of the updates I can give at this point.

See you tomorrow.
-- Dave

It's confirmed. One of the UE errors that some folks are experiencing is due to a lack of an AVI codec. (This is NOT the only error. There is another one that we are trying to pin down right now.)

If you are NOT seeing the movie play, but ARE getting a UE error, then this is probably affecting you.

We will have a fix in the next patch for this. In the meantime, you can possibly work around this by trying to play the movie in your Windows MediaPlayer. It will then try to download the proper codec for you. If that works, then you can *probably* get into the game properly thereafter.

If not, we'll have the patch up later...probably tomorrow.