Welcome to Through the Looking Glass

In an Interview at IGN, Harvey Smith discussed his departure from ION Storm.

Well, Ion has been fantastic and my relationship with Warren and those guys is still really, really great. They asked me to stay and it took a very long time to make this decision and it feels kind of insane and freaky because I'm walking away from a really good job where everybody loves me and I love everybody. Everybody's kind of mystified.

What it comes down to is this is the optimal time in my life to try (if I'm going to try) to branch out on my own. My goal for a while has been to create a little game design studio. This is the opportunity: I'm between project,. I've been in the industry over ten years, I have fantastic contacts now. It's a leap of faith. You just have to do it if you're going to do it.

Having spoken with Harvey about this, I can definetly recommend you read the interview if you wish to gain understanding.

Dan says it all in his post over at The Circle. I just wanted to personally wish Randy good luck in his future endeavors and we hope to be mentioning your ever-growing talent soon enough!

Wow, first news post in a long time. At any rate, just got word from Harvey 'Witchboy' Smith of Ion Storm fame regarding great information for you aspiring game designers; take a look:

eric zimmerman and katie salen have been working on this game design book for a while now, collecting up concepts, examples and vocabulary to help game designers think about the craft of making games.

the book is out and it's great. if it's not the first significant modern game design textbook, it's certainly the best and most complete.

this is a critical read for game designers and for anyone in a leadership position within the video game business; shared vocabulary and basic understand of game design schemas will be increasingly important in the coming years.

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals

Thanks Harvey!

Mike Ryan and Tim Farrar, both ex-LGS developers, has completed their first game, a game for mobile phones, under the name of Fat Frog Studios. The game is called Eye of Rana, a game heavily inspired by the likes of the original Legend of Zelda, the early Ultimas (3 and 4), the class Rogue (Nethack, Larn), and Diablo. It's good to respect your roots. :)

The game's site lists the phones it works with, and offers download and purchase information.

Thanks, Ryan. :)

Deus Ex: Invisible War has just been updated to version 1.1. CatsClaw, super quality assurance honcho at Eidos, posted to the forums tonight the changelog and the download link. Here's the breakdown:

- Defaulted Bloom to off when starting a new game.
- Adjusted mouse movement to eliminate feeling of "lagginess".
- Adjusted the HUD so that it is pushed toward the edges of the screen.
- Added option for turning all shadows off. This can massively improve performance, especially at higher resolutions.
- Shrunk all text sizes.
- Reworked mouse-based UI control within the inventory and biomod screens:
. Right-clicking will now swap items in the inventory and toolbelt screen.
. Added buttons for installing weapon mods and biomods.
. The biomod/inventory/datavault hotkeys are now toggles (the same buttons will now both open and close these subscreens).
- Added quicksave/quickload keys. (F10/F12)
- Non-hostile AI's will now go hostile much sooner if shot.
- Eliminated monitor resyncing during level transition and savegame loads.
- Increased the headshot damage multiplier for the pistol.
- Increased the damage of the stun prod.

You can download the patch directly from Eidos. If you have any comments, a good place for them would be the aforementioned forum thread.

I'd like to let everyone know that the files in the TTLG Jukebox have now been restored. Browsers can now download mp3s of music from the Ultima Underworld series, System Shock series, Thief series, and Terra Nova.

And a big thanks to Dennis Nixon for the hosting. :)

Big News!
Computer and Video Games is reporting that Ion Storm director Warren Spector has confirmed that the second sequel to Deus Ex is in the preliminary stages!

Earlier today, during a discussion about Deus Ex: Invisible War and the future of the Deus Ex universe at a press event in south London, Ion Storm chief Warren Spector confirmed with us that preliminary work on Deus Ex 3 has already begun

Wow, that's pretty amazing, they must be expecting Invisble War to shift in serious numbers, which I'm sure it will!
Discuss in our forums!

DeusEx.com

If this is any indication of the type of style and class we can expect from this new game, sign me up for the funny farm... because it's driving me nuts. :)

Gamespot has a nice Q&A on Irrational's upcoming game, Tribes 3.

Now for a snippet!

GS: Can you tell us anything about the background story for the game? How will background elements from the previous Tribes or even the Starsiege games figure in?

CM: On the big timeline, Tribes: Vengeance takes place between the existing Tribes games, and Cyberstorm, about 300 to 500 years before Starsiege: Tribes. It fills in some background on how the tribes were formed. Tribes: Vengeance is definitely part of the ongoing Starsiege and Tribes timeline, and people who are familiar with that will be comfortable with this story; however, you won't need a Tribes history lesson to understand what is going on. It fits into the universe but doesn't require it.

Go check it out!

We've got some fresh new info on Arx 2 posted over at StygianAbyss.com. Pretty exciting stuff, I think. Go on over and have a read. :)