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OS/2 Gaming News- by Colin L. Hildinger
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It's time once again to check out the latest news that affects OS/2 gaming and gamers. Each month we scour the 'net and hound ISVs to provide you with a digest of all the events and updates in the OS/2 gaming market, complete with helpful links. While it has been a bit of a slow month for OS/2 gaming news, I did manage to find a few interesting tidbits:

Cosmic Defender Beta 2

Last month I told you about a beta version of Cosmic Defender, a new 3D shooter/flight sim type of game (kind of a cross between Descent and Comanche in the style of play). Well, there's a new beta out. The new beta adds:

Take a few minutes and check it out.

ColEm Updated

The ColecoVision Emulator, ported to OS/2 by Darrell Spice, was updated recently. The new version sports increases in performance and a few cleanups to the interface. The update is available from the Spiceware home page. In further news, it looks like Darrell is getting started porting Handy (Handy is an Atari Lynx emulator; Handy was the original name for the Lynx before Atari bought it), and will likely be porting XNES, a Nintendo emulator.

New Drilling Billy Beta

If you downloaded the second Drilling Billy beta in the first few days after the last issue was published, you may have had trouble getting it to work. Why? They accidently forgot a couple of files in the distribution. If you couldn't get the beta to work, take a few minutes and visit Northwind's home page and get the rest of the files.

Entrepreneur Ships

Probably the biggest game to hit OS/2 since Galactic Civilizations, Entrepreneur is now shipping. It should be in a store near you in the next few weeks. Look for a review next month, and if you haven't checked out the demo yet, get it from Stardock's web page. Also note that the documentation is on-line in Adobe Acrobat format.

OpenGL 1.1 Goes Gold

Look for OpenGL to be an important gaming technology on both the OS/2 and Windows platforms. OS/2 Warp version 4 shipped with OpenGL v1.0, but IBM has recently released v1.1. Do you need it? Not yet, but you will as soon as OpenGL software begins to take advantage of the added features in v1.1. Look for OpenGL accelerating video drivers for OS/2 in maybe the next 6 months or so, as IBM is due to release an OpenGL DDK (Device driver Development Kit) in the coming months. There will likely be a relationship between the release of the OpenGL drivers and the release of GRADD drivers from major video chip set Independent Hardware Vendors.

If you want to download OpenGL v1.1, you can find it on one of IBM's FTP servers. The files you want to get are oglgold.zip and glut.zip. Glut.zip is a replacement for the glut.dll in the oglgold.zip file.

Rescue from Kedk

A new shareware shooter called Rescue from Kedk has recently been released. The gameplay is pretty direct, basically you shoot everything that moves. It can be found on BMT Micro's web site.

Maxis Games for OS/2 at Micro Center

Finally, last month I mentioned that the Maxis games for OS/2 never made it onto store shelves. I was corrected (quite politely) via e-mail by a Micro Center employee. He informed me that all of the Maxis OS/2 games could be found at their store, so if you're looking for them, that would be a good place to start. Micro Center seems to be the most OS/2 friendly of the major computer stores.

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Colin Hildinger is an Aerospace Engineering senior at Oklahoma State University and has been using OS/2 for the last 3 years. In addition to being the Games Editor for OS/2 e-Zine!, he maintains The Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page and the AWE32 and OS/2 Page in his "spare" time.


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