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Date: Jan 17 1999 18:42:18 EST
From: Apolyton Announcements (Apolyton Civilization Site)
Subject: Apolyton Weekly News 17/Jan/99

Greetings everyone!
It was a great week for Apolyton, with the opening of our SMAC section,
the move of CivLeague on our server as a hosted site and the flood of
C:CTP screenshots. Plus the move of the TFGC2S file archive in the Civ2
section. In details here is what happened on our site between
11-17/January...

----------------------------
**Civilization II Section

*News

AFRICA CONTEST VOTE January 16, 1999
If you followed our Community forum and Scenario League you would know
about the Africa Contest. Well, the time for creation is over, and now
it's to vote for the best scenario. The vote will take place on the
Scenario League forums. Check it all out on Scenario League

TFGC2S ARCHIVE!
(Jan.16) It was one of those things that I(MarkG) was saying to that I
would do but never did, because something else always came up. Well, the
TFGC2S archive is finally here and you can find along with the UCIVIIS
archive in the Archives option on the menu. Our dream now is to put
everything in to the our database...

GOODIE HUTS ALL AROUND
(Jan.12) Looking to spruce up the ol' desktop? A map here, a throne there?
You're in luck! From MicroProse comes three self-extracting, eye-catching
wallpaper patterns ready for download. 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768
versions are available for both the PC and Mac platforms. Go on, explore!

CIVII FOR THE PLAYSTATION
(Jan. 11) Dan received word from Erik W. Leppo, in Baltimore, MD., that
CivII PSX was available for rental! :-)

*Site updates
17.Jan TFGC2S archive!

16.Jan Markos concludes his latest column

12.Jan New Viking Scribe


----------------------------
**Civilization: Call to Power Section

*News
UNLIMITED MAP SIZE?!? (Jan. 16)
I'm copying from a usenet post by Activision's Peter Karpas:
As far as size of maps, this is from one of our programmers: "There is no
max map size, save what you're willing to wait for when the terrain
generator starts up. I made one that was 256x512 tiles; it took over 2
minutes for the terrain generator to run on my PII450."
There probably is a theoretical map size limit that will "break" the game,
but we haven't found it yet.
Comments? :)

GAMEPOST PREVIEW (Jan. 16)
Gamespot as a part of a CGW feature has a three page preview of C:CTP. Not
many new things to read, except perhaps that all units/ techs/ wonders
around slavery will be optional, and the the Genesis Device, the ecotopian
wonder, will "remake all life on the planet in a new image"(don't ask me
what this means though :)). On the same feature you can also find small
articles on Civ2:TOT and SMAC

MORE SCREENS... (Jan. 11-15)
(Jan. 15) A bountiful harvest of screenshots has been graceously presented
to us --- again! Today's additions are, again, in beautiful, high-res JPEG
format. No drooling now. :)
(Jan. 13) Even more screens! Lt John was kind enough to send us three new
(latest build) screenshots showing the Monument, Ranking and Battle View
screens. Not to brag about it, but we now have over 90 screenshots...
{grin}
(Jan. 12) Pages 10 and 11 of screenshots are now posted. A small
clarification: the screenshots are new in the sense that we've found them
now, heh heh... they are taken from older builds and some inaccuracies
likely exist.
Jan. 11) We've discovered some new screenshots for you. They are too
many(over 20) to post them in one day's update so they will posted
partially. A couple are not new but they are on 1024x768. In fact, almost
all are on 1024x768! Anyway, here is part 1(screenshot page 9).

*Site updates
16.Jan 3 New animations
15.Jan Screens page 13!
13.Jan Screens page 12!
12.Jan Screens pages 10 and 11; alos updated units info

*News

Move to Apolyton!
15 January 1999 -- Markos Giannopoulos
BAC(from now on called Apolyton CS: SMAC section) is from today on it's
new home. We understand that lot's of things need to be changed/ updated/
corrected on the site, so be a little patient. You could also help us by
notifying for any errors/problems you see. In case you're not sure what
happened here, read our merger announcement.

BR on difficulty...
14 January 1999 -- Markos Giannopoulos
If you think SMAC is easy here is Brian Reynolds' view from one of his
usenet posts:
I'd say wait until you have the full game before worrying about difficulty
level! I find it excruciatingly hard to beat on the top level using a
decent sized map, and I pretty much never lost at Civ2.
So, wait... :)

Demo Update!
12 January 1999 -- John Bell
The fans have spoken, and Firaxis has responded! Uproar on Usenet and in
the forums has prompted Firaxis to start work on a patch for the demo to
fix some problems in graphics and play balance. A specific list of
updates hasn't been made public yet, but announced changes to the final
game that may make it to the new demo include higher-resolution unit
graphics, an in-game gamma ramp, and a tweak to reduce the effectiveness
of mindworm sweeps.
And good news for those of us with slow connections, a few Firaxis
employees have said they're going to push for a patch, instead of a new
demo release!

*Site updates

16 January 1998: Added info for Morgan Faction.
12 January 1998: We welcome John Bell as our new SMAC Helper.


----------------------------
**Alternative Civilizations Section

GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS COVERAGE: NOW!
(14.Jan) After more than an intensive month of production, we are proud to
announce the start of our Galactic Civilizations coverage by opening that
section today! This is only the start of Alt. Civ's projects for the first
quarter of 1999... next on the list is the development of our Freeciv
division. Stay tuned!


----------------------------
**CivLeague (hosted site)

CivLeague Moved to Apolyton - Sunday, January 17
Thanks to the gracious folks at Apolyton CS, CivLeague has moved to their
faster, more reliable server. Due to the move, all non-initialized
accounts will need to register again.


----------------------------
**Scenario League (hosted site)

Vote for Your Favorite Africa Contest Entry - January 13, 1999
It's over, and you need to pick the winners. Download them all and vote
for your favorites on our message boards. We will award the "People's
Choice Award" while Judge Andrew Hoekzema will award the official prize.

SLeague Will Review AC Scenarios and Modpacks - January 11, 1999
In Brief: The title says it all. Alpha Centauri is now fair game for
scenario reviews. We can't wait for it to hit the shelves.

Reviews of Fantasy/Sci-Fi Scenarios:
Day of the Dead [+1]
Swampland II [+1]



That was all, ladies and gentlemen
Until next time...
Markos, Apolyton CS

ps. New length of newletter record! 8K(previous one last week: 7.1K) :-D
ps2. From this week this newletter is sent to more than 1000 people!