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Date: Jan 25 1999 17:14:27 EST
From: Apolyton Announcements (Apolyton Civilization Site)
Subject: Apolyton Weekly News 24/Jan/99


Greetings everyone!
Sorry for the delay, exams are starting for both Dan and I and time is
limited. Anyway, here is what happened on our site between 18-24 of
January...

Of course, the big news of the week was our interview of Brian Reynolds(!)

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

*News
MGE MAP EDITOR FIX
(Jan. 23) Lots of people have found out that the map editor crashes after
the installation of MGE's patch. Jeff posted a solution for the problem on
our forums. Our thanks also to Jim Luchford who mailed us about it.

CIVLEAGUE HITS 400!
(Jan. 23) What started last summer from some forums about a civ2 ladder,
this week got it's 400th member! Congratulations to the boys at CivLeague!
Check also the site for a new tournament that starts soon!

*Site updates
23.Jan Column #25 by Sven
18.Jan 9 New Viking Scribes

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

*News
100 OUT OF 23,000??? (Jan. 22)
According to Lt John, the total number of entries for the beta test was
23,000!! This was the bigest signup Activision ever had, and one of the
bigest for Gamespot. There will be a total of 100 beta testers, and some
of them are people from our forums, so if you see someone disappearing...
Their names wont be announced though, and there will be a NDA until near
release time. The lucky ones might get a mail even today!

NO REPLAY FOR NOW... (Jan. 22)
I sent our replay poll results to Lt John. He said that the game is almost
at "feature lock", which means all of the features are in the game and
functioning- no more additions can be made. Even if there was more time,
in his own words "you can't make game design modifications on the fly or
add in major changes late in the process- it's a recipe for disaster and
major delays". Well, I guess they know something more than me or you... :)
Anyway, the replay feature might make it in the expansion(which seems to
be a certain thing), but don't take it for granted...

REPLAY FOR THE PEOPLE! (Jan. 19)
One more time we asked for your opinion and you gave it! Of the 618 votes,
292 or 47% "Would kill" for a end game replay feature in C:CTP just like
in Civ1. 166(26%) are more gentle and ask for it in a nice way :) while
66(10%) don't see why it shouldn't be in the game. Finally, 32(5%) don't
care about it and an amazing amount of 62 people(10%) don't know what it
is(blasphemy!). Of course, as you may know already, a replay feature is
not in Activision's plans. Let's hope they will change their minds after
our poll... :)

EDITING MAP DETAILS... (Jan. 18)
We should watch newsgroups more often. Here's another interesting post of
Peter Karpas:
You bet you can edit the maps. One of the cool things we've added is what
I call the "macro tile" system. Place a bunch of forest tiles next to each
other, and the forest art automatically adds more trees in the tiles,
making it look like a "bigger" forest. Put just one forest tile on a map,
and it will look more sparse. Same is true for mountains and most other
tiles.

*Site updates
22.Jan Latest batch of unit animations

----------------------------
**Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Section

*News
Brian Reynolds Interviewed! - 22 January 1999
We're happy to present you an interview of Brian Reynolds. If the name
doesn't say anything to you, leave this site right now! :) Brian speaks
about the demo, the factions, pbem, and lots of other things...

Story Episode 32 - 21 January 1999
Finally, a new episode, #32. "Captain Garland punched in a quicklink to
his friend, Pravin Lal...". Also, Episodes 12 to 24 can now be found in
doc format.

Demo version 1.1! - 20 January 1999
A new version of the demo is now available with the following changes:
Higher resolution graphics
A gamma correction slider for better monitor compatibility
Optional interface/faction leader displays without interlacing
Multiple gameplay balancing fixes
There are two versions with(50MB) and without(20MB) a video intro
available in our Files page. See also the readme.

Week of Feb 16th! - 20 January 1999
On the first page of the official SMAC site under the big SMAC logo it
now says "Arriving in stores the week of Feb 16th!". I think this is the
most accurate date we have seen on the official site. So, it's only a
month or so...

The demo and your buying decision - 20 January 1999
As you can see on your right, we have started our first SMAC poll. It is
about your decision on buying or not buying SMAC and how the demo has
affected it. The options cover all possibilities even the more far-out
ones :)

Video Interviews - 19 January 1999
Firaxis posted on the official SMAC site(Gallery section) 10 video
interviews of Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, Time Train and Mike Haire which
you can all find in our updated Files page. The video's are in MPEG
format. In the official site you can also find them in Real Video.

Avault, Gamespot previews - 18 January 1999
Avault has a 2 page preview of SMAC along with some screenshots. Also,
Gamespot has a small preview as part of a CGW feature on various strategy
games of the year. On the same feature there are also previews of C:CTP
and Civ2:TOT. If you find these not satisfying you can always check on the
older 10 page preview of Gamespot.

*Site updates
22 January 1998: Brian Reynolds interview in Features pages
20 January 1998: New demo in Files page. First poll started.
19 January 1998: Videos and more in Files page.
18 January 1998: Maintainance of Features pages.

----------------------------
**CivLeague (hosted site)
Inactive Accounts to be Culled - Sunday, January 24
Effective next week: if you have not logged into your account for two
months, your account will be deleted.

Signup for Tournament - Friday, January 22
You can signup for the tournament now. Just login to your account a
click Tournament Signup to signup. Signups will last about a week and the
tournament will start on Friday the 29th of January. Rules will be posted
soon. Each round of the tournament will run for one week. Do not signup if
you don’t think you’ll be able to make it to the games.

Forums Open - Monday, January 18
The message forums are open! Go there and voice your opinions and find
opponents.

Tournament / Patch / Keep Current - Monday, January 18
There will be a new tournament starting February 1st. It will be a World
War II scenario tournament. We will accept nominations for the scenario at
civleague@gamestats.com. Please don’t send us the scenario itself just its
name and the url that it can be downloaded from, please make sure any
scenarios that you nominate are balanced for multiplayer and are of good
quality. Version 1.1 will be required for this tournament, if you don’t
already have it (I don’t think any games have shipped with it yet) you can
download the patch(see below). More details will be posted soon. We would
also like to remind all users to keep their profile up to date (especially
the email so we can contact you). We would recommend that all users
download the patch so that all of our users will be compatible with each
other when you go to play ladder games.

----------------------------
**Hodadian Award Central (hosted site)
THE FIRST DRAFT IS HERE!!! JAN.19
You've been asking for it, so here it is! Go to the Vote page, and
although the booth is not yet available, you'll see it... the first
official listing of the awards that will be offered at our upcoming awards
"show." We still plan to commence the voting on February 22, and while the
numbers on the Search Team have increased in recent weeks, we still need
YOUR ideas for nominees! Please use the form on the Vote page to submit
your nominee directly to us, or post in on our forums on the new Apolyton
Hosted Sites UBB! And we're still open to category ideas. It will be YOU,
the visitors, who determine when we start voting, so get us your ideas NOW!

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

Vote for Your Favorite Africa Contest Entry

Review of Historical Scenario: Danubian Empire [+1]


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

ps. yet for another more time we have a new record in the length of this
newsletter. This week it's 9.7k(last week 8k). My problem now is that the
limit of each message is 10k... :)