Year: 2002

MacSoft has announced release dates for several of its upcoming games for Mac OS 8/9 and Mac OS X, according to Inside Mac Games. Beach Head 2002, an arcade-style action game, will be available in March. Castle-building strategy game Stronghold is expected to be released in May.

GarageGames.com has announced that its Torque Game Engine, the same engine technology used in the award-winning action game Tribes 2, is now available for the Mac. The Torque Game Engine features networking, indoor/outdoor terrain, scripting language, built-in terrain and mission editors, support for the Apple Project Builder IDE, support for the Truform feature on ATI’s Radeon 8500 and more. The cross-platform engine can be licensed by independent developers for US$100.

Westlake Interactive has released Unreal Tournament X Preview 2, the latest Carbonized version of the popular first-person shooter, as noted by VersionTracker. The new version corrects a major bug that would cause the game to crash. A full version of Unreal Tournament is required to install the Mac OS X preview.

Macworld UK has published a follow-up to its recent article that covered the lack of native scanner support under Mac OS X. An Epson representative told the publication, “[We are] wholeheartedly committed to OS X, and will release scanner-driver support in the next few months.” Meanwhile, Canon said, “Development is underway to deliver OS X-native support by April or May 2002, to coincide with the introduction of several major OS X applications.”

One MacMinute reader notes some confusion at his local Apple Specialists regarding Apple’s recently launched PowerBook G4 Combo Upgrade Program. “I have visited two local Apple Authorized service centers here in Kansas City — CompUSA and Micro Center — and they claim to have no clue of the drive upgrade program. Both of these locations are on the Apple Specialist list in my area.