News

Playback.dem

This was May 2025 in a nutshell.

Site Updates

• Data oriented redesign. Most bits of information from games came from a single sheet of HTML - now the individual header categories are dynamically put together from multiple sources of data.
• We have started adding notes to certain games. Like on the page for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, you can read bits specific to the PC version. It’s like trivia, but often more technical.

Game News

Giant Bomb Goes Independent

This was quite a saga. We’ve watched the transition of ownership of the legendary videogame site Giant Bomb a few times.

It was previously owned by Fandom, but had now found independence. After fans and staff made it clear that recent changes at companies run by Fandom would effectively kill the site, the people in charge were kind enough to sell the business.

This means that no one is funding Giant Bomb now, except for people like us.

They have a vault of great video content, including some high quality game tape rips. If you sign up for Giant Bomb Premium you’re allowed to download it all too.

R1Delta released

Sales of Titanfall were halted back in 2021, leaving the game abandoned by its developer and publisher. While some of the infrastructure is still up, no one is really playing due to the threats constantly ruining the game.

Now, there’s an answer to your worries - and that is R1Delta. With its full guts on display over on GitHub it promises an open source, custom server framework for Titanfall. It allows you to host dedicated servers and modded servers as well. You can even view a list of games active at any given time.

Great work on preserving one kickass multiplayer game. Our hats off to our friends at R1Delta.

Overturn Network Test

As reported earlier, a playtest event took place that tested the network performance of Overturn. We were debugging some network anomalies where also seeing how the elaborate entity work performed over the network. You can also still download and play Overturn: Operation Deathmatch Test and see what all the fuss was about.

One of the maps had lots of visual effects, like beam type entities (and lightstyle color switches) for the King of the Hill mode that we were worried about might be heavy on the networking. We had some issues with client-side state/prediction misses, but nothing that detracted from the fun. We thank everyone again for their participation - and I have word from the core development team at Bloodbath Software that an update will be out this June (or July, at the latest). As there’s lots of things going on in the industry this time of the year, some of our staff will be extraordinarily busy too.

Valve Stops Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive

After years of waiting, the Classic Offensive mod for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive had announced that their project is not allowed to be distributed. Watch the video by ESCalation for the direct source.

Valve was blocking them from releasing it, unless they rebase it on top of Counter-Strike 2 or on top of the older (but still supported) Source Base 2013. On a technical level this was understandable because the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive branch was no longer being maintained and thus no longer receives security updates. Valve would only make themselves more work by endorsing it in the long run by letting them use it.

Unfortunately, when you agree to the SDK license agreement put forth by Valve you are at their mercy. Maybe we’ll see a port to Counter-Strike 2, but it seems morale had hit rock bottom. We are hoping for an eventual happy ending to this saga.

You can see the credits and development timeline here.

The Tekken Waffle House Saga

Waffle House has been ghosting Tekken 8 lead Katsuhiro Harada. Fans of the franchise want to be able to fight inside a Waffle House franchise but they won’t seem to get it.

IGN reports this passionate cry for a cross over.

Tweet 1

Tweet 2

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That is it for our AAA game industry coverage for the month.

The Golden Parrot: Against All Flags v2.2 released

Probably one of the most creative modifications for Wolfenstein 3D is made by fraggeur and it’s titled The Golded Parrot: Against All Flags. This sequel to The Golden Parrot continues the mix of of action and role-playing game.

With an all new episode in this update, you’ll find plenty to plunder on this adventure. Even if you’ve played an older version, you might want to replay it with the newly added skills.

Read the release announcement on ModDB.

Holocron Challenges v2.0 released

Love duels? Love Star Wars? The PvE mod Holocron Challenges for Jedi Academy adds a new game type for you duel/tournament lovers:

Masters of Tera Kasi

Fight 8 enemies across 8 stages in this ladder mode, before meeting a boss character you need to fight. Every time you play it’s different, as it’s all randomized.

Basically, if you crave variety and want something you can pick up and play? Look no further than this mod by Plasma89. No need to choose a map every time, this mod just picks some variety for you.

Half-Life Dreamcast Manual, Correcting Misinformation

The SEGA Dreamcast Info site by Comby Laurent had posted a full scan of the manual of the cancelled Half-Life on Dreamcast as well as inserts for the case from an authentic copy.

Staff of Frag-Net preserved the authentic Half-Life Dreamcast box many years ago already. Combined, we are all able to see what Half-Life Dreamcast would have been like on our game shelves.

Another rumor and bit of misinformation was being put to rest, and we could now confirm that the original scene release of Half-Life on Dreamcast was not modified.

HRPG v3.0 released

This is Heretic but with more RPG elements! With adjusting monster spawns, new classes and powerups this is a fresh new way to experience Heretic on GZDoom. Made by ThePunKing.

Download for v3.0 on ModDB

Tiberium Resonance v0.2 released

This mod by Nozuki_Guardian17 is an attempt to remake Command & Conquer 4 on top of Command & Conquer 3. You will also need the expansion pack Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath in order to play this mod. Grab the latest full version on ModDB.

You should definitely also check Tiberium Chaos if you’re into some chaotic, unbalanced, feature-filled skirmish for the same game, by the same mod author.

Clone Wars Era Mod v2.5 released

Listen up, Star Wars: Battlefront II players: The full version of Clone Wars Era Mod v2.5 by Benoz was released.

reTHAWed v4.3 released

Of course there’s always more reTHAWed. There’s so much we have a dedicated mod page now for reTHAWed. We also added one for THUG PRO.

The launch trailer for reTHAWED 4.3 shows off that they’ve indeed ported the entire set of levels from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 into it, complete with details such as cutscenes attempting to be preserved.

As always, lots of customization had been added too. Hats off to the folks at 10K Rising.

Forgotten Hope: Secret Weapon v0.73 released

A new full release of this fan-continuation of Forgotten Hope for Battlefield 1942 had been released.

See the full versions of the above renders on this release article for Forgotten Hope: Secret Weapon v0.73.

Tech News

SteamOS Kicks Ass On The Legion Go S

If you have a Lenovo Legion Go S and want to install Windows on it you’ll come to shoot yourself in the foot. The benchmarks “destroy Windows in peformance and battery life” according to GamingOnLinux and Dave2D. Read all about SteamOS on the Lenovo Legion Go S here.

Waffle House Index getting DMCA’d

Yes, we have to keep talking about Waffle House this month, but it’s serious this time. The Waffle House Index had received a Cease and Desist order.

What is the Waffle House Index?

“If you’ve never heard of the Waffle House Index, you’re in for a bit of weirdly fascinating disaster response lore. The Waffle House Index is an (incredibly) unofficial tool used by FEMA to gauge the severity of natural disasters. Why Waffle House? Because they’re infamous for not closing even during the worst of storms. If the House is closed, that means things are getting real.” – Jack LaFond

So Mr. LaFond set up a site for displaying his scraping of that data, in order to help people. Of course, Waffle House did not like their trademark being used like that and shut it down. We hope for the safe return of the Waffle House Index.

Over & out

And that’s it!

The Overturn Playtest concluded earlier today!

We want to thank everyone who showed up!

When ModDB has done authorizing the post, you can learn more about it here:

Ping! Playtest Over! - Overturn mod for Half-Life

You can also still download and play Overturn: Operation Deathmatch Test and see what all the fuss was about.

This is the first playable release of a game using the new iteration of Nuclide with its new networked object-oriented inventory system.

What does that mean? Well, it’s a bunch of systems that allowed the original development team of Overturn to give you this prototype, which only took a few weeks to make.

The mod had been dormant for over a decade, but thanks to not having to write a single line of code or programming the team implemented the weaponry, item and game object work in record time using the new SDK.

How does that work? As stated, a lot of subsystems are at play there, so we encourage you to simply throw yourself at it. Open overturn/pak000.pk4 like you would any ZIP archive, and look around the decls/ directory specifically.

In the end, the only custom code resides to handle the Heads-Up-Display and additional multiplayer modes. However even items like the flags in CTF are handled via text files. The client and server code is still vanilla Rad-Therapy.

If you want to make prototype a Half-Life mod or a whole standalone game, yours too can be developed in a few weeks, editing nothing but plain text files.

Playback.dem

It’s the April of 2025. Who knows how long we’re able to do any of the stuff you see here.

The global economy is at risk!
Powerful people are making really stupid and/or ill-informed decisions at a whim - but don’t fret.

There’s a blip of sanity on this mad earth. It’s called Frag-Net and we’ve already pulled the pin on the grenade! Let’s blow it all up.

Frag-Net Status Report

New Broadcasts

Wowzas!
Check out all those new broadcast features that have found their way onto the game pages.

They’re now also being tacked onto the end of the page dynamically so that whenever we index more of archived television shows it shows up as soon as we update any other part of the site.

Check out some game pages for broadcast appearances! We will try to push up new database updates every weekend.

New Games Indexed

We are joined by Grand Theft Auto and its sequel GTA2 complete with official downloads.

Also joining us are the Red Alert expansion packs Aftermath, Counterstrike and Yuri’s Revenge for its sequel.

Ray Wise’s performance in Red Alert 2 may have tempted us to waste hundreds of hours fragging each other once again, but the staff of this website excercised self-control! Let’s give them a round of applause.

The mission packs for GTA will come. In due time. We spent too much time looking for since deleted audio clips. Sorry.

Worms 2 Backend Updated

The server’s backend for powering Worms 2 was updated on April 22nd ahead of a new patch for Worms 2 Plus by Carlmundo.

The downtime was of about a minute and it shouldn’t have impacted any in-progress games. If you experience any issues with the new multiplayer service, please let us know and we will fix it pronto.

Game News

Patch: Worms 2 Plus 1.7.0.1

Along with our server-side being updated, we now have a new client for everyone to download on GitHub for Worms 2 Plus v1.7.0.1. Users already on v1.7 can download a single DLL file instead.

The main fix is that complex custom maps no longer crash on-line lobbies. Grab it!

Awards: Shenmue - Most Influential Game

The BAFTA people voted Shenmue as the #1 most influential video game of all time.

Proving once again, that the PlayStation 2 has nuthin’ on the SEGA Dreamcast. Church!

Wishlist: Arkane and Dishonored 3

Arkane loves Dishonored, so much that there was a report on Rock Paper Shotgun about multiple proposals on where to take it next despite there being no actual plan to develop it.

Steam: The Rigs Are Big, Sergey

A very bizarre sight on Steam this month: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

Clearly published to cash-in on its notoriety gained thanks to on-line content creators, this is also being rumored to not be a ‘proper’ page after all, meaning that someone put up the page who may not have the full rights to it.

How spicy. Will you care to dig deep and uncover the truth? Now that sounds like fun to someone out there.

Map: Solomon’s Tower (The Pentagonal Seal) for Arcane Dimensions

Anyone in Quake has heard of Arcane Dimensions. It’s known as the mod that forces Quake engine programmers to speed up level rendering quite a bit.

Now creator and level designer Sock released a new level titled Solomon’s Tower!

More Arcane Dimensions! Go play!!!

Teaser: reTHAWed 4.3

This month we were surprised by the team at 10K Rising, who are known for giving the Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland community reTHAWed.

We got one trailer showing some new customization options, and another trailer showcasing enhancements to create-a-park and photo mode.

You can visit the website for reTHAWed for the 4.3 when it goes live soon.

Console News: Sony Raises PlayStation 5 Prices, Microsoft Follows

In the price report on the web portal for PlayStation it lists an increase of about 25% for Europe, UK, Australia and New Zeland (yes, not the United States which is heavily impacted by tarrifs).

The exception is the stand-alone disc drive which sees a price reduction of 30%.

Then right at the start of this very month, Microsoft announced a $100 price hike in the US for its Xbox Series X.

Makes a domestic-US price increase for the PlayStation 5 seem inevitable. Time will tell!

Review-Rant: AI Generated Version Of Quake II

A server-side version of Quake II released that keeps generating new frames out of previous ones, in respect to user input. As you’d expect with anything related to present day ‘AI generated’ responses, it has barely any concept of state and you can, when shoving your face into a corner, teleport into random locations in the starting level.

Meaning progress and score doesn’t matter - in a medium where it does.

They put out pieces also, talking about how this is totally the future of gaming, despite it simply generating existing stuff.

Previously we thought of it as just a harmless technical experiment to see what we can get away with using primitive 2025 technology, it was also being proclaimed as a showcase of AIs ‘incredible ability to preserve games’ in the same article.

Okay, your got our attention. Tell us: How could this live web-service help preserve games?

No examples were given. But the idea that this husk of a game would replace anything, or be used to represent games is horrifying. It couldn’t.

As with any hype-driven technology, they expect the reader to just make up an uneducated wish and hope for the best. And that’s exactly is why they didn’t say anything.

But okay, we’ll bite. Let’s give some honest, constructive feedback. Here’s an idea that’ll be fun and is probably impossible despite its simple premise:

Create a multiplayer version of “AI” Quake II. Maybe it can hallucinate away the embarassing fixed rate netcode, too! Or, at the very least - (try to at-least hook up a scoreboard. As it currently stands, there’s no game.

Now if you make that work Microsoft, give us a call.

Released: THPSPro 9.3

Yes, the really cool Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 modification THPSPro has seen another release, announced with this 7 minute video of gameplay.

Quick overview of the new things being shown off:

• Level: New Orleans
• Revert Cooldowns
• Manual Spins

You can find the latest up to date information, mirrors on the Nexus page for THPSPro.

It is currently the de-facto way to play 1+2, as it contains more of everything.

We are eager to see how the upcoming release of Pro Skater 3+4 affects THSPro.

Trailer: In Mute Witness Stand

Over on ModDatabase its page for In Mute Witness Stand we have a trailer now available.

But that’s not all, also revealed is a new enemy: The Chatterer.

You will be able to hear him from a distance by his distinctive chatter of teeth.

Also shown off is quite a bit of cartoon violence, complete with blood spewing everywhere. Although low poly, still quite disturbing. What can we say?
War is hell.

Check this WW1-themed co-operative mod out!

Cancelled: Respawn Layoffs Killed New Titanfall

GameSpot reported at the end of the month that an unannounced Titanfall game had been cancelled due to layoff at Respawn affecting roughly 100 developers.

This extraction shooter game would have run on the same modified Source Engine that powered Apex Legends.

Once a money maker for Electronic Arts, Apex Legends was seen as underperforming - along with EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA). Yes - the franchise formerly known as FIFA is underperforming also.

Tech News

Release: DEFACTORY

The first release of DEFACTORY is here!

This is a new piece of software by CYBERDEViL, who’s already blessed us with REWise and REShie.

Much like the above, this tool also lets you rip files from installer software - but this time for the Setup Factory family by Indigo Rose Corporation.

We’ve needed this tool ourselves for our mod archiving and indexing purposes. So obviously we were very excited when it was shown off.

And if you haven’t heard of REWise or REShie, check out their pages. If you’re a serious visitor of Frag-Net you will have one of the listed installers/games yourself, as it was an insanely popular format - and now you can rest confidently knowing that breaking their archives open is of no problem to you.

Many thanks for CYBERDEViL for making this happen! Cheer them on in our Chat or let us know what installer format you want to see pried open next.

Release: AmigaOS 3.2.3

Right at the beginning of the month Hyperion Entertainment released AmigaOS 3.2.2.

If you haven’t upgraded your ROMs yet, now is your reminder. Last release was 2 years ago.

Release: Chroma - Color Blindness Accessibility Tool from UbiSoft

UbiSoft released Chroma, which is a tool that simulates most types of color blindness.

GamesIndustry.biz had some more blurbs from a spokesperson for this neat little tool.

News-Rant: Discord’s Jason Citron Exits Amidst IPO Uncertainty & Legal Turmoil

Jason Citron has done a lot.

He created a platform that gamified social relationships, and normalized people to broadcasting their entire personal lives over unencrypted, insecure channels while allegedly failing to protect children at scale.

But enough of the damn kids - sacrifices will have to be made I guess. The users demand it! Discord needs to succeed. But most users aren’t exactly willing to pay. Can that feat even be accomplished?

As we enter our next phase, I’ve been reflecting on how I can best contribute to Discord’s long-term success […]

Now it’s time for him to step away - at least for the time being. You know - in case Discord suddenly loses a lot of value or something. Which it might, given what they’re about to attempt, which is taking the company public!

Citron said that Discord didn’t have plans to announce about potentially going public, but noted that “as you can imagine, hiring someone like Humam is a step in that direction.”

Who is the new CEO to replace Citron? This time it’s an ex-King (ActiBlizz) guy, who are no doubt used to bad publicity.

It’s always good for the founder to step away first - can always bring him back later and pin the upcoming failures on the last guy. Hu-yuck!

Despite all that uncertainty, we expect to be able to claim Discord will be Skype within the next few years.

Why? Well, why would you go public to begin with? They’ve been failing to monetize their service since the beginning. Game store front? Failed and closed.
Sponsored cryptocurrency integration? Abandoned for now, while users complained the creator Jason Citron was eager. Clearly, they saw themselves as more than a game chat platform.

Like many risky startups, they used venture capital (someone elses money) to grow an unsustainable free service. The bet is that it goes public and certain shareholders will keep it alive with their gambling habit. Even then, they need to continue to innovate, rise and fall - and they ain’t keeping the expenses down with Nitro subscriptions alone - no matter what.

While the frogs have been boiling for a while, they still haven’t fled en-masse or shown much signs of protest. Maybe the Video Quests that roll out in June will divert enough attention away from people and make them realize they’re being gamed for not much in return.

Now, to be absolutely serious for a moment. In this age people are expecting a lot of free stuff, but some of you need to get a reality check.

• This service is not making anyone any money. For years there were talks of being desired to be acquired and still nothing has happened. Maybe certain parties backed out for good reasons.
  
• Close to $1 billion in funding was raised from 2015 to 2023. None of that money is lost. It will be extracted from somewhere. Investors expect a return on their investment. Revenue won’t get them that, only profit (revenue minus expenses).
• The previous hope was that they can increase metrics like user count and revenue to such a degree that a big entity that owned datacenters (such as Microsoft or Amazon) could buy them, and said data center bill (the most expensive bit about their business) would vanish as a result.
  Cool, but you’d still end up realizing that the corporation owning it, while it would cost them little to run this service, is not a charity.

Yet, we hear a lot of complaining. People desperately want things to continue like they have been. It’s like some people fundamentally do not understand how these industries work. Nothing lasts forever.

“This is when enshittification begins.” - some comment on The Verge

As if it already hadn’t… cough. Anyway -

Let’s be responsible adults and suggest something else. This is not new, or unheard of: If you want your communications to be private, and owned by you and your group of friends, use something like Matrix or XMPP. As for clients, start by grabbing Cinny, which would suit you visually.

We don’t think people are willing to put up with intrusive ads in Discord for long, and at some point they’ll end up having to tap user data instead to avoid pissing people off directly. You can see where this goes. Even when we bridge our messaging services, all our data is at risk. Both past and present. Don’t even need a bad actor for that - just a data breach. Remember, nothing is encrypted or encoded on Discord. It’s just another website.
It’s not a protocol, it’s not a standard and it’s not secured or backed by anything unlike the things we proposed above. If you want our advice: Leave.

There just aren’t a lot of appealing options for a commercially run chat service that serves trillions of messages. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

Everyone else is trying to sell you something. Snap!

It’s Over

This Playback.dem is over… thank MasterControlProgram. My head is still spinning from all this news. We need to lay down.

Playback.dem

It’s our Playback for March 2025.

Frag-Net Status Update

Site updates

We’ve been adding more game pages. You’ll also notice some file sections getting added to. Some of those things aren’t quite done. But to make up for it we’ve updated our magazine racks for various games.

Check out a few game pages! It’s like a time machine, dude.

We missed: Map Center’s Quake 3 25th Anniversary Pack

We completely missed this in February on LvlWorld, but there was a 25th Anniversary Pack for Quake III Arena, released by the Map-Center community (who keep blessing us with levels, more on that in Mod News below).

Levels vary in theme. From the classic themes present in the original game, as well as classic community themes. Go check them out, a server ought to be hosting them somewhere! If you know of a server that does, let us know and we’ll add it.

Here’s the complete list of artists who contributed, taken from the readme (nicknames only):

Screens

Look at these sweet screenshots:

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault community now served by 333networks

As of the beginning of March, our friends at 333networks are now serving the Medal of Honor community:

Another great title now joins the list of games supported by 333networks. After a brief development-and-testing period, our friends at xNull trust 333networks to be a highly robust and reliable masterserver service to be adopted for their community. Our passionate team of retrogamers are committed to providing a reliable online experience for legacy games.

We thank the Medal of Honor community for their trust in 333networks and we will remain dedicated to continue providing the best multiplayer support so you can continue to enjoy the game without interruption. We also thank @ldvc and @Todesengel for their (continued) help in making 333networks ready for Medal of Honor Allied Assault, Spearhead and Breakthrough!

Note to server owners: if your server doesn’t appear in the server list after the update, restart your server so it reconnects with the new master server. This should resolve any visibility issues.

Game News

sc2kfix

We’ve not yet talked about this cool project which will breathe new life into your copy of Sim City 2000 Special Edition.

It is called sc2kfix and it doesn’t just make it run on modern versions of Windows but it also fixes longstanding bugs, improves compatibility when run under Wine, as well as introduces the python-esque language Kuroko into the mix, which will allow you to add scripts to modify your game.

You can find instructions on how to get everything configured on their website.

Unreleased 1984 Demo from 1999

The name was MediaX and they tried to develop this title between 1996-1999, as some avid readers of Computer Gaming World might recall from their memory banks - this demo of a game with the license and endorsement of George Orwell’s estate is a 3D, first person adventure game adaptation/sequel of 1984, the book.

The book as you may know, has since its release become the template for many stories about authoritarianism. This is where we tell you about all the games that are obviously inspired by it. If you really want to know what could have been - then check no further than the Internet Archive page for the disc containing a build plus some sources for it.

Hide your Jams

Here’s what wasn’t on your 2025 bingo card: Acclaim is back!

What will this mean for the Turok videogames? Will they try to re-acquire those from Nightdive?
BMX XXX Remastered when?

Get your jokes and references out of your system people.

We’ll be watching this development closely.

Here’s to hoping that the ASSEMblergames disc dump will get some use!

Bloodlines 2 Delayed Yet Again

Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been delayed again. We’ve reported on this before. Let’s see if Paradox can deliver on this very anticipated game.

THPS 3+4, then Bam Margera

Pro Skater fans rejoice, as THPS 3+4 has been announced!

Blues News announcement

What? It doesn’t play like 3 or 4, but instead only has the classic mode with the 2 minute time limit?
Okay, whatever - but considering they’re basing the gameplay on 1+2 - which was practically perfect - How could one complain?

If you’re salty about them being different and not being able to relive the ‘old’ days, don’t:
We actually put pages up for the various THPS games and how to play on-line with the latest patches!

For Pro Skater 3 or Pro Skater 4 respectively you will find that PARTYMAN managed to make those play smooth. Those patches are even available under the MIT License. Sweet!

In related news, Birdman hung out with Bam and was stoked to see how well he’s holding up. Hooked him up with a last minute insert into the game.

We still miss Vicarious Visions. Did you know that they originally had their own version of 3+4 in production?

Kotaku report Video Games Chronicle report

RoboCop - Unfinished Business

Up and coming darling of 80s movie videogame adaptations Teyon Studio dazzled us with a trailer for RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business, which is a follow-up to their beloved game RoboCop: Rogue City.

It’s a stand-alone game that focuses around you taking on the threads inside OmniTower. A tall housing complex that also happens to be infected with crime of the highest caliber.

It’s store-page is live already, but you’ll have to wait until late Summer to play it.

We’re Head Over Heels

Get a load of this: the store page for Head Over Heels: Deluxe went live and we have yet to get it. It’s a certified classic.

Reality Settles In

Are we making too many games? Perhaps we should be smarter about what kind of games we should be making.

Could the problem be that the industry just doesn’t know what to aim for? Like what happens when there’s nowhere to go. Are there any technological challenges left to solve? Surely, but perhaps it’s easier to chase fads in the era of late-stage capitalism. It appears that big developers are clinging onto any safe bets they have, while of course still punishing the talent when things don’t perform.

At least some try to avoid creating such a mess for themselves in the first place..

Considering the controversies of recent years, it seems not surprising to see some pushback: We saw the first videogame developer unions form last year although it’s far from being established. Especially now in with the state of the current economy, we will only see these issues accelerate.

In other news, UbiSoft was being nibbled on and subsequently sold 25% of a new company that will house their biggest franchises to Tencent. That’s rough.

Modding News

Command & Conquer 3: Alien Prophecies

Requires Kane’s Wrath, but Alien Phrophecies is in Early Access now with a full release scheduled later this year.

Get an overview with the original announcement post and see the latest update post to get dazzled by glowing screenshots.

Dawn of the Tiberium Age for Tiberian Sun update

Now check this out, this stand-alone mod just got a big update that took them about half a year to develop. It mixes Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert together in the engine for Tiberian Sun. While it sports an impressive (70 or so) amount of original missions, all the original Tiberian Dawn campaigns are designed for co-operative multiplayer now too. Sweet!

In Mute Witness Stand - Promising Half-Life mod

We have an update post to a mod on our radar titled In Mute Witness Stand. This mod is a co-operative multiplayer horror game in the trenches of the first world war. Very promising!

Map-Center blesses us with Mine Jam - Quake II

Every month there seems to be another jam release by the folks at Map-Center! This time it’s for the re-release version of Quake II.

However, this isn’t your regular Jam of random levels made by different people, it’s a proper expansion pack, with custom textures, cutscenes and everything.

The release announcement has wonderful screenshots of some very tasy areas.

We’ll keep this short since, you should just read the damn announcement.

Speed Devils is back on-line

Got a fix for UbiSoft’s racing title Speed Devils on Dreamcast this month. Sweet! We can all thank Shuouma and flyinghead.

Tech News

GIMP THREE

The world rejoiced when it was graced with GIMP 3.0, followed up with 3.02.

Finally us users have non-destructive editing, and just better interactions with layers in general. It’s been a boon to everyones productivity. Re-evaluate it now if you’re still stuck on Adobe’s PhotoShop.

Also, obscure bugfix to those who work with palettes (which affects games like Quake and even Half-Life with its 256 color per texture restriction): That pesky bug where random black pixels would turn greenish has finally been fixed. A lot of the palettization has been reworked and should result in higher quality results in general.

I myself have used GIMP 2.X’s palettization features for years and couldn’t tell initially that something was off, but we were able to reproduce it quite easily.

Hyperkin Cleans Up

The news is that Hyperkin is reaching out to discuss their wrongdoings, a rare sight of humility in the industry. They do good stuff every once in a while, the folks at Hyperkin. If you ever produce that Mega-Drive handheld? Hook us up with a review copy.

Wine updates, Wine Mono released

We got blessed with two new releases of Wine: 10.3 and 10.4 released. Noteworthy game fix: It fixes the Tiberium in C&C 3 being invisible when playing the Kane’s Wrath addon.

Over at WineHQ you could also read about the new release of Wine’s Mono - Framework Mono.

This was the first release since the big migration, having shifted hands over from Microsoft.

The release post also includes a refresher on what was going on during the time.

All in All

That’s it. We’re done with March 2025.

For the past two weeks, support for a revolutionary new feature coming to Worms 2 was quietly being tested on Frag-Net.

Things appear to be stable, so without further ado, the latest Worms 2 Plus patch is here!

Now you can play on-line without port-forwarding. This means from now on, when you are playing Worms 2 with the latest Plus patch, you no longer have to play with settings in your network router - it’s hassle free!

New in v1.7:

• Revamped online multiplayer!
  • Play via TCP over a Worm2NAT Relay Server (thanks to fkWorm2NAT by Dawid8)
  • No port forwarding required
  • IP addresses are now hidden
  • Multiple computers with the same external IP can now play on the same server and games
• IPX is now used for LAN/VPN games only
• Added 9 terrains from Worms 1/Reinforcements/United (Ported to W:A by CarmineLynx, converted using > W2TerrainConvert by Dawid8)
• Installation automatically sets the recommended resolution for your screen
• Settings app improvements - new option for separate Cavern map resolution
• Improvements for Wine in online games
• Improved the “disabled LAN” image in the menu
• Updated menu text to reflect the purpose of IPX
• Fixed:
  • In-game crash that occurred when you zoomed in during an online game
  • Layout of the game statistics screen for high DPI users (Dawid8)
  • TOOLS level (from W:A) now has it’s background image (Dawid8)
  • Issue with limits of “Amount of fire” and “Override fuse” in Weapon editor
  • Minor typo present on game statistics screen
• Updated cnc-ddraw to v7.1
• Updated C++ Redistributables
• Optimised modules: fkMissions, fkSettings (Dawid8)

We’d like to express our thanks to Carlmundo, Plus contributors, and the Worms 2 community for giving us the opportunity to serve this game with a shiny new backend.

You can go to the game page for up-to-date instructions on how to get playing using the update.

We have been serving as Worms 2’s on-line service since the October 2024 announcement, with a basic master and an IPX proxy.

It joins a range of other games that support us with ability to host matches without accounts or other compromises, as stated in our mission goal.

If you’d like to reach out and see about making your game run on-top the Frag-Net on-line service, talk to us here.