April 2002

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With the release of SoF 2 real soon , our dear game SoF is being pushed to the back of our minds in 'SoF-Land' ... But to change that SoF-Land has announced the start of the SFL CTF tournament. Sign-ups were made a couple of weeks ago and currently 32 (!!) teams are ready to fight to be the Omnipotent! The winning team will be proud to get a 12 player clanserver from NGZ. The starting day will be 20 April or in Dago's words ;)

The first Tournament Week starts @ Satturday 20 April. Matches will be played on Saturday, Thursday and Friday. If a SFL Tournament Admin is available you may also choose to play on other days.
Stand by for more information... Read More.

Have fun yall ! :)

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Thursday will be a big day here. We will see the release of the SOF2 Test to the public and at the same time Gamespy will be conducting a live Chat with the developers.

The exact time of the test's release will be announced during an exclusive chat with the Raven / SOFII development team, to take place at 3:00 p.m. PST, 6:00 p.m. EST, 11:00 p.m. GMT in the Soldier of Fortune II(R) demo lobby in the GameSpy Arcade software.

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We're looking for a couple of news posters, mainly for Jedi Knight II, Soldier of Fortune (II) and Elite Force (but if you'd like to post news to other Raven games, it's cool too). If you're interested, just drop a mail to the webmaster.

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AndyB on JediKnightII.net reports of a new site that claims to reveal all secrets of the single player game. Check it out here.

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A new version of both the Linux and Win32 dedicated servers for Jedi Knight II have been released. You can get them from JediKnightII.net (Linux, Win32).

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In case you want to see the place where the guys from Raven Software develop their games, check out the "About Raven Software" page, I just added a photo with the outside view of the Raven developer studio.

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We got over 20 new hosting signups since RavenClans.com went online last week, thus setting up new accounts took a little longer than usually. If you don't get your login info in your inbox by this evening, please contact us by e-mail.

Also, there have been some submissions w/o a (valid) e-mail address. I wonder what did those people think, how the heck should I send them the login info? If you put a website as e-mail addy, same deal... :)

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Next Thursday a Soldier of Fortune 2 download will be coming. It`s a multiplayer test and you can play one map. You can play 6 multiplayer modes: Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Infiltration and Elimimation. You can find all weapons from the original game. The file will be relaesd on 18th april, 2002. If you have tested the MP test, than you can write a mail to sof2mptest@ravensoft.com.

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The teamleader from the Jk2 - Resident Evil Mod project is looking for good hobby creators. He needs

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A new Doomsday version has been released. Besides some bugfixes and minor new features, it enhances the KickStart module and adds a new tool that creates WAD files for you from the contents of a directory. For more info and downloads, see the jHeretic or the jHexen site.

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A new tool surfaced that allows you to record JK2 games, even in multiplayer. See JediKnightII.net for more information and the download.

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Still more Jedi Outcast reviews are pouring in, here some if you still didn't have enough: DeadAlfs 2000, Pregaming, BarrysWorld, EuroGamer, InvisibleDream. There is also a review in German at GBase.ch (thanks JediKnightII.net).

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Jedi Knight II Editing, a site dedicated to just what its name suggests, is now open for business. If you are into editing JK2, be sure to check them out.

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Just got this from ESSNemesis:

"For those of you who enjoy sniping. The name's Nemesis from the >ESS< ~~> "Elite Sniping Squadron". We are in the process of beefing up our ranks. WE are a current team of 18 members. Any player interested in joining a team of good friends, kick ass snipers and prestige ...check out our site. Have a read and get into contact with a member. Everything's pretty much laid out in the 'Info Section'."

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ActionTrip has now posted a preview of the SOF2 single player game. This is a hands on preview of the game, so there is no heresay here.

"Besides the amazing terrain, one other thing that just blew me away was the incredible polygonal count of the models, as well as their natural (skeletal) animation and facial expressions."

They posted some nice screen as well.

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The Raven Clans Center (previously on clans.ravengames.com) now moves to its own domain, RavenClans.com, featuring an all-new design and a lot more hosted clans than before. Special thanks to MarcusZ from Jedi Outcast TH for his help with the graphical part of the new design.

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Mike Gummelt's .plan file contains important info on Jedi Knight II mods and on when the official modding tools from Raven will be released.

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JediKnightII.net has a new in-depth article on how to edit weapons in Jedi Outcast through directly modifiying the DAT files.

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The next bunch of Jedi Outcast reviews can be read at following sites: PC-Gaming.com, The International House of Mojo, Monkeyreview, GameSpot UK, GameZone.com and Fragtopia, all rating the game pretty high (thanks JediKnightII.net).

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ReverendTed on PlanetSoldier repots that GameSpot has a new Soldier of Fortune II preview up, with new shots and a 3.75 minutes long video showing off gameplay.

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There's no question mark behind this any more, there will be an Elite Force II, though not from Raven Software. GameSpyDaily conducted an interview with Ritual Entertainment, the company working on EF2.

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Next round of our "write a walkthrough, get a free game" action...

We're (still) looking for walkthroughs for different Raven games. We already have one for the Elite Force Expansion pack; Soldier of Fortune and Elite Force are still vacant. We also added Jedi Knight II, Take No Prisoners, MageSlayer, Necrodome and CyClones to the list of walkthroughs we're interested in. The list of the games you can get for free has also been updated, now you can choose from over 30 games. All games are used but in as good as new state, complete with game CD(s), manual and box, unless stated otherwise.

For more information, see here for more information.

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Ladies and Gentlemen... It's official. Last night there was a Los Angelos release party and GameHelper.com was able to get in to watch the festivities. The party was to celebrate the announcement of SOF2 and it's official release date which is now slated for May (I know.. not an actually day, but this is what was reported). The actual release day has not been mentioned as of yet, but we expect it to be before the 21st which is the first day of the E3 convention. This is important since they cannot show a title at E3 two years in a row

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The Elite Force mod The Cooperative just released the first public version. You can download it from The Cooperative site.

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Another unsupported release, the dedicated server for the windows platform. You can get it from either HomeLan Fed or XGR.

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Fluxgames.com conducted a quick interview with Raven Software's project admin Kenn Hoekstra.

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PCgamesportal.de posted a Jedi Knight II review in German.

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In case you not yet got Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and want to read some reviews first, here is the latest bunch, with Actiontrip, Epigamer, Gamer's Hell, PC Rivals, GameSpot each having a review posted.

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Elited.net interviewed Kenn about SOF2. Some of the topics of special interest may be:

"How hard is this going to hit older machines?"
"Will the environmental effects slow down gameplay with lag issues?"
"Tell us about the editing capabilities."

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Although this interview between ActionTrip and Kenn are not SOF2 exclusive, it does provide us some insight to the going's on over there at Raven.

"We pretty much handle everything internally. In the case of Jedi Outcast, we worked closely with LucasArts on developing the story and the dialogue, etc. in a real team/group effort. For Soldier 2, however, the story and the screenplay were done internally."

There are also 3 new screenies of the game posted on the page.

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Just as they promised, Shacknews has supplied us with the interview they had with Kenn Hoekstra regarding SOF2. Read about design of the game, gore, guns, screenies, RMG, and demo plans.

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Evil Avatar has listed many of his first impressions he has after previewing the multiplayer test for SOF2. He goes to say, "Once released, I think a lot of critics out there are going to be surprised at how fun a realistic game can be."

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Well, here's another interview with Kenn Hoekstra regarding SOF2. The interview here at the Action Vault gives you an idea of what went on in the designing of the game. You can get a good picture of the development process that leads up to the story we will soon be playing.

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Kenn Hoekstra from Raven Software updated his .plan file with a couple of tips for the case you're stuck in Jedi Knight II becasue of hardware, drivers or configuration problems. Check it out here.

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Phew... it took a lot longer than anticipated (about 2 days instead of 2 hours), but the forums are up at last. I'm really very sorry for the glitch, hope you'll be able to forgive me this last time. :)

Should you still experience any kind of problems on the site, feel free to drop me a note through the forums (or, if the problem is there, then by e-mail).

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It seems the DNS switch takes a lot longer than it normally does. As a result of this, from most places on the web you still see the old server instead of the new one. While it doesn't make any difference for the RavenGames info and news pages, unfortunately it means that as long as you aren't redirected to the new server, you won't abe able to access the forums (which have been closed on the old server and reopened on the new server you might not yet be able to see).

The following line tells you which server you're currently accessing:
You're viewing this page on the new server.

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