Every Wednesday night I get the pleasure of talking with Shawn King and Hilary Percy of The Mac Show, a weekly QuickTime streaming Webcast dedicated to all things Mac. My segment deals with Mac games, and normally Percy and King do their best to play “stump the guest” by firing a barrage of questions at me. Every so often I get to interview someone in the Mac game business, however, and last night was just such a night. Jeff Morgan, president of Mac game publisher GraphSim Entertainment, was the guest of honor. He brought listeners up to speed with what’s happening at his company these days.
One question that consistently pops up whenever GraphSim’s name is mentioned on MacCentral is the role-playing game Baldur’s Gate and its long-awaited but never-released multiplayer patch. Morgan advised listeners that GraphSim would release the patch soon — perhaps as soon as today (Thursday). It’s a public beta patch that should give Baldur’s Gate users the same functionality as they’d get with the recently released Baldur’s Gate add-on pack, Tales of the Sword Coast.
Speaking of Tales of the Sword Coast, Morgan also talked a bit about that new module and what it adds to Baldur’s Gate — BG users who add Tales of the Sword Coast onto their game will gain new areas to explore, new characters to interact with, and new adventures to conquer.
It’s been a busy few months for GraphSim. The company has also just put into production a new game called Summoner, developed by Volition and published for the PC by THQ. It’s a unique 3D action/role-playing game that puts you in the role of Joseph, an intrepid adventurer with a powerful but unwelcome ability called Summoning that enables him to call upon supernatural forces. He’s on a quest to recover the Summoner’s Rings, to help him gain control over his powers and go head-to-head against an evil emperor who wants him dead. Summoner should be hitting store shelves within the next couple of weeks.
Morgan also discussed his company’s plans to release Red Faction, another game in THQ and Volition’s arsenal that features the “Geo-Mod” 3D graphics engine, which incorporates the ability to deform terrain. As Morgan described it, users can blast through walls, knock down structures, and do other things that have been heretofore impossible or very difficult in 3D action games. The game is still in development, and while Morgan said that it won’t be out before Macworld Expo, he expects to be able to show it there.
For all the details, feel free to drop by The Mac Show’s Archive Page and click on either the Stream or Download link buttons for the June 13 show featuring Macromedia. If you want to fast-forward straight to our segment, go to the 29:55 mark. Otherwise, listen to the whole show — it’s always entertaining and informative.