unrealtournament3 posts

One Voice Technologies Inc. has released a beta of Say2Play, a voice-command program that allows users to speak the names of in-game actions rather than press their respective keys.

"Say2Play revolutionizes the gaming experience by providing voice control to the world's most popular PC games," according to the official Say2Play website. "Now, with Say2Play you can keep your fingers on the most important controls, like the fire and movement keys, and use voice commands, like "flak cannon" or "show map" to change weapons or instantly access any other keystroke using only your voice.

Offering support for titles such as Age of Conan, Crysis, Unreal Tournament III, World of WarCraft, BioShock, Doom 3, Battle for Middle-Earth II and more, Say2Play claims to offer "tremendous competitive advantage with the ability to instantly execute any one of thousands of preloaded commands by voice."

Users interested in trying Say2Play for themselves are encouraged to download the program's beta.

It was perhaps the most popular and most successful gaming mod contests ever run and now we have a sequel. Epic Games recently announced the launch of the new Make Something Unreal mod contest using the PC version of their sci-fi shooter Unreal Tournament 3. The original Make Something Unreal contest yielded a ton of imaginative mods for Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 and some actually turned into full fledged commercial games.

The overall winner of the first contest, Tripwire Interactive's WWII shooter Red Orchestra, morphed into a stand alone game that has gotten a small but very loyal audience. It was recently announced that a runner-up in the last contest, Blue Omega's wield western shooter Damnation, would also be released as a stand alone game via Codemasters. Epic Games is teaming up with sponsor Intel to give people who win the various phases and categories over $1 million in cash and prizes. The grand prize, which will be awarded in fall 2009, will be a full Unreal Engine 3 license to the winning mod team. Of course we will be following the contest and its winners in the months ahead.