"DropTeam" multiplayer beta demo released for PC, Mac and Linux!

Battlefront.com and TBG Software are excited to announce the availability of a multiplayer "Public Test" version of DropTeam, the upcoming Sci-Fi themed real-time armored vehicle combat simulation.

DropTeam combines accurate physics and ballistic systems, intelligent and realistic unit and weaponry capabilities with fast paced action set in a stark future of humanity. This Public Test is being offered in three different formats. One for Mac, one for Windows and one for Linux. This marks the first title published by Battlefront.com to offer Linux support!

Some of DropTeam features include:

. A rich, fleshed out universe complete with a engaging back story and detailed history.

. Realistic combat system that models projectile/armor penetration, various munition types, and interior vehicle damage in detail.

. Huge, detailed and varied alien landscapes each planet accurately modeling its own gravity and atmospheric density, radically changing the tactical situation.

. Map sizes up to a massive 1000 (!) square kilometers.

. Terrain height resolutions from small ridges and vehicle fighting positions to towering hills and mountains.

. Deformable terrain with engineering vehicles digging out trenches in real time, ordnance created surface cratering and even trees toppling over under artillery fire.

. Dynamic environmental effects include building destruction and vehicles exploding and flipping over.

. Support for enhanced graphics effects including advanced shaders and High Dynamic Range rendering.

. Terrain uses dynamic tessellation (continuous Level of Detail) to render high resolution terrain at large sizes.

. Up to 16 human players or more supported, depending on system specs. Maximum online players realistically only limited by game server bandwidth, CPU and RAM.

More background and info on the game can be found on the DropTeam webpage located here.

The purpose of this release is to test DropTeam's network functionality with a large number of players. Anyone can play for free in order to help us test DropTeam but this build has the following important restrictions:

1. Single player is disabled. You can only play network games with this release. The full version of the game includes single player skirmish games and a single player campaign.

2. This release only allows you to play 2 scenarios. The full version of the game includes 21 scenarios with more available for free download after release.

3. This is a test release, which means the game isn't finished yet. It definitely still has bugs. We greatly appreciate your help in finding and fixing them all!

Apart from these restrictions, this is a fully functional release. Players can use all of the dozens of vehicles and deployable items in the game. The two included scenarios are "Ice Field" and "Raid". Ice Field takes place on the frozen wasteland of Arcanum, a once-inhabitable planet orbiting Luyten's Star that has had its climate devastated by bombardments from the Mu Arae Entente. The Raid scenario takes place on an inhabitable moon called Hopewell. Hopewell orbits a gas giant in the Wolf 9773 star system. Almost half of the moon's surface, called "The Scorch", is a radioactive Hell created by the destruction of an antimatter station that used to orbit the gas giant. The remainder of Hopewell has recovered from this disaster and is once again beginning to flourish with vegetation and a growing human population.

This release includes everything needed to connect to servers and play on the Internet or on Local Area Networks on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X Tiger. It also includes everything needed for players to run their own public or private servers. This is important since there will be a limited number of public servers made available by TBG. We plan to run only 6 servers for this public test release so players might need to run their own servers if they want to play frequently.

A stripped down version of the game's manual is available in PDF format. This abbreviated manual explains everything players need to know about running the game and also what administrators need to know about running their own servers.

Please utilize the new DropTeam Public Test Forum to discuss any issues you find with this Public Test. Any bugs should also be posted there.

Geforce4/Radeon 9600 64MB VRAM class video or better

512 MB system RAM

WINDOWS

• Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003

• Pentium III 800MHz or better

• Catalyst 6.2 or higher drivers for ATI users

• Forceware 81.98 or higher for nVidia users

• OpenGL 1.5 or better for other video cards

MAC

• OS X Tiger 10.4.5 or higher

• G4 1.2 GHz or higher

Note: Intel CPU's not yet supported on OS X

LINUX

• GLIBC version 2.3.4 or higher

• X Windows with working OpenGL acceleration

• ALSA audio

P4 or G5 CPU

1 GB RAM

nVidia 6600 or Radeon 9800 class video card

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If you would like more information about this game, review copies, exclusive materials or an interview with the developers, or for any other inquiries, please contact martin@battlefront.com. We are also looking for mirror sites to host the beta demo, especially for Mac and Linux.