Tim Gift updated his .plan with word on what he's been contending with on IRC that's kept him from updating some of Dynamix's TRIBES servers. Here's an excerpt:

Hmm, well I had originally intended to come in this weekend and upgrade the Combat and Training server and get ready for our next release, but when I got in our IRC server was under attack again. Using IRC for our chat server has been a major pain in the butt. We had wanted to use it because of it's open architecture. Wanted to allow people to connect and chat outside of the game, something people were used to using, etc., seemed a lot more flexible and friendly than a writing another proprietary chat system. Unfortunately, there are quite a few bozos who seem to get a kick out of disrupting our chat server, booting people off, or otherwise being a nuisances. I've already wasted several days getting up to speed on IRC and the MS server, and here I am over the weekend doing the same, when I could be working on TRIBES....

There's now an English version of the Team Fortress 2 preview on Halflife.com.br mentioned earlier (story) that was originally posted in Portuguese. By the way, I'm sorry if I made it sound in my follow-up (story) like they were the ones that said there were new screenshots in the preview, I was actually correcting my own mistake, not anything they said.

Sharky Extreme's Expendable Update adds 15 new screenshots of Rage's upcoming third-person action game, with the promise of a movie showing off gameplay soon.

A couple more guides for Starsiege TRIBES have emerged, it seems likely these projects were all started around the same time to provide what had been, until recently, a pretty a scarce commodity. Regenerated Forces Starsiege TRIBES guide, promises to teach how to "terrorize" a TRIBES server, and GriBBsY's Beginner's Guide to TRIBES is online offering a way to get your feet wet before spilling blood on the live battlefield.

It turns out there is a common thread behind the few emails I've received asking if there was a problem with the archive of the Half-Life demo released the other day--all the problems were from one download location. If you've had problems and you downloaded from ftp1.sierra.com (this was not the copy posted here, so you should not have had this problems with the local download), that archive is indeed a few bytes shy of a mouthful. If your FTP supports resume downloads, you might be able to pick up the remainder of the file from another site, or you may indeed have to re-download the whole dealie. Thanks Frans at 3D Action Gamers. Also, I'm told the TF2 shots in the Portuguese TF2 preview posted earlier are not, in fact, new. Sorry about that, though of course, some always welcome the opportunity to brush up on their Portuguese.

The smoothies at Orange Smoothie Productions have released a new Quake II mod called OSP Rocket Olympics, described as "a virtual play land of rocket jumping feats and events. Categories included Height, Distance, Accuracy and oh ya.. Quad Height!!!" It would have been more thematic to release this during the Olympics, but it's not like I can think of any logical Valentine's Day mods (not any that I can imagine wanting to play anyway).

This Valentine Interview on Cali Girl News talks to notable romantics from the gaming scene like CliffyB (Epic Games), KillCreek (ION Storm), Wicked (Voodoo Extreme), and of course Wanker (PlanetWank) giving insights on love and friendship. Also, In their grand tradition, the Tormented Souls have posted some new e-cards, these with a Valentine's Day theme, of course, along with their trademark Quake trappings, so make sure your valentine understands your concept of romance before you fire one of these off.

The Team Fortress 2 preview on Halflife.com.br is in Portuguese, and even if you can't make sense of that, or AltaVista's Portuguese translator, the new screenshots are worth those proverbial thousands of words. Thanks SailorScout.

Computer Games Online interviews Scott Youngblood, talking to Dynamix's own CornBoy! about Starsiege TRIBES.

Version 0.3 of the unofficial Mortyr FAQ is up at the Widerstands updated with the latest intelligence on Interactive Magic's upcoming World War II Shooter Game.

Word from X-M4N is that to solve some difficulties, the Italian Master Server for both Quake II and QuakeWorld is now 194.177.113.32.

There's a KillCreek edited chat log from the recent online conversation with this ION Storm level designer on The Daikatana Deathmatch page offering info on their upcoming Daikatana, as well as the even more imminent Daikatana DM demo.

The Sniper Tips Section on the lonegunmen site has continued to grow, and now offers seven pages of tips on how to pick folks off with perfection in Starsiege TRIBES.

Realm Technologies has a Half-Life mod that is a simple replacement skill.cfg file that makes locational damage more pronounced, increases weapon damage and enemy health, and emphasizes the differences between difficulty levels.

GA-Source reviews the ABIT ZM6 Motherboard.

The palpy.com Quake II tournament is a one-on-one competition with a "rare Quake II action figure" as the prize.

• So You Want To Be A Webmaster? is a new article on PlanetQuake that offers a suitable degree of discouragement and some sage advice for aspiring game site webmasters...
• Internet Challenges Game Publishers is a CNN article on trends in the biz. Thanks Mynx (the birthday girl no less -- Happy B'day Mynx!)...
• S3 Planet has a new version 1.03 of the S3Tweak program. Word is "No major changes... just a couple of safeguards put in place." Thanks DemoNews...
• Updates to this Optimizing The Swapfile guide include confirmation on whether constant rewriting of the same area of a drive reduces the MTBF as well as a tip on how to move the swapfile to the outer tracks of the hard disk without paying for a commercial defragger..
• Site stuff: The MarTim site has moved, and PlanetCrap 2.0 is online...

Happy Valentine's Day! Welcome to the beta test of ProjectX, otherwise known as the Blue's News version of Blammo, the game news system being created by my friends RonSolo and Bagpuss, the mad geniuses behind the BlueTracker .plan Summaries and Webdog, and Blammo's main programmer, furn (who showed amazing patience as we conferred on this yesterday in what amounted to an all-day transatlantic phone call). As I mentioned when I tempted fate by predicting we might be ready for a beta today, the change is hopefully almost completely transparent at the moment, but the difference behind the scenes is significant, as the stories on this page now are database generated. While things seem under control, there are a couple of glitches I know about already (if you use the headlines in the left frame, the finger insert disappears, the target links on the archive at the bottom are whacked out, as is the archive page, and the yesterday links in the headlines), and, of course, there's the possibility something unforeseen will pop up, so if everything blows up at some point, that may be what has happened. Going forward, for those that don't want change, not much will be different (this was a top priority), but the database will allow a bunch of neat functionality to be added that will be quite helpful, and I'm really excited about what we should be able to do with this. More on that as we go forward. Excelsior!