The GameSpy 3D page has version 2.08 of the shareware GameSpy shareware which offers support for Starsiege TRIBES and Accolade's Redline.

PlanetBlood has posted a Q&A with Monolith's Jay "Shade" Wilson on the upcoming Blood II add-on, talking about the story line, weapons, monsters, and more, as well as word the Blood II patch (AKA the "point release"), would be out this week sometime (we have a guarantee backed by Shade's Mazda).

Saw on Voodoo Extreme that GameSpot's Tomb Raider III Demo download page has an updated version of the Tomb Raider III demo that offers part of the South Pacific level for your vacationing enjoyment, be there, aloha.

There are six new exclusive screenshots of Shiny's upcoming Messiah on Messiah Press. They are high resolution shots, each weighing in at over 100 KB.

There's an Anachronox development update on The Adrenaline Vault that give a status report on the game from ION's Tom Hall. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

New beta version 1.02 Diamond Monster Sound MX300 drivers have been posted, they're dated the 11th, but they're new. Thanks David T. Dao.

Frag Fortune interviews' Chia Chin Lee, sound designer for Raven software about Raven's upcoming Quake II-engine game of mercenary action, Soldier of Fortune, talking about gameplay as well as sound issues.

ZDNNews News Bursts and Rootshell each have stories up about the cracking of the id Software Website this morning. Thanks Conan Ford. For some time the site contained a message in support of Kevin Mitnick, currently serving jail time awaiting trial for computer crimes.

Another screenshot from the Starsiege beta has surfaced, this one on PlanetStarSiege showing a mech's eye view of a convoy trotting along.

A Turok 2: Seeds of Evil Multiplayer Server has been posted on Turok Dot Com for ISP's and others who would like to run a Turok2 dedicated Rtime multi-player server. The server archive is a 13 MB download containing four flavors of dedicated server for WIN32 (Win 95/98/NT), Linux, Sun, and SGI.

There's a new Starsiege screenshot on Bad Karma showing off a mecha from this upcoming prequel to TRIBES walking on the Moon (one small step for mecha, one giant leap for mecha-kind). Thanks Datumplane::Starsiege.

Interplay's Kingpin Website has posted some sample music performed by Cypress Hill from the soundtrack of the upcoming Quake II-engine gangsta extravaganza, Kingpin: Life of Crime.

Virgin and Interplay sign agreement is the announcement that these two companies will be working together to combine efforts on future distribution deals capitalizing on Virgin's establishment in the European market and Interplay's in the US.

Version 0.6a of the Insomniax Mod for TRIBES is now available, offering a new item, the cloaking pack, as well as several options that affect administration of the server. Thanks PlanetStarSiege.

tAng at PlanetStarSiege sends word of an updated version of TRIBES Axis commander (I've already made a Rommel reference on this one, haven't I?). Here's the word:

Tribes Axis Commander(TAC) version 1.2 has been released for TRIBES. This is a handy program that helps with configuring a players controller. It is available for download here.

The GameGirlz Course In Level Design is now accepting sign-ups for these IRC classes that will be conducted by Dolomite of the D-Team. Here's the skinny:

Run as an online course, people who sign up will be asked to take part in IRC classes and forum discussions. Even if you know nothing about creating levels, by the end of olomite's course... you will! This editing course will include topics such as: Getting Started, Planning, Grids, Geometry, Textures, Light Entities, Speed, Advanced Geometry, Geometric Abuse, Working with Mods and Their Authors, Teamwork, Online Presence, Dispositions, and Hard Stuff.

Billy has posted six new screenshots (five of them are similar-like frames in a sequence), showing off Activision's upcoming Heavy Gear II on Voodoo Extreme.

There's a new Intel CPU Roadmap for 1999 on Sharky Extreme giving the latest intelligence on what the Big I has planned for the coming year gleaned from "several conversations and meetings with key sources close to Intel."

A new walkthrough of chapter one of Blood2 is now up on PlanetBlood, covering the first 11 levels of the game.

PlanetBlood has posted two new screenshots as well as a sample of some of the music from Revelations, the upcoming official Blood2 add-on from Tequila software.

The current issue of loonygames (great cover this week, BTW) is off and running. Here are your crib notes on what will be posted all through the week, there will be a test:

Yeah, it's issue twenty five...who knew? Creeping you out this week:

• The Unreal Cliffy B!: Jason "loonyboi" Bergman sits down with the guy behind Unreal and Jazz Jackrabbit 2 to try and figure out how the heck he did both games simultaneously! [Tuesday]
• From the Mouth of Madness: The ten most underrated games of all time! [Tuesday]
• Penny Arcade: A very special Penny Arcade! Trust us, you WON'T want to miss this one. :) [Wednesday]
• PLUS: Fargloads of User Friendly [DAILY], Penny Arcade does TNT [Friday], our look at Jazz Jackrabbit 2 first in Pixel Obscura [Wednesday], and then in The Bargain Bin [Thursday], Code on the Cob returns, along with a new Graphic Content [Wednesday] and more! And then some more, because we don't sleep. Got that?
• NOTE: loonygames is starting the week a day late in honor of President's Day, the day that celebrates a bunch of presidents who didn't have affairs with their interns, but did own slaves, grow hemp, and abused their wives. Actually, it's really because of Valentine's Day. In order for us to update on Monday, our editor-in-chief would have had to work on Valentine's Day...and that just wasn't happening. :)

The Faith CTF page has a new mod for Quake II called Psyclass which allows the server-op total control over classes included in the game with up to ten classes and over 50 variables for each class, hundreds of variations are possible making each server unique.

There's a problem with the current release of BattleCruiser 3000AD with corrupted screens when going into the configure screen in the Glide version, so there is an interim patch on the BC downloads page that addresses this until version 2.05 is released.

GamesMania reviews Turok 2 Seeds of Evil. Thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme. Also, Gamers Central reviews Deathkarz. Also, here's FullOn3D/Hardware's ATi Rage Magnum review. Finally, The Sanctum reviews the AOpen AX6BC Revision 2.20/Slot 1 motherboard.

The GameSpy Black Market is holding a PantherXL giveaway.

• Spiteful Microsoft May Drop Java is a ZDNet article on the latest on the battles of big business...
• 740 has posted some hardware rumors they feel are from a reliable source, including word on Real3D's next project, and a mention of the upcoming Intel752 accelerator...
• The Modem-to-Modem Play tutorial on Atomic Half-Life has been updated for ease-of-use. The new instructions should not conflict with anyone's ISP settings...
• Ars Technica Slot One Battle Royale, according to the site: "In which the Pentium III takes on Intel's (former) best"...

Happy Chinese New Year. Day three of the beta test of the news database here, and it's tough to continue to consider it a beta, since I can't seem to find any bugs in the system. It is still uncertain how much of the old news can be added to the database how quickly, but there are hopeful signs, so I've got my fingers crossed.

I received a correction on my explanation of President's Day here in the US saying it's really just for George Washington, and a contradictory explanation that the holiday is meant to honor all US Presidents not just Lincoln and Washington. I believe the latter is the correct explanation, and it appeals to me, since it made my Warren G. Harding tribute more appropriate (an anonymous writer queried: "How could you forget to honor Millard Filmore? Traitor!").

Link of the day: This SANYO USA Bread-Slicer. In spite of the designation BS-1, this is apparently not BS, but check out the selling point in the logo in the lower right. Thanks esses.

The Disposable Heroes downloads page offers Linux and Solaris ports of the ArmourBack and flame entity mods for Quake II from The Coven's Disposable Heroes deathmatch pack. A Linux port of MAD is also in the works.

There are five exclusive Shugotenshi Screenshots on GA-Source showing off this upcoming mission pack for Monolith's Mobile: Armor Division in development for Instant Access by the Nevolution Group.

The Ultimate Uplink Walk-Thru offers tips on how to get through the new Half-Life Uplink demo.

The official Quake III Arena site has been updated with a brand-new Quake III Arena misc. publication screenshots section that offers five screenshots that have appeared in various recent print publications. Some of them have been scanned and posted on the 'net already as well, but these are the originals. Thanks Simon Speichert.

Rust has posted a short interview with Dan Koppel, Xatrix Entertainment level designer and technical coordinator, about his work on Kingpin, Xatrix' upcoming Quake II-engine game. The conversation covers the game, as well as editing-related stuff, making mention that they plan on shipping the game bundled with the level editor.

A run-through of the Interloper level has been added to Gamers.Com's Half-Life run-through giving step-by-step instructions on how to complete the penultimate mission in single-player play. Thanks Apache at Planet Half-Life.

There's an interview with yours truly on pels interactive, in what I invariably describe as their amusing finish the sentence format (though I think I managed to provide them with the least amusing set of answers I've ever seen on one of these Q&As).

A new beta 0.11r055 of the free Crystal Space 3D engine is now available. Crystal Space offers state-of-the-art features and cross-platform (Linux, general Unix, Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, BeOS, NextStep, DOS, Amiga, and Macintosh) support. Thanks BetaNews. The new release fixes the Linux/OpenGL port so that it works correctly with Mesa, fixes the SVGALIB port, and adds assorted fixes to other versions.

3DsoundSurge interviews Toni Schneider from Aureal Semiconductor about Vortex2 and wavetracing technology, including a preamble that makes the case for wavetracing as the "correct" way of creating acoustic effects. Thanks WarDog.

Sharky Extreme's 1998 first-person shooter shootout looks at ten FPS titles released last year, ranking them "start(ing) off with the cold and migrat(ing) to the hot."

So, you wanna make games for a living? is a Gibbed.com article by John Williamson giving advice on how to break into the biz by this employee of Zombie Interactive (currently working on SpecOps 2).

Game-Interviews.com talks with David Wu, Programmer and President of Pseudo Interactive (not to be confused with Pseudo Online) about their upcoming auto combat game, Inertia.

The first public beta of the Rainbow 6 Toolkit is available through the Rainbow 6 Retreat. Among the tools provided is an R6 multiplayer launcher, an R6 server creator, a function to disable the Windows key (which crashes R6), an address book for favorite servers, a mouse sensitivity adjuster, and more features to come.

Version 1.03 of the Ultimate Regular Quake Patch has been released on the Quake Info Pool (they were even prepared for me this time, including this note in the announcement: "for Blue: everything 'ultimate' can be made better," which we'll just leave as the philosophical theory for the day). As always, the new version includes more QuakeC bug fixes for classic Quake, but this time many new features have been added as well, like QW's popular "Drop Quad/Ring" function, deathmatch modes 3-5, an easy expandable map rotation, and more.

I should have mentioned this the other day, Citizen talks Giants with Alan Pavlish is an interview on IPlayGames talking to the head of the Tantrum division at Interplay and co-producer of Giants: Citizen Kabuto, about this upcoming game of living large from PlanetMoon Studios.

This week's new interview on 10 Questions With SamHell talks with Angel Munoz, mostly about the CPL (actually, this Q&A belies the site's name, offering an unprecedented eleventh bonus question).

Also in the Q&A queue: There's a MindRover Interview on Beta Bites talking with CogniToy's Quirk Family who are all participating in the development of the upcoming action/adventure/strategy game, MindRover. Also, The Beauty of Madness interviews FlameThrower. HardOCP interviews ABit's Jeremy Smith. Finally, Action Xtreme interviews John Graham talking to the webmaster of MPOG in part one of a two-parter.

According to Curtains at nVidia Pages, there actually is one new shot in the once Portuguese TF2 preview from yesterday (story), the shot showing the sniper, infantry dude, and a medic coming out of an APC which provides an insight as to what the HUD is going to look like.

PlanetHardware reviews the Pentium III 500, in another review that claims to examine actual shipping units.

• HardOCP has a post up on improving the cooling in your machine (look on the page for the descriptive headline, "How To Up That Fan Voltage To Give Ya's More Cooling Power"...
• Dan's Techie Zone has a how-to article on setting up Half-Life to work through the Winroute proxy (not Wingate, as I originally wrote, though I'm told this info could be applied to using Wingate as well)...
• Word from 3 Fingers is he's hosting a Mad Dog CFG Aliases page, saying "Mad Dog has built quite a reputation with the 3Dfx Voodoo2 News Group gurus as being the man in the know when it comes to even the most complicated aliases and .cfg files. I kid you not, check out his site and you most certainly will learn a few new tricks (no matter how advanced your alias/.cfg skills may be)."...
• The Tiger Den looks to organize LAN play at Clemson U., since their outbound network connectivity is apparently a bit rough...

Hope your Valentine's Day was a happy one. Take a President out to lunch: Today is President's Day here in the US, celebrating the combined birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but I like to take a moment out to remember other past leaders as well, like Warren G. Harding and Franklin Pierce. Things seem to be working out well so far in the beta of the news database, no serious glitches have surfaced, and most every known bug has been squashed. There's no real connection at all to the archive of the older (HTML) news when you go back, but one of the things we should have a handle on soon is what's involved in getting older news into the database, and how far back it will be practical to go in a conversion project based on that.

Image of the day: A 22 player TRIBES stack. The jetpacks help =]