HereticII.com has posted some more scoop on new client options that are in the upcoming Heretic II enhancement pack including word on Quick Defensive Spell Binding, Turning Off Screen Flashing, Turning Off AutoMessages, and Ignoring Specific Players.

PC.IGN.COM has posted a MechWarrior III preview with a quick glance at Microprose's new installment in the MW line offering scads of screenshots for your viewing pleasure. Thanks SailorScout.

There are some new screenshots on the The Navy SEALs home page showing off this upcoming Unreal-engine game based on the exploits of this elite combat unit. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

PlanetBlood has posted their walk-throughs on how to get through the second chapter of Blood2.

Datumplane::Starsiege has posted a quick Q&A with Dynamix's Eric 'Griffon' Soulvie about models in TRIBES.

The Adrenaline Vault previews Oni, Bungie's upcoming action game offering up a conceptual artwork image to give the feel for the look of the game.

There's an edited chat log of last night's chat session on Mplayer's Daikatana Deathmatch page.

A Heretic II enhancement pack beta tester (legLess) sent along the following from Activision's Steve Stringer that gives the lowdown on the upcoming release:

We're close enough that you all can start talking about the beta and the program.

What's New:

• Eight new deathmatch maps from Raven's top designers!
• A3D 2.0 enhanced 3D sound support.
• EAX enhanced 3D Sound support.
• New defensive weapon: Whirlwind
• New shrine: Boots of Speed
• Custom skin and model support.
• All-new female model: Kiera the elf!
• Additional skins: Howitzer, SirLoin, and Domino.
• Network download capability for skins, models, and maps.
• Team deathmatch games with grouping by models or by skins.
• Staff-only "Bladematch" mode.
• Advanced swordstaff moves, including the back sweep and downward stab.
• New blocking capability for more exciting staff-to-staff combats!
• Keys can now be easily bound for quick defensive spell usage.
• On-screen Armor meter.
• All new death animations.
• New ignore feature so players can ignore the chat messages other online players.
• New modifiable welcome message on joining a multiplayer game.
• Variable player model translucency.
• Hidden "First-person POV" mode.
• Diagonal jumping (Run+strafe+jump should keep diagonal momentum)
• Prediction of player sounds and effects, for better-looking player in a high-lag situation.
• Separated and releasable player code. This makes it possible to create as many spells/weapons/items as a modder wants. It will also allow programmers to completely modify animations, controls and add new sequences.
• New easy-to-use deathmatch flag setting commands for dedicated servers.
• New HTML-capable logfile for tracking number of kills and team scores in tournaments.
• Enhanced water effects for swimming under the surface and running through it.
• All-new extra-hard "Armageddon" difficulty level.

Daikatana Cabana interviews Bobby Pavlock, talking to this Daikatana level designer about his work, gaming, and life in general.

Accolade To Preview Redline And Slave Zero At Extreme Annihilation In Dallas is an announcement about Accolade's participation in the upcoming CPL event. A preliminary list of all retail, software and hardware exhibitors for Extreme Annihilation is available in this press release.

Saw on Voodoo Extreme that the Kick Engine site has a new patch for their next-generation demo that attempts to emulate a Voodoo3, saying: "See what happens when you take RGBA 8888 fog, convert it to RGBA 4444 and combine it with up to 6 passes. Should happily work on a real V3 too." The new release also adds support for "all major video cards" including Matrox G200, Savage, ATI Rage Pro, 3DFX cards and Intel I740.

Creative Labs Graphics Blaster TNT Drivers page has new drivers for CL's TNT offering based on the new NVIDIA "Detonator" reference drivers. Thanks Planet RIVA.

Version 1.01 of GameCam the Quake II chasecam/spectator program that can be added transparently to any other mod, has been released.

Gamers Central reviews Starsiege TRIBES and QuakeCity's TRIBES review is up as well. The Sanctum reviews the Pentium III.

The QuakeMovie version 2.1 Gold contest offers a CD with "the very very very last edition of QuakeMovie" to five winners. The CD includes QuakeMovie 2.1 Gold with never-before seen features, a whole mess of demo editing tools, and comprehensive documentation and examples. Plus, as an added bonus, a collection of "Classic Quake1 Movies."

• GameSpot has posted a Machines demo of this strategy game that allows action fans to jump in and command any of the machines at their command...
• The SoftFSB downloads page has a new version 1.50 of the SoftFSB program that allows control over the speed of the front-side bus even on motherboards that don't usually allow this (use at your own risk). Thanks CiKoTiC...
• mIRC 5.51 is now available. Thanks SailorScout...

More on the birthdays mentioned yesterday: Raven's Chris Foster's birthday was actually last week (I mis-read a .plan update of his from last year I came across which was where I caught the bit about old Nick Copernicus' birthday. Turns out yesterday is also the birthday of Ritual texture artist Andrew Collins, as well as the one year anniversary of the release of Quake II CTF, and the Quake II point release.

I've had a few recommendations to check out SyGate from SyberGen Home, and I have been using it for a while to get one machine on my home network to connect to the Internet through another machine. It's worked great for surfing, etc., but the acid test came yesterday when a friend dropped by and we both were able to play games over the 'net with no special configuration. And the whole thing runs without any special software on the client machine. Just set up SyGate on the host machine, configure, and you're good to go. Highly recommended.

There's a Zoid Interview on linuxpower.org talking with the birthday boy about Linux and Quake III Arena. Thanks Magnet.

Dominik 'BiTBUSTER' Volmer sent along a new version 0.20 of his TRIBES Volumer, (mirror courtesy of Walnut Creek CDROM) the volume extraction tool for Starsiege TRIBES. Here's word on the update from the author:

I just finished coding the PBMP -> BMP routine. Now you are able to extract all the graphics, textures and backgrounds from Tribes, modify these BMP's and add them to your new vol. You'll get new gfx in your mod's.

Next release will have Vol-File Creation Support so that you don't need the dos program that comes from Dynamix. It'll be easier to create your own Vol Files then.

Have Fun with this Tool.

Epic's Unreal Page contain's an interesting announcement about a Knowledge Adventure title that will use the Unreal engine as well as word about the PIII optimizations that will be in Unreal Tourney. Here's the lowdown on both:

Knowledge Adventure has announced that they are using the Unreal Engine to create Dr. Brain™ Thinking Games: Action/Reaction, a new edutainment title designed for kids ages 10 and up. The title was demonstrated this week at Intel´s Pentium III Processor Preview Day. Knowledge Adventure is a leader in multimedia educational software having created the very popular Math Blaster® and JumpStart Learning System™ game series. Read the full Knowledge Adventure press release HERE.

At Intel´s Pentium® III Processor Preview Day, Epic participated by showing Unreal Tournament which has been optimized for the Pentium III processor. The Pentium III optimized version of Unreal Tournament was also shown at the S3 stand with high resolution S3TC textures. Both technologies will appear in the final release version of Unreal Tournament and will be incorporated into the Unreal Engine for the use of Epic's licensees.

The new Descent 3 Preview on GameSpot UK offers up some new screenshots of Interplay's upcoming Descent installment that they say "should win hearts among the Descent faithful" with its "Refined missions and return to core concept."

Also up on GameSpot UK is a first look at Mortyr, the upcoming time-travelling World War II game.

PlanetStarSiege has posted three more new screenshots from the upcoming TRIBES OpenGL patch showing off the broadside map. There's also word there that the Renegades patch has changed its name from the SkyNet mod, has moved in to P.S.S., and is available for download as server-only mod.

Acclaim.Net has posted a Turok 2 1.04 patch that "addresses most of the reported issues with the game." The patch updates the shipping version 1.03 of T2, but clients are inter-operable with the new release (you don't have to upgrade to play on 1.04 servers). The patch addresses some multiplayer bugs and tweaks down the damage dealt by the War Blade. Additionally the fix offers an updated version of GameSpy Lite that patches a bug that mis-reports ping times. Thanks The Turok Cave.

The GameHost Page has a new beta 1.30 of the GameHost server control program that allows you to easily setup, run, and manage many popular network games, including Quake, QuakeWorld, Quake II, Hexen II, Half-Life and Sin. The beta has very few changes (a few bug fixes), and if no major bugs surface it will become GameHost 1.0. The new release will give you another 30 days to try GameHost since online ordering isn't up yet (if you want the extra days, don't uninstall the previous version).

There's a Redline Server Hosting Application on the Accolade site offering the first 45 registrants this deal: Host a Redline demo server at least eight hours a day for 30 days and receive three free games of your choice.

Raven's Pat Lipo updated his .plan with word that the Heretic II Enhancement Pack is but a single bug away from release, as well as word that he will be attending GamesCon in Toronto at the end of this month, along with Dynamix's Scott Youngblood, ION Storms Tom Hall, and Zoid (I have plans to attend myself). Here's the part about the Enhancement Pack:

The Heretic II EP is almost there. QA and we are both hammering on one tiny remaining bug. Thanks to all the beta testers for all their assistance, support and patience!

Mplayer's Daikatana DM site has word of another Daikatana Deathmatch chat, this time with Programmer Justin "Logic" Randall and Director of Web Operations William Haskins. The chat is today from 4:00 to 5:00 PM Pacific time in the Mplayer Onstage Chat Lobby.

Kick Engine website has an updated version of their Next-Generation 3D demo for RIVA TNT and ATI Rage 128 cards (only). Thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme. The new version of the demo adds 2048*2048 textures, a FPS counter, and Volumetric Fog (making it true vaporware).

A new version 1.17 of ZDoom, a Doom for Win32 project based on the id source code, is now available. Thanks Doomworld (where a mirror of the release can be found). The new offering has the simultaneous release of a DOS version (although it does not support MIDI/MUS music or a joystick like the Win version), bugfixes, a significant speed boost (near 2X) on "modern processors," a chasecam, a particle system (particle blood splats and bullet puffs), and more.

For those who edit: Version 0.7 of MapSpy, the freeware Quake II map editing diagnostic utility is out on Mad Dog's CFG Aliases-Configs-Map Editing page. The update adds new error checks, refined report output, and a "slick" search option to help find entities.

Turok 2 Seeds of Evil on GameFan Online as well as a Turok 2 Seeds of Evil review on Sharky Extreme. There's also a Pentium III Review @ bxboards.com.

Battle for the border: It's Canada versus USA in LMCTF.

• There's a new demo edition tutorial on the Zarathustra Studios site covering the menu-based special effects available from within Keygrip2...
• Clan Database is looking to become a comprehensive listing groups participating in online competition, and they request that all clans who wish to be listed pop over and register...
• Here's a poll on what you like in gameplay to help mod authors plan their projects...
• More pollage: The single Game Survey Question on the Atlantis Enterprises page asks "If you could make your own game, what would it be like?"...
• Here are some never revealed cheat codes for the Abyss Of Pandemonium Quake Mission pack...

Happy Birthday to id Software's Zoid, Raven's Chris Foster, Ritual's onethumb, and old-school 3D guru Nicolaus Copernicus...I know I recently mentioned getting some of the department pages updated, but getting the database online more quickly than I imagined threw that off schedule. Now with the Voodoo3 in the Blue Labs for testing, it may be a while longer before those are addressed, though I did get some missing Viper V550 benchmarks on the Benchmarks page in preparation for the new benchmarks that will be added there soon (actually that bad boy needs a redesign before I try and plop another column of numbers in there, doesn't it?).