GA-Source interviews Levelord talking to Ritual's own beerf*ck a bit about his work as a level designer, and mostly about games and outside interests.

Raven's Eric Biessman updated his .plan with word to expect weekly updates in the future to help share more of what their upcoming Quake II-engine game, Soldier of Fortune, will be like, promising screenshots and in-game movies along the way.

There's a new Paul Jaquays interview on Pels Interactive playing finish the sentence with the id level designer talking about Quake III Arena, Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and more.

There's an interview with Stevie "KillCreek" Case on GA-Source talking to this ION Storm level designer about her work on Daikatana, gaming in general, and some personal stuff as well.

The GamesCon site has the announcement that the first public showing of Mortyr, Interactive Magic's upcoming World War II game, will be at GamesCon's upcoming event at the end of the month in Toronto.

An new version 0.7 of the AirQuake II mod is now available. AirQuake offers a flying action mod for Quake II putting you behind the stick of a jet fighter. The new release offers a whole list of features, which can be found on their page, along with a poll asking your favorite mod, offering a choice between "Some junky TC not worth mentioning, another one, same here, and AirQuake 2."

The BotJohnny Home Page has a new version 2.2 of the BotJohnny front-end that offers support for well over a dozen Quake II bots.

PlanetBlood has posted some detailed info on what will be included in the upcoming mission pack for Monolith's Blood2. Thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme.

Gangland.org interviews Drew Markham, CEO of Xatrix Entertainment, about their upcoming Quake II-engine game, Kingpin, discussing the inspirations for the game, what to expect from Kingpin, and a bit about the realities of the game business.

There's a ten question interview with EpicGames' Cliff Bleszinski on the newly opened Arcadia talking about games and gaming.

Team Reaction Home Page has posted version 1.0e of their Gloom mod for Quake II. This is "mostly a bug fix release which prevents player lameness." This is a server-only update, and the new version also fixes a bug that would crash Linux. A new client "should be out in a week" with new levels and sounds.

The Coven website has news of their new Napalm II mod for Quake II that adds a second firing mode to all of the game's weapons. New actions include fireballs, incendiary rounds, napalm rockets, flame-throwers, firestorms, and an anti-matter gun. The new weapons are available in single-player and deathmatch.

FvF QW Headquarters has a new version 4.7 of Future versus Fantasy for QuakeWorld, the "cult-favorite TC." Also, there are some new FvF Redemption screenshots on the FvF Redemption site that show off the development of the AI in the upcoming Genesis3D sequel to the Quake version.

Boardwatch Magazine's February1999 Cover Story talks about Internet gaming and factors that influence gameplay over the 'net. It's an informed discussion of the topic that tells ISPs how to gain extra revenue by proving good service to gamers and can also help gamers know what to look for in an ISP. Thanks David Ross.

Ace's Hardware goes on The Quest For The Best Videocard for Super 7 motherboards. Also, PlanetHardware Reviews the Storm Platinum, a Vortex2-based audio card from Xitel. And, Tweak3D reviews the card cooler, a giant dual-fan card cooling system aimed at overclockers.

A contest on the Sanctum offers a first prize of a Diamond MX300 soundcard, and a second prize of a copy of Half-Life. PQL is a Quake one-on-one league in Portugal.

• An endgame walk-through has been added to Gamers.Com's Half-Life guide with word on how to finish the game...
• Wingate and Half-Life tells how to get online playing Half-Life from behind a Wingate proxy...
• 3Dfx invests in Quantum3D -- technology alliance follows is an article on 3Dfx and Quantum3D's still strong relationship. Thanks Pyscho_Clown at 3DNow.net...
• An Indoctrination in Carving and Hollowing is a new level editing tutorial on Rust...
• Version 0.54 of the Gladiator launcher for the Gladiator Bot for Quake II is now available...
• The Texture Studio has posted a sixth texture pack containing 50 "photorealistic" images for use in a variety of 3D games in the following file formats: BMP, PCX, DTX (lithtech), WAD3 (Half-Life), and UTX (Unreal). This brings the total number of textures offered by The Studio up to 465, but represents the last such release for a while, as the site's maintainer is relocating soon....

More birthday madness, today is id Software texture artist Kenneth Scott's birthday. It seems the traffic caused by the link to the SyGate home yesterday busted their bandwidth pretty quickly (I debated about making that a link again, but decided to chance it), links on the page that went up in place of their homepage still had download links to get the program. As mentioned here before, connecting multiple machines through the same 'net connection is a native feature in Linux, and I'm told by several folks that this is a recently announced feature to be added to the Windows 98 service pack.

I guess Blammo! is officially out of beta, as the news page has relocated back to its traditional home at /news/news.shtml. I spent all day locked in the BlueLab with the Voodoo3, but managed to hook up with furn to work through some Blammo! enhancements, one of which is the new headline section up top. By the way, if I haven't stressed it yet, the news database is searchable (woowoo!). Until we perform a conversion to get older HTML news in, there's only a bit more than a week's news in the archive, but it's a start. There's a search from on the News Archive (there's a link at the bottom of this page), and I've got to work out a handy spot for a version of the search dealie like this:

Search news archive:

• Use the % character to match any number of characters (Even none).
• Use the _ character to match any one character.
• To search for a reserved wildcard character, add a \ before it, i.e \% or \_.

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.