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.