Raven's Brian Raffel's .plan has the announcement that Raven is working on a game based on Star Trek: Voyager. There's no word on the engine the shooter-style game will use, but in a move similar to last year's showing of Heretic II at E3 so soon after its public announcement, word is they'll be ready to show the new game off at this year's E3 (in May). Here's the poop:

I am pleased to announce that Raven Software will be developing a Star Trek: Voyager game for Activision. The title will encompass the attributes of both intense first-person shooter action and team oriented combat, as you play the role of a security officer fighting alongside your fellow security team members. Drawing from the rich Star Trek universe, we will be focusing our efforts into creating the most amazing first-person shooter yet, with new and intriguing gameplay elements. We are developing new AI and Scripting systems so that the NPC's and enemies will intelligently react to their surroundings and situation. At this time we are in the early stages of development and more information will be forthcoming.

Look for us showing this title at E3 in May!

There's a big ole update from Monolith's Jason Hall on PlanetBlood, where they asked Jace why he's been a bit quiet lately, and he used the opportunity to give an update on the state of just about everything going on over there, summing it up with this:

So here is some general info -

Blood 2 source is on the way soon (VERY). With that users will be able to modify the heck out of the game. We will be releasing a Blood 2 patch soon (bugfixes) Users should expect a continued committed support effort from Monolith with regards to mods and level editing. We are still looking into the "High Ping" issue (this only happens on certain modems). We haven't found a way to fix that yet. We won't stop looking until we find and fix it.

The Nightmares Add-On is coming out soon. It is quite p1mp.

The main thing that I'd like to point out to the gamers is that Monolith is always doing the best that it can. Sometimes, that may not be good enough, but rest assured that we are working hard to satisfy. The frustrations that the Blood community has felt, Monolith has felt as well. We want Blood 2 to be as flawless as possible. We care about our game. We are doing the best that we can. That is all we can do. Trust me when I say that Monolith wholeheartedly appreciates the patience that the community has shown us.

A report on The Adrenaline Vault News gives the news that Trilobyte software is closing up shop in the wake of the departure of Graeme Devine, who recently joined id Software. It is unclear if Mr. Devine's departure is actually the cause or the effect of this announcement, but according to the report, this spells trouble for Trilobyte's Extreme Warfare, which was nearing release:

According to Trilobyte, its multiplayer 3D action game Extreme Warfare, which was near completion, will not be distributed by them, and may never be released unless it can be completed by another developer.

Carl "General WarT" Glave made another update to his .plan with a clarification that the evil weapons he mentioned earlier (story) are unsupported portions of the pack, and folks shouldn't go bugging anyone about them, as well as a South Park style disclaimer about celebrity voice impersonations:

I forgot to mention something in my last plan update. The evil development weapons are unsupported features. Please do not call or email Activision, Ritual, or us about any crashes or other such nonsence encountered during their use.

Also, no celebrities were harmed in the making of this pack. All voices are impersonated impersonations of someone impersonating the characters being impersonated by the voice of an impersonator impersonating the impersonation of the characters. Or, something like that.

Datumplane::Starsiege TRIBES OpenGL FAQ has been updated to include information on how to get OpenGL TRIBES working on a whole boatload of different video cards.

Word in Daikatana lead artist Eric Smith's .plan is that the Mplayer Daikatana deathmatch demo is "out the door," which is about the full extent of the update, so it's not apparent when we can get our hands on it. Here's the whole quote:

Shhh...the DK M-Player Demo is out the door.

There's an interview with "Meester" Tim Sweeney on Arcadia talking with Epic Games' lead programmer about his own and other folk's games, as well as some questions about life outside of gaming.

AVault's Extreme Annihilation pre-coverage for this coming weekend's festivities is underway, a feature up there now is an interview with Kurt "immortal" Shimada, talking to one of the strong competitors participating in the tourney.

Aureal Semiconductor's David A Gasior sends word that they've released the A3D 2.0 SDK on their FTP site. Also now available from A3D are new version 2.05 A3D drivers, which use the version 2.12 A3DAPI.DLL shipping with the SDK, offer support for Flatland technology (3D Web - 3DML), fix a small memory leak, and properly copies A3DAPI.DLL to the Windows System folder.

10 Questions With SamHell talks with Scott Miller, putting the head of Apogee Software under the 10 questions microscope, managing to cover a good deal of territory along the way, including some Duke Forever stuff, gaming, and other media, even learning Scott's first choice to play Duke in a movie, if it were up to him.

Carl "General WarT" Glave updated his .plan with word on the secret "development" weapons in 2015's Sin mission pack Wages of Sin (thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme and Ritualistic). Here's the scoop:

OK, I'm in a nicely evil mood right now, so I thought I'd tell you about the secret "development" weapons that are in WOS. It first started out as a special stinger pack to help speed testing of the boss monsters, but it mutated and kinda grew into something kinda... evil. >)

Hehe, anyway, to get to the point, there are five "evil" versions of some of our new weapons. They are: EvilStingerPack, EvilPlasmaBow, EvilFlamethrower, EvilConcussionGun, and EvilIP36. They can all be given and used just like any other ordinary weapons, but there's also an extra give command, "give evil", that will give you all these as well as arm you to the teeth with a few other usefull... development tools. ;)

Now go fourth, and do evil unto those that would seek to thwart thine destructive Wages of Sin. :)

The Eraser Ultra Homepage has a new release of the EraserUltra, which adds features of several popular Quake II mods to the AI powered goodness of the Eraser bot. The new release has been delayed by problems getting the merged code for the Xatrix and Rogue mission packs merged, but what's called a stable version offering Xatrix mission pack and 3-Team CTF support is now available.

Hey, that thump on the doorstep must be the new issue of loonygames arriving (at least I hope that's what it is). Here's the scoop on the articles to be posted all week in sadistically spaced increments:

loonygames yells, "issue twenty eight!!!!"

Ah...be quiet. My head hurts. Giving you migraines this week:

• Adventures in ASCII: Jeff Miller explores the weird world of "Roguelikes" the oddball ASCII RPG games that have inspired countless games, including Diablo. Featuring not one, not two, but *six* full games for your downloading pleasure. [Monday]
• From the Mouth of Madness: Jason "loonyboi" Bergman asks the inevitable question...is Sega screwed? [Monday]
• How'd They Do That?: Yep, it's another HTDT, featuring your questions answered by game developers. In this week's installment, we go to Bungie Software and 3DRealms' Chris Hargrove to answer your questions about 3D engines. [Thursday]
• Thinking Outside the Box: Paul Steed does another animation tutorial, this time using a well known videogame character as his subject...the DOOM guy. If you don't know who that is...well, that's just your problem, isn't it. [Tuesday]
• PLUS: Whole caravans of User Friendly [DAILY], Penny Arcade reveals their secret identities [Wednesday], a new Pixel Obscura [Tuesday], loonyboi does Blood 2 [Thursday], we check out the Microsoft Force Feedback Pro [Thursday] and more! And then some more, because we're louder than you, dammit.

NOTE: This issue of loonygames is respectfully dedicated to the living memory of Stanley Kubrick. (1928-1999)

The PGL season 4 Quake II Brackets have been posted (thanks fido_7). Here are the finalists: Sybek, Vorador_, Kuin, immortal, VD_Jmaster , k9-g , b00m3r , and DH-SaboTaJ. The TF CNN League is accepting registrations, describing itself as a TF1/TFC league centered around the values of sportsmanship, fair play, intensity and fun. Matches will be played on Thursday evenings.

• FiringSquad.com reviews South Park.
• GA-Source reviews the Hercules Supercharged Terminator Beast.

• These results are from one of those research paper surveys that someone conducted recently on verbal and non-verbal communication in Quake II if you're curious at what sort of results turned up...
• Tweak3D's CPU and Motherboard Tweak Guide has been updated with info on how to tweak your BIOS for performance and compatibility...
• This Download Windows 98 Update page has some of those critical and recommended update files for download so you don't always have to go through the auto updater after a fresh reinstall. Thanks Thorson at Ravengames.com...

Question of the day comes from old school buddy Tony Fabris who asks if the Blammo news database is year 2000 compliant. The scary thing is I don't really know (I haven't mentioned this to furn since it came up). Hell, we installed the BlueTracker in January, and found out soon enough that the summary page wasn't February compliant

Stanley Kubrick 1928-1999 R.I.P.

Mod Central HL's multiplayer basics guide is online giving a complete range of tips on HL deathmatch, from getting started all the way through tweaks and DM strategies.

Gamestream.Net interviews Richard Barker of AMD talking about the upcoming K7 processor.

According to Voodoo Extreme (because I can't get through to this link myself) Viper3D's new GLQuake Setup Guide is up, specializing in tweaking GL settings on TNT cards.

A new version 1.2 of Spine Design's Third Person Perspective Quake2 mod is out, fixing a couple of features and adding a third-person view crosshair.

Microsoft will alter software to protect privacy is a report on the Mercury Center saying "Microsoft Corp. moved to defuse a potentially explosive privacy issue on Saturday, saying it would modify a feature of its Windows 98 operating system that has been quietly used to create a vast database of personal information about computer users." Thanks Kent Spillner. In the wake of the ongoing PIII ID number controversy, Microsoft concedes the Windows number "had the potential to be far more invasive than a traceable serial number in Intel Corp.'s new Pentium III." Here's the quote on that from the article:

Microsoft conceded that the feature, a unique identifying number used by Windows and a handful of other Microsoft products, had the potential to be far more invasive than a traceable serial number in Intel Corp.'s new Pentium III that has privacy advocates up in arms. The difference is that the Windows number is tied to an individual's name, to identifying numbers on the hardware in his computer and even to documents that he creates.

A new version of chUmbaLum sOft's .md2 viewer is available, adding the ability to view Quake II models directly from .pak files.

PC.IGN.COM's Aliens versus Predator preview gives a look ahead at Fox Interactive's upcoming game that will soon be, as they mildly put it, "bringing the clash of the intergalactic titans to your PC." The preview looks at all three character classes in AvP, and offers a bunch of screenshots. Thanks Killjoy.

The Scripting section at PlanetStarSiege has a new script for TRIBES called Dyn_HUD which allows you to enhance the already customizable TRIBES HUD (or "heads-up display"--the icons on your screen that show your energy level, ammo counts, etc.). The new script allows you to add more helpful bits of info to your HUD, including a kill counter, flag status indicators for each team's flag, mine count, and grenade count.

The ReDeMpTiOn SiNbot main page has word of the first release of the ReDeMpTiOn bot for Sin, which offers full client emulation, where the bot can spawn as Elexis, Blade or that annoying little punk and join right in the deathmatch, with their score appearing on the scoreboard. The bot was coded for Sin 1.01, so there might be problems trying to run it with version 1.03.

PC.IGN.COM's Descent 3 Preview offers a look ahead at the full game, including a list of all the weapons and all of the ships, as well as "the inside scoop" on the new power-ups.

Noname CTF Homepage has version 0.4.4 of Noname CTF for Unreal. The new version includes several bug fixes to ensure that sound files play properly upon flag captures, etc., and new optional "U-War-style" capturable bases.

There's a Dave Rossum Interview on ALive (some questions were contributed by 3D Sound Surge and HammerSound) talking to the chief scientist at Creative Labs about the SBLive! and EAX technology. This is part one of a two-parter.

Andrew Smith passed along an email exchange he had with id Software's Anna Kang about the recent announcement of a planned Linux Quake III Arena retail package that clarifies how the cross-platform release will be handled:

Q: I saw the announcement that Q3A will be sold as separate packages for Win95 and Linux, but will people still be able to buy the Win95 version and download the Linux executable for free? And what about vice versa?

A: Quake III Arena will be sold in three different boxes (PC, Mac, and Linux). If someone purchases any of these versions, they will be able to get the executables for the other versions on-line.

Word on Sharky Extreme from Accolade is to expect their upcoming Slave Zero around June/July of this year.

Hello, McFly, anyone home? (Blue taps self on head). Ben from 3DFiles.Com points out I never posted the version of the TRIBES 1.3 patch that updates the files that need to be changed in TRIBES by overwriting them, rather than modifying them (you don't need this patch if one of the smaller patches worked for you). Here's a copy of the full TRIBES 1.3 patch (20.0 MB) with a list of mirrors, including the Blue's News mirror, courtesy, as always, of Walnut Creek CDROM.

How to cool your Celeron on The Techs has been updated. Also, there's a Whopper Cooler review on BXBoards looking at this twin fan CPU cooler, HardwareCentral's Kryotech Renegade ATX PE First Look talking about this case with the built in fridge (no microwave), and Wicked PC reviews the 3Dfx Cool hddHO an odd-looking rig to cool high-RPM hard-drives. Finally, not to be outdone, HardOCP has posted another of their "don't try this at home" (or anywhere else for that matter) modifications to a Pentium II to add a new extreme in cooling. Concludes the article: "Does it werk betta? Dunno, but it sure looks kewl!" Anything for science.

AGN3D reviews Wages of Sin, the new Sin Mission pack from 2015.

Total Synopses is giving away three Monster Fusion cards (I can go to the contest page in Explorer, but it relentlessly crashes my Netscape).

• Birdman's Lair has posted files to support South Park and Thief using the Spaceorb...
• Speaking of the Sporb, a couple of alternative controllers can be seen in this GameWire preview looking at the upcoming Zorro gamepad, and the Zulu, a unique new FPS-oriented controller dealie, both from Microsoft...
• Maximum PC does GamesCon with a short write up, a photo of Levelord, Zoid, and Pat "CodeKing" Lipo and what seems to be a screenshot of Anachronox (pretty psychedelic).
• GA-Source has posted a S3TC Egyptian Level For Unreal which crams 35 MB of textures in an Unreal level for owners of Savage3D. You also need at least 64 MB of RAM (128 MB recommended) to run it...

As I mentioned yesterday, ace Blammo! programmer furn went bug hunting: An update to the news system here has fixed the vexing bug that skipped a day when using the "Previous 2 days" link at the bottom of the page, and all the date input options on the News Archive page should now work properly. I killed the search highlight for the moment because it messed up HTML links when the highlighted word was in a link, and with that, as far as I know, everything is working properly, so please feel free to drop a line if you find a glitch.

Making the Quakerena the link of the day yesterday pushed them over their bandwidth limit, when it's back online, I'll look into posting a link to a copy that won't go away (local or a mirror or something).

Link of the Day: You know times are progressing when you can read news in Reuters about 12-foot penises (it's all tasteful art stuff, even the part about how they're used to appease a virgin). Thanks Ant.