Graeme Devine updated his .plan again with word that there won't be a Q3Test release tonight, as well as the revelation that a more compact patch will be available for people who already downloaded the 1.06 version of the test:

Not tonight. We're fixing the cheat exploits. Users who downloaded the current build should expect a 3-5 meg update (so you don't have to download the whole thing).

id's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with word that they're working on another build of Q3Test to be released soon (possibly tonight!). Here's the scoop:

Okay. More. Must Sleep Soon.

We're testing a new version of the build right now that has some new stuff in it:

- the ; key now remains bound (for all you lefties)
- the timescale exploit has been plugged (again, actually this was in the last version of the test and a lot of people were silently using it)
- LAN servers display properly
- IPX is working
- the enabling cheat exploit has been fixed
- CPU time for servers should be nicer
- an exploit in the tourney map has been filled
- joystick support (there is no conspiracy here, but this might require more time to fix than just tonight)

We're looking to get win32/Macintosh out there, hopefully tonight, but probably tomorrow by the time we're through checking all this out.

It's time to see how you did in last week's contest! And hey, even if you didn't enter, check out some of those goofy answers. Yowza. Once you're through with that, swing over and enter this week's contest. Good luck!

At long last, the BeOS port of Quake II is available (thanks Sean Graham). In order to play this, you must have the most recent version of Be (4.5), as well as a purchased copy of the game - the 1.2 meg download is only the executable file.

There's a new Wheel of Time Shot on Unreal Universe, apparently the first of five they've gotten their virtual hands on. The others will be posted either as part of a preview of this upcoming Unreal-engine action/strategy game from Legend Entertainment, or one of those shot a day dealies.

3dfx Interactive's Voodoo2 Macintosh MacOS 8.x Reference Drivers are now available for Mac owners to get their first chance at V2 action. Word is that no support is available for these drivers. MacOS 8.x and a Voodoo2 Accelerator required. Thanks Torsten.

The Gathering of Developers and Delphine Software's Diablo-style game Darkstone, has gone gold, and will be available in stores next week. Since the press release isn't available on wire news sites as of yet, here's the full release, complete with details on this 3D adventure title.

Stormtroopers has posted an interview with Chris Norden, lead programmer on ION Austin's first person RPG Deus Ex. There's also this bit about the game's current status:

[Stormtroopers]How close is Deus Ex to feature-complete?

[Chris] Really close...our "code complete" date is rapidly approaching, and we're on target to hit it. After that, we'll be tweaking things that aren't fun, fixing bugs, and polishing the visual effects.

Not to say the ones in the screenshot article (story) aren't, but there are definitely new real Tomb Raider 4 shots in GameSpot's Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation Revealed, a brief preview that features info straight from EIDOS about the upcoming installment in their third-person adventure franchise, expected to be available in November for both the PC and the PSX.

Computer Games Online has posted the first two parts of their Aliens vs. Predator game tips, providing gameplay hints for completing the Marine and Alien missions of the game (with the Predator missions to be posted soon).

The French site InfosGames has some new (badly JPEGed) shots they say are from EIDOS' upcoming Tomb Raider 4, and this interview Jon Ellison, Borderline Studios on GA-Source is likewise en Français, but also offers new screenshots (the universal language, or is that math...or is it art?) of their upcoming World War II mod for Half Life, Russian Front. If you want to read either, but your French is rusty, as always, AltaVista Translations can help you out. And don't put away that translator just yet, since MagixX (in German) has a bunch of Earth 2150 shots up showing off this 3D RTS game. And while we wander off-topic, while I'm here I may as well point out Computer Games Online's NFL Fever 2000 preview since it is chock full of screenies, as well.

Dynamix' Rick Overman updated his .plan with an update on the status of the OpenGL fixes for TRIBES and Starsiege, which is good news for TNT users. He also adds a note on the Starsiege installer's incompatibility with the Win2000 beta, which will be addressed in an installer patch, with other fixes on the way in an upcoming version 1.004 patch:

The coding for the OpenGL performance upgrade is virtually done. Because of the extensive changes that
were required I'm letting QA really pound on this patch release. So far everything looks good. You TNT
die-hards will be glad to know that I have removed my Voodoo2 from my machine and am running exclusively with a TNT. Starsige runs great, no more hitching and very respectible framerates. Next plan I'll report on TNT2 performance.

I've been receiving a few e-mails reguarding Starsiege not installing on Win2000 beta. Yes we goofed. Starsiege runs fine but the installer gets a bit confused. We'll have an installer patch available on the website soon for those who are interested.

A few more hacks have been confirmed and will be addressed in v1.004.

To follow up on Mike Wilson's recent .plan update saying TRI's Fly! was on the verge of going gold (story), comes word that this upcoming flight sim dealie is now officially gold, is off to manufacture, and will be shipping on July 26.

There are six new SEED Screenshots on GA-Source showing off more action from Human Soft's upcoming action game which uses the proprietary SEED engine. There are also the more new shots on Screenshots Extreme, and if you missed 'em, we posted a half-dozen SEED shots of our own here the other day (I think the new GA-Source ones are the best of these bunches, however).

Part two of Speedy 3D's interview with Seumas McNally, lead programmer on Longbow digital Arts' upcoming tank racing game, Tread Marks. The Q&A continues the discussion about the game, as well as a bit on the future, Seumas describes a desire to use the "Tread Marks terrain engine in future projects, perhaps having to do with hovering attack vehicles or anime-style mecha."

There's an interview with Darren Pattenden on 3D Palette talking to the Bullfrog artist about the work he did on DungeonKeeper2 where he built and textured all the characters for the game, and created some of their animations.

There's an article on Salon called "One Step Ahead of the Law" that focuses on Kingpin and the whole "carding" issue that's popping up here in the United States, and its implications for the industry. It's an interesting article, and has this notable quote from Doug Lowenstein, front man for the ISDA (and staple for articles like this):

"There is this feeling that government will say, 'We gave them a chance and they didn't do it, so now we have to regulate for them,'" says Lowenstein of the IDSA. So the group's current position is that "We would prefer if 'Mature' games were not sold to people under 17."

The always entertaining sCary has posted more GameSpy tabs for Q3Test, including ones for 1.06 servers, teamplay, FFA, and my personal favorite, 1 on 1 servers.

Pels Interactive has posted a "Complete the Sentence" interview with id's PR woman, the fabulous Katherine Anna Kang. Amongst the entertaining responses is this oddly Zen-like answer: "PR is like between O and S with Q in between." Think about it.

The Adrenaline Vault previews Spec Ops 2: Green Berets giving a look ahead at the sequel to Zombie's Spec Ops: Rangers Lead the Way (thanks VE). Here's a quote from the preview that talks about the effort being put into creating a true-to-life simulation:

Like its predecessor, Spec Ops 2 will strive for realism. All of the weapon sounds are actual recordings of those weapons being discharged. All of the textures are taken from photos of real objects. Furthermore, the motion capture data for their soldier character animation was taken from their tactics consultant -- a former Green Beret who runs a military training school. While wearing a full pack and rifle, their consultant provided authentic motions for treading water, climbing ladders, moving, jumping, using inventory items and weapons and even animations for bullets striking different parts of his body (which was hopefully improvisation).

A follow-up on the story that follows (wow, was that quick!): I.Am-KingPin sends word that the post about the 1000 skin limit is in error, (meaning the Kingpin Skin Registry is obsolete in a few short hours). It turns out there is a workaround that they've posted involving the "skin" console command which allows for long skin filenames in Kingpin and eliminates the 1000 skin limit.

The I.am-KingPin Skin Registry is now up and running. The way Kingpin handles custom multiplayer skins is to use a unique 3-digit number for each one of each model's three body parts (head, body, and legs), so there can only be 1000 skins. "The registry will ensure that everyone who makes a new skin and submits it to I.am/Kingpin for download uses a different number."

Onicore.Com interviews Doug Zartman talking with the "PR Guru" from Bungie about their upcoming third-person fighting game, Oni. This is part one of a two-parter, with the second part to be posted following MacWorld (this week here in the Big Apple).

Hardware reviews are up here again this morning (like our own version of Where's Waldo, or something).

• 3dfx Interactive offers $30 OFF your Voodoo3 2000 and Voodoo3 3000. Thanks Voodoo3.net.
• The TechZone asks: 16 meg TNT2 vs 32 meg TNT2, which is better? Looking to see if the extra RAM is worth the extra cash.
• Exxtreme3D.Com's Overclocking 101 offers a very basic beginner's introduction to the black art.
• SysOp's reviews the Diamond Viper 770 Ultra.
• SystemLogic reviews the Elsa Revelator 3D Glasses.

Apparently WinNT users do not hear footsteps in the new version 1.06 Q3ATest. Team Abuse sends along a solution for this that they've doped out, saying that if you set s_mixprestep to 0.1, you will once again hear the pitter-patter of little feet.

Savage galleries has posted a couple of configs to help get better visual quality and improve performance on video cards based on Savage's S4 chipset.

Word from the InterPlay fans over at IPlayGames send word that Kingpin will be available in Australia (where they are restrictive about violent games) with an MA 15+ certification on July 22.

• Gamers Depot reviews Kingpin.
• BarrysWorld reviews Descent 3.
• GibWorld reviews Aliens versus Predator.
• ProGamers reviews South Park saying "I like the show, I love the movie, and now I hate the game."
• Sujoy Roy has written up his impressions of the new Q3ATest on Sujoy.com giving an expert player's analysis of the new tourney map.

• I see Dave's Video Game Classics has a new beta of MAME, the Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator (or something like that). In other EMU news, the official bleem! site doesn't mention it, but the bleem! support page has info on plans for the upcoming bleem! 1.3b2 release, which will include PSX mouse support...
• The Atriarch Downloads page has posted a 12 second movie from this upcoming online (persistent universe) sci-fi RPG in QuickTime format. The clip shows off a slithering alien, and does not use the game engine, but does use the game's sound effects and models...
• In spite of Graeme Devine's comment in his .plan that advanced controller support is broken in version 1.06 of Q3ATest, the old-school SpOrbers at Birdman's Lair have posted what they say is a working configuration for the venerable Space orb 360. Word is "it's not perfect, but it's working"...

A little pop culture yesterday: "Try the wine," is from A Clockwork Orange, used a second time because it fit so well, and because I messed up the quote in a previous attempt to use it (if at first you don't succeed...). I know I've threatened this before, but today may just be the day I go for a WinNT install to get rid of this system resource problem that keeps screwing up my email. If you hear the loud sound of someone banging their head against a wall, you'll know I decided to do just that.

Link of the Day: Big Bang machine could destroy Earth reports the London Sunday Times. Science marches on! Thanks PT and DiabolicalGenius.
Bonus Link: Super Marketing: Ads from the comic books. Thanks Joel. I cannot tell you how much time I spent in my youth dreaming of one day owning many of these hunks of junk.

The techies over at Tech Radio have posted an audio transcript of their interview with Jens Anderson, one of the designers of Heavy Gear II, Activision's newly released game of giant piloted robot (gear) combat in their show archive. The show is in RealPlayer format, but an MP3 format version could be made available if demand is high enough. Speaking of MP3s, while any of you who are audiophiles are checking out their audio files, you may dig on their Q&A with the Director of Advanced Research for Lydstrom about the Songbank MZ3-5000, their just-announced home stereo component that plays digital music (up to 5000 songs on the main device) using compression technology from Lucent with audio quality said to be better than MP3 (and the device is also MP3 compatible, to boot).

There's a Starsiege Sensors comparison on Datumplane::Starsiege offering a complete rundown on the sensors in Dynamix' own game of giant piloted robot combat. They promise more such articles in the future (you have been warned).

The Los Angeles TFC Half-Life Game Server File Downloads page has a new program to easily launch a dedicated server to run the TeamFortress Classic Half-Life mod. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

id's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with details on Q3Test's new SOCKS support. Here are the details:

SOCKS Proxy Support

There are five cvars that control it. They are only settable from the at init time (from the OS command line).

+set net_socksEnabled 1
+set net_socksServer
+set net_socksPort
+set net_socksUsername
+set net_socksPassword

Please note that you use the address (name or IP number) of the SOCKS server (firewall machine), NOT a Q3ATEST server. The port number defaults to 1080, you should not need to change this.

It supports no authentication and username/password authentication method (RFC-1929); it does NOT support GSS-API method (RFC-1961) authentication.

L810C and Chris Kane both send similar news of a fun bug to play with in the new Q3ATest using the cheats mentioned earlier (story), and the lightning gun. Here's L810C's explanation:

I was trying the Devmap and the Give All mentioned in an earlier post when I found this wierd bug. Use Grapple and grapple to something and hang there by pressing another weapon. Then use Lightning Gun and you will be propelled anywhere you aim it, you will be tethered to your original grapple spot, but can go anywhere. You can fly to the upper limits of Q3Test2 and you can fly into other rooms in the other levels. You can fly through tele's, but bounce pads will break it.

A tip for Linux server operators interested in running the latest version of Q3ATest that is currently only available as a Win32 binary comes from moonbeam, who says, "Try the wine!" BTW, I believe the proper address for the WINE emulator (or, more correctly, the Wine non-emulator) is the Wine Development HQ (www.winehq.com/), rather than the address listed in the quote (thanks Dave Slusky). Here goes:

Haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. The win32 binary will run under WINE (www.linuxhq.com) as a dedicated server. Works surprising well actually. Just have to do the most basic of installations - it doesn't need access to any windows dlls etc.

There's a Thief 2: The Metal Age interview on GA-Source talking with Project Director Steve Pearsall from Looking Glass Studios about the upcoming sequel to their stealthy stealing game. The interview discusses new features, new weapons, and multi-player support, and offers two new screenshots as well.

There's a new tab on The Shugashack for use with the GameSpy 3D server-browser to help filter through servers to find the ones running the latest version.

A new Werewolf: The Apocalypse Screenshot on GA-Source giving a look at the third-person perspective in this first and third-person action/RPG hybrid. Werewolf is based on White Wolf's pen and paper role-playing game, and is being created with the Unreal engine by Dreamforge Productions.

Thresh's FiringSquad has posted their own article on the new Win32 Q3ATest release talking about what's changed from the previous release, like the smaller smoke trails from rockets, and the 100 FPS cap on framerate. They top things off by using the newly-fixed timedemo command (story) to offer benchmarks on an AMD Athlon 600 MHz system, as well as more SMP (Symmetrical Multiprocessor) results on both a dual Intel Celeron 366 MHz setup, and a dual Intel Pentium III 500 MHz (on the heels of Anand's, mentioned earlier (story)).

The DEMISE site has a new Patch4TEST2 Pre-release for their OpenGL accelerated RPG. Thanks Voodoo Extreme. Word is "there could be many problems" with this pre-release patch, but the patch also "fixes many issues -- problems with drivers, Multiplayer, and more." One or two more tests before the full Patch4 release are expected.

Mikel Blanchard writes in to point out that you can check out the current effects and sounds (all mostly placeholders) of the Q3ATest grappling hook and the weapons not included in the current maps, simply by enabling the cheats. Start a map from the console using the "devmap" command (e.g., "devmap q3test1") and then grabbing the items using the command "give all," (or "give hook" for just the grapple) to check them out. Again, most of this stuff is clearly just placeholders for the real deal, with temporary and missing graphics, effects, and sounds, but some of the stuff works, and you can grapple around the levels like Spider-Man if you so desire.

I.Am-KingPin has posted a new Skins department with new player skins available for download. There is also info there on how to create and edit skins for Xatrix' newly-released gangsta shooter, Kingpin: Life of Crime, including info on how to add your likeness to one of the player models (especially useful if you've got the Kingpin/John Goodman physique to begin with).

AnandTech has posted a bunch of benchmarks and commentary about Symmetrical Multiprocessor support in the new release of Q3ATest. Thanks Daniel. The numbers demonstrate that SMP indeed improves performance, though the difference between multiprocessor and single processor modes seems to narrow as the resolution gets higher.

Beta build 1043 of Q3Tweak, the Q3ATest front-end, is now available, offering a way to "access Q3A console commands not found in the in-game menus. The program allows you to tune Q3A for best performance, best visual quality or a cross between the two."

Hardware reviews are up here this morning:

• Intel's Plans: A New & Improved Roadmap? asks Sharky Extreme.
• KAC Hardware reviews the VideoLogic Neon 250.
• 3drage.com reviews the Elsa ERAZOR III.
• Speedy 3D reviews the Elsa ERAZOR III.
• Sharky Extreme reviews the Castlewood 2.2GB EIDE ORB Drive looking at this example of "one of the new generation of removable storage devices."
• Sharky Extreme reviews the MSI MS-6163 440BX Mainboard.
• FPS3D.COM reviews the Abit BP6 motherboard.
• 3drage.com reviews the EZlink USB Home Networking kit.

Kokak's Hexen Page has version 0.5 of Kokak's OpenGL port of the source code to Raven's Doom-engine shooter, Hexen. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

Thanks Frans at 3D Action Gamers for these:

• Gamecenter reviews Kingpin: Life of Crime, written by none other than ex-Prey designer Paul Schuytema!
• Thresh's FiringSquad also reviews Kingpin.
• The Adrenaline Vault reviews Unreal Return to Na Pali.
• Games Domain Reviews Descent 3.

• Hero's Journey Vault has posted three AVI movies featuring gameplay from Hero's Journey from E3 giving a low (320x240) resolution of this upcoming 3D RPG...
• 3DFiles has posted a local copy of a new Dungeon Keeper 2 Olympia Level just released by Bullfrog as a freebie add-on for for DK2. Thanks Robert M Lowrey...
• A new version of the 3D Exploration OpenGL 3D viewer is now available...

To follow-up on the beans loony spilled the other day, he did indeed witness my purchase of a PlayStation: It is nice to be able to check out some of the games that have pushed the envelope of console systems lately, like Metal Gear Solid, it's been something I've been meaning to do for a long time now. However, if loony thinks I am doing anything with those pokemon's other than creating a big smelly acrylic bonfire out of the cute little beasties, he's kidding himself.

Link of the Day: Squad Nuclear Slug: How to Start Your Own Squad, a loving look at how to start your own totally 'l33t clan. Thanks Densun.
Bonus Link: Game Development Truisms, or, "You know your game is in trouble when..." Thanks Ben.