I received an e-mail from Red Storm's webmistress, Mur Lafferty, that despite earlier reports of a Rogue Spear demo being released sometime in the next three weeks (story) they're working on finishing the game, and therefore haven't set a date for the demo as of yet. There will definitely be a demo released, just not quite as soon as many of us had hoped.

A new version of the Tread level editor (1.11) has been released (thanks Redwood). This version adds support for Kingpin, as well as some other new features. A downloadable, 10 day trial version of the editor is available, but at the end of the trial you are required to pay for it. An earlier version (1.02) is available for free, however you won't get any of the new features.

Leinen Software (the people who brought you the Unreal Launcher and the Battlezone Configuration Utility) have produced an Aliens vs. Predator Launcher, which allows you to easily turn on a whole slew of options. Here's a quick list:

• Display frames/sec. and number of polygons.
• Adjust volume and speed of the motiontracker.
• Adjust time- and leanscale.
• Adjust RGB-coloring of the sky.
• Access cheat codes like GOD and ALLWEAPONS.
• Pre-load additional bots.

Canopus has posted step by step directions for getting Pure3D cards (those being the Pure3D, Pure3D II and II LX cards) working with Q3Test (thanks Vornskr). It contains both directions for installing, as well as uninstalling the new drivers.

Bot Epidemic has posted a Q&A with Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin, talking about the AI and bots (or lack thereof) in Kingpin. There's also this bit that's of note for would-be Kingpin mod authors:

Cube: Is the Kingpin source code going to be appearing soon, or is the intention to have the game patched a couple of times to remove any lingering bugs before a release?

Ridah: That's the intention. I expect to have the code out within a week, but that depends on how things go with the patches.

BE has also posted a new version of Ridah's Eraser Bot (version 1.10). This is the version that appeared in the Quake II add-on Extremities, and features "heavily re-worked CTF and combat AI," as well as a new route-file for Q2CTF2. This is a patch for the Win32 version of the Eraser bot only.

Federation HQ, a Star Trek gaming site has posted an interview with three members of Raven's Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force team: Chris Foster (the lead designer), James Monroe (the lead programmer), and Michael Gummelt (the AI and scripting programmer). It's a nice sized interview, containing lots of little bits of information about Raven's Quake III: Arena engine title. In an oddly related story, The Boomstick Joint has posted a review of the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D, a really cool map that recreates the USS Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Version 1.11 of the ReDeMpTiOn bot for Sin has been released. This version tweaks the bot's combat abilities, making him utilize the Rocket Launcher and Quantum Destabilizer more effectively, as well as making them generally tougher opponents.

A non-beta release of Ping Tool 2.5 is out, now adding Q3Test "fun name" support, as well as fixing the game launching errors NT and Roger Wilco users were reporting.

eXplosive 3D has posted a tutorial for all of you would-be programmers, appropriately titled the 3D Programming Guide (A-Z). The topics covered include finding the right compiler, writing your own Keyboard manager, and even drawing polygons on the screen.

PCParadox has posted nine new screenshots from Volition's space sequel, Freespace 2, showing off a variety of different models and ships.

The angelic Billy Wilson spotted this post on the Requiem message boards from 3DO's webmaster, confirming that the Requiem: Avenging Angel editor will not be publicly released. It's short and sweet:

I'm sorry to say that the level editor will not be released.

Guthwulf
Webmaster 3DO

UGN3D has posted some screenshots from the Homeworld intro movie, taken from a beta version of the game that actually contains a single player game (as opposed to most of the betas that are multiplayer only).

GA-RPG has updated their RPG Mythology column, with this week's installment featuring Bio Ware's Greg Zeschuk talking about more of his favorite RPGs, including some forgotten classics: Sierra's The Shadow of Yserbius (part of the failed Sierra Network), and of course, Wasteland (the game Fallout was a pseudo sequel to).

• ComChip has written up a guide to choosing an ISP, with some general tips to picking the right service provider.
• USBWorkshop reviews the ACT Labs Force RS (USB) wheel.
• Overclocker's Workbench has posted a picture of a Celeron 400 that's labeled, "for uniprocessor systems only" adding some proof to the rumors that Intel would be disabling SMP in the Celeron line.
• AMDZone has gotten a confirmation from 3dfx' Brian Burke that their drivers will be supporting the new Athlon instruction set.

Well, I had quite a day yesterday, that's for sure. First things first: I woke up, and discovered, much to my horror, that I was in excruciating pain (I have a lousy back, and yesterday was just one of those days). Then I find out that my ISDN line hadn't been turned on yet, and wouldn't be until Monday morning (aargh). I can live with that, I suppose. Yesterday was a freaky-hot day here in Brooklyn, and my air conditioning just didn't seem to cut it, which wasn't exactly helping. But the topper of course, was when around 8:00 PM the server started going wonky on me, and as I write this (the next morning), it still hasn't been fixed. Aaargh. Sorry for the downtime folks, but if you can read this, I'll assume it's been fixed. :)

Link of the Day: Storytime - Curious George and the High-Tension Power Line. Because on some days, this is the funniest thing in the world.

Editing site Rust has posted the transcript from their chat with Raven programmers John Scott and Dan Kramer. This is a heavily edited log, so it's fairly easy to read (which is something of a rarity with logs of this kind). The talk focuses on both of Raven's games currently in production: Soldier of Fortune, which uses the Quake II engine, and Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, which uses the Quake III: Arena engine.

Several members from Legend's Wheel of Time team have been taking questions from gamers over on GT's Wheel of Time Forums (thanks Apache). There's a lot of subjects tackled in here, including the WoT scoreboard, rocket jumping, air control, and a whole gaggle of others for you to read up on.

Just a quick caveat to anyone planning on downloading the just released Kingpin version 1.1 patch (story): we've gotten several reports that you will not be able to use any previously saved games, as well as many reports of people randomly being kicked from multiplayer servers. Also, we received details on how to use the vehicles in Kingpin from Daniel "Milamber" Woods of WA Gaming Zone:

I was just fiddling around with Kingpin and found out how you can test the very cool vehicle code that didn't quite make it into Kingpin. As you probably know, before being hired by Xatrix, Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin coded the immensely popular Q1 TC, Quake rally. So, the vehicle code is pretty damn special. Anyways, start the game using +set developer 1 and the bring down the console and type g_vehicle_test 1 and for a really authentic feel, turn on the rear-view mirror by typing cl_rearviewmirror 1. Now map one of the DM levels, kpdm1 works fine, and try being, from what I can gather, a motorbike, complete with fairly realistic physics and sounds.

3D Action Planet has posted an interview with Kenn Hoekstra, the Project Administrator on Raven's Quake II engine extravaganza, Soldier of Fortune. The interview features a bunch of new information about the game, including the available graphics resolutions, and word that there are no plans for a Linux SoF client at this time.

Billy "screenshots" Wilson has posted two new images from Shiny's diaper wearing Messiah, which is due to be released in early November (if you trust release dates, that is).

The Kingpin 1.1 patch has been released, and is available for download over at PlanetKingpin. This patch has a ton of fixes and changes, including a fix for those long level loads, the new "dm_realmode" which is sort of Action Quake-esque, and lots of other stuff. Also available is the 1.1 Linux version of the Kingpin client/server, which is available for download in both TAR and RPM format (download links are available in Ryan Feltrin's .plan file).

John Carmack updated his .plan with details on the QVM, or Quake Virtual Machine, that he has implemented into Quake III: Arena over this past week. It's a giant update, but here's an excerpt:

The basic setup is that I have a modified version of the lcc compiler that generates assembly files that are processed by a new tool "q3asm" into a .qvm file that can be interpreted by q3. You can still use normal dll's for debugging, then release interpreted code. You can release a binary dll if you need some native system services (some networking stuff, for example) or are doing very compute intensive work, but I strongly encourage everyone to try to use the virtual machine.

The interpreted code has two prime benefits: portability and security.User mods done with qvms will automatically work on mac, linux, and any other oddball ports that get released.

A qvm program cannot modify anything outside its private address space, and the "system calls" to the game strictly limit what can be touched. I was scared about the binary dll's in Q2, but rationalized it to myself that people running public servers should be aware of the dangers. With Q3 allowing client side programming, it just needs to be safe for everyone.

Gamasutra has posted a big article on level design, featuring tips from such industry luminaries as Levelord, The Romero, Paul Jaquays, and Cliff Bleszinski (thanks Billy "yoink" Wilson).

Mortyr.net has posted another fixed EXE for the Mortyr demo, this time fixing the "nie monza otworzyc pliku avi" error message that some people have been getting (thanks Frans). Also of note is Damage Gaming's extensive walkthrough of the demo, for those of you who are stuck.

Next-Generation Online has posted a preview of Nihilistic's upcoming 3D RPG title, Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, featuring the usual descriptive text, as well as nine new screenshots from the game.

This week's Unreal Tournament level of the week is up over at GT's official UT site. This week's level is called DM-Tempest, and it's described as having been, "created strictly for large scale arena combat, with multi layered areas and dark hiding spots." Swing by for more details, as well as three screenshots from the level.

GameSpot has posted a news bit about NVIDIA's next-generation graphics chipset, currently called the NV10. They're reporting that the chip will have, "more than twice as many transistors as a Pentium III CPU" as well as, having a triangle rate that's "three to five times that of a Pentium III CPU, which can put out about 5 million triangles per second." Yowza.

PC.IGN has posted a new preview of Nova Logic's Delta Force 2, featuring some new images, as well as a handful of information about this Voxel powered tactical game.

Pandemic Studios has released their Battlezone II shot of the week, and it can be found over at StrategyPlanet's Battlezone II Center. More BZ2 info can be found in GameCenter's new preview of the game (thanks VE).

Unreal Nation has posted an e-mail they received from Epic's Tim Sweeney, asking about their future plans in regards to cross platform portability. Here's a quickie excerpt:

We will develop the next engine on at least two platforms simultaneously. At least PC and Playstation2 (pending arrival of a development system). I can't promise Linux, but it would be pretty easy I think. The big complication we've faced porting Unreal Tournament is that our C++ code needed lots of modifications for Gnu C++, but since that's the Playstation's compiler too, our code should be Linux-friendly all along

The official Freespace 2 website has been given a complete overhaul, and to celebrate it, they've posted two new ships in their ship gallery. They plan on adding two ships a week to the site until well, the game ships.

A new version of Kali, the server browsing IRC program, has been released and is available for download on their FTP site (thanks Scott). This is a beta, as it warns you as you install it, "everything is new!!! THIS IS A BETA! PLEASE REPORT ANY BUGS IMMEDIATELY!" Oooookay then.

• 3DRage reviews the Gigabyte GA-660, an easily overclockable TNT 2 card.
• Viper3D has posted an extensive graphics analysis of Q3Test running on a Viper V770 Ultra card.
• DigitalClips reviews the Case Logic GL4 - Gel eeze mousepad.
• Thresh's Firing Squad reviews the Logitech Wingman Formula Force steering wheel.

So okay, here's the latest on my ISDN situation - sadly, it's not up and running yet (like nobody saw that one coming, right?). I'm not 100% positive that it's been turned on yet (I was told it would be, but that doesn't mean anything) but believe it or not, the showstopping problem at the moment is simply that I don't have a cord long enough to reach my computer! Oh well. I've got one that will be here sometime this morning, so once that arrives I'll be able to see if the phone company has done their part in getting me online (I can only hope they have). So check back tomorrow, and hopefully I'll be able to say that I'm a happy ISDN user (if there is such a thing).

Link of the Day: As I'm gearing up for QuakeCon in a few weeks here, it's only appropriate that today's link be Virtual Cow Tipping. It's a source of endless amusement, I tell ya.