Gigex has posted a 23 MB trailer for Prince of Persia 3D, both as full download on this page, and as a small stub program that will allow resuming interrupted downloads. Thanks MeccaWorld and Frans at 3D Action Gamers. On a related note, GamePen's Prince of Persia 3D preview is online.

Stevie "KillCreek" Case sent this .plan update from ION's Steve Ash (just added to the Blue Tracker) which should clarify the reasons for Ash's departure from the Daikatana team (story):

Not this rumor stuff again ;)

It's true, I am leaving ION, but only for boring personal reasons, I'm afraid. I've had a lot of fun working at ION for the past few months. I got to add a lot of cool tech to DK, and now that that's done, I'm heading back to Cali. It's been cool working with John and everyone else here, and I wish them all the best!

Now go away!

As part of Quake2000.net's coverage of games that aren't Quake, they've posted an interview with Dynamix' Nels Bruckner, former programmer, and current manager on Starsiege: TRIBES.

John Romero updated his .plan with word that Steve Ash, former lead programmer on ION Storm's Daikatana, has decided to part with the company. Taking his place is Shawn Green, who many will recall is an id Software alumnus. Here's the scoop, straight from The Romero himself:

Alright, before all of the news sites start going nutty with this information, I just want to thank Steve Ash, my lead programmer, for all the excellent work he's put in on Daikatana. We're past the "adding tech" stage and are working on finishing up the game, so Steve decided to move on and get back to California where he can actually USE his Ducati motorcycle on the winding mountain roads instead of watching his tires melt on the hot Dallas pavement. Heh. Good luck Steve, and thanks for everything. :)

The new lead programmer on Daikatana is Shawn Green, whom I have known for eight years or so and has been doing a great job on Daikatana since its inception.

Dynamix' Dave Moore updated his .plan with word that the recently released Starsiege: TRIBES 1.7 (which was supposed to fix palette errors on 3dfx cards) is causing palette errors on 3dfx Banshee based boards:

Erk! Ok, there have been reports of palette problems on 3dfx cards with only one TMU (Voodoo Graphics, Rush, Banshee). Mea maxima culpa, all my fault. I goofed a logic test (Morgan's law? Something like that. The one that goes ![A && B] => [!A || !B]). We're aware of the problem, and a fix is in QA at this time. This is especially embarrassing, since 1.7 was supposed to fix a palette problem on Voodoo 2's and Voodoo 3's. Sigh.

AGN3D has posted a brief Q&A with James Schmalz, game designer for Digital Extremes (Epic's collaborators on Unreal and Unreal Tournament). Also of note is Unreality.org's interview with Andy Frazier, the composer behind the music in Legend's Unreal Engine game Wheel of Time.

This Seattle Times report sent along by Stillwater refutes the report posted earlier (story) that Bill Gates plans on donating his entire fortune to charity. The article quotes Gates' father, the alleged source of the original report, as saying "I didn't say that...It isn't accurate," and goes on to say "The elder Gates speculated that the Sunday Times writer misunderstood him."

This week's edition of 10 Questions with Sam Hell features everyone's favorite little devil interviewing Mike Nichols (hey, didn't he direct The Graduate?), creative director on Drakan: Order of the Flame. Topics include the game's engine, the competition, and some gameplay questions.

Raven Artist/Animator Rob Gee updated his .plan with word on progress on Elite Force, Raven's upcoming Star Trek Voyager game using the Quake III engine. The lengthy update goes on to describe the reception of SoF and Elite Force at the Activate Conference in Scotland and a welcome to their new artist Andy, but I'll just quote the part about the Star Trek game:

Elite Force is coming along nicely. The newest mission area (undisclosed at this time) is in the
final stages of defining it's overall look. The designers and artists have most of the "major" areas
done and have been tweaking out textures, architecture and lighting effects for final approvals. The
entire mission area is really looking great - the original concept sketches were done with Quake III's
curved surface capabilities in mind. Needless to say, it won't be a very friendly neighborhood when
it's done ;).

While I'm waiting for some model approvals to be reviewed, I've spent some more time setting up some
additional animations for the scavengers. We've been fortunate to have access to the SoF animation
data base, as well as using the CHIMAERA system for our humanoid models to apply the animations to.
We're using a fair number of the mo-capped scenes that Scott and Eric set up with hOuse of mOves.
But unfortunately, there are a few animations we can't use. Most Star Trek races have a very distinct
body language and just wouldn't look right doin that gang bang thang. Klingons just don't go talkin
smack while they cap :) A big thanks to Eric Turman for the ungodly hours he put into setting up the
CHIMAERA system. He has much honor.

Shubes is working on the creature that will be found hanging around the newest levels, mentioned above.
Brian P. is working with Bill to get our official website finalized - it's really looking pretty sweet.
Mark has been doing more concepts, as well as helping Brian get the story boards done for future cinematics.
Lampo has been a big help exporting all the anims for me so that Mike can edit and reclip them into the
game. Kim has been working with Les to get the characters' heads and faces done. B'elanna is looking hot.
hmmmmmmm.... B'elanna. Les has been busy making models and working with Steve R. on some new effects that the
designers will be able to set up in their levels. Todd, Mark, Kim, and our newest artist - Andrew Trabbold -
have been creating some very impressive textures for the new levels.

So, as I said, things are coming along nicely.

id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead updated his .plan with an excited blurb about this coming weekend's festivities at QuakeCon '99. The update warns of how badly over-crowded the small town of Mesquite, TX will be due to the event, and suggests attendees without accomodations get on the ball.

Bleem!'s President Vents is a GameSpot Q&A with David Herpolsheimer, president of bleem! LLC discussing life after the launch of Bleem!, the PlayStation emulation software. The article discusses the legal battles with Sony the product is enduring, and talks about what it will take to make Bleem a mainstream product.

Also on GameSpot is an article called Half-Life MOD Heaven that looks at the doings at last weeks event to show off seven of the best Half-Life Mods currently in production, briefly describing Action Half-Life, Chemical Existence, Counterstrike, Gunman, Kanonball, Science & Industry, and USS. Darkstar.

The Tectonic Latest News page has word of a new version of the TecArena Q3Test front-end program. The new release fixes a "stupid bug" in the last version which prevented the launcher from actually launching Q3Test (which is a problem for a game launcher).

The Croatian Quake3 Arena Scene sends word of their new Quake III Arena User Benchmark Page. A majority of the benchmarks on the page are user submitted, which sacrifices some control over the data, but allows for the widest variety of tested systems. The goal is to to see what hardware is best for Quake III Arena, and is meant to be especially useful to those considering upgrades.

Before It's Done interviews Greg Zeschuk posing ten questions to the CEO of BioWare about their upcoming sequel to the quirky third-person action game, MDK, which, as we've pointed out before, stands for Math Don't Kompute.

The press release for the Quake III US Tour has been well, released, with some more details on the event (or events for that matter). If you're wondering what's going to go on at the bus stops, the PR has this bit of information, "at some locations, lucky players will get to challenge top professional guest-gamers" although nobody specific is named. I also enjoyed this quote quite a bit - actually it kind of scared me:

"You never know where the bus might stop -- there are a lot of routes between cities," Welch continued. "One day it might pull into a cyber cafe or a parking lot and just let people in to play -- it might even be at your house. You always have to be ready. Watch the Web. "

Including a new video card announcement from Bitboys Oy(!):

• Bitboys Oy have announced their new line of Glaze3D video cards, which sport gigatexel fillrates and embedded DRAM.
• 3DWars has posted an article chronicling the battle between 3dfx and NVIDIA for dominance of the 3D market.
• Matrox has posted a Q&A with Chris Satchell, Technical Manager at Silicon Dreams Studio Limited, the developers of Warmonkeys, which will utilize their environment-mapped bump-mapping.
• Ars Technica has posted an article explaining how the Dual Celeron SMP setup works.
• Sharky Extreme has updated their 3dfx Next-Generation Technology article with new images of the in-house demo they saw.

GASource has posted a Q&A with Bungie's PR screwball Doug Zartman, talking about their Anime influenced action title Oni. Some of the questions focus on the gameplay balance, which is an odd mix of hand to hand combat and good old fashioned gun toting mayhem.

The Italian games site Games on Line has posted a new Black & White preview (actually, the preview's in color, but...oh, never mind) complete with 27 screenshots (almost all of which are new, and quite impressive looking). As the preview's in Italian, you may want to stick a Babel Fish in your ear before heading over there.

GameMaster Gamer's Paradise has set up a new Quake II master server all the way over in Holland (mmm...Quake with hollandaise). The server's at www.games.hetnet.nl:27900, with a server listing available at http://www.games.hetnet.nl/quake2/gamespy.txt. So update those server browsers if you're into that sort of thing.

Dynamix' Tinman ("yes, dammit, that is my real name!") updated his .plan with word that he's created a new mission type for TRIBES that's up for testing as we speak. Here's the scoop:

However, I finally decided that everyone else was having too much fun creating their own mission types, so I decided to get in on the action. I've created a new mission type for Tribes: "Flag Hunters"! (It may look familiar, the idea came from some other game I'll leave nameless).

The object? Kill everyone of course, but besides that... Everyone spawns with a flag. If you die, you drop your flag and someone else can pick it up. If you had picked up several flags before dying, you'll drop them all, plus the flag you spawned with. The object is to take as many flags as you can to the "alter". Scoring is additive, so the more flags you bring at once, the higher your score. e.g. 1 flag = 1 point, 2 flags = 1 + 2 = 3 points, n flags = 1 + ... + n points.

This hasn't been released, so the only server you can play this on is: "Kidney Thief's Domain" (address "IP:198.74.33.53:28001")

So... check it out. Keep in mind that I'm not a mission designer, so I'd appreciate any *suggestions* about which maps (I've set up 5) work, which need improvement, and which just plain suck. Also, any bugs. Please keep in mind that this was just a pet project, and not an officially sanctioned Dynamix release.

The Flamelands recently posted a new shot from Psygnosis' upcoming Drakan: Order of the Flame. The shot, of Tahkora, "the renowned skeletal dragon," is the sixth in their series of seven shots showing off the various dragons that are featured in the multiplayer game. Thanks Drakan.Net.

This thread on GT's Unreal Tournament Forum has a a couple of posts from Epic's Jack "Mek" Porter describing the possibility that Epic will conduct a similar program to Valve's Half-Life Primary Server program where free copies of the game may be distributed to server operators who have "demonstrated they can run quality Unreal 1 servers for a reasonable period of time," to help make sure UT server propagate quickly. Thanks Apache from Voodoo Extreme.

Dave at The Adrenaline Vault News sends word that the AVault is going to be hosting a chat with Terminal Reality's Nocturne development team to chat about this upcoming third-person Lovecraftian game. The chat will be this Thursday, Aug. 5 at 7:30 EDT on the AVault's IRC server. Instructions for joining the event will be announced soon.

The London Sunday Times is reporting "Gates to give away £65 billion fortune," quoting Bill Gates' dad (administrator of the William H. Gates Foundation) saying the younger Gates, the slightly well-off co-founder and CEO of Microsoft, "plans to become the biggest single benefactor in history by giving away his £65 billion fortune to help rid the planet of diseases such as Aids and malaria." Props to BetaNews for getting the scoop on this yesterday (they attributed it to Reuters where I couldn't find it, thanks to The AVault for the pointer to the Sunday Times).

Like bookends:

• Thresh's FiringSquad's Pentium III 600 Review.
• Review Zone's Intel Pentium III 600 Review.

Version 1.13 of the ReDeMpTiOn Bot for Sin is now available, offering "a seriously improved combat engine that includes Aim Leading code." Saw that on the Bot Epidemic.

The Myth of the Bugless Game is an AVault guest editorial by Jeff Morris, Programmer and QA manager for Firaxis Games talking from a developers point of view about the complaint that computer games are buggy .

Raven's John Scott updated his .plan with a worklog of his own, detailing progress on Raven's Quake II-engine game-in-progress, Soldier of Fortune. Here's the update:

* Fixed "Failed command checksum" bug
* Fixed alpha surfaces in bmodels not being rendered properly (still not perfect - but should be good enough) and not moving.
* Sorted alpha surfaces, quads and alpha bmodels properly.
* Made undulating surfaces shade smoothly
* Added screenshots to savegames.
* Routinified lightmap creation code and surface rendering - multitexture used in more situations now.
* Used sorted texture chains if multitexture available to reduce texture thrashing (previously it only rendered by texture if there was no multitexture available).
* Went out and got completely blasted Saturday night.

Just a note to say that The Blair Witch Project is bleeding awesome - thoroughly recommended.

I'm also completely hooked on the Sequencer CD by Covenant.

• Hot Hardware's 3dfx Technology Summit gives their report on their recent visit to 3dfx.
• Likewise, Beyond 3D's 3dfx Technology Summit article is online.
• Digital-Clips.com goes to Digital World Expo 99 in Hong Kong, starting the report off with the very salient question "What the hell is Digital World Expo 99?"

Quake 3 French Olympics has info (in French) about this competition (in France) that will feature two-on-two and four-on-four duels, as well as free-for-all competitions in Quake III. Just for completeness, here's the usual link to AltaVista Translations in case you are curious about the proceedings, and your Français is a bit rouillé.

• Singularity Features a MidTown Madness Vs Need for Speed: High Stakes Shootout (in spite of the non-shooting nature of the games).
• Better late than never, UGN3D reviews Turok 2: Seeds of Evil.

• There's a new screenshot posted as a BattleCruiser 3020 AD Shot of the Day, implying there may be daily shots to follow...
• The Skynet Project Tactical Combat Simulation page has some new screenshots of this Half-Life mod in progress. Thanks Killjoy...

We had another blessed event at the Blue Tower yesterday, as the first of our second pair of mourning dove eggs hatched in the flowerpot on the fire escape (can you imagine climbing down 245 flights of fire escape ladder in an emergency? There's a downside to living in the tallest building in the world). As small is the hatchling is, it's still hard to believe it came from something as tiny as the unhatched egg next to it, which is the size of a large gumball. I'd describe the mother feeding the newborn, but some of you are probably eating right now yourselves.

Link of the Day: B1FF#S K3WL H0M3 PAG3!!! As Joel , who sent this along, says: "Everything that's lame about the Web wrapped up in one page!" Also, as he did when passing along the link, let me apologize in advance.
Image of the Day: The Worlds Biggest LAN Party? Thanks Ryan.
eBay Item of the Day: eBay item 140092659 - The Blue TeamFortress Fort. Thanks Nicholas Ryan. Sure bidding starts at $10,000,000, but it's a fort, dammit! Besides, it's blue...