GA-Source's: More on New Q3A Engine Title is a report where they have an unsourced report giving some more detail on plans of the new Q3A-engine game being produced by American McGee over at Electronic Arts. Here's the report, which says that alice, indeed refers to the adventures of that tripped-out little girl:

Although details are very sketchy, American McGee's Alice is going to be a warped 3D shooter adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic story, Alice in Wonderland. As bizzare as Alice in Wonderland was (for its time), American McGee's Alice is going to give this classic a Tim Burton-like twist, by adding more of a darker and edgier feel.

The game will be played in the third-person perspective with the slight possibilty of a first-person perspective multiplayer mode. The game will also follow the storyline of the classic tale, which means player will be encountering such characters as the Tweedle twins, the Mad Hatter, and many of the other assorted characters from the book.

The Adrenaline Vault News has posted a log of the online chat session with the developers of Nocturne, the upcoming horror adventure from TRI. According to the info gleaned from the session, the posted the following news about a demo:

What follows is a highly edited version of the chat, during which TRI revealed that the game is essentially finished -- with the exception of the final polish -- that it will be released Halloween Day, and that playable demo will be available via an exclusive magazine covermount and then online in September.

PlanetQuake has posted a few summaries of the id Software workshops here at QuakeCon: Paul Jaquays Brings On The Curves, Paul Steed Talks Modeling in an interview, as well as their own Rodeo Photos.

Barrett "Bear" Alexander has arrived at the QuakeCon '99 showfloor, and it would appear that he's landed himself a gig at Rogue Entertainment, where he's their new CEO. I asked him what they're working on, and while he wasn't allowed to disclose very much, I can give you some preliminary details. Rogue, along with EA, has started working on American McGee's Alice, which will be based on the Quake III: Arena engine. Details are scarce, but the teaser site is live now, with a more formal announcement to come sometime this week.

AVault has posted five new screenshots from Drakan to celebrate the game's gold status (story). It would appear that this time, it really is gold.

A 1.1 patch for the hardware test version of Venom has been released and is available for download over at the official site (thanks Frans). This patch fixes some bugs, and enables 3D audio support in addition to other changes.

This week's Unreal Tournament level of the week has been posted to GT Interactive's official UT site. This week's level is DM-Grinder, and three new screenshots have been posted showing it off.

Volition has released the demo for their space shooter sequel, Freespace 2. The 60 MB demo features twelve ship classes, two singleplayer missions, one training level, and two multiplayer missions. Swing by Volition's download page for mirror sites across the country.

Linux.com has posted an interview with id Software's resident Linux geek (and CTF scribe) Zoid (thanks Christopher Reimer). Zoid discusses his role at id, the state of Linux, and his thoughts on where things are going.

According to PC.IGN, Drakan: Order of the Flame, has gone gold. Previous reports of it having been turned in for production proved to be false, but they claim to have confirmed both its status, as well as the news that it will be in stores on August 20th.

PlanetStarsiege has posted a Q&A with Dynamix' Tim Gift, talking about the future of the Starsiege universe. According to Tim, the next giant robot based Starsiege game is currently on hold, with the company's focus being devoted exclusively to TRIBES 2 and TRIBES Extreme for the time being. He stresses, however, that this does not mean the end of the Starsiege universe - it simply means that the next game is a ways off.

Planet - er, StormTroopers has posted 17 new shots from Tom Hall's Quake II engine RPG Anachronox, featuring descriptions from Jake Hughes, the game's producer.

The Vault Network has posted an interview with Trent Oster, the producer of BioWare's newly announced RPG (story) Neverwinter Nights. Along similar lines, a bunch of new screenshots have been posted on Next-Generation Online. Lastly, the official Neverwinter Nights site is up, and chock full of stuff.

GamePen has posted a preview of Monolith's isometric (and genuinely unique) action title Sanity, which also serves as a preview of the LithTech 2 engine (which powers the game).

• GameSpot reviews the Falcon Xentor SE.
• MacGamer has posted an article that attempts to give the honest truth about the Mac as a gaming platform, both how it is at the moment, and what needs to be done to help it succeed.
• Computer Games Online reviews the 3dfx 3500TV.
• CPUReview reviews the PowerColor Sniper 2, a relatively inexpensive TNT 2 card.

• AVault reviews Hidden & Dangerous.
• Digital Clips reviews Aliens vs. Predator.
• Gamearena.net reviews Requiem: Avenging Angel.
• Sharky Extreme reviews Hidden & Dangerous.

First of all, before I forget: a special thanks goes out to H2H and his band of merry men for providing me with the beer I'm drinking at the moment. I needed it. It's been quite a day here at QuakeCon '99. The smurf-colored guy arrived in the early afternoon, and has been wandering around muttering to himself ever since then. Myself, I managed to play a couple of rounds of Q3Test in preparation for this afternoon's press tournament. I couldn't care less about the tournament itself, mind you - I just want to beat my sister. It's a family thing, what can I say.

Most of last night was spent by many of us press folk at the VIP party, which oddly enough, happened at a real Texas rodeo. I must say, this was a strange thing for me, and me, along with Blue, Raven's Jake Simpson, Zoid, and several others, couldn't help but root for the animals. It's just more fun that way.

Image of the Day: I took this picture with the official Blue's News Way Too Nice Camera™. Take what you will from it.

Starsiege: TRIBES version 1.8 has been released, and is available for download over at TRIBESPlayers.com (thanks Syncope). This version fixes problems with single TMU 3dfx cards (such as the Rush and Banshee boards).

The Cowboy Carnage Radio site is up, allowing you to tune into their streaming audio show from the QuakeCon '99 floor. They're broadcasting both music and live content, so check the site's playlist to see what's coming up. They also say that "we have our big shows on Saturday nights at 9:00PM EST. But since it's outlaw radio sometimes we miss shows running from the thought police!" So take that as you will.

GameFan.com has posted a Q&A session with Epic's Tim Sweeney, talking about the Unreal engine. Here's a quote with an update on several Unreal-related issues:

All features for the gold master are finalized. We're just tweaking and bug-fixing phase now.

There is some stuff in the works that we were planning on releasing after UT ships, that are already in progress. Brandon's Linux client port is up and running and should be ready by release time; and some very very much improved server admin tools are in the works. If they are wrapped up sooner than planned, we might include them on the CD. Otherwise they'll be available after release as originally planned.

A new beta version of Kingpin has been released and is available for download over at the Kingpin Beta Testing page. We haven't been posting these since Ridah had requested that news sites not mention the beta releases (due to the frequency with which he was releasing them) but since the message to webmasters appears to have changed, and the version number has gone up a notch (from 1.15x to 1.16) I'm assuming this is kosher to mention. Here's a list of the changes since the last version:

• = NOT TESTED: BAN voting system to boot trouble makers (use "vote ban <nick>" to start a BAN vote, requires 45% of players to "agree" to take effect)
• + Fixed 100% CPU usage occuring on some NT servers
• + Fixed voice in Deathmatch sometime speaking in a male voice when using female character
• + More "SV_GetSpace: Overflow" fixes (please report the full message if you get this on a server)
• + Add debug info to "FS_Read: 0 bytes read" error
• + Fix scoreboard for realmode (show kills and net score)
• + In Gangbang teamplay, frags go to the wrong team
• = Dead bodies of client's that haven't respawned yet block doorways
• + Skins not found, try and keep model, change skins back to 001 001 001 (since this is a safe set for all models)
• + Subtract a frag for dying in "real mode". Subtract 2 for suiciding.
• + Weapons reload after firing, if reload is pressed when clip is full

The ATI chat log has been posted on 3D Rage giving an account of this afternoon's chat session discussing the newly-announced Rage Fury Pro, in addition to talking about other ATI-type stuff.

Direct from the GenCon floor, BioWare has announced their next title, called Neverwinter Nights. Here are the details, fresh from BioWare's homepage:

BioWare, the developer of the hit roleplaying game, Baldur's Gate, recently unveiled their next big project at the annual GenCon conference in Milwaukee. Neverwinter Nights, their new title, will be a multiplayer roleplaying game based on TSR's new 3rd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons® ruleset. Set in and around the cities of Neverwinter and Luskan, in the far northern reaches of the Forgotten Realms® gameworld, the game will ship with a strong story, a powerful editor suite dubbed the Solstice Toolset, and the ability to enter the gameworld and modify it in real-time as an omniscient Dungeon Master. Neverwinter Nights will be powered by a variation of Omen, BioWare's own 3D engine developed for their visually stunning action game, MDK2, and will be published by Black Isle Studios, a division of Interplay.

3D Unlimited has posted an interview with Pancho Eekels, a level designer and 3D artist for Epic Games. Pancho discusses UT's gameplay, level design, and a whole bunch more.

AVault has posted a playable demo of Revanant, a 3D isometric-style RPG (with elements of strategy, action, and adventure games rolled into one). It's 40 some-odd MB, so start the download and go grab some lunch.

Well, QuakeCon '99 has officially begun, as the opening ceremony (if you can call it that) has just concluded. The network here is really, nothing short of astounding. The whole thing is running on an enormous Lucent Technologies backbone, and is 100% 100BaseT. Pretty impressive for a LAN party this size (and lest there be doubt, this thing is huge).

Just a reminder: you can catch updates from the show here at Blue's News, but also at PlanetQuake, and GamePost, and be sure to check out NetGames USA for live tournament stats. The tournament is scheduled to begin around 1:00 central time, so look for stuff to start appearing real soon now.

PCArena has posted the second part of their look at the ships in Homeworld, this time focusing on the Kushan ships from the game. There are 24 images up, with some showing over 100 ships onscreen simultaneously.

3DSpotlight has posted an interview with David Harold, PR jockey for Videologic, talking about their upcoming Neon250 card, which among other things, will be supporting scene anti-aliasing, light and shadow volumes, and bump mapping.

There's a new Half-Life Opposing Force preview on GameSpot UK with a short look ahead at Gearbox' upcoming Half-Life add-on, along with some brand-new screenshots. I'm off to Dallas. See you all later.

BZ2.COM has posted a new BattleZone II screenshot showing off action from Pandemic studios' upcoming action/strategy hybrid.

StarsiegePlayers.com has a new map pack for Starsiege. Thanks Voodoo Extreme. "There are two versions, one for the casual gamer and one for the server admin types."

A reminder about today's chat sessions (I'll just duplicate yesterday's post on these): First is a Rage3D Chat (details on joining are on that page) with ATI talking about their newly-announced Rage Fury Pro accelerator at 2:00 PM EDT. Then later, at 9:00 PM EDT is August's AnachroChat, a live online IRC session with the developers of ION Storm's upcoming RPG, Anachronox. You can get to the chat via "the Chat Lobby" in the "Online" section of the ION Storm home page, or through the IRC server www.ionstorm.com in the channel #ion.

This is probably part one this morning, since more usually roll in when I post them this early:

• Hardware One looks "Inside the SL36A" investigating what have been said to be an especially overclockable series of Celeron 300A processors.
• ComChip's System Optimization Guide may help you and your system if you are suffering performance anxiety.

• The Adrenaline Vault Reviews Tellurian Defense "a futuristic flight combat game too deep to be considered an arcade shooter, but too simple to be considered a simulation."
• Wicked PC reviews the Intel Celeron 466.
• 3D Alpha Hardware Station reviews the SBLive! Value.

• Frag.Com interviews Jim "H2H" Elson, talking to "The Father of QuakeCon" from QuakeCon '99. They've also posted an interview with Craig Sparks of NetGamesUSA, who are doing stats for the tournament Speaking of community-type interviews, Clan World Network interviews Cali Girl, talking to the "Diva of Gaming News"...
• GuildBoss Official Homepage offers what they call the "ultimate guild and clan management utility for multiplayer games such as Diablo, Quake, EverQuest, StarCraft, Ultima Online, etc..
• PlanetShogo has posted a new desktop wallpaper with "the women of Shogo" (no, it's not like a Playboy thing)...
• There's an Extreme Trial Motocross demo on 3DFiles...

QuakeCon '99 is upon us, loony flew out this afternoon, and I fly at dawn (whenever I say that I toss my dashing silk scarf over my dashing shoulder). Since we settled into a more normal work mode here upon the installation of loony's ISDN line I think we've been doing a great job of keeping up with a heavier than normal news flow, but I won't pretend that we'll be able to cover things quite as well from the road this weekend (though the weekends tend to be slow, and GenCon and QuakeCon may be the big stories anyway). We will do our darndest, however, and hope for your understanding (and hopefully we can pick up a nice tidbit or three from the show to make up for it). If you're down at QuakeCon, we hope to see you there... look for us waiting for our check at Denny's.

Off to QuakeCon '99!

Link of the Day: Creating in DOS. Thanks $ikander
Bonus Link: CNN - Dutch postman suspended for working in mini-skirt. Thanks devilbunny. No word on whether he's going to use the famous "But I'm Scottish" defense.
Image of the Day: Tempest by Dhabih Eng. Thanks Kaserman. Dang that's good.