3DFiles has posted a new patch for the American version of Hidden & Dangerous. This patch brings it up to version 1.1, and has a whole bunch of changes, including fixes to the sniper mode, improved latency issues, and more.

Power Gamerz has posted a Q&A with Unreal designer, Jazz Jackrabbit trainer, and guidance counselor Cliff Bleszinski, talking about the future of 3D engines, upcoming games, and of course, Britney Spears.

Arena Universe has posted a Q&A session with everyone's favorite Quake III: Arena poster boy and 3D modeller Paul Steed, talking about those things Paul loves to talk about: women, making models, and women.

Dynamix' Tinman updated his .plan with word that he's released his mod for Starsiege: TRIBES, called Hunters. It's available for download now over at TRIBESPlayers.com, and includes eight new maps to go along with it. Also released is Eric Lanz' new mod Rabbit, a server side only mod that's described as "a classic game of smear the guy with the red triangle on his head".

The Stratos Group has posted a comprehensive guide to System Shock 2 (which is on store shelves now, according to numerous reports we've received). The guide covers almost all of the weapons (still a work in progress), all of the psi powers, and a whole lot more. It's available in flat HTML format, or in Adobe Acrobat PDF format for offline reading.

SpecForce.net has posted two new screenshots from Zombie's upcoming tactical shooter Spec Ops II: Green Berets.

3DRealms' George Broussard updated his .plan this evening with word that they're looking to hire a new programmer to work on Duke Nukem Forever (that's the game, not the length of time expected for the position). Here's just a teeny bit of this massive .plan update:

We're looking to add a 3rd programmer to the team to help Chris and Nick with the workload. This will be a variety packed position, and we'll discuss the exact tasks to be done during the interview. We'll be updating the "Get Hired" section on our web site ASAP, but for now, here are the relevant details, in order of preference.

MAJOR REQUIREMENTS (In order or preference)

* Professional experience with the Unreal engine preferred. If you are working on an Unreal engine game now, contact us. I bet we can work something out. You'd be surprised how flexible we are. Even if you're happy where you are you owe it to yourself to consider the option. After all, what could look better on your resume than Duke Nukem Forever, a sure blockbuster and easily one of the most anticipated games in production.

* Professional experience on a major 3D engine, or having worked on an FPS game before.

* User Community experience, working on killer moods for Unreal, Quake, Half-Life,or other major games. The more popular the mod the better. If you're the new up and comer, give us a shout.

Stomped's official Aliens vs. Predator site has gone live, and features (in addition to one genuinely stylin' interface) all kinds of information about the game, message boards, and even a game server listing (although as of this writing there were none listed). Thanks Redwood for the tip.

NGNetwork has posted an interview with Raven's Kenn Hoekstra, talking about their Quake II engine title Soldier of Fortune (which was demonstrated at last weekend's QuakeCon). Amongst the topics covered are GHOUL (SoF's special modelling system), and the multiplayer options they're working on, including the revelation that they're going to try to ship with Capture the Flag support.

The Unreal Technology Page has undergone an update, by way of a True-Type Font Importing Tutorial by Epic's Jack Porter (thanks PlanetUnreal). Apparently Unreal mod makers can use any True Type font in their mods (although it should be pointed out that many popular fonts are not public domain, and therfore cannot be freely distributed). Here are the details:

The TTF importer allows you to convert a Windows true-type font of a particular size into an Unreal font which you can then use to draw in-game text. The Unreal engine now has support for rendering anti-aliased fonts, and the TTF importer allows you to import the anti-aliasing from a Windows font.

Unreal has had the ability to import true-type fonts for use in-game since version 224, although there was a bug in the 224 font importer code which meant all the fonts you imported ended up as MS Sans Serif. Be sure you're using Unreal 225f or later, or you may have problems.

With TRIBESCon only three days away, Datumplane::Starsiege has posted seventeen things those planning on attending should make sure they take care of before showing up. Amongst them are such notables as "back up your registry" and "bring headphones". The list is good for any LAN party, so I recommend checking it out whether you're planning on attending TRIBESCon or not.

Kingpin guide on Captured.com that tries to teach you how to make crime pay when playing Xatrix' Quake II-engine game of gangsta-living.

AGN's QuakeCon '99 Coverage is up with AGN's Josh Krane's overview, heavily illustrated with photos (including a shot of the winner (loony) and loser (Bobbi) of loony and his sister's deathmatch. Also, QuakeCon 99 Tidbits on BetaBites giving Lockup's personal impressions of the event along with several photographs. Also, The Flagship Engineering Room's QuakeCon wrap-up is online as well, with their own recap of the event scatted across the front page of their site. Finally, Team Abuse's QuakeCon impressions and photos are up as well.

Chess king Tom Hall has posted a new installment to his developer's diary over at Anachronox.com (thanks, as usual, to ION's Daily Informant). To find it, hit "Game Information" followed by "Design Diary" on the funky interface. This installment has Tom ranting about how cool the interface, cinematics, music, and well, everything about Anachronox is.

Version Mk.Ia of Roger Wilco, the real-time voice communication shareware program that works with Starsiege: TRIBES and Quake amongst other games, has been released. This version has a slew of fixes and enhancements - for specific features, check out the official Roger Wilco site.

According to FGN Online, "a member of the staff at Surreal Software" has confirmed that the level editor for Drakan will be available for download soon after it hits store shelves. The game has already gone gold, and should be popping up near you Real Soon Now.

The Pulpit has posted an interview with Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin of Xatrix, talking about the K7, various 3D chipsets and other hardware issues, and how they relate to Kingpin (thanks Billy).

Following up on their Q3Test 2 strategy guide, Quake 3 Source has posted their guide to Q3Test 1, with a slew of strategies for the first map in Q3Test.

System Shock 2 has shipped to stores, as reflected in this press release that EA has been sending out. Look for it on shelves near you within the next couple of days.

Xatrix' Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin updated his .plan with details on how the new download code that was implemented into Kingpin works. Here's what he had to say:

...what I did was break the file being sent, into "chunks" of 1024 bytes. This way the client can keep a record of which "chunks" it has recieved, giving it the ability to have multiple pending requests for data at once.Anyway, that's the basic principle. Some obstacles here were finding the right balance between sending too many requests, and not sending enough. This was handled by adjusting the maximum number of pending requests with the current RATE setting, which worked out pretty well, and didn't involve a lot of effort.

It was an interesting experiment, and one I'm happy to say was a reasonable success. I still have one issue involving duplicate chunks being recieved, which doesn't cause any harm other than wasting some bandwidth. I think it has to do with requests timing out on the client before the server has had a chance to send it. Nothing major, but something I'll no doubt make sure gets cleared up before our next game ships. :)

There are some new TRIBES Extreme screenshots on the Tribes Players site. Thanks Datumplane::Starsiege. TRIBES Extreme is an upcoming version of Starsiege TRIBES that will offer enhanced single-player capabilities.

Gamecenter's: QuakeCon 99 a Hit is a recounting by our old pal crash, now a high-falooting game journalist, and all . The story includes a detailed recounting of the event, and is illustrated with several photos. Also, QuakeCity's QuakeCon 99 Coverage offers a discussion of Curved Surfaces in Q3A based on the Workshop by Paul Jaquays.

There are six new exclusive Gothic screenshots on Glide Underground showing off gameplay from this upcoming action/RPG from Piranha-Bytes.

Here's a reminder of the two chat sessions later today: Inside Mac Games Chat is planning a live online chat session with Bungie's Brent Pease to talk about progress on Bungie's upcoming third-person fighting game, Oni. The session is tonight at 10:00 PM Eastern (7:00 Pacific). To join visit the page using a Java-capable browser. Also, with tomorrow the release date of the first-person RPG sequel, System Shock 2, Irrational Games' Ken Levine is hosting a live chat at 9:00 PM EDT on the IRC server polaris.starchat.net in #system`shock`2.

The King of the Server page has a new version 3.0 of the King of the Server mod for Quake II. KOTS is the deathmatch mod that saves your stats, inventory, ammo, armor, weapons, and health across games, maps, and servers. The point-release is anticipation of their upcoming Armory dealie, which will let you stock up on ammo, armor, weapons, heal yourself, and "buy" items from a website to be used in your next KOTS game. Stay tuned for more on that (including its debut) next week.

The CIDE page has a new version 1.4 of this teamplay mod for Unreal. New to this release is the ability to pick up corpses and use them as shields (woah!), a fire extinguisher, signal distortion device, grenades for the Marine's rifle, binoculars, AntiTank Cannon, Arm Mounted Machine Gun, Dragon Deflector Device and combination ammo boxes.

PlanetStarSiege has posted an uber-set of GameSpy tabs for Starsiege TRIBES that can now search out no less than 23 mods and mission types.

Club-i - Half Life TFC Festival '99 has word on a LAN Party across North America on August 21, 1999 that will accommodate 300 People in locations in five different cities.

• Glide Underground previews Wartorn describing it as the "first ever 3D RTS Tournament game" (like an RTS Q3A or UT). The preview features some exclusive screenshots...
• There's a Starfleet Command Chat Log on Strategy Planet...
• Exxtreme3D interviews Gabriel Knight 3's Jane Jensen...
• There are a couple more new Slave Zero screenshots on 3D Action Planet...

I was tooling through the archives and found that a year ago marks the appearance of an article called Return to Low Res that offered the theory that games might start incorporating lower-resolution textures to create a better overall effect. That article sparked no small debate at the time, and thought it would be interesting for those interested in the discussion at the time to be reminded of it, since the answer to which way this trend has gone since then is pretty clear (perhaps due to the high-resolution textures). Also certainly worthy of note, it was right around now in 1996 that a bunch of shakeups in the gaming industry occurred, including the departure of several 3D Realms employees, and the storied parting of the ways for The Romero and id Software that resulted in the formation of Ritual and ION Storm (at the time Hipnotic and Dream Design). This ends the history lesson for the day.

Link of the Day: NASA - Eclipse 99 for today's Total Solar Eclipse (just don't look directly at your monitor). Thanks Ryan.