GameCenter has posted a preview of Sierra's upcoming tactical shooter SWAT 3 (thanks VE). The preview contains a number of images which show off the game, and one can spot a definite Rainbow Six influence in them.

SinEd Omega, a new version of SinEd based on the source code, has been released and is available for download at the Sincest site. This new version adds a 2015 texture submenu, so all the mission pack textures show up separately, a command prompt option for easy access to the map directory, as well as several other enhancements and fixes.

GamePen has posted an interview with Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford, with Geoff Keighley asking intelligent questions about their upcoming official Half-Life add-on Oposing Force. Here's an excerpt with some info about the NPC interaction in the game:

Patrick, our programmer, has spent a good deal of time making the squad combat very fun in OpFor. The first big difference you’ll notice is that instead of just two NPC’s being able to follow the player, Cpl. Shephard can gather a whole squad together and bring them into action. Sometimes you’ll be able to talk to other soldiers over the radios you find scattered around the base and work out how to link up with them. Other times, you’ll come across a fight in progress and can jump in to help your team. We spent some time improving the AI so that the new larger squad of soldiers can act more intelligently. I hope that our programmers can spend even more time with it before release to make them even better at working as a group and avoiding damaging the player and each other.

Version 0.4a build 3 of wHeretic, a Win32 port of Heretic has been released (thanks Billy "hermetic" Wilson). This version adds new config file options, fixes issues with the MIDI code, and has a bunch of other new optimizations and fixes. To show off the new code, there are some benchmarks showing its improvements over previous versions posted on the wHeretic home page.

PCGamer Online has posted a preview of Sinistar: Unleashed, the 3D remake of the 1983 arcade space shooting classic, complete with a handful of new screenshots.

The Official System Shock 2 site has been updated, and the FAQ now features questions related to the upcoming patch as well as answers to common tech support issues. Here are the details we received regarding the upcoming patch from Irrational Games' Ken Levine, just so you know what to expect:

The primary issue to be addressed in the patch is the addition of multiplayer capabilities. The patched game will support 4 player co-operative multiplay. The patch will also include several bug fixes to problems that have become apparent since the game shipped.

In response to requests, the patch will enable some new configuration variables which will allow you to adjust gameplay elements such as weapon degradation and monster respawning. These gameplay adjustments are not recommended or supported by Irrational Games, Looking Glass Studios or Electronic Arts.

The patch is currently in final testing. It will be released as soon as we have finished the verification process.

Saw on Datumplane::Starsiege that the official TRIBES Extreme Development page is up on The Tribes Players Page, where they have also posted a "Would You Enter A Renegades League/Ladder" poll on their screenshots page.

There is now a new version 0.3 of The Jumbot for Half-Life. In the new release, bots have full use of ladders, some bugs are squashed, and the bots perform better with waypoints under water.

Freespace2.org has posted an interview with Dave Baranec, lead programmer on Freespace 2 at Volition. The interview covers a variety of topics, including the technological differences between the Freespace 2 engine, and a FPS engine like Unreal or Quake's.

Intel exiting stand-alone graphics chip business is a Reuters story that confirms the CNET News.com report from the other day (story) that Intel is leaving the graphics chip market after only one year. Thanks The Adrenaline Vault.

A new version of hlds_l_admin, the Half-Life Dedicated Server Admin program for Linux has been released (thanks Planet Half-Life). This version adds compatibility for the new 3.0.1.4 server.

Ridah made an update to the Kingpin Beta Testing page announcing that: "The Kingpin patch beta testing program is now complete. Thank you to all who participated, and especially to those who helped out with bug reports, and suggestions. Look for the official v1.20 patch to surface soon, on the official Kingpin Page."

Some strategic patching to be done: Rex from AVault sends word that the The Adrenaline Vault Downloads Patch page has an 11-some MB patch to update Dungeon Keeper 2 to version 1.5 (with a link to the original download location, as well). It is warned that the update will affect your saved games, so read up on the patch before installing it. Also, a version 3.22 Braveheart Patch has been released by Eidos, also for the North American version of the game ("if the box the game came in has a flap, you have the correct version"). This patch updates your game from version 3.09. Again a caveat about saved games -- your saved games will no longer work after applying the patch.

The Sincest For SiN page has the public release of the source-code for their Sin front-end/launcher with the terribly politically incorrect name.

Pandemic Studios has posted a new screenshot "of an ISDF Assault Tank tak(ing) one in the face." Thanks The Battlezone Nav Beacon. BattleZone2, currently in development, is the sequel to the critically acclaimed BattleZone, offering a blend of first-person action, and real-time strategy.

The DiabloII.Net Network sends word that Blizzard has released a pair of photos of prototypes of the just-announced Diablo II action figures (I love stuff like this--I still desperately need one of those Quake II Tanks). Here's a shot of the Barbarian, and here's a shot of the mummy.

Why Being a Computer Game Developer Sucks is a Slashdot feature that's generating a great deal of interest (at least judging from all the mail about it we're receiving--thanks Ant for being the first). The piece is written by Talin, a veteran game developer with over 15 years experience in the industry to back his premise.

N64Planet Interviews Joe Viviano of Raster Productions talking about their work on the Nintendo 64 port of Quake II, which also benefited from the contribution of the rogues over at Rogue.

Volition's FreeSpace2 site has two more new images of ships from their upcoming space-opera sequel, FreeSpace 2. Thanks Voodoo Extreme. The shots are presented as traditional screenshots, and alternatively as "an actual 3D model embedded within the web page using MetaStream technology," which requires the installation of the MetaStream plugin.

The mainstream gaming violence article of the week is Violence Is Where the Action Is from today's LA Times (thanks devilbunny). The piece talks about games like Grand Theft Auto, and Postal, and finishes off discussing Xatrix' Kingpin: Life of Crime. Also sent along by devilbunny is Linux gamesters, a Boston Globe article talking of the spread of penguin-powered PCs in the gaming world.

Alienware Technology is making version 1.05 of First Contact available, which is the first public beta of their new program to offer real-time voice communication to players of multiplayer games over the Internet. Games must be played on their servers, info on where to play will be sent to applicants along with a password to activate the program. Currently their test servers are all running TeamFortress Classic. This version has a 15-day evaluation period.

GASource has posted three new screenshots, showing off the outdoor levels in Venom. They're also reporting that GSC will release a Venom demo on September 1st that will feature two playable levels.

Westwood has posted a "mini-movie" from Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, showing off gameplay footage from this soon-to-be-in-stores game. It's also available on OnlineCombat.com, if Westwood's site's a little slow.

• Adventure Gamer has posted a preview of The Longest Journey, which seems to have left quite an impression on the author.
• RPGXtreme has posted a brief preview of Septerra Core, a Japanese style RPG that Monolith is set to publish.
• GameLinks has posted a preview of Soldier of Fortune.
• Gamer's Central has previewed Wizardry 8, complete with eight new screenshots.

Gamer's Central has posted an interview with Ken Levine, the president of Irrational Games (the folk behind System Shock 2). Topics discussed include the possibility of a Shock 3 ("I wouldn't be surprised if System Shock 3 eventually happened"), his start in the industry, and other games he's playing.

id Software's Paul Steed sent along another version of the Quake III Arena Visor/Slash image he sent along the other day (story), saying "That image I gave you was screwed up for some reason. It may not be worth your time, but here's a better one..." Not sure what was wrong, but since he went to the trouble to send it along (and you know how artists are about their work), I certainly thought it was worth passing along. Here's a copy of the whopping 4 MB bitmap on Blue's News FTP (902 KB zipped), and here are the original description, the thumbnail (linked to a leaner, but still spiffy, jpeg), and the new caption Paul Sent along yesterday:

This is something I did for an advertisement idea to be in magazines sometime in the next few months or so. With the exception of a few minor Photoshop enhancements, the characters are rendered from their in-game model selves featuring cool Kenneth Scott skinnery. Makes a great windows background...

Visor: "Baby, why do we fight so?
Slash: "Oh shut up and kiss me you fool."

Stu from Surreal just sent an email to say the problem pointed out in the story below this one has been fixed (I think his saying the problem would be fixed "shortly" has proven accurate). Here's the deal:

The Mplayer master server has now been fixed. All available servers should now be showing up on everyone's Join Game server list within Drakan! Note that people using GameSpy (which queried the GameSpy master server) did not experience the problem.

Drakan.Net is reporting on a post to their forum by Stu from Surreal about a problem with the in-game server browser in the newly-released Drakan: Order of the Flame (thanks Redwood). Here's the poop on the problem (BTW, they point out the fix he describes will be on the Master Server, not as a client patch):

There is a problem with the master server where when using the in-game Drakan browser, some servers do not show up on the list as valid. The problem should be fixed shortly. In the mean time, you can connect to the following servers by adding them to the list manually (using Add Server):

38.169.194.101
209.20.146.100
209.20.146.105

The Adrenaline Vault Previews FreeSpace 2 giving a thorough look ahead at the sequel to Descent FreeSpace: The Great War (the Descent part of the name has been dropped). The piece describes the new sequel as having more plot than the original, and shows off the improved graphics with eight screenshots.

3D-Unlimited interviews Jarrod Showers talking to the Raven Software animator about his work on Raven's upcoming game of mercenariness, Soldier of Fortune.

Sharky Extreme's New Blade Shots presents some new artwork and screenshots and Rebel Act Studios' upcoming 3D first-person shooter/RPG.

Tonight's Lilith & Eve is going to be a star-studded (and Steed-studded) tribute to QuakeCon '99. Here's the deal:

Friday night at 7:00pm EST, the ladies of Lilith & Eve (http://www.allgames.com/lilitheve) hit QuakeCon in force, and tonight and next week we have the footage to show from it!! Among other things, Paul Steed from id Software talks to the ladies all about his models in Q3:A, the folks from the OGL speak with Vangie about their ladders, you'll see some new gameplay and interviews about both Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek: Voyager from Raven Software (and you just gotta see the Borg!), interviews with lots of people from the gaming community (Redwood, Bill "Crash" McClendon, and PMS-BostonChick, to name a few), and lots lots more!!

Watch the show live using your Real Player (http://www.real.com ), and join us for chat by joining server chat.pseudo.com, channel #allgames.com!

• Sharky Extreme's Matrox Millennium G400 In Depth looks at Trilinear Filtering and Mip-mapping and their effect on visual quality and performance.
• Overclocking The Intel Pentium 3 To 800Mhz By The Tech Zone. Zoom! You smell something burning?

The King of the Server page has a new version 3.1 of the KOTS deathmatch mod for Quake II. KOTS saves your stats, inventory, ammo, armor, weapons, and health across games, maps, and servers. The new release offers several new features, including map voting.

The Sincest For SiN page has a new version 0.5 of the Weapons of Fury mod for Sin. the new release adds a variable that lets the server admin choose the weapon order. There's also now a command to the clients go back a weapon (in case they run out of ammo), and the weapons no longer spawn when the map starts.

• Killjoys has posted five new screenshots from the upcoming 3D RTS, Wartorn...
• The Habitat interviews the Mod Makers talking with several mod creators like Riever (Redemption bot and Sinmod), Gooseman (Action Half-Life, Action Quake 2 and Counterstrike for Half-Life), Tren (Tren's Blood 2 mods like FXEnhacer) and Crescent Moon Software who made the "Shadows of Na Pali" mod for Unreal...
• The Adrenaline Vault Downloads Patch has a new patch for TRI's new flight dealie, Fly!...
• In Honor of Ripley Founder of the Violent Femmes, May '98, Tragically lost August 11, 1999. Our condolences to her friends and family...

In a startling turn of events, I believe I may have stumbled across the answer to the question of why the news page here reloads a second time for some readers. I was noodling around with the settings in Internet Explorer 5, and I noticed a setting under the view menu called "encoding." When I changed this from Western-yada to auto-select, the news page seemed to reload, so if you are experiencing difficulties, this may help (though it may not, because a similar test by loony didn't seem to duplicate those results). If this fixes the problem for you, I'd appreciate a quick note to that effect if you have the time (or if it didn't help you for that matter). I also received a couple of note from lynx readers pointing out the news page was generating an error... turns out there was a bad link in the no-frames version of the site (which shows these were users of an older version of lynx), it's fixed now (sorry about that).

With all the new stuff going on here, the Messageboards, and all, it slipped my mind that loony is heading off on Saturday to party down with the Quake III Tour Bus crew, so I'm going to try to relax a bit today before I'm abandoned (all these changes and new features are so exciting I've been working non-stop lately, so I should pace myself better). By the way, in light of the stories that were mentioned here recently regarding ethics and journalism, we have made my long-standing policy of disclosing when accepting travel or accommodations from outside companies an official thing, so when we travel somewhere (like QuakeCon, for instance), unless it's stated otherwise, you can assume that expenses came out of the meager Blue's News travel budget. In the case of loony's trip, id Software is not paying for loony to fly down to Texas to join the bus tour, though he apparently will be able to share a hotel room with one of the folks from Activision, and Anna has promised to feed him if he's good. id invited us to join the tour for a bit, and it seemed like it would be fun enough to be worth flying down for (I just can't figure out how I lost the coin toss, when loony told me it came up heads I dropped the telephone in shock).

Link of the Day: New Jolt Flavors (thanks Alex Bischoff). Great decision, since Jolt is a great idea, but that taste is a crime against cola (before you Jolt fans flame me, remember you aren't drinking it for the taste).