As part of their coverage of Ground Zero, the LAN party going on in NYC (under the shadow of the Blue Tower, of course), AVault has posted MP3 interviews with several key players in the tournament, including DieharD (winner of the QuakeCon '99 tournament), Sujoy, Lilith (winner of the Female Frag Fest last night), and others.

This week's Unreal Tournament Level of the Week has been posted over at GT's official Unreal Tournament site (thanks PlanetUnreal). This week's level is "AS High Speed", an assault mission that takes place on a train. It's pretty cool stuff, and there's three screenshots posted to show it off.

GameSpot has posted a massive preview of Blizzard's "RPS" game, Warcraft III. The preview contains four new pieces of concept art, a complete rundown of the known races in the game (there are still at least two other races that haven't been revealed as of yet), a detailed description of the demo they were given, and if that's not enough for you, an interview with Rob Pardo, the producer and senior designer on the game. Thanks yet again to the tireless Frans from 3D Action Gamers.

GameSpot has posted another one of their "ten best" articles, this time focusing on the ten best heroes in gaming (thanks to the ever vigilant Frans for pointing it out). Notables on the list are Duke Nukem, and Garret from Thief: the Dark Project (Wolf3D's BJ is sadly missing from the list, as is everyone's favorite silent hero: Gordon Freeman).

As promised earlier, GameCenter has posted the demo for Thief Gold, a "special edition" of Thief: The Dark Project that should be hitting store shelves next month (thanks again to Frans). The demo is available as a massive 70MB download which includes the cinematics, or as a less portly 42MB version without them.

Gearbox Software's Rob Heironimus updated his .plan with a brief announcement regarding the music that will be featured in the upcoming Half-Life add-on Opposing Force for those of you who can tell the difference between "hardcore beat box" and "ambient-techno-trance" (I plead total ignorance on this one, I'm sure it's quite obvious for many of you). There's also a startling revelation about Randy Pitchford's career before joining the software industry (insert tongue firmly in cheek before reading):

I'd just like to make a short announcement about the direction we'll be taking with the musical score on Opposing Force. We've dropped the ambient-techno-trance-style music of the original game, and have decided to go with 100% hardcore beat box, featuring the vocal talents of Randy "Grandmaster Phat" Pitchford.

It's widely known that Randy was a talented magician before entering the ranks of game development, but very few people are aware of the fact that he was actually the fourth member of the popular '80s group "Fat Boys." We realize this is a bold move for the type of game we're making, and that many people may disagree with such a drastic change in genre. However, I assure you that once you've heard Randy's dope beats in the context of the game, you'll want to bust out your Members Only(tm) jacket and your parachute pants every time you fire up Half-Life. As a testament to the viability of beat box in action games, the one and only Valve Software is rumored to be featuring the beat box grooves of their own Gary McTaggart on the upcoming release of Team Fortress 2.

/Snicker of the Rogue Spear Retreat sends along word that by entering "Rogue Spear" 0 3000 to the games.txt file for Roger Wilco, you can enable support for the Rogue Spear Demo in the popular voice communication software.

GamePower has posted a preview of Terminal Reality's Nocturne, with a general writeup of the game (thanks Billy "spooky" Wilson). There's nothing in the preview that can't be found out by playing the demo, but if you can make it through the first four pages, you'll be treated to an interview with Jeff Mills, the production lead on the game (a role which involves both artistic and programming duties).

According to Looking Glass' official Thief: The Dark Project page, the demo for Thief Gold will be released this weekend on GameCenter, and will be available there for two days only (thanks Frans).

Matrox has released new drivers for their G400 series of graphics cards (thanks Byron Hinson). In addition, they've also released a new beta OpenGL ICD, which should give a minor performance boost to GL powered games. Specifically Matrox says these have been optimized for Quake II, Q3Test, Half-Life and Unreal.

• 3DWars has posted an interview with Scott Sellers and Brian Burke, 3dfx' CTO and PR manager respectively, discussing next-generation technology.
• She's the Baddest Fragger is the name of an article up at Wired News, that provides a full profile of Anne "Lilith" Chang, the winner of last night's Female Frag Fest tournament (thanks [SOG]Nataraj).
• Speedy3D has posted an interview with Bernd Lehahn of EgoSoft, discussing their space shooter X, which has already been released in Germany and is set for a release this month here in the US.

3DActionPlanet has posted a picture showing off the lead character from Raven's Quake II engine title Soldier of Fortune - the first published, to the best of my knowledge.

Pandemic has updated their official Battlezone II site with two new unit profiles: the mortar bike and scion scout. There's details on each one, and swanky animated GIFs showing off the models (thanks GhostFire).

BeNews has posted a report from ECTS, talking about the stuff available for the BeOS at the show (thanks Pete). There were pretty much only three games of note that were shown, Civilization: Call to Power, Quake II and Quake III: Arena. Here's what the author had to say about the Be version of Q3A:

Quake III was running at the booth, alongside Quake II. At the moment it is very very beta. The frame-rate is quite bad and there is something wrong with the mouse. This is however no indication of how it will be when it is finished. The main thing is that it runs and that it is looking good. People were generally very impressed by the mere fact that it was running on BeOS already.

Well, today's the day that last week's contest was supposed to end, but due to the fact that not a single person managed to get all three questions right, well, we've had to extend the deadline. You've got until Tuesday now kids, so head over there and enter if you think you know your stuff.

• This week's Matrox Enhanced Game of the Week is Carmageddon: Death Race 2000, and they've posted a handful of screenshots that show off the new environment bump mapping in the game.
• PCArena has posted some new screenshots from Jane's USAF.
• GASource has posted a handful of new shots from InteractVision's BHunter.

Sierra has announced more of the "all-star" level designers who are contributing deathmatch levels to the Half-Life add-on Opposing Force. In no particular order, they are Richard "Zdim" Carlson, David "Kevlar" Kelvin, Marin "Kandyman" Gazzari, and Eric Reuter. These four join Levelord, who was announced a while back. If you don't know who some of these guys are (shame on you), check the press release, which has full details on all of them.

PlayNOW! previews Soldier of Fortune looking ahead at Raven Software's upcoming mercenary game currently being constructed using a modified version of the Quake II engine. The preview discusses the game, as well as its background. For instance, did you know that rather than play just any mercenary in the game, you play a specific mercenary? Here's a quote about that:

The main character, believe it or not, is based on an actual person of the same name - John Mullins. John is an ex-mercenary and highly decorated soldier with an extremely impressive record and amazing military history. The in-game character is particularly well developed and (apparently) not terribly unlike that of Johns true identity. Part of the reason Raven Software contracted John is because a major focus in the game design of SoF was to make gameplay as immersive and realistic as possible in every conceivable way.

Datumplane::Starsiege is reporting that StarsiegePlayers.com has posted a tutorial by Dr. Awkward on how to make a mission in Starsiege, Dynamix' latest edition in their giant robot combat series that began with Earthsiege. The article also has a zipped walkthrough for download that contains the mission from the tutorial, and a printable .rtf version of the text.

3DNow!'s Drakan: Order of the Flame Interview talks with Surreal's Stu Denman discussing how Drakan takes advantage of the 3DNow!™ instruction set, whether it was difficult optimizing for 3DNow!, and more details about the game's support for AMD's special 3D instruction set.

FGNOnline has posted a Q&A with GearBox Software's Brian Martel, the art director on their official add-on pack for Half-Life, Opposing Force. There isn't much in the way of new information here, but he does describe the new weapons in detail.

Strategy Gaming Online has posted an interview with Robin Walker of Valve/Team Fortress Software, talking about a variety of issues with Team Fortress 2. There's a lot of good stuff in here, especially for those of you planning on making custom TF2 maps, so check it out.

GameSpot UK has posted an enormous preview of Unreal Tournament, which the author says, "rocks his world". It's very much hands-on, and loaded to the hilt with screenshots to boot (thanks Billy "wacky" Wilson).

GameSpot News has posted a brief preview of SpecOps II: Rangers Lead the Way, that's based on an alpha build of the game they received. It's a short preview to be sure, but they've posted nine new screenshots along side it.

A new official release of the Crystal Space engine (0.14) has been released, and is available for download in all its various formats. This new version updates the OpenGL and Direct3D renderers, adds support for vertex based volumetric fog, adds a new LOD system and more.

Well Rounded Entertainment's FreeSpace 2 Preview is up offering a hands-on look ahead at Volition's upcoming sequel to Descent FreeSpace: The Great War. In addition to accounts of gameplay in the space opera, the piece also offers nine new screenshots.

The Jumbot site has a new version 0.5 of the Jumbot for Half-Life. The new release fixes a bunch of bugs, and adds some tweaks, including my favorite: "Bots try harder not to blow themselves up," which is always helpful. Word is the new release also eliminates the crashing problem users on certain systems were experiencing. TheFatal says: "If you were previously getting crashes and this version no longer crashes, please send me an e-mail to let me know. If it does still crash, don't bother sending e-mail, because I will already be dead and hanging from a towel on my bedroom door."

This Brian Love Chat Transcript on DiabloII.net or Brian Love Chat transcript on MacGamer's Ledge each give the play-by-play for last night's chat with Blizzard's man of Love talking about "new Mac efforts for Blizzard, WarCraft III, Diablo II, the upcoming Diablo II Beta test, and much more."

ATFW's ECTS '99 wrap-up concentrates on all the space sims at this year's show, and Sharky Extremes' ECTS Highlights are up, here's Sharky's description: "We've got dibs (and shots) of Rage Software's Incoming Forces, Midnight GT, Offroad and Hostile Waters. Then there's Interplay's Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Klingon Academy, then X-COM Alliance by Hasbro. To wrap it up we look at Acclaim's Trickstyle with a brief look at the Hardware goings on. And yes, we explain what those Hari Krishna were really doing at the show."

Once again, Frans is the man when it comes to reviews:

• Gamecenter reviews Drakan Order of the Flame. Again by Paul Schuytema.
• Ingava reviews Drakan: Order of the Flame.
• Games Domain Review reviews Shadow Man.
• GameSpot UK reviews Driver.
• AGN3D reviews System Shock 2.
• PC.IGN.COM reviews Outcast.

• i2e2, describes itself as "the first international standards organization and Web site for the competitive gaming community. This fall, the company plans to introduce competition standards and universal rankings, as well as begin the sanctioning of professional gaming events." The newly-launched project is the brainchild of former online events manager of Total Entertainment Network Joe Perez, and former commissioner of the CyberAthlete Professional League Frank Cabanski...
• The GameSpy 3D Jobs page has word of their hunt for a Gaming Site Content Manager...
• Sega unleashes a 128-bit monster on the gaming world is a CNN story on the big console release yesterday...

Well I actually did end up picking up a Dreamcast of my own yesterday instead of just checking out MrCoffee's. I'm not really a console person myself, but so many rave reports were rolling in, that I decided to take advantage of the availability of units at the local Software Etc. where they had a bunch that weren't preordered because they were only open a short time when the chain cut off pre-orders, but they still got their full share (apparently available units were the rarity, with sellouts reported all over). The graphics and ergonomics on the new system are pretty unbelievable, certainly raising the bar for this kind of gaming. We mostly played with the fighting games last night: the boxing game "Ready to Rumble" is the early favorite, Soul Calibur is cool for multiplayer, but the arcde mode had to be the easiest single player game I've played (I beat it while my friends were digesting their pizza). I wonder what the Internet stuff is like? I'm told this site is readable, if a bit wonky on it, so at least we're compatible.

Link of the Day: American Express Blue Card. Thanks Agrajag. An actual new Amex service. Don't leave the Blue Tower without it.
News Stories of the Day: Wired reports a tiny startup is set to launch an engine that requires no fuel, produces no pollution, and is free to run, and ABCNEWS reports on The World's Smallest Motors. Both from SlashDot (thanks Randy Waterhouse). They both seem worth mentioning for perspective, as others claim to be changing the world with things like video cards and games.