A fairly busy day for Kingpin news has our third story this afternoon/evening related to Xatrix' Quake II-engine life o' naughtiness game, as version 1.0 of the Kingpin Competition on the Reactive Software site. The mod adds the ability to elect server admins, set up and start timed matches, and "on-the-fly" changes of teamplay modes between DM and bagman. The mod also fixes a "bug" in bagman where money does not disappear when a player suicides, eliminating what they call an increasingly abused loophole in the game. This is a server-only mod, so clients need not apply.

There are five new BattleZone II screenshots on PlanetBattlezone showing off scenes from the upcoming first-person strategy sequel from Pandemic Studios. The shots are hi-res 1024x768 jobbies, and they say there are more on the way, so don't say you weren't warned.

An update to Poisonville's Kingpin FAQ adds loads of information to this unofficial resource to help answer questions about Kingpin: Life of Crime, Xatrix' criminal first-person shooter. KungFu, the FAQ's maintainer, points out this is "as close as you can get to an official FAQ," since he worked on Kingpin (who knew?).

The NOP website has a new and improved version 3.2 of NOP, the statistics tool that supports Q3Test, the Unreal Tournament Demo, and Half-Life. The new release adds support for Half-Life, H-L CounterStrike, H-L TeamFortress Classic, and H-L Jailbreak. Also new is ASP support to search player database and display player statistics, a bug-fix for the problem that caused NOP to crash while parsing UTDemo logfiles, and more.

Richard Turnbull sends word that ACID REIGN, the homepage of the Blitz Engine, has a new Blitz Engine SDK V0.02 Beta for download. The new SDK offers "a few major bug fixes and many minor improvements." In the new release, fogs curves correctly and standard volumetric fog has been added, the dynamic lighting system has been fixed so that curves light correctly, and smaller additions include inverse mouse support, more console commands, and the ability to export levels at any point in the program.

A new version 0.2 of RiEvEr's (or would that be RiEvEr'S?) Kraze! bot for Kingpin is now available on The Kraze! News. Thanks Poisonville. This new versions adds the beginnings of teamplay support to this version of his bot code for Xatrix' Kingpin: Life of Crime.

There's a Codemasters interview on GA-Source with more on the future of the Navy SEALs game that looks like it is going to be produced after all, following a period when its future was in jeopardy due to the reorganizations at Sierra. The Q&A talks with Tony Hernandez, the producer at Codemasters on this first-person tactical simulation based on the exploits of ex-Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko.

A new version 1.29 beta 9a of OpenGL DooM Legacy is available on the newly-relocated OpenGL DooM Legacy Homepage. Thanks Frans at 3D Action Gamers. The new changes are minor: The archive now includes the proper doom3.wad for those who had an out-of-date version, and the automap bug has been fixed. Any other expected changes and fixes will wait for the next release.

There's a post on Descent3D with a workaround to help those who may be having problems upgrading to the just released full version of Descent 3 1.2 after previously applying the beta 1.2 patch. The fix involves mucking around in the registry, so caution is advised, but if you can't get the patch working properly, desperate measures may be called for.

3D Action Planet previews Wheel Of Time with a hands-on look ahead at Legend Entertainment's upcoming Unreal-engine game based on the best selling series of Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan. To accompany the preview they've snapped nine new screenshots.

GameSpy.com interviews Gabe Newell talking with the Valve Software managing director about how the impact of the user community on the success of present and future games. The quote that begins the piece makes it clear that Gabe feels this is going to be even more of a factor in the future:

The user community is going to be more and more important going forward. Companies that don't rethink how they do business as a result of the opportunities represented by the Internet will go away. When I worked on Windows, the user community was incredibly far away. [Newell spent 13 years at Microsoft in the Systems, Applications, and Advanced Technology divisions -ed.] We had no idea what they thought, we had no way to talk to them, and we didn't have any way of enlisting them in making Windows better. I'd say it wasn't until pretty late in the 80's that even 1% of our consumer customers had email.

A new installment to Computer Games Online's Ask A Developer has Cliff Bleszinski sharing some "(Un)real advice on being a designer." answering the question "how hard is it to get into the field of design?"

Happily Ever After Story Lines in the Action Genre on GameSpy.com is an article featuring interviews Marc Laidlaw of Valve Software, Niklas Pehrson of the Swedish developing team Refraction, and Graeme Devine of id Software offering their opinions on the necessity of a detailed storyline in action games.

This Half-Life Opposing Force Frequently Asked Questions is a newly updated "semi-official" FAQ for Gearbox Software's upcoming official add-on for Half-Life, where you play the role of one of the soldiers, heretofore all believed to be among the bad-guys in the original Half-Life.

• A new version 2.52 of the PowerStrip uber-monitor and video card control utility is now available. Thanks 3DFiles.com.
• Demo News has posted a bunch of Matrox demos, some new, and some previously released that show off bump-mapping and dual head effects. The demos are meant for G400 cards, but should work on and Direct3D accelerator. Many include source code.
• Thresh's FiringSquad's IA-64 Itanium Guide attempts to explain the inner workings of Intel's new IA-64 architecture, and the Itanium (the CPU formerly known as Merced) in general.
• The fourth of NeHe's OpenGL Tutorials is up offering help with setting up OpenGL in Windows. Thanks Demo News.
• Digital-Clips.com reviews the Creative Labs GeForce 256 Part II.
• Sharky Extreme's The Motherboard Guide Part 3 offer help on installing a motherboard.
• Glide Underground reviews the Celeron (Slot 1) Double Whammy CPU cooler.
• Game Forces reviews 3DfxCOOL Cel-REX.

It's Gordon does Deutschland as the first beta of the War in Europe mod for Half-Life is up on the Borderline Studios Page, bringing World War II action to Valve's sci-fi shooter.

A new version of the Hexen32 Hexen Win32 source port is out, offering a first pass at Multi-Resolution support for a maximum resolution of 1600x1200. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

This WONnet Tournament in conjunction with Clan World Network offers the chance to win an all expense paid trip to San Francisco to meet the Valve Team, and become one of the first to play Half-Life Opposing Force. The tournament will ultimately send the four best players to the event is in San Francisco on November 10, to be broadcast live by Talkspot's GameDive.

Thanks, as always, to Frans at 3D Action Gamers for staying on top of the review scene:

• Game Revolution reviews Prince of Persia 3D.
• Speedy 3D reviews FreeSpace2.
• Electric Games reviews Drakan: Order of the Flame.
• ActionXtreme.com reviews Drakan: Order of the Flame.
• TUGI.net reviews Homeworld.
• Computers R Us reviews Total Annihilation - Kingdoms.

• Webdog is now accepting new sites again to be included in the sites tracked by this system tray website tracking utility. The process is now an automated one...
• Interstate Mugshots is a site devoted to displaying photos of Interstate '76 players (and in the future I'82 players, as well). And not all of them look like Skeeter, either...
• There are six new screenshots on The Skynet Project page for this upcoming Half-Life mod...
• Gamedesign.net Prefabs has added about 50 new prefabs to their prefab database bringing our prefab total to 609 useful mapping prefabs for level designers...
• The new RPG Mythology on GA-RPG is by James Ohlen, Director of Writing and Design at BioWare describing the stories considered for both Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter, but were ultimately discarded...
• GA-RPG's World Fusion on Atriarch Interview looks ahead at this "3D massively-multiplayer, online, persistent role-playing & strategy game based on the alien and organic world of Atriana."...

Well, this will be the third straight day with an update that references Blue's Clues, a record that we can only hope isn't threatened anytime soon, but a flood of readers wrote in to point out that Blue the dog from Blue's Clues is a she, not a he. One can only hope that those writing in with this tidbit are parents, because from what little I've seen, this is not one of those shows that makes any attempt to appeal to a mind much beyond Tele-Tubbie age. Anyway, this is great news, because the next time I get riled by confusion with Blue the dog, I can get away with calling her a bitch.

Link of the Day: The Sports Illustrated for Kids Dancing Referee. You have to answer a football quiz to get him to dance, but it's worth it for the trippy disco ref effect. Thanks Matt Van Vleck.
Story of the Day: CNN - Police suspect killing was a Beanie Baby deal gone bad. Thanks Matthew Rorie and Mike Martinez.
Bonus Link: The Hunger Site Home. Thanks TERJE. Okay, so there's none of the usual LoD humor, irony, or attempts at such, but how often can the LoDs that offer those save lives?