PC.IGN has posted a preview of LucasArts' Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, complete with 18 new screenshots from the game. Indy is a Tomb Raider style adventure game, which of course is fitting, since Lara Croft is often described as an Indiana Jones clone herself.

Also up on PC.IGN is the second part of their interview with Rod Fung, the producer of Sierra's SWAT 3: Close Quarters Combat. In addition to a number of questions about the gameplay, how it differs from other titles in the genre, and questions about the engine, there's several new screenshots up as well.

There are a bunch of Opposing Force screenshots on GameFan showing off 25 scenes from Gearbox Software's upcoming official add-on for Valve's Half-Life. The shots are taken from a recent build of OpFor that's been distributed to the media.

There's a Slave Zero mini-preview on Well Rounded Entertainment giving a quick rundown on what to expect from Infogrames' upcoming third-person game offering the opportunity to do combat as a giant cyborg. The piece is accompanied by a gallery of 20 Slave Zero screenshots.

There's a new Diablo II Screenshot of the Week showing off another in this seemingly endless series of shots from Blizzard's upcoming sequel to their hit action/RPG. The caption reads: "The Necromancer battles in the ruins of a once peaceful village." Thanks The Labyrinth.

We have at least one report of Omikron: The Nomad Soul in stores. Several readers have written in reporting sightings of Asheron's Call on store shelves, and on the heels of these reports, Microsoft sends word of that as well, along with a bit of pimpage for the game:

Microsoft announced today that Asheron's Call, the online-only game available exclusively on the MSN Gaming Zone, is starting to appear on store shelves throughout the U.S. There have been many reports of its availability at both Electronic Boutique and Babbage's/Software Etc. stores across the country.

Developed by Turbine Entertainment, Asheron's Call is a massively multiplayer role-playing game that draws together thousands of players within a dynamic, 3-D online world. Players can create truly unique characters by choosing between extensive combinations of visual appearance, attributes and skill sets. Asheron's Call immerses players in an intense role-playing environment where they must compete or cooperate with thousands of other online players. An extensive system of allegiance and influence greatly enhances social interaction. The online nature of the game facilitates an evolving and dynamic adventure inside a consistent universe. The game will never be solved because there will always be more areas to explore and quests to complete.

Asheron's Call has an estimated street price of $49.99 that includes one free month of play. After the free month has expired, there is a $9.95 per month charge to continue play.

For more information about Asheron's Call, please visit the game's official Web site.

Ritual's Mark Dochtermann updated his .plan with more on the Sin patch that was released earlier today (story). Here's the scoop:

Sin Version 1.10

Check out www.ritualistic.com for the latest Sin patch 1.10. Here are the fixes from the readmes.

- Cheat variable protected a bunch of developer commands
- fixed CTF flag cheat where you could join the other team while taking the
flag with you.
- say_talk spamming fixed
- various bug fixes
- added cl_speechdelay - spam control for speech synthesis, defaults to 1000
- added cl_nospeech - archived cvar that controls whether or not speech is active
- added ctf_forcejoin as archivable variable.
- fixed bug with cinematics and Direct X 7.0
- fixed annoying phantom windows that are left after vid_restarting

I also put out a new source archive which can be found at the same place. If anyone has any problems, please direct them towards sinbugs@ritual.com

SpookHouse (boo!) has posted a pair of new patches for Nocturne, TRI's just released oogie action game. On patch is for owners of Voodoo3 cards, and the other is for owners of all other video cards, and as that distinction suggests, each patch addresses video issues, and each patch also addresses problems with hardware mixing and SoundBlaster Live! cards.

Paul Sauser sent along this post by Terminal Reality's Jeff Mills that he spotted over at The Spookhouse's forums in response to someone's discovery of code that referred to networking within the Nocturne EXE file:

I will once again praise Mark Randel and Flether Dunn, the two programmers for Nocturne. They are extremely thorough. Instead of throwing in code to solve certain problems, they devised complete, robust systems to handle the individual issues that arose during development. Some variables and attributes went virtually un-used in the final game, but the data was there in case we needed access to it. And in more than one case, I found ways to use the functionality they had included. Something Fletch and Mark worked on for a week or so was multi-player support. Even though Nocturne was designed for single player, they knew that the Nocturne engine would be capable of expanding far beyond this single title, so they built multi-player into it. Now, if we (or anyone else) want to make a multiplayer game in the Nocturne engine, it can be done.

Gamecenter has posted a preview of Tachyon: The Fringe, an upcoming space combat sim by NovaLogic that's mixing role-playing elements into the action. Here's a bit about the game's multiplayer ambitions:

Most exciting, for multiplayer fans at least, is the second big difference between Tachyon and other space combat games: massive multiplayer support. Tachyon can accommodate "128 players per arena via NovaWorld, which is our free Internet-based server," says Maza. "And we'll be offering a lot more than just the usual deathmatch and capture-the-flag games. In fact, our plans for multiplayer support in Tachyon are the most ambitious yet for a NovaWorld game; we're really excited about the possibilities the huge game world offers, and our multiplayer model keeps evolving to reflect that. The icing on the cake is Voice-Over-Net, our built-in system for voice communication. You can talk to your teammates rather than typing messages, and because it's built in, there are no configuration or compatibility hassles."

Robs at Rogue slapped me with a trout to point out that using this weekend's FRAG3 festivities as a distraction, they've snuck up a new screenshot onto EA's American McGee's Alice page, showing a scene from Alice, Rogue & EA's upcoming Quake III-engine action/fantasy game. The small shot is up in the "Game Info" section showing off a horny little devil looking to give someone a good forking.

The ION Storm Daily Informant has posted an update on Anachronox, offering quotes from Tom Hall and the rest of the team working on ION's upcoming Quake II-engine RPG. In addition to the individual progress reports, there is also a new screenshot showing off a scene from the game.

A new patch for Sin is up on Ritualistic, bringing Ritual's Quake/Quake II-engine shooter up to version 1.10. In addition to the patch, which is a bit under 2 MB, they also have posted the updated version of the source code for eager mod authors to update their Sin mods. Our man on the scene, Frans, has a mirror up on 3D Action Gamers if you are having trouble getting through.

Italian games site NextGame.it has posted an interview with id Software's Graeme Devine. There's nothing new revealed, but you do get to read Graeme skillfully dodge questions, with such entertaining answers as, "Next game? We're doing another game?". The interview is available in English, or Italian.

Action Forms has released a patch for their just-released title, Carnivores II. This new patch adds EAX and A3D 2.0 support, as well as fixing issues with Voodoo and Matrox cards amongst other changes.

GA-Strategy has posted nine new screenshots from SegaSoft's massively multiplayer strategy title 10six. The game, which will be playable exclusively on their HEAT.net service, supports up to a million people (hence the name) and is entering its beta test phase this week.

E-tailer Checkout.com has posted an interview with Dave Walls, the creative director on Nerf Arena Blast, the oddball Unreal-engine title that is arriving in stores today. The interview deals with various design issues, from the restrictions of the Nerf license, to their decision to use the Unreal engine, and more.

Thresh's FiringSquad has posted a brief Q&A with id's John Carmack, discussing the latest changes to Quake III: Arena, including the news that he's been toying with removing the footsteps (although he keeps deciding to leave it in).

GameSpot UK has posted their hands-on preview of Sierra's SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle, a tactical shooter in the same vein as Rainbow Six (although the games differ in that SWAT is "on the fly," meaning there's no pre-planning of missions). It being GameSpot UK, there's also a whole boatload of screenshots as well.

Visionary Media's Sam Kolb sends word that Nerf Arena Blast, the foam (and Unreal engine) powered first person shooter (which they co-developed with Hasbro Interactive) has landed in stores. If you're looking for a slightly more lighthearted shoot-em-up, check this one out.

AVault has posted an interview with Dan Myrick, one of the two directors of the indie-movie sensation The Blair Witch Project (yep, we saw that one coming). The interview was conducted at the Nocturne launch party in New Orleans last Thursday, and while it is pretty brief, they do talk about the Blair Witch title in the works that utilizes the Nocturne engine. Here's an excerpt:

The guys at Haxan are going to be overseeing a lot of the mythology, scriptwriting and creative aspects of the game, and the designers at Terminal Reality and the Gathering are going to be guiding us through the developing and programming aspects. So it’s going to be a cross between then showing us how this whole arrangement operates-- because this is our first time; we’ve never done it before--and then helping us with plugging the creative aspects into the Nocturne engine. Our questions at this point revolve around what we can and cannot do with the engine, though from what we’ve seen so far in the demo, it gives us a lot of flexibility. So we’re trying to stay true to the mythology we’ve created and plug it in to what’s been established with the Nocturne engine to create a cool game that’s inherently Blair Witch.

There is a new OpenGL port of Hexen created by Jaakko Keränen, appropriately named JHexen. This port features unrestricted mouse look, enhanced menus, a freely resizable status bar, a Quake-style console, and more.

id Software's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with word that you may have trouble for a couple of days reaching the Q3Test Message of the Day Server and the Q3Test Master Server (perhaps they're replacing the Master Cylinder):

The MOTD server and master server will be up and down over the next few days, if you don't get a response that's probably the reason why.

3dfx has announced that their new technology that's code-named "Napalm" will be officially unveiled at Comdex '99, a mere two weeks away (thanks Voodoo Extreme). The unveiling will be webcast over at 3dfxGamers.com, and details will be available on the site the day before the event (Sunday, November 14th). The first bit of the announcement is already in the press release, which talks of Napalm achieving an impressive one billion pixels per second fill-rate:

Chief among these features will be a focus on fill-rate and the ability to achieve over one billion pixels per second. With fill-rate come benefits such as higher resolution, faster speeds, greater application complexity and the ability to display high quality 32bpp rendering at 60+ frames per second (FPS) at ultra high resolutions. All of these attributes equate to better image quality and highly realistic environments.

3DGPU has posted an interview with Sky Kensok, Vice-President at The Whole Experience, developer of the upcoming game Experience as well as the Dagoth Moor Zoological Garden demo that is being used to show off nVidia's GeForce 256 card. Here's a quote about the card's features currently being employed:

Currently, the specific GeForce additions to our engine are Hardware T&L, Cubic Environment Maps, and Texture Compression. We also added things like Detail Textures that work on any card. We like to stay on top of what’s happening with the major hardware manufacturers, so we can make sure to add whatever is being supported (or will be). Our next specific addition, if needed, will likely be Bump Mapping.

Kokak's Doom Page has been updated with the OpenGL alpha 0.08 version of ZDoomGL v1.18b, adding support for features like scrolling textures, colored sectors, earthquakes, deep water sectors, and more. The MD2 models pack by Edmundo Bordeu has also been updated, with a new Chaingunner model, and there is a new GLHexen/GLHeretic launcher & configuration utility on Kokak's Heretic page.

There's a new version 2.17 of GameSpy 3D for registered users posted on FilePlanet. Thanks Voodoo Extreme. The new version adds support for Nerf ArenaBlast and Wheel of Time, neither of which is yet available, but it's never too early to start planning ahead.

The latest edition of Games Domain Rant entitled Spooktacular is online, discussing the new wave of horror games that was initiated by last week's release of Nocturne. The editorial goes into the differences in experiences brought by horror games versus horror movies and books, and mentions upcoming 3D role-playing horror games Vampire and Werewolf along the way. Here's a taste of what's on tap:

Yet even with the profligate past and these new games on the way, I still doubt that the sub-genre will ever really take off. It could even be fairly said that we've never seen a real horror game on the PC. You see, true visual horror, like that displayed in classic films such as Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Changeling, and, yes, The Blair Witch Project comes from cunning sleight of hand. While a little aptly applied gore can make people squirm in their seats, you can only get into their heads by playing the old "now you see it, now you don't" game. Revealing too much destroys the mystery.

John Carmack updated his .plan with another Quake III Arena worklog. Among the latest programming changes he's implemented is a change to the teamplay rules: "weapons always have a full load of ammo," which sounds like picking weapon up a weapon will add a full load of ammo to your inventory instead of just one when you are already carrying a load of ammo for the weapon.

The newly-relaunched Extreme Games has posted an interview with Dhabih Eng, talking with the artist formerly known as Doc Holiday about his work, which is now as an artist at Valve Software.

The MSN Gaming Zone sends word of a chat with Turbine Entertainment, the developers from of Asheron's Call, Microsoft's imminent massive multiplayer online RPG (due in stores this week). The session will take place tomorrow evening at 10:30 PM EST (7:30 PM Pacific). You can find the festivities in the Zone Theater Chat Room.

nV News' Tweaking Quake 3 Test Graphics article has been updated to include tips for tweaking the test with cards based on the new NVIDIA GForce256 chipset.

• ZDTV Athlon Against Coppermine. Thanks DNapalm.
• GA-Source - Loki Entertainment on Creative Labs Linux Sound Drivers talks more about planned SBLive! Linux drivers and GA-Source - Aureal To Release Linux Drivers is a report that Linux using A3D fans won't be left out ion the cold.
• There is word on AMD Zone of some more upcoming AMD price cuts on the K6-X line.
• Also on the AMD front, AMD has posted some recommended Athlon Power Supplies and a list of suggested Athlon peripherals (in PDF format). Thanks AMD Zone.
• Tech-review.com's CPU Prices have been updated.
• Chip Tester's Weekly Hardware Price Update is up.
• 3D Spotlight reviews the Videologic SonicVortex2.
• Glide Underground reviews VRJoy 3D Glasses.
• Extreme Hardware reviews the NVIDIA GeForce 256 SDRAM.
• Sharky Extreme's Savage 2000-Viper 2 Preview.
• RIVA3D reviews the EPOX EP-GXB-M Dual PIII Xeon Mainboard.
• SystemLogic reviews the Card Cooler 3pin Double Ball Bearing Video Card Cooler.
• MacWEEK tests the Power Mac G4-450. Thanks DNapalm.

A report on The Adrenaline Vault reveals that Odium, Monolith's upcoming adventure/RPG, has gone gold, and is off to manufacturing. This is apparently inside dope, and we can expect an official announcement of this sometime today.

Following up further on the Blair Witch game story, according to a post on Gamasutra, there will be more than one game produced by Gathering of Developers based on the Blair Witch project. While referring to the previously announced Nocturne-engine game, the article also says "GoD plans to spread the wealth among several of its affiliated developers while creating multiple PC and console games based on the license." Thanks devilbunny.

There's a shot on PsychoNews showing off how the ArachnaClown model was created for Third Law's upcoming LithTech-powered shooter, KISS Psycho Circus--The Nightmare Child. Also, GA-Source previews KISS Psycho Circus based on checking the game out at the Nocturne Launch party in New Orleans last week. The piece runs through the game's plot, offers some first-hand impressions of the game, and serves up the screenshots released at the event, which you may have already seen elsewhere.

There's an updated version 1.3 of Reactive Software's Kingpin Competition Mod is now available. This mod adds all sorts of multiplayer enhancements to Kingpin: Life of Crime, including voting options. This is a server-only mod, which all server ops are urged to check out, especially those running bagman servers.

Ritual's Berenger "zor" Fish made a .plan update with word of an unofficial contest that can net the winner a copy of Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2 when it's available. The competition is a fantasy football league (in honor of the Late Great Walter Payton--see the Story of the Day), and available spaces in the pool are quite limited.

• Sharky Extreme reviews FreeSpace 2.
• 3dgn.com reviews Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear.
• Games Gallery reviews Homeworld.
• BigKid reviews Drakan: Order of the Flame.
• 3dgn.com reviews Flight Unlimited III (this seems new in spite of the date).
• Ingava reviews the Close Combat Trilogy.
• Gamer's Voice reviews Professional Bullrider.
• gg8.com reviews S.C.A.R.S.
• GameOver reviews Space Invaders.

• Speedy 3D interviews Scott Phillips from Rage UK about their off road racing game appropriately titled Off Road...
• A follow-up on the story the other day about the closing of Gibbed.com. Though they are struggling keeping the site running, the clan sites I wondered about are still being hosted. If anyone wants to volunteer to help keep things running over there, check out this page and see if you want to pitch in...
• There are 12 new G-Sector screenshots on Ingava.com showing off their upcoming freeware space shooter...
• The FRAG 3 site has posted a small collection of photos from the event...
• ZDNet News reveals MS' pricing plans for Win2K (are you sitting down?): $219 for an upgrade from a previous version of Windows, and $319 without an upgrade. A 10-user version of Win2000 Server will cost $1,199. Thanks DNapalm...
• ZDNet News reports RealNetworks rewrites privacy policy hoping to placate critics of a recently revealed nasty habit RealJukebox has of continually reporting personal information about its users to Real Networks. The users don't seem placated. I know I'm not. Thanks again DNapalm...

I have made vague comments over the past few weeks about behind the scenes matters here at the site that have been occupying a lot of my attention, if you are curious, the nature of one of those matters is revealed in the new network logo atop this page, as Blue's News is now a member of the UGO network. UGO are great folks, and have made a strong long-term commitment to the site which will allow us to continue to do the best job possible. If their role isn't clear, UGO are the folks who deal with the advertising here, allowing us to maintain editorial independence from that area, and concentrate on what we do best. There won't be any changes to content here as a result of this, though one of the things that will be taking place soon is the move of the site to some spiffy new high speed servers on a fat pipe which will allow us to implement some of the awesome new features we have been hammering away at for blammo. Excelsior!

Link of the Day: DogDoo.com. Thanks Traa. No word on the ring the bell and leave a flaming bag o' doo delivery method...
Story of the Day: RIP Walter Payton 1954-1999, a classy, dignified athlete.