The Stratos Group has released their full strategy guide for Revenant. The guide is available as a downloadable PDF edition, and features a full walkthrough, maps, cheats, and more.

3dfx has released a new, prerelease version of MesaGL for Linux which features windowed 3D support. This is for Voodoo 3 cards only, and requires RedHat 6.1 in order to install. It will not work at all on Voodoo 1, 2, or Banshee based cards (thanks Jason Wong).

The Vault Network has posted the second in their series of Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption designer logs. In this installment, Nihilistic's Rob Huebner discusses their decision to license QERadiant from id Software (but not the Quake engine), how the game got started, and even the genesis of the game's engine. Thanks PlanetVampire for the tip.

It's been rumored for a while, and now it is official: French entertainment company Infogrames has acquired control of US-based publisher GT Interactive Software for a total investment of US$ 135 million. GTIS is the publisher of a host of first-person shooters, including Blood, Blood II, DOOM II and Unreal, as well as recent titles Unreal Tournament and The Wheel of Time, and upcoming games Amen: the Awakening and Duke Nukem Forever. Thanks Demigod for sending the press release along.

Another update to Christian Antkow's .plan (courtesy of Webdog as the Blue Tracker keeps struggling with the server load) provides the latest information on the DNS problems that are plagueing some Quake III Arena test demo users:

Got about 50 e-mails over night with various insights into possible DNS resolution issues with authorize.quake3arena.com. I just made a few changes to the DNS records, Tim restarted the nameserver, and lets see if this doesn't get better in the next 24 hours or so.

A new version 0.98.1 of JHexen has been released, providing new features and bug fixes in this OpenGL port of Hexen. Among the new features are runtime wad/lump loading, improved dynamic lighting, and more configuration options and console commands.

There is a quick Q&A with Relic's CEO Alex Garden on GamesMania, discussing the aftermath of the release of Homeworld, their space-based RTS.

WolfGL, the OpenGL version of the grand-daddy of first-person shooters, Wolfenstein 3D, has been updated and moved to a new home. The new version 0.91 for both Windows and Linux includes a number of bug fixes in mouse, sound and 3dfx support. Additionally, this version is now available for both shareware and registered editions of Wolfenstein 3D.

There is a new Freak of the Week up on PsychoNews, showing off the Ballbuster character in Third Law's upcoming action game KISS: Psycho Circus - the Nightmare Child.

A new beta version of Kali, the server-browsing IRC client has been released on their FTP site (thanks Hamish[DW]). This new version adds support for a ton of games, including Nerf Arena Blast, Wheel of Time, HomeWorld and Warcraft II: Battle.net edition.

GameSpot has posted Myth II: Chimera, a scenario pack for Bungie's 3D real-time strategy game Myth II: Soul Blighter. You need the full version of the game to play this scenario, which is a part of the Myth: The Total Codex compilation, and the pack contains eight single-player levels and two multiplayer maps.

Redwood posted this solution to a problem many people (myself included) are having when they try to play the new Quake III Demo Test online over at Stomped. Here's the scoop:

Some people are having problems getting the DNS to resolve for authorize.quake3arena.com. The IP address is 192.246.40.56 as stated in the readme. If you can ping 192.246.40.56 but can't get the IP from the DNS name, you can try this method that has successfully worked for some people. In your windows directory, there is a file called hosts.sam. Make a copy and rename it to hosts without the extension. Edit it and go by the sample to create an entry for the authorization server. Then you should be able to ping with the DNS name and thus play Q3 on the net. I knew that MS TCP/IP course I took years ago would come in handy one day. :) Let me know if you have this problem and that helps by posting in the comments.

Important Note: If id changes the IP address of authorize.quake3arena.com, you will have to either remove the entry from the hosts file and hope DNS is now working for you or find out the new IP address and change it to that.

GameSpot UK's Lara Week continues today with new artwork featuring Lara Croft, the star of all those Tomb Raider games. If that's not enough Lara for you, check out all of their Lara Week stuff, including the bizarre "Lara vs..." series of articles which have to be seen to be believed.

GameLinks has posted an interview with Dynamix' Nels Bruckner, talking to the former programmer (he's now director of the TRIBES line of games) about their upcoming titles, TRIBES Extreme, and TRIBES 2.

I just got off the phone with Epic's Mark Rein who informed me that Unreal Tournament is gold, and in fact will be in stores in the US by this Friday, fast enough to make your head spin. He's not sure about availability in Europe, but speculates it may be the Friday that follows. Look for an official announcement from GT later today or tomorrow, but this is a confirmed story, straight from the horse's mouth.

Here's some more 3dfx stuff of note that's up at 3dfxGamers: they've posted an interview with Scott Sellers, one of the founders of the company, who talks about their new technology (including projected frame rate numbers). There's also screenshots from different technology movies, which show off their Soft Reflectance and Anti-Aliasing (including downloadable MPEG movies). And lastly, there's more in-game screenshots, from Need for Speed III, Soldier of Fortune and other games.

3dfxGamers has posted seven new screenshots from Q3Test, which show the game running on 3dfx' new technology, with full-screen antialiasing and motion blur enabled.

As expected, 3dfx has officially announced their new products, including the Voodoo 4 and 5, both of which utilize their new VSA-100 chipset. There are full details in the press release and their newly updated website about specific products (which range from low end Voodoo 4 cards, all the way up to a 128 MB Voodoo 5) and their new technology, but here's a quick rundown of features of the new chip:

At the heart of the VSA-100 is a new advanced 3D engine which enables extremely high fill rates. Sustaining high fill rate is critical to deliver real-time frame rates at high resolution, with significant depth complexity, digital effects and the highest visual quality. For the consumer market, products based on the VSA-100 deliver from 333 megatexels/megapixels per second up to 1.47 gigatexels/gigapixels per second fill rates using 16-128 MB of video memory and one to four processors per board. In the professional market, Quantum3D will manufacturer systems that will utilize eight to thirty-two VSA-100 processors and 128 MB to two gigabytes of video memory to attain fill rates greater than three gigatexels/gigapixels per second in their Alchemy product line.

The VSA-100, composed of over 14 million transistors, is fabricated in an enhanced .25 micron, 6-layer metal semiconductor process. The architecture incorporates industry standard 3D features including 32-bit RGBA rendering, 24-bit depth-buffer (Z and W), 8-bit stencil rendering, DXTC and FXT1 texture compression support, 32-bit textures, 2048x2048 texture size support, and advanced texture and color combine capabilities. Additional support is provided for both AGP 4x and PCI, DVD hardware assist, and the world’s most powerful 128-bit 2D engine. All VSA-100-based products include support for all major APIs including DirectX®, OpenGL® and GLIDE® providing the highest possible software compatibility. The VSA-100 is designed for optimal performance on current and future CPUs from Intel and AMD.

According to AVault, that piece on The Register that claimed the U.S. version of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation would be made simpler to accommodate for American gamers' shorter attention span, is a load of bunk. The fourth installment in the thrilling adventures of Lara Croft is expected in stores next Monday, freaky-hard puzzles and all.

If you're getting bored staring at that download window for the Quake III Demo, you might get a kick out of this screenshot on Unreal Universe, which they claim is from Unreal running on an unnamed console system (thanks VoodooExtreme). Personally, I swear that looks like a GameBoy Color to me. Either that, or a Jaguar. Definitely a Jaguar. Update: as it apparently wasn't an authorized screenshot (which I suppose should have been obvious from the mystery surrounding it) the image has been taken down.

ZDTV has posted an article/video feature which chronicles the history of the First Person Shooter, from Wolfenstein 3D through Doom, Dark Forces, and the Quake series. It features a really goofy framing sequence with the host playing paintball, but once you get past that, it's pretty entertaining stuff for genre fans.

Stomped has posted three new Quake III Arena character renderings, showing off the Daemia, Grunt and Stripe characters that are available in the just released test demo.

Another update to GLSetup brings this nifty OpenGL driver installation program up to Build 1.0.0.109. Here is the list of changes:

- New drivers for 3dfx Voodoo3 and Voodoo Banshee.
- Bug fixed where the card would be detected properly, but the actual install would fail after copying the files due to corrupted registry.
- Will install in more cases when the device has a problem code in the config manager.
- Fixed bug detecting some Quantum 3D Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 boards.
- Install the NVidia GeForce 3.53 drivers on Win95.

id Software's Christian Antkow updated his .plan with a list of known issues in the just released Quake III Arena Test Demo. Here's the scoop:

Ok, known issues so far;

• Server browser is fux0red. Will look into that tommorow
• Problems binding and using the mousewheel
• Can't resolve authorize.quake3arena.com. God only knows why. I've been losing my mind over this. Some people can resolve it fine, others can't. If someone can e-mail me with a definitive reason why this isn't resolving for some people, I'll be ever so greatfull. I've done digs off of various nameservers and most can resolve this just fine. *sigh*

As promised, here is a local copy of the Quake III Arena Demo Test (49.7 MB) along with a list of mirrors. As a reminder, here is what the Quake 3 Arena page says about this:

This is a demo test. It is not a demo. This test may only be distributed electronically. Physical media (e.g. CD-ROM's, floppies, etc.) redistribution of the demo test is prohibited. Refer to the End User License Agreement for further details.

While you're downloading the Quake III Arena Demo Test, you may be relieved to know there's a new issue of loonygames underway to read (though, as always, special care is to be taken if you want to read on the toilet). Kicking off the week's festivities in loonyville is End of the Line - RadPipe Live from the Quake III Party! giving all the skinny on the end of the bus tour soiree in L.A.

The Quake 3 Arena page has the release of the Quake III Demo test, with that unlimited Sandpiper bandwidth. Be that as it may, we'll have a local copy and a list of mirrors up ASAP (though it's tough to even get news updates onto the site right now, it's being hit so hard). This is about a 50 MB download.

The following confirmed bit of IRC banter was posted on Stomped giving the status of the Q3A Test Demo release from id Software's Christian "Disruptor" Antkow:

<_Xian> It's going to be at least a few hours. Still working some stuff out guys.
<_Xian> gonna be pulling a late night at the id offices tonight looks like.

This unedited chat log gives the outcome of the Outcast chat session with Yann Robert and Franck Sauer, two of the developers from Appeal who helped create this cinematic third-person action game. A majority of the discussion centers around plans for Outcast2. If the multilingual unedited log is too tough to wade through, Outcast Central has summarized the high points.

• Sharky Extreme's quick take of the S3 Savage 2000 Diamond Viper II 16MB.
• Thresh's FiringSquad reviews the Diamond Viper II Z200 Savage2000.
• GA-Source reviews the 3dfx Voodoo 3 3500 TV.
• Sharky Extreme reviews the Abit BF6 440BX Mainboard.
• Ars Technica reviews the ASUS K7M Athlon Motherboard.
• Overclockin.Com reviews the Super Duper Slot Fan and Twin Turbo.
• Tom's Hardware Guide on how to Make Your Own Athlon Overclocking Device. Thanks eidolon{MOO}.

The TriCon website has a new version 2.5 of Tricon, the Starsiege TRIBES remote console admin tool. The sole change in this new release is that Tricon no longer requires registration to change your nick as often as you like. also word is that unless the Tricon team is truly inspired by TRIBES2 when it's released, this is likely the last release of any version of Tricon.

Quadmonkey's page has a new beta 6 of monkeySPI server browser program. The new release feature more reliable operation, and an improved add a server feature.

• Gamer's Alliance Role-Playing Games First Look at Summoner gives a preview of Volition's upcoming third-person RPG...
• Column castigator the AntiELVIS has a new version 1.2 of his Half-Life Compilation Controller, which "replaces Worldcraft 2.1's buggy compiling interface, and offers a veritable sack o' features that serious map makers need." Available on the files section at GracelessLand...
• BigKid's Dirt Bag Racing skin editing guide is online...

I think I have mentioned before that we are at a threshold with our current server capacity. We are fine almost all the time, but when something really near and dear to the site's core interest happens (like the Unreal Tournament demo and the Q3Test and demo releases), things get a bit hairy. Basically we are a little shy of horsepower when traffic is heaviest, which is of course, when heavy-duty server mojo is needed the most, so this is obviously not good. I don't have an ETA on when this will be addressed, but it is a top priority, so hopefully it will be soon. In the meantime, apologies to anyone finding it difficult to reach the site (or .plan updates, etc.) last night and this morning amid Quake III Arena demo mania.

Link of the Day: RadiSkull's Hella Weenie. A sequel to yesterday's shock-powered LoD on the Shockwave page that offers links to tons other similar nuttiness. Thanks again Colin W.
Story of the Day: Artificially Grown Sex Organs May Soon Be Possible. Thanks Claw[bc]. Though no webmasters are specifically mentioned, this will apparently help replace "genital organs which are missing, nonfunctional, or inadequate..."