Undaunted by the impending (in the US, anyway) end of the year, Epic's Brandon Reinhart made a .plan update to announce the release of the 402B patch for the Linux version of Unreal Tournament, as well as giving a general update on the progress of the next Windows patch and the imminent UT open source release, and describing a pair of debugging binaries (which are unsuitable for general use). Here is the entire update:

A new patch for UT Linux is available at openut.sourceforge.net. Follow the link to the project root page and download from the column on the right. Feel free to leave bug reports, but please register with Source Forge first so I can contact you if necessary.

This patch is version 402B and is a Linux patch only. It contains fixes for two critical Linux issues:
* UT Linux now runs under Enlightenment.
* UT Linux will properly shutdown glide after a critical crash.
It also has a few other fixes and incidentals.

There will be no 402B patch for Windows. The next multiplatform UT patch will be 403 (we'll probably release the first UT expansion pack around that time).

I will release the open source archives tonight or tomorrow, depending on how long it takes to get organized.

The UT open source project page also contains debugging binaries. You can read about these in the Announcements forum. WEB SITES: Please don't mirror these, they are 20 megs each and its not necessary for most users to get them, only programmers will want them. Running the game with debugging libraries is slow and not a good idea for most people. Mirroring them on fan sites is probably not appropriate.

There are binary archives for guard and slowguard. You can read about the difference on the site.

GameSpot's Geoff Keighley goes Behind The Games with a feature on "Millennium Gaming" as "20 gaming visionaries usher in the next millennium of gaming." The article discusses the future of the industry with such noted luminaries as 3DRealms' George Broussard and Scott Miller, Valve's Gabe Newell, Chris Roberts, Sid Meier, and more. In addition to all the conversation, the piece includes some never before seen screenshots, including a rare Duke Nukem Forever shot and three new shots from TeamFortress2. There are 20 Q&A's at several pages each, so you've got something to do if you're skipping the party scene tonight.

There is a first look of Hitman: Codename 47 up on Computer Games Online. While the article on this third-person "thinker-shooter" by IO Interactive and Eidos is very brief, it does offer two new screenshots of the game.

In their irregular series of Fast Track guides, Gamecenter has posted one such guide for Half-Life: Opposing Force, offering basic but fairly detailed walkthroughs of all of the four levels in Gearbox' expansion pack.

There are four new Codename Eagle Screenshots on GA-Source showing off gameplay from this upcoming first and third-person action title from Refraction Games. According to the latest word posted along with the shots, Codename Eagle is due in the US on February 25, 2000.

Relic News interviews Aaron Kambeitz talking with the lead artist on the team that created Homeworld in a conversation centered mostly on Relic's 3D space RTS.

• New 600 MHz mobile PIII to save on batteries. Thanks Jacek Fedoryñski.
• S3-Diamond Savage 2000 is reviewed ("in-depth") on Sharky Extreme
• Gen-X Tech AMD Athlon 550 (overclocked to 850) is reviewed on 3D Rage.
• Kupe Kicks Ass from OZ on HardOCP gives tales of overclocking a Coppermine to 807 MHz.
• The Supermicro PIIISCD Motherboard is reviewed on iXBT.
• The MSI MS-6163Pro Motherboard is reviewed on Extreme Hardware.
• ComputerNerd USA Announces Athlon Speed Control Card, bringing the overclocking touch of "golden fingers" to the Athlon.
• A new version of PC Accelerator 4000 is now available, claiming it "can boost your overall PC/Internet/3DFX performance by up to 35%."

The Mutation Device has cooked up an Unreal Tournament Mutator FAQ to answer all those nagging questions about these gameplay mods for Unreal Tournament. The FAQ is in Help format and is pretty comprehensive, offering 36 topics in four sections, including and Introduction, Installation, Mutators Online, and Developing Mutators.

The Name Maker Studio homepage has a new version 4.27 of NMS, the WYSIWYG FunName creation utility that can help you create colored and/or animated names for Quake III Arena, QuakeWorld, Unreal Tournament, StarCraft, ICQ, Quake II, and Hexen II. Thanks Jacek Fedoryñski.

Star Wars Duel of the Fates is a modification for Quake (1) that aims "to simulate the exciting lightsaber fights and blaster battles from the Star Wars films, while at the same time making the whole thing as fun and easy to use as possible." The mod offers new levels, and a chance to fight Darth Maul, though no word on whether you can get him to give you your Episode One admission back if you win.

Apparently taking the attitude that tonight I'm gonna WAN party like its 1999, Games.Velocity.Net is holding a Final Frag of the Millennium Quake II WAN party. The shebang kicked off at 4:30AM EST to complete as of the first Y2K rollover in Tonga, and will run until it's 2000 all over the world. Head over for details, including the 64 player maps that will be used, and details on the Y2K server-side mod they will be running.

• Age of Empires II: Age of Kings on GameSurge.
• Age of Wonders on Game Revolution.
• Gabriel Knight 3 on GameProWorld.
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 on GamePower.
• Odium on Gamezilla.
• Planescape: Torment on Computer Games Online and Well Rounded Entertainment.
• Razer BoomSlang 2000 Gaming Mouse on GameSurge.
• Seven Kingdoms II on Game Revolution.
• Sid Meier's Antietam on Games First.
• Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict on GameSpot.
• Star Trek: Hidden Evil on Gaming Age.
• Tanktics on Adrenaline Vault.
• Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation versus Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine on GameSpy.com.

• The QuakeWorld Revitalization Project looks to create a pair of closed source programs to authenticate QW clients to prevent cheating since the release of the source code...
• Aqua's Quake3 Guide offers Q3A console commands, tweaks, etc.
• GameSpot's First Look at Thandor is a preview featuring several gameplay movies of this upcoming 3D RTS under development in Germany...
• A post on LinuxGames offers the possibility of a Linux port of the Q3Radiant Q3A level editor using WINE, with the more remote possibility of a Gtk+ port not out of the question. Thanks Jacek Fedoryñski...
• The results of the annual Best Of Loki's Minions CTF poll are online, with all this year's results (including my favorite category "Most LMCTF improved player")...
• SNGaming.com's You Ask Maxis offers the chance to submit questions sort of directly to Maxis for both TheSims and Sim Theme Park...

Here's the promised follow-up on the Image of the Day from Wednesday. To recap, this was a screenshot on gXp showing a smiley face on a Unreal Tournament Flak Shell which a lot of folks suggested was faked because of it's inclusion of some Q3A-style textures, curved surfaces, and a jump pad. As it turns out, the map is indeed a real Unreal Tournament map, a user-made jobbie by Rich "Akuma(matrix)" Eastwood called DM-Brutality][ (said to be quite fun), with the jump-pads and such an homage to Q3A. Some correspondence with Alan Willard and GreenMarine at Epic Games confirms the existence of the smiley on the alt-fired flak shell, certainly an Easter egg that will almost invariably be the last thing you see should you be "lucky" enough to get a glimpse of it in a game.

Tonight, of course, is some holiday or another, exactly which one it is escapes me at the moment (I wish they'd publicize these things more). Remember, if you are partying, please don't drink and drive. On the Y2K front, we believe Blammo (our news database) is safe from potential date glitches through something like 2031, giving us a little time to come up with a workaround, so provided the missiles don't all fire at midnight (always good to end on a cheery note), we should be running fine tomorrow .

Link of the Day: The World Has Not Ended! A Y2K resource you can check first thing tomorrow. Thanks Mat Ward. "Will the World end? Has it ended already? This page has all the answers. It is hosted on a computer in Australia, which is many hours ahead of most of the rest of the world (and ALL of the important bits). So if the World ends, it will end here first!"
Bonus Link: QUAKE II ARENA. Who knew? Thanks Xoo.