There's a Mac Descent 3 patch on Inside Mac Games that brings the Mac version of D3 up to 1.3.2, fixing problems with PXO, Parallax's online service, problems with peer to peer multiplayer, and more. Thanks Descent3D.

There's an interview with Robert Bob White on Source.Net talking with the design team leader on Deus Ex, ION Storm's upcoming action/RPG. The Q&A, which is also available en Français, discusses progress on the Unreal-engine game, and offers four new screenshots. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

Uwe Girlich's Demo Specs page has a new version 3.3.0 of the Little Movie Processing Centre, as well as updated documentation by way of the unofficial DM2 specs v1.0.4 and the Recording FAQ v1.1.3. Uwe includes word on how these updates are related to the Quake II Relay project and how that could affect the handling of demo recording in Quake III Arena:

These 3 updates are strongly correlated and show my support for the Quake II Relay project (http://www.planetquake.com/relay). This Quake II server modification introduces an extension to the well known DM2 file format and it was my duty to describe it and support it in LMPC.

This project may show a new direction for the Machinima community. The modified server stores a recording during the game play in a file (similar to server recordings). This file can be edited (with LMPC and a text editor) and reloaded into the server. Now it can be replayed by any client, who connects into this server. If we can recreate a similar modification for Qake III Arena, we don't need any reverse engineering of the DM3 demo format or the network protocol at all.

Epic's Brandon '<what-color-would-you-like-today>Marine' Reinhart updated the Unreal Technology page with some enthusiast words about upcoming mods for Unreal Tournament, and how creating a successful mod could land you a job in the gaming industry if you have the talent and will to pursue such opportunities. Here is an excerpt:

There are a lot of opportunities out there, you just have to drive yourself. If you've done a Quake or Unreal mod, definitely consider Unreal Tournament. Everybody at Epic is very open with answering questions. We won't fix your code, tweak your level, or polish your art, but we can point you towards resources and we can give you the tools to educate yourself.

The days of garage game developers are not over. In fact, its a hidden renaissance. You don't see entire game companies popping out of nowhere, but you do see a large number of very dedicated people getting into the industry. So you've always dreamed of making a cool mod? Go for it. (And hey, do it for Unreal Tournament. You never know where it will take you.)

SoFCenter has posted the first part of their ongoing Soldier of Fortune Designer's Diary, by Raven's Eric Biessman. In this first, brief installment, Eric explains what the past week was like at Raven, as they were in crunch mode on the SoF demo (which is now scheduled to be released tomorrow).

The Unofficial Half-Life FAQ has been updated to version 1.23.2000, and is available for download on its home page as a ZIPped HTML file. This update contains an overhauled Team Fortress Classic section in addition to other changes.

Tweak3D has posted a pair of new screenshots from Shadows of Reality, the upcoming Unreal-engine game by Nevolution. Earlier reports of new images (here and here) referred to it as a yet-to-be-announced title, but a little digging in the archive unearthed this story that confirms Shadows of Reality to be the title of Nevolution's cyberpunk 3D role-playing game.

A new beta 2 version of Heretic II Siege is now available, offering a large number of improvements to this class-based teamplay mod for Heretic II, including a new Succubus class, customizable taunts, new models, skins and icons, map and item fixes, and much more.

This story on EvEm.org.au gives the lowdown on how to restore the long-lost crosshair health function in Quake III Arena without any files or modifications, simply by using some Q3A console commands. The downside to the technique is that it involves setting r_picmip to "0" which needs a pretty beefy system to handle without too much of a performance hit. However, if you can run the game acceptably using these commands, it will allow you a razor thin circular crosshair that indeed gets redder as you lose health.

Unreal Universe Interviews Juan Pancho Eekels talking with the lead level designer at Digital Extremes about his work on Unreal Tournament, UnrealED, and an attempt to pry loose hints about D.E.'s next Unreal-engine game for which he's heading up the level design team.

The aGSM website has a new version 2.33c of aGSM (alternative Game Server Monitor), a freeware Win32 program for finding and monitoring LAN and Internet game servers. The new release adds support for 13 more titles, and aGSM now features support for 33 games, including Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Age of Kings (the full list can be found on this page). The new version also features 100% customizable HTML output, loads of GUI improvements and bugs fixes, and many more new features.

• Intel asks U.S. to bar chips from Taiwan's VIA. Thanks The Adrenaline Vault.
• Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo soundcard is reviewed on Maximum3D.
• Pentium III 750 MHz is reviewed on t-break.
• 2CoolPC cooling devices are reviewed on Screaming3D.
• Swiftech MC370 cooler is reviewed on Thresh's FiringSquad.
• Tornado 1000 case is reviewed on Exxtreme3D.Com.

No, that's not the title of some sort of all-male Debbie Does Dallas, it's a headline for this announcement that game fans interested in getting in-person first impressions of Sacrifice, Shiny's upcoming real-time fantasy multiplayer strategy game can do so at GamesCon's upcoming game exhibition in the Bay area February 19-20, where Dave Perry will be on hand to show off the game.

Adventure Gamer interviews Adam Bormann of Sierra Studios about his work as a design assistant on Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. The Q&A goes into the making of the game, the public's reaction since its release, and the possibility of another installment of the Gabriel Knight series (I keep waiting for the one where he gets the car named Kitt).

A new version .70 of the Sabaneta 2050 modification for Half-Life is now available. This is a deathmatch mod that pits a pair of teams against each other in a battle to kill the opposing team's leader while protecting your own. Among the new features in this release is a new morale system that boosts players near the team leader, and a new experience system.

Tharger's Gibs has the debut release of their RailWars modification for Quake III Arena, where a player starts with the railgun and infinite ammo, with no other weapons present in the game. Accuracy and hit streaks are logged, and the server can change how much damage the rail does. RailWars works with any map, any game type, and can be used with bots.

The Checkered Flag-Gold Cup Website has the first beta release of the Checkered Flag-Gold Cup modification for Quake (1), which, in the style of the classic Quake Rally, and the seminal Quake Karts, puts you behind the wheel of a large automobile. The new mod is described as "Quake Rally with better physics, tracks, weapons," and in the biggest difference from its predecessors, bot support.

A page for NovaWorld's Delta Force 2 Lock-n-Load tournament is online. Though no dates are listed, they're very specific about the starting time of 4:20 PM PST--the banner on top of the page says "Wednesdays," though the graphic also says 5:00 PM PST, so some clarification may be in order here.

• Act Labs Gun System on Ingava.
• Close Combat IV: Battle of the Bulge (second opinion) on Games Domain Review.
• Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned on ESCMAG.
• Half-Life: Opposing Force on GameStats.
• Jane's F/A-18 on Daily Radar.
• Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer on CTNews.
• Microsoft Sidewinder Dual Strike Controller on Ingava.
• Mortyr on Game Over.
• Planescape: Torment on Sharky Extreme and Actiontrip.
• Quake III Arena on Reviews 'r' Us.
• Rage of Mages 2 on Ingava.
• Razer BoomSlang 2000 Gaming Mouse on GameWire.Org and GA-Source.
• Supreme Snowboarding on Reviews 'r' Us.
• Tomb Raider: the Last Revelation on GA-Source.

• There's a Q3A Configuration FAQ on The Bind to help you if you're in a bind over binding your keys...
• A bunch of new Unreal Tournament files on Painful Detail include seven new skins, three new voice packs, and five new models, as well as volume one of their Best of the Best Skin Pack...
• DSL: Darn Stupid Line is a Wired article outlining problems with implementation of high speed access that says "the rising tide of consumer complaints may cause many users to skip over DSL and wait for the "next" broadband technology." Thanks Ant...
• HardNews-3D or not 3D asks a few odd questions about 3D acceleration of Epic's Tim Sweeney, Valve's Gabe Newell, and Raven's Jake Simpson. Also, RTS Domain interviews Keith Zabalaoui of Atomic Games about the Close Combat Series...

A little foray into history this morning. I was tooling through the news archive, and I noticed that this is about the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Blammo project that resulted in our cool searchable news database. It's also just over a year since first amused mention of Swatch InternetTime, but it looks like this one hasn't caught on, at least around these parts. Also, for you real old-schoolers, it's now been over two years since last mention of Ranger Gone Bad 3 (and that mention was a joke about its non-existence at that), the ill-fated Quake movie sequel that would now be as over-budget as Heaven's Gate were it to still be in production (I think it's pretty safe to give up on this one). To finish on a high note, however, I'll point out this is about the three year anniversary of one of the all-time great Quake cinematic efforts, Operation Bayshield... the unfortunate note on this is I can't find a valid mirror of the movie anywhere. If I can dig one up, I'll post it tomorrow, like AMC, someone has to try to keep these classic films from fading into obscurity.

Link of the Day: Lunar Embassy. It's like The Man who Sold the Moon without having to give Robert Heinlein's estate a cut. Thanks Lord J.
Story of the Day: Greeks making waves over Sea-Monkey invasion. Thanks Scott Ames.
Image of the Day: Tom Arnold Never Dies. Thanks Larry Hastings.

Adrenaline Vault has posted an interview on Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, talking to Headfirst designer Andrew Brazier about their upcoming 3D horror adventure, which is based on the Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper RPG. As the title is still quite early into production, the article doesn't go into a lot of specifics, but here is a quote about their planned use of real-time physics to highten the experience:

Our advanced real-time physics will be an essential part of the gameplay and atmosphere creation. Most games these days feature an element of physics, such as the bouncing of a grenade or the pushing of a crate, but we will be moving it forward a lot further by accurately simulating physics on most objects in the game. Therefore, if you throw dynamite into a warehouse, when it explodes, the windows might smash, debris will be thrown about, and the walls might collapse. This is not just some scripted event; the force of the explosion will be calculated by the physics engine, and everything will react accordingly.

In terms of gameplay, this has far-reaching implications as it means there will be a number of ways to solve any particular puzzle. For example, should you need to move a heavy object, pouring oil on the floor would reduce the friction. However, this would also reduce the friction for you, meaning you, as well as other creatures, will slip around all over the place. Water will behave realistically, so objects dropped into it will float or submerge, depending on their weight. We can also simulate events such as driving a car or piloting a plane.

A new unofficial FAQ for Battlezone II: Combat Commander is available at GameFAQs, providing tips and strategies for survival in Pandemic's recently released 3D action/strategy game.

The NetGames USA ngStats for Unreal Tournament Patches and Updates page has a new Patch No. 2 for ngStats that brings it up to version 1.2. Thanks Stomped. The version history page has a list of what's new, which includes a fix for the missing CTF flag kill bug that showed up after the UT 405b patch, a change to the way the program handles large log files, and a way of addressing the problem of players potentially getting disconnected during the heavy CPU usage of both UT changing the map and ngStats running.

A new version 0.5 of the D3DQuake conversion of the Quake source code modified to use Direct3D 7.0 instead of OpenGL is now available. Thanks Ryan Stotts. D3D Quake is GPL, just like Quake, so the source code is also available. Current issues with D3D Quake include requiring 32-bpp textures, an NVIDIA Beta Driver bug makes gun models invisible on GeForce cards, and it crashes on Voodoo3 accelerators after about 60 seconds of play.

Version 5.12 of the King of the Server Mod is now available, offering what they describe as "the next generation of King of the Server." The website has word on what's new and changed in this Quake II mod, a list far too big to try to represent here.

Version 1.0 of Merc's Q3A TeamMod is now available. This server-side mod is designed to help keep the peace on a Quake III Arena server by providing ways to vote players on and off of teams, as well to decide the timelimit via a vote.

PCGamers.Net's ORB interview talks with Christina Ginger, Jamie McNeely, and Phil O'Connor from Strategy First about ORB (Off-World Resource Base), their upcoming space opera where two sides struggle to control the resources in an asteroid belt.

Yumpee's Home Away from Home has a Makefile, a Q3A.depend file, and a read me that Yumpee says will equip you to compile Quake III Arena Virtual Machines on Linux using the Win32 SDK & Wine. Here's word from the Yumpster on the benefits and the limitations of this setup: "However, only one QVM (cgame.qvm, client-side effects) will load and run in Linux since the other 2 QVMs seem to be using features supported only by the Q3A point release. All 3 QVMs load and run in the Win32 point release while only cgame.qvm runs in Linux. Still, even one QVM should allow people to play around with Linux mods in a limited fashion till iD provides the point release and/or the SDK for Linux."

Eurogamer.net's xsi coverage is underway with a look at the qualifier round matches (Makaveli vs. DOOMer, Immortal vs. Shub, Kane vs. DOOMer, and Timber vs. Lakerman) in this big international Quake III Arena tournament currently underway in Sweden. They plan full coverage of the event throughout the weekend.

The intriguingly-named legowhore.com has version 1.5 of Q3ServerKit, the Quake III Arena server utility that offers remote and localhost server monitoring, real time player information, easy addition of bots with all skill levels, a 'kick' button, and much more. Features added in the new version include support for the full retail version of Q3A, a new real time chat panel, and a start panel to kick off a dedicated server.

Version 2b of Artifact Quake 2 is now available, offering the debut public (beta) release of this Q2 update of the "tongue-in-cheek" deathmatch modification for Quake. Not all of the mod's 30 artifacts are in the current version, but it still has a load of them that alter gameplay much in the way of CTF runes (techs, etc.), along with "Pretty pretty colors," and "Many many bugs."

After nearly two years without an update, there's a new version 1.0h of Q_Check, an mIRC auto-away Plug-in script for GameSpy users that will insert the server you joined via GameSpy into your mIRC away message, apparently supporting any game GameSpy supports.

In light of the release of the full source code to Quake, the QuakeOn page now offers the source code for the QuakeOn front-end for Quake. The source is written in Visual Basic (from the page: "The final release was for VB5, but I've since loaded the code into VB6."), and is released under the GNU public license.

Longbow Digital Arts has opened a Modifications and Add-Ons page on the Tread Marks site, giving info and advice on how to modify their tank racing game. To kick things off, they have released a SuperFriction mod, which doubles the default friction of the tanks in both the demo and full versions of the game, for players who would like to have tighter control over their high-speed tanks.

• GA-Source has posted a square nine new screenshots of Venom, the first-person shooter in development by Russian company GSC Game World built on their own Vital Engine ZL.
• XCommand has received six more screenshots of X-COM: Genesis, the latest installment in the long-running X-Com series that will likely never be completed due to Hasbro layoffs.
• There is a first screenshot of Steel Whisper on GA-RPG, an upcoming 3D action adventure RPG by Dutch startup Lost Boys Games.

A new version of the unofficial Quake III Arena FAQ by SilverStream is now available, bringing the info in sync with the final point release, adding links to new mods, and updating many areas with more tips. And while I'm at it, there were also a few minor updates to this Unreal Tournament FAQ.

Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan with a status report on the Soldier of Fortune demo, which he now says to expect Monday:

SoF Demo News

The Demo will be officially released Monday. It got delayed until then mainly because QA found another crash bug Thursday (in the same function, ironically, but different area). Friday, I decided I wanted to try and address a 3dfx driver related bug. On certain drivers (kinda a mix of processor and OS), texturing would completely screw up. I changed the code so that on 3dfx, the game would not enable a specific rendering feature. This took a bit to QA today (to track down a related problem that got by me). I just got done talking to Mike Denny, who is in charge of QA for SoF. We have their blessing to release the demo (finally)... But because of "outside influences" it was decided to hold up until Monday.

Just to give you a brief rundown of the Demo features:
4 single player maps (a tutorial level, 2 full playable levels, plus a cinematic level)
2 deathmatch maps
12 different deathmatch models / skins representing 3 teams
In game server browsing
and a ton of custom options (including custom game settings (such as disabling spawning))

The demo will weigh in at a hefty 95 megs, but should fit on zip disk.

Nihilistic's Rob Huebner updated his .plan with a giant (nearly thousand word) update outlining some what's going on in development of their third-person blood-sucking thriller, Vampire: The Masquerade--Redemption, discussing some of the stages maps must go through, and some bugs encountered in the process.

Thresh's Firing Squad sent off an e-mail to John Carmack, asking why GameSpy's modified server browser DLL is allowed on so-called, "pure" Quake III Arena servers. John explained that it's allowed since it's loaded before you connect to a server - only loads after that point count as "pure."

IGN Guides has posted their guide to Unreal Tournament, featuring a rundown of all the game's weapons, maps, mutators, and more. The guide is available as a downloadable PDF file, or online in HTML format (however, a free signup is required).

There's a preview of Nox on PC.IGN.Com, with some hands-on impressions of Westwood Studios' soon-to-be-released adventure game (which according to them is very addicting). Also, as mentioned yesterday (story), true to their word, the next in-game Nox movie has been posted on Westwood's official site, with some more of the upcoming movies also now on Westwood's FTP server.

Tritin Films, the makers of the Quake III Arena movie "Quad God" have released a short, comedic film titled, "CTF - Comedy in Armor". Like Quad God, it's available for download in Windows Media's ASF format, although it's significantly smaller at 26 MB.

The official Battlecruiser 3000 AD site has been updated with six new screenshots from Battlecruiser Millenium, showing off one of the game's "type 3 stations." Look for more shots next week, showing off some of the new features just added to the game, including shots featuring environmental bump-mapping.

Gamecenter has posted some new screenshots from Earth 2150: Escape from the Blue Planet, an upcoming RTS from TopWare Interactive, that adds depth to the usual RTS gameplay by including various weather and environmental hazards.

GameSpot's GameGuides has posted their guide to Planescape: Torment. The guide, like every other one they've released, is available online for free, or as a paid-for downloadable PDF file. Also, IGN Guides has posted their quick guide to Ultima IX: Ascension, which is available for free in both formats.

Here's two professional gamers making headlines: GameSpy has posted an interview with Kornelia as part of their "Women of Gaming Week." Also, the Boston Globe has published an article on Thresh, better known in the real world as Dennis Fong, talking to him about the world of pro-gaming, and his site Gamers.com.

• AMA Superbike on Gamezilla.
• Grand Theft Auto 2 on Adrenaline Vault.
• Heroes of Might and Magic III (for Linux) on LinuxGames.
• Planescape: Torment on Happy Puppy.
• Quake III Arena on MPOG.
• Shadow Company: Left for Dead on Electric Games.
• Tread Marks (demo) on Rocket Download.
• Thief II: the Metal Age (demo) on 3D-Unlimited.
• Unreal Tournament on GameSpot AU.
• Virtual Sailor (demo) on Gamer's Press.

• According to the official Parsec home page, a self-running demo of this space shooter will be released in late February...
• PlanetQuake has posted an interview with Steven "Massive Bitch" Irvine, the lead skinner at Polycount...
• ShinyNews, a new fansite devoted to all things Shiny (like aluminum foil, no doubt) has posted some new screenshots from Messiah...

I spent much of yesterday afternoon building my new uber-PC, and I tell ya, there's nothing like making your own computer. Sure, you get terribly frustrated trying to find that one jumper on the motherboard you forgot to switch, and sure it's really annoying trying to work all them cables inside your case, but when you're done, and the thing starts up Quake III Arena for the first time...boy is that ever fun. I think I'm done building computers for a while...I've got a desk PC (that's today's model), a game PC, and with all the extra hardware I had left over, I made a server PC, which I'll use to run dedicated servers (under Linux, no less). That ought to keep me happy until Moore's law catches up with my new Pentium III 733 processor.

Link of the Day: Club a Seal. Because some days, this is really, really funny. On every other day it's just stupid.
Bonus Link: Something Awful's Look at PowerPlay, featuring a Q&A with the Gabe Newell Simulation Device. Note: this is a joke, and not meant to be taken seriously.