3dfx has released new MacOS drivers for their Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 3 based cards. These new drivers fix problems with Rainbow Six and Quake III Arena.

GameFan has posted six new screenshots from BioWare's MDK 2, taken from a beta build of the PC version of the game. MDK, as everyone knows, stands for Missiles Don't Kill (otherwise known as Famous Last Words).

Although labelled as a review, Jumbo Games has posted a brief preview of Thief II: the Metal Age, Looking Glass' upcoming stealthy action game (thanks Vault Network). The article includes a Q&A with the development team and several new screenshots from the full version of the game.

Westwood sent along the announcement that Nox has gone gold and should be in stores by February 15 in North America, and February 18 around the world. Nox is their isometric action-RPG in a fantasy setting with a single-player game and several multiplayer options.

HQH51, also the headquarters of the unofficial Half-Life FAQ, has posted an unofficial Soldier of Fortune FAQ as a zipped HTML file, providing detailed info on the game and its demo, as well as troubleshooting and performance tips.

Just when the version 1.0 release earlier today was described as "probably the last in a long time" (story), here comes version 1.1 of the Jumbot for Half-Life at Rich's Project Warehouse. Thanks Fulgore. This versions fixes the "gauss fire-through-wall code" that was disabled in the 1.0 release, and tweaks the tripmine avoidance code.

Raven's John Scott updated his .plan again on some issues and changes with Soldier of Fortune configs, and a request for feedback. Here's the deal:

A common issue that people seem to have is that there are too many keys. We have only really added two (the zoom in and out), which are not necessary (you can hold down the alternate fire to zoom in).

We will be putting in several predefined configs and I am pushing for 2 new keys that emulate the use and strafe left/right functionality in one keypress.

There has been much discussion internally, but what other ideas do you netizens have ?

Email: sof-demo@ravensoft.com

In related SoF news, Rick Johnson updated his .plan to mention three demo servers that are running at different player speeds, as promised earlier today (story):

I set up 3 servers here.
Raven-Speed-0.60 - player speed set at 60%
Raven-Speed-0.70 - player speed set at 70%
Raven-Speed-0.75 - player speed set at 75%

This is completely setable by the server operator, so in the end, you can pick whatever speed you desire...

The weekly update to the official Summoner site brings the opening of a character gallery, where the Brass Golem character can be viewed as a traditional image, or in its 3D modelled glory using the MetaStream plugin. Also on offer is a fresh screenshot of the week.

The version 1.1 patch for SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle that was released last week (story) turns out not to be meant for public distribution, as this post on the SWAT 3 message board explains, and a new version 1.2 patch should be released soon. Thanks Hastur.

ION Storm lead designer Harvey Smith updated his Witchboy's Cauldron site with the current status of the development of Deus Ex, their upcoming 3D action RPG (thanks Vault Network). Summarized as "fixing bugs and tuning game-play," there's a rundown of the current tasks of programmers, artists, designers and writers on the team, and a bit about the overall feel of the game.

Telefragged has posted three in-game, and three conceptual images from X-COM: Alliance, the Unreal-engine title in the X-COM universe. The concept images show off a character, a location, and a weapon, while the in-game images show some of the game's teammate interaction.

3dfx' Jason Wong sent along word that new Voodoo3 2000/3000 WHQL Win9x Retail Drivers v1.04.00 have been released. The 6.8 MB download includes updated Glide and OpenGL ICD's, as well as various bug fixes.

TRIBES Skinners Anonymous has posted a Q&A with Barry Drew, the lead 3D artist on Dynamix' TRIBES team, talking mostly about the artistic side of the game's development, including some details on their usage of the PNG format for the skin files in TRIBES 2, and other techie stuff.

Today's barrage of Soldier of Fortune news continues, as Raven has released a demo FAQ on their Soldier of Fortune support site, offering help with video and driver issues, the use of the console, a collection of past .plan updates, and other tips.

Another Call of Cthulhu interview has popped up, this time at the German Vampire: The Masquerade site Lair of the Vampire. The interview is with Headfirst's Simon Woodroffe, and covers the company's background as well as their upcoming Lovecraft-inspired first person title.

Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan with a reaction to feedback they've apparently been receiving about player movement speeds in the just-released Soldier of Fortune Demo. Word is a new cvar to govern these speeds will be created, which sounds like it can be run on the server side, as he mentions plans to demonstrate this on a server, possibly as early as this evening:

Whomever said we don't listen...

Based upon feedback of the DM players, we are going to add a cvar which controls (on the server) how fast movement rates are. So you can scale down the movement rates to whatever rate you desire. Few other things we are going to add: cvar to allow you to set a frag penality if you kill yourself and a dm flag to say that you only want bullet weapons in a level.

Sometime this evening, I'll bring up a demo server with the slower movement rates, so that you can judge it for yourself.

Raven's John Scott updated his .plan with a config file that Soldier of Fortune dedicated server admins can modify. Here's the scoop:

Here is the config file that runs when a dedicated server is started.

http://www2.ravensoft.com/users/jscott/sof/dedicated.cfg

Just slip it in your user folder and edit to your liking. It will override the one in the pak file. It is heavily commented and about 300 bytes.

To get a list of dm flag bits, run the game with a console, set deathmatch to 1 and type list_dmflags (setting deathmatch to 1 is required for this).

I ran a cable server at home last night, it filled up in about 30 seconds! Have fun fragging!

FAKK You! has posted an update from Ritual's Robert Atkins, regarding their third person Quake III Arena engine title, Heavy Metal: FAKK2. The update is fairly long, but contains the news that they've redone the Julie model yet again ("third time's the charm" says Atkins) and that she'll be able to wield two weapons simultaneously in the game.

AGN3D has posted a brief interview with SquareSoft's Kenji Mimura, talking about their Playstation (and now PC) RPG Final Fantasy VIII. Since the game has been out for so long, there's no new information in this interview, but it's still interesting if you're unfamiliar with the game. Like yesterday's Voyager interview, this was transcribed from one of their shows, which you can catch in their archives.

GamersCentral has posted an interview with HeadFirst's Andrew Brazier, talking to the developer about their first person title Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. The interview deals with several gameplay issues, as well as how the developers plan to tie the game into the pen and paper RPG. Here's a brief excerpt:

One of the key features we will be keeping from the RPG is the element of the character's Sanity (and the loss of it!). This will take an important part of gameplay. We won't be incorporating all the stats from the RPG, but will be keeping parts of them.

GASource has posted a new screenshot from 4D Ruler's upcoming first person shooter Gore, as well as a quote from the game's lead developer regarding their technology and how it stacks up to the competition. Also, Voodoo Extreme has posted a new shot from Monolith's LithTech 2 engine, presumably from a demonstration level, as no game is named.

Raven programmer Marcus Whitlock updated his .plan with some comments on the Soldier of Fortune demo that's sucking up bandwidth across the globe:

Just like to say a couple of things about the Soldier of Fortune DEMO and in particular, the predicted view-weapons in Soldier of Fortune:

1) Though we're very pleased with how it turned out, the DEMO is at the end of the say, a snapshot of work in progress. So the final, retail version of SoF will contain many enhancements over what you're playing with now. In line with what I'm working on currently, the predicted view-weapons will be further refined.

2) A couple of things to note about how the prediction works. The server instructs the client to change weapons (e.g. in response to seeing that you pressed a weapon selection key). The server also instructs the client to reload your weapon's clip (either 'cos you hit the reload key or your clip ran out). And of course, the actual missile / projectile / bullet tracing / hitting something code is also done on the server. Everything else tho' is predicted.

After a month-long hiatus, a new update to the official American McGee's Alice site shows off a new enemy character, the Card Guard, which, according to the description, shouldn't be underestimated just because he appears to be limping along.

Epic's Tim Sweeney has written an article for GameSpy.com, discussing the issue of programming languages in games, looking at the evolution of them from low-level assembly to C++ and Java.

Rich's Project Warehouse has the release of version 1.0 of the Jumbot for Half-Life. This is described as "probably the last (new release) in a long time," and is also called "biggest release in a long time." The new version of this AI opponent for Half-Life fixes a bunch of bugs and other problems including trip mine avoidance and visibility checking, and adds new global waypoint code (replacing the old entity-based system), as well as other enhancements and fixes.

There's a list of Soldier Of Fortune Console Commands on Gameaholic dot Com detailing known console commands in Raven's just-released Soldier of Fortune Demo (story). Starting with how to enable the console in the first place, the page offers a list of cheat codes, controls, WON commands, other multiplayer commands, and more.

A new version 0.9.3 of the XQF Quake server browser and launcher for Unix/X11 is now available. XQF can help you find Quake, QuakeWorld, Quake II, and Quake III Arena servers, serving as a front-end to Steve Jankowski's QStat. Described as a "New stable version," this release offers new autoconf support, rewritten master list handling code, Debian/Linux support, and bug fixes. Thanks Jacek Fedoryñski.

Raven's John Scott added a fourth installment to his string of .plan updates about troubleshooting the just-released Soldier of Fortune Demo with a tip on how to sort the server list produced by the demo's in-game browser. Also, Raven's Rick Johnson added a note to his .plan in case it was necessary to point out they are eager for feedback on the new demo:

With the demo being out now, we would love to hear your Comments. Either Positive or Negative, just be descriptive, as one line comments don't really help us too much. For general questions, comments, etc, go to the SoF Message Board on that page.

There are a pair of new Starlancer screenshots on Active Windows showing off the upcoming space combat game from Digital Anvil. In addition to the in-game shots, they've also got a shot up of the box art, and a list of key features planned for the game.

The World of Arcanum (this is the English version of the native German site) has updated their gallery with more new screenshots showing off the isometric role-playing offered in Arcanum, currently under construction at Troika Games. Many of these are full-sized version of shots previously only available as thumbnails.

• Pentium III price cuts likely to presage PC discounts. Thanks Haakon Larsen (who points out "thanks AMD").
• MS cancels Neptune, consumer version of Win2k on THE REGISTER, reports a rumor that the consumer-oriented "Neptune" Win2K code is now being merged with the "Odyssey" code, that had been planned for a subsequent Win2K release. If this is true, it sounds like it could spell further delays. Thanks Ant.
• @Home Puts Speed Limits on Uploads by Subscribers (free NY Times subscription required) describes new plans by the cable provider to free up more bandwidth for most of their subscribers by capping the bandwidth used by all of them. Thanks marleyboy.
• Speedy 3D's Overclock Everything offers tips on how to do just that (keyboard cooler anyone?).
• GeForce 256 - The Fan Sites Speak on AGN Hardware talks with several webmasters of NVIDIA-oriented websites about NVIDIA's latest.
• SMP: Taking a TNT2 Ultra to the Max on Beyond3D examines SMP results, with benchmarks and GeForce T&L Day 2 on HardOCP also offers new benchmarks.
• The Weekly CPU Price Chart on Tech-Review has been updated.
• Rev. 6.0 of the BIOS Optimization Guide on Adrian's Rojak Pot is online.
• Elsa Erazor X2 is reviewed on GameSpot.
• Guillemot Maxi-Sound Fortissimo soundcard is reviewed on Tweak3D.net
• Athlon 750 CPU on a K7M motherboard on Ars Technica.
• ECS P6IWT-Me/i810E motherboard is reviewed on Sharky Extreme.
• Iwill WS133 motherboard is reviewed on HardwareCentral.
• AOpen AX6C motherboard is reviewed on got apex.

An update to the unofficial Gibstats Quake III Arena support is available on Fuzzy's Logic. The new feature in the small download is the addition of Q3A CTF support, and there are also a few more new fixes (grenade suicides weren't showing up in the Grenade Launcher stats, BFG kills weren't being displayed correctly) to the full Q3A support for the Gibstats logfile parsing utility that currently officially only supports the Q3A Demo/Test releases.

• 12 O'Clock High: Bombing the Reich on Adrenaline Vault.
• Corsairs (Flash required) on gg8.com.
• Crusaders of Might and Magic on Actiontrip.
• Mortyr on GamePower.
• Odium on Electric Games.
• Planescape: Torment on Gaming Age.
• Ratpadz Mousepad on The Tech Report.
• Septerra Core (in German) on GameSurf.De.
• Sid Meier's Antietam on Gamers Depot.
• Star Trek: Hidden Evil on Well Rounded Entertainment.
• TrickStyle on Glide Underground.

• I.am/TFC has posted a collection of "a few dozen of the best recorded videos of tips, tricks, secrets, and techniques that are essential to keeping your team one step ahead of the enemy in Team Fortress Classic."...
• Pixel Obscura on loonygames looks at The Wheel of Time and Unreal Tournament cinematics, through the eyes of their resident film critic...
• Word from the folks at Game Commander is that an SE version their voice command and control software for games will be included in the bundle with Soundblaster Live! Platinum sound card...
• Authors interested in the source code for the Jumbot for Half-Life should head over to Rich's Project Warehouse, where there's a deadline of February 5, after which requests for the source will no longer be honored...
• 3D Realms Entertainment Web Site has a new table for download for Balls of Steel, their provocatively-named 3D pinball game. On a barely-related note, an updated version of the Crazy Marbles freeware OpenGL accelerated homage to Marble Madness is now available...

Hey, look at that... as I write these words, my SoF demo download completed! After over nine hours of downloading, Windows popped up a dialog box in the middle of my screen saying the file was being "copied" to my drive for the next 15 seconds or so, with a nice healthy "cancel" button in the middle. I can't imagine how unhappy I would have been had I been typing away at that moment and managed to cancel that process, but luckily that didn't happen (still gives me shivers to think about it). Is that ever a "feature" that could backfire! I seem to have stirred up some activity with that mention of RGB3, from what I've seen, some of the key players will be telling their tales in that article mentioned yesterday, and The Clan Rangers News reports: "The Rangers are proud to announce that we are finally releasing a high quality demo version of the highly anticipated Ranger Gone Bad 3. We are looking to release this innovative production sometime this weekend." Go figure!

Link of the Day: Y5B - The Year 5 Billion Problem. Hey, it's real, and pretending it isn't will not make it go away. Thanks David "D:)Man" Van Meter.
Story of the Day: Goat to Be Hurled From Belfry Is Spared. We like to avoid "oddly enough" and other categorized-as-odd news, but as I said when posting the original to which this is a follow-up, we'll go for any story about goat-tossing. And this one has a happy ending too.
Image of the Day: Womb Raider. It's taken that long to get around to Lara satires that don't include nudity. Thanks Ant.