A thread called Any Questions on the New-Legends.Net Forums has an answer from Infinite Machine's Justin Chin giving a bunch of details about what's planned for inclusion in New Legends, I.M.'s upcoming Unreal-engine first-person shooter. The post talks about how the game will likely ship with just basic multiplayer elements and contain at least 20 hours of single player gameplay, discusses the "friggin huge" levels, the camera system., and more.

The game will be in stores any day now, but incite.com has released a new movie featuring footage from Daikatana. The movie is available as a small (3.5 MB) or large (10.5 MB) MPEG file, and the footage is from some of the later levels in the game.

The Mushroom's Legit Section has posted another one of their 20 question interviews, this time featuring 3D Realms webmaster Joe Siegler. If you're looking for new information about Duke Forever don't bother, but Joe talks about life at 3DR, his thoughts on the gaming industry (and recent games) and of course, what it's like to be the original voice of Duke Nukem (in Duke Nukem II, Joe says two words).

The trailer from KISS: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child that was shown at this year's E3 Expo is available over at GOD's Psycho Circus site as either a Quicktime or Real Video file.

A new interview with members of Microprose's X-COM: Alliance team is up at Telefragged. The interview covers a lot of ground, including a look at some of the game's newer features, including this bit regarding their new speech system for your AI driven teammates:

...each trooper has over 200 lines of autonomous speech that cover everything from running out of ammo in a firefight to mourning over the loss of a fellow trooper. Characters will tell you when they are tired and then bitch at you if you don’t give them a break. They’ll get frustrated at their own mistakes and can become panicked when they’re outnumbered. They’ll even chat amongst each other! Each character has his or her own voice, personality, and in some cases, accent.

GA-Source has received some new screenshots from CroTeam's upcoming first person shooter Serious Sam, along with word that the game's demo will be released a week from tomorrow. Serious Sam runs on an original engine, and they say the demo will contain a single level with six weapons and eleven enemies.

Epic has released Unreal Tournament version 420 (here's a local copy with mirrors). In addition to the new game patch (which features improved Direct3D support), this update contains the first public release of the new UnrealEd 2.0 editor (developed by Legend). Here's a list of changes from the readme file:

Version 420 is completely network compatible with all previous public releases of UT (versions 400, 402, 405b, and 413).

Bug fixes
- fixed actorlinecheck() crash
- fixed findrandomdest()
- fixed D3D driver - combined best performance with widest compatibility of previous iterations, improved Voodoo 4 D3D support
- fixed installer problem with certain directory structures
- fixed security holes with ServerRestartGame() SwitchLevel() and SwitchCoopLevel()
- removed ability to use bad skins
- fixed ADDINI for editing .ini files for patch and umod installation

New features (thanks to Legend)
- New editor! - note that the editor is still called unrealed.exe
- various other under the covers features and fixes merged in by Mark Poesch of Legend

The newly unveiled Vampire Vault has released a new AVI movie from Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption that shows the Christof character being "embraced" to become a vampire. In addition, they also have a new gallery of multiplayer screenshots, that show off the game's character creation system.

According to a news update by AVault, the US version of Earth 2150 has gone gold (the international version has been available for some time now), and will be in stores on June 2nd. In celebration of the news, they have posted 12 new screenshots from this 3D strategy game.

Legend's Craig Lafferty updated his .plan with word that due to the longer-than-expected wait at GT International's QA department, he has released the internernational Wheel of Time patches on their official site, along with a new DLL file that should improve framerates for Direct3D users. Here's the scoop:

Six weeks ago I sent the Wheel of Time International patches off to GT International for testing. Good thing I didn't hold my breath. I think at this point it is safe to assume the patches AND GT testing have been sucked into a black hole or time void.... So, we have decided to just release the patches and call them "beta". I don't for see any problems, they just haven't had the GT seal of approval stamped on them.. So, if you have the Wheel of Time (a non-us version) you can grab the German or "other" International patche from the official Wheel of Time site (http://www.wheeloftime.com). They are linked via Glen's update (under Current Wot News). Also, we released a new d3ddrv.dll file that is also available from the WOT site that should give D3D users a boost in both Image quality and framerate. (Your milage may vary)

If you do run into any problems, please email me at clafferty@legendent.com and let me know.

XtremeNetwork.com has conducted an interview with Erik Bethke, the senior designer and CEO at Taldren, the company behind the original Starfleet Command and its upcoming sequel, the appropriately titled Starfleet Command Volume II. The interview covers both games, with some questions dealing with the success of the original, as well as lots of questions about the sequel, including ones that deal with the multiplayer, its extensibility, and various gameplay features.

Here's some more FAKK2 news for you this afternoon: Italian games site NextGame.it has conducted an interview with several different members of Ritual's Heavy Metal: FAKK2 team. The interview will be run in two parts, and this first installment covers some background info about the game (the license, the story, etc.) as well as some details on their system requirements and how they have modified the Quake III Arena engine. This being an Italian site, you can read the interview in your choice of either English or Italian.

FAKK YOU! the colorfully named Heavy Metal: FAKK2 fan site, has posted the second, and last part of their Q&A with Ritual's resident sound and music man, Zak Belica. These last few questions deal with the type of music the game's soundtrack will include, as well as whether or not they will be using any songs from the Heavy Metal 2000 movie (it doesn't look likely due to rights issues).

GameSpot UK has released nine concept art pieces and two Quicktime movies from Alone in the Dark 4. One of the movies is described as a "making of Alone in the Dark" piece, while the other is a trailer for the game.

SoFCenter has posed a new edition of their Soldier of Fortune Development Diary, featuring programmer Keith Fuller explaining how much of the original Quake II engine they used, and what they changed (complete with a detailed list of the various engine components).

The April 2000 edition of ChessMess.com's UnrealScript Q&A is online. Like each previous installment, this issue is based on of the tons of topics brought up in the UnrealScript mailing list, complete with plenty of code samples for mod authors.

There are three new TRIBES 2 screenshots on Tribes Station, a newly-opened TRIBES fan site. I noticed there that Tribes Universe posted a short Q&A with Dynamix' Dave Georgeson talking about the gameplay seen in the TRIBES 2 movie from E3, talking a lot about how the game's new vehicles will be handled, and also, Fragtopia has posted a scanned copy of the TRIBES 2 poster.

• There's a new ABIT KA7 version RX BIOS (direct link) dated 5/5, there is no word of fixes yet. Thanks SlotA.com. There is also a mirror on the Overclockers' Workbench BBS.
• There is also a new MSI 6309 r1.5 BIOS on the Overclockers' Workbench BBS.
• A new version of the CPUCooL utility. Thanks File Flash.
• RageLtMan's Rage3D Display Drivers has an updated version 7.5 of this unofficial Rage Pro driver set.
• The weekly UK CPU prices on games xtreme have been updated.
• IBM taps new technology to build faster chips (CNet). Thanks a-mammal.

A new version 2.3 of GameSpy2mIrc is now available, updating this script that can update your IRC cohorts as to your status when you use GameSpy 3D to join a multiplayer game, useful for helping friends and clanmates to find the game you're in, or of course, just to be able to chatter to the channel while you are away.

A new version 0.5 of the Gwrap PERL Linux server wrapper is now available. A server running under Gwrap will automatically restart after failing. Gwrap is based on the inspiration of Qwrap and Q3Wrap, which served the same function for Quake and Quake III Arena servers, respectively, but has been rewritten from the ground up to support any game server running under Linux.

A week remains in sign-ups for Counter-Strike Assembly, planned as "the largest gathering of Counter-Strike players in the US," this 100 player tournament/LAN party slated for May 27-28 in San Francisco, though there are also plans for participation from remote LAN locations. Also, the Magic Clan Tournament is a Quake II tourney looking for another couple of entrants. Finally, the next edition of the Pro Quake Players Challenge on GamersHome is gearing up, allowing those following the upcoming Teamplay/ Double Team tourney to predict winners of the tournament, like the deathmatch version of Rotisserie baseball.

• Allegiance on Alloy Gaming.
• Martian Gothic on Eurogamer.net.
• Messiah on Player Of Games.
• Motocross Madness 2 on Game-Guru.net.
• Nox on GameWire.Org.
• StarLancer on Pacific Asia Gaming Network.

• Asus CUR-DLS Dual Flip Chip on Insane Hardware.
• Black Label 60mm 38cfm cooling fan on TweakMax.
• DFI AK70 motherboard on Next Dimension Hardware.
• HDSRAM on 3D Spotlight.
• Razer Boomslang mouse on The Tech Report.
• SuperMicro 750 Server Case on Frosty Tech.

• An articled called The future of games ... is in the future on MSNBC interviews Hideo Kojima about Metal Gear Solid 2, asking about the game that will follow the movie that was the talk of the show at E3. Thanks Brendan Reville...
• GameSpy.com's Ethermoon Developer Journal #2 is up, with more on Strifeshadow, their upcoming multiplayer fantasy RTS...
• A new version 1.5.3 of Cycles 3D, a freeware game based on the cycle sequences in Tron on DemoNews, and likewise, a new version of 3D Blocks is out, described as a "really 3D Tetris like puzzle game." Finally, not really a game, but this MSN Computing Central Shareware page has a PC version of the Magic 8-ball! Thanks Steve Strickland...

The latest trend in spam seems to be aimed at avoiding being filtered out based on the sender's address, I now have a couple of solicitation emails in my inbox that have my own address as the sender. Funny, I don't recall sending out any get rich quick schemes... I wonder if I should complain to my ISP and see if I can get myself in trouble? Speaking of spam and related annoyances, someone wrote in the other day asking why our site was generating external pop-up banner ads (called interstitials by those who keep track of the official names for annoyances). My initial response was to suggest this was generated by exiting some previous porn site or something, but I have learned since then that a glitch at UGO high command accidentally pumped a few of these down the line over the course of a couple of days last week. Our apologies for that: Rest assured, this was accidental... we have some sort of "over my dead body" clause when it comes to interstitials.

Link of the Day: Spud Server (building a potato powered web). Thanks Ant, Brendan Reville, and Slashdot.
Bonus Link: DeadRoses.Com (Over the Hill Birthday Gifts). Thanks Muad.