GameSpot has posted an in-depth preview of Conquest: Frontier Wars, looking ahead to the space-based strategy game by Digital Anvil in detail, while including 16 new screenshots. The article describes the gameplay, which is now confined to a 2D plane, the three races, the combat and supply systems, and more, and also includes an interview with designer Chris Roberts.

The second installment of the Battle Realms Designer Diary is online at GameSpot, discussing progress on the real-time strategy game in development at Liquid Entertainment. Designer Ed Del Castillo explains the new Living Resource system, the peasants in the game, and the importance of "Yin and Yang."

Three Days of Crimson Skies: Day Two on PC.IGN.com features another look at the planes that swarm through the skies in this upcoming fantasy flyer by Zipper Interactive. Tonight's installment offers five more aircraft in images and stats, so study the whole lot as there will probably be a test tomorrow.

Finally on GameSpot tonight, there is a new game guide for EverQuest: the Ruins of Kunark offering their usual thorough treatment of the expansion pack to Verant's MMORPG. The guide can be browsed online, or downloaded as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file for a sum just shy of six bucks.

Okay, it must be Baldur's Gate II day today. Daily Radar has posted a hands-on preview of BioWare's upcoming role-playing extravaganza, relating their experiences with a recent build and snapping ten new screenshots. Elsewhere, there are a dozen new screenshots on GamePro. And GameSpot chips in as well, with a look at the Baldur's Gate II Characters and bunch of concept art, while reporting that the game is on schedule for a September release.

The American McGee's Alice Week at Daily Radar rolls on, and today offers a look at some Wonderland Residents, examining Alice and a couple of the wacky enemies she will encounter, although most have already been introduced elsewhere before.

There are ten new screenshots of Age of Empires II: The Conquerors on Gamecenter, showing off new scenes from this upcoming expansion pack that adds five races, a dozen units and numerous other improvements to Ensemble Studios' real-time strategy game.

Daily Radar UK has posted an interview on Soulbringer, talking to producer Don Kirkland about this recently released 3D role-playing adventure. Don talks about the gameplay on offer, the combat system, the proprietary 3D engine, and more.

Four new screenshots of Warcraft III are online at GameSpy.com, showing some new scenes and a spell effect or two from the fantasy role-playing RTS in development at Blizzard.

Loki Software has released a new beta version 1.0b3 of the Quake III Arena Linux SDK, adding Linux versions of q3asm and lcc, the Portal Viewer Radiant plugin, and some minor fixes in Q3Radiant. Thanks LinuxGames, who have a mirror on 3D Downloads.

• Titanium Angels
  There are five thumbnail-free screenshots of Titanium Angels on Titanium Technology, a fansite for this upcoming third-person action adventure by Mobius and SCi.
• The Fallen
  Gamers.com has posted a couple of new screenshots of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen, taken from the full version of the third-person Trekkie shooter rather than the demo that was released this morning (story).
• Startopia
  GA-Strategy is the latest site to join the Startopia craze, offering four new screenshots of Mucky Foot's oddball 3D strategy game.
• Baldur's Gate II
  RPG Planet has posted a gallery with 18 screenshots of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, showing more scenes from the isometric RPG being crafted at BioWare.
• EVE
  The official EVE site has been updated with new screenshots, concept art and wallpapers for this massively multiplayer space-combat RPG by Crowd Control Productions.

Hot on the heels of yesterday's patches (story), Vicarious Visions has released version 1.61 patches for Terminus, fixing three gameplay problems in their space combat sim. As usual, the patches are available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

PlanetPS2 has posted a comment from Epic's Tim Sweeney, talking about their plans for multiplayer on console systems. Just yesterday we reported that the PS2 version of Unreal Tournament will not be supporting USB modems as had been hinted at in the past (story), and Tim's comments would seem to explain why. Here's an excerpt:

Modem play is something only a PC gamer could love. Performance can be highly erratic; ping times are often high (250 to 350 msec), and the user doesn't know why -- it could be their ISP, it could be a bad server, it could be a noisy phone line, whatever. These issues aren't fixable; they're inherent in the way modems and analog phone lines work. Do you think a significant percentage of console gamers are really going to care about modem play? I personally don't think so, so I place a much higher priority on things like game features and performance. There's no point spending time implementing features that can't possibly live up to users' expectations.

Beta 3 of the Bound For Da Reload mod for Classic Quake has been released. This single player mod adds more blood, weapon kickback and reloading, a chase cam, new skins, and of course, more.

With the Quake III Arena version out and cramming up servers, the official Rocket Arena: UT page has been updated with a status update on the Unreal Tournament version of Rocket Arena. According to the news post by Mongo, the next release (which is technically the first release, as the last version was out for less than 24 hours before being recalled) has been delayed "into August" and will contain four new maps. He also mentions that they are soliciting for new maps, and that the internal beta testing continues, after a slight delay during his vacation. Thanks Stomped.

Although not yet listed on the official Evolva site, Computer Artworks has released a new patch for their colorful tactical shooter, available for download from their ftp server in a US/European version (4.1 MB) and a Japanese version (3.3 MB). The patches bring the game to version 1.2.944 and add a new "diffuse bump mapping" mode available on GeForce, GeForce 2 and Radeon video cards, as well as performance improvements, multiplayer fixes and other tweaks. A US-based mirror is available on 3D Gamers.

A new interview with Akela's Constantine "Kostia" Sapronenkov is up at GA-RPG, talking to the designer about his work on the upcoming sea-faring RPG Sea Dogs. Constantine explains the game's skills system, how combat works (it's entirely in real-time) and the level of realism they're implementing. In addition to the interview itself, GA-RPG has posted some new screenshots from the game.

Just when Senator Lieberman thought the gaming industry couldn't get any more violent comes word from this interview with Vince Desiderio, lead designer at Running With Scissors, that the upcoming sequel to the infamous game Postal will be a first person shooter. The interview also covers the original game, with Vince commenting on the controversy surrounding it, and even why there isn't any offensive language (but plenty of everything else). Here's the quote which says all that is known about the sequel at this time:

We are now in the process of making a new POSTAL game that will be 1st person with strong online support. I really think taking advantage of the Internet will make for a great new version of POSTAL, players just love to run and shoot like in DOOM, so POSTAL is really a great concept for 1st person.

Nicely coinciding with the next story, there is a one minute movie trailer of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn on GameSpot France, displaying new cinematic and in-game footage of, again, BioWare's upcoming isometric RPG.

GameSpot TV has posted a new video interview, talking to BioWare producer Ben Smedstad about their isometric role-playing game Baldur's Gate II. There are seven clips in RealPlayer or Windows Media Player format adding up to about twenty-five minutes of footage, with Ben discussing the premise and engine of the game, the new classes, spells, monsters and items, and a whole lot more.

Big Time Software has released a version 1.03 patch for Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, updating both the Windows and Mac editions of their 3D turn-based wargame. While no changes are listed on the site, the included README shows a large number of improvements and fixes, and includes specific installation instructions.

GameSpy.com has a new article up that chronicles the author's recent visit to BioWare's headquarters in Edmonton, Canada. The piece features a description of the goings on at the studio, and contains a hands-on report of Baldur's Gate II and details on the Neverwinter Nights Toolset.

Two new screenshots from No One Lives Forever, the upcoming first person, LithTech 2.0 engine title from Monolith, are up at GA-Source. The shots feature one of the weapons, and two different environments from the game.

A new edition of GameSpy.com's Crimson Skies developer diary is online, with Zipper Interactive's 3D artist Jay Banchero explaining the art of creating environments for the game. Crimson Skies contains very detailed environments that feature ground clutter, physical buildings, real 3D clouds, and other effects not normally seen in a flight simulator, and Banchero details how all of this was achieved using their engine.

Stomped has conducted an interview with Tim Gerritsen, talking to the biz head at Human Head about their upcoming games, the third-person Viking melee game RUNE and the third-person horror adventure Blair Witch II: Coffin Rock. Tim discusses both games in equal measure, including their plans for supporting the RUNE community after the game's release, and how they aim to make BWP2 different from the other two games in the trilogy. Here is a quote on the development status of RUNE:

Rune goes alpha next week, and the place is hopping. Gameplay is pretty much there minus the final tweaking to make it shine. We are just finishing all the event scripting for all the levels, and enemy placement. Once that is done, it is pretty much fix, polish and tweak. Multiplayer is also the last big hurdle to complete. Initial multiplayer is working, but it is not really ready for prime time.

A rare update to the official The World Is Not Enough site brings some new background information to the upcoming Bond shooter. To gain access, you need some spy-like abilities, but since we can't assume everyone here has a "00" number, just click on the fingerprint and enter any four digits. The resulting pop-up window, which can only be fully viewed in screen resolutions of 1024x768 and larger, introduces the leading characters James Bond and Dr. Christmas Jones, as well as two weapons of choice in Q's Lab section.

An edited chat log from yesterday's IRC session with members of Ritual's Heavy Metal: FAKK2 team is up at FAKK2 Central. Topics covered include everything from the changes they've made to the Quake III Arena engine, to the nudity (or lack thereof) in the game, the number of frames of animation in their main character, and the possibilities of a multiplayer add-on once the game is released (it definitely won't be in the box).

A new edition of Voodoo Extreme's Rune developer's diary is online, with Human Head's Chris Rhinehart providing an update on the current status of the game. According to Chris, they are fully entrenched in crunch mode, and he explains what the various team members are concentrating on, and answers a couple of questions about the game, including one about the inevitable demo (which will be released, but not until after the game goes gold).

A playable demo for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen is available on the CD accompanying the new print edition of PC Gamer magazine. The 90 MB demo of this third-person, Unreal-engine action game is now also available for download from The Adrenaline Vault, 3D Action Gamers, and DemoNews.

Krawall interviews Bobby "Xcalibur" Pavlock, talking with the Rogue level designer about his work on American McGee's Alice, the upcoming through the looking glass Quake III-engine game. The Q&A is pre-translated to English (it's a German site), and discusses things like their goal of making you ask "What were these guys smoking when they were making this game?" Continuing on the subject of Alice, Part Two of Well Rounded Entertainment's Alice Preview is up, with more hands-on impressions of the game after visiting the publisher, including another six screenshots, the last three of which are new.

GA-Source interviews Chris Roby of Sinister Games to catch up with the game designer on Soldier to discuss progress on this upcoming third person film adaptation, illustrated by several screenshots. Meanwhile, taking a similar tack, The Corporation interviews Paul Potera talking with the VP of operations at Sinister about his role as the game's producer.

Actujeux.com's FAKK2 preview takes a look at Ritual Entertainment's upcoming Quake III-engine, third-person action game of big guns and big explosions with some hands-on impressions of a playable beta they were able to coerce out of the game's European publisher. Though this is a French site, the original French article is already translated to English, offering impressions, and loads of new screenshots from their build. There are more new FAKK2 shots, including some wireframes, on their article on the game's technology, but this one is only in French, so if you don't parlez, you can rely on the helpful (if a bit literal) services of Babel Fish.

Fox Interactive producer David Stalker updated his .plan with word that the source code for Aliens versus Predator Gold has been released, offering the opportunity to those that like to get in and edit or modify games "to play around in the AvP sandpit." The .plan doesn't mention an actual location, but the files can be found on AvPNews.com.

SystemLogic.net's Elite Force Exclusive offers up some new screenshots from Raven's upcoming Trekkie Quake III Engine shooter as well as some E3 artwork, and an interview with the game's sound director, which discusses the challenges of living up to the work of highly-regarded Trek music composer Jerry Goldsmith, among other things.

• Thermaltake Cooler Warning
  Word from the millisec.com Store is they are recalling Thermaltake socket 462 coolers for Duron/Thunderbird they have sold and are warning users to not try to install one wherever it was purchased due to the strong possibility it will destroy your CPU. Thanks G3d.
• On NVIDIA PR
  Hypothermia's Derek Perez Q&A follows-up on recent allegations of coercion by some websites, explaining that some confusion is what lead to some mistaken impressions of their policies.
• ATI's Apple Mea Culpa
  ATI on Apple leak: It was our fault reports MacCentral.
• AMD Q&A
  GA-Hardware's AMD Q&A catches up with AMD's Drew Prairie to discuss the present and future of AMD's CPUs.
• More Prices
  Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU Prices have been updated, as have Chick's Hardware's US CPU Price Guide and their UK CPU Price Guide.
• Cool Dat Case
  G3D's Case Cooling Guide shows how to keep cool and go with the airflow.
• State of the State
  Ars Technica's The State of PC Hardware attempts to recap the last month's worth of news on the PC scene.

Word from the toxic avengers at Noxious.net is that Nox Quest, the upcoming free coop multiplayer add-on for Nox. Westwood's isometric-view action/RPG, will be available for download on Monday, July 31. Here are the details they passed along:

"The Nox team is proud to announce that we will be releasing Nox Quest on Monday, July 31st! In order to accomplish this, we will be taking the official Nox servers down during Monday. We have a lot of servers all over the world to update, so it will likely take the whole day. When the servers come back up, they will be running Nox version 1.2, which includes hooks for Nox Quest as well as some bug fixes and gameplay tweaks. This patch will be between 700 Kb and 1.3 Mb, depending on your current version, and will be auto-downloaded to you when you connect to Westwood Online. To actually play Nox Quest, you will need to download it separately from www.westwood.com. This FREE download is approximately 26 megabytes. We hope you really enjoy this unique new COOPERATIVE multiplayer Nox game. How far will you be able to adventure? Things get pretty rough after stage 20... See you in Nox Quest Monday night!"

A post to the Nightmare Child Forums by Gathering of developers' head honcho Mike Wilson gives news that the collector's editions of KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child are being printed now "and will ship out on Monday to Babbages, EB, and Best Buy," who are the only three retailers that will be carrying the C.E.

The Sven Co-Op website has a new version 1.35 of Sven Co-Op, the Half-Life modification that adds cooperative multiplayer play to the game's cooperative single player support (you have to admit that the Barneys are quite cooperative, if not more than a little reckless). The new version, available for both Windows and Linux, fixes a few bugs, and adds some weapons, which often were not available in sufficient numbers to support all the players.

The Wireplay Counter Strike 4 v 4 Tournament has been announced, planned to coincide with the upcoming ECTS in the UK. Also, Gamershome.com interviews Sangboy, talking with one of the most feared competitors on the Korean gaming scene.

Top 10 Quake III Arena Mods on Gamecenter recaps their choices of the best of the best of Q3A gameplay variations. Meanwhile, ChaosRealm's Starwars: Call To Arms interview discusses this Half-Life mod and another H-L mod is the subject of Crossfire's Navy Seals Interview, which talks with Curtis Wyant. Finally, a UT mod is the subject of Unreal Italia's Strike Force interview, which talks (in English) with Gruff, the lead coder on the mod.

Machinima.com's Quick 10: Working in a New Engine offers thoughts from Strange Company's Hugh Hancock on "the fear and loathing that is a new game SDK..."

• Aliens Vs Predator Gold on PlayNOW.
• Army Men: World War on Game-Over.
• Cleopatra on PC.IGN.com.
• Colin McRae Rally on Game Industry.
• Dark Reign 2 (second opinion) on Games Domain.
• Deus Ex on Stomped.
• Dino Crisis on Daily Radar UK.
• Empire of the Ants on GameSpot UK.
• Evolva on The Corporation.
• Icewind Dale on Games Domain.
• KISS Psycho Circus: the Nightmare Child on Gamers Depot, Game-Over, and Daily Radar.
• Sanity: Aiken's Artifact Demo on FiringSquad, GA-RPG, Xtreme Network, JunkExtreme, and Shaft's House.
• Shadow Watch on Well Rounded Entertainment.
• Soldier of Fortune on GracelessLand.
• Star Trek: ConQuest Online on Games Domain.
• Star Trek: Starfleet Command Gold Edition on GameRaiders.
• Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing on Techgrounds.
• Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption on HyperActive (thanks RPGVault).

• AOpen AK72 motherboard on Sharky Extreme.
• AOpen AX3L motherboard on Gamer's Depot.
• Asus A7V motherboard on Overclockers UK.
• ATI Radeon video card on Ace's Hardware
• Cable/xDSL Router Shootout part two on hardCOREware.Net.
• Cambridge SoundWorks DeskTop Theater on The Tech Zone.
• DI-701 Residential Gateway on PCGN.
• Everglide Giganta mouse pad on Jsi Hardware.
• Gigabyte GA-7ZM Micro-ATX Socket-A motherboard on Gamer's Depot.
• Guillemot Hercules 3D Prophet II MX video card on Gamecenter.com.
• Hercules 3D Prophet II 32 MB video card on Tech-Review.Com.
• Mouse Bungee on nV News.
• MSI MS-StarForce 815 GeForce2 GTS video card on GotApex?

• Health groups directly link media to child violence is a CNN article that reports: "In one of the most definitive statements yet on violence in American culture, four national health associations link the violence in television, music, video games and movies to increasing violence among children." Thanks Steve and theAntiELVIS...
• ActiveWin is reporting that August 1 will mark the debut release of "Microsoft SideWinder Game Voice Share Edition," an in-game voice communication program, presumably the result of their acquisition a while back of Shadowfactor Software, makers of the BattleCom in-game communication software...
• Diabloii.net's MP3 of the Week is up, with another tune from Diablo II in that .mp3 format that the kids love so much...
• Word is the newly-renamed Planet Romero (johnromero.com) will be home to The Romero's future .plan-type updates, according to this .plan update, presumably one of his last of the old public variety...
• Majesty - Dragon has a list of changes planned for the upcoming version 1.3 Majesty patch...

As it rains here in New York City for pretty much the third straight day since they sprayed for those mosquitoes, I find my feeling that Mother Nature is rooting for the little suckers in the war against us big suckers is growing stronger and stronger...

Link of the Day: The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project. Been a while since we've aided in the glorification of preservative-laden food (or at least quasi-food). Thanks wayne.
Story of the Day: Judge orders Napster to halt online music distribution (CNN). "So long and thanks for all the Phish." Thanks Chris Johnson for the story and Mike for the great one-liner..
Bonus Story: Pizza Delivery Ends Suicidal Standoff. Thanks Bill Hodkowski. A depressed webmaster, perhaps?