And the dust gently settles, as the show comes to a close, but not the coverage!

• PC.IGN.Com
  PC.IGN.com's E3 coverage continues with Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, Max Payne, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Sigma: The Adventures of Rex Chance, Myth III: The Wolf Age, Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, Dune, as well as more ShakyCam movies, including: Soldier of Fortune 2, Sigma, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Red Faction, and Ghost Recon.
• GameSpot
  GameSpot E3 2001 has been updated with previews of SimsVille, Zero-G Marines, O.R.B., Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars, Real War, Skittles: Darkened Sky, Battle Realms, Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon, Republic: The Revolution, and Anarchy Online.
• Miscellaneous
  And rounding out our update: eUniverseGames.com's E3 coverage, including a look at Strategy First Games and Morrowind, Fragland.net's E3 Coverage Day 2, Warcraftiii.net previews Warcraft III, MGON previews Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and likewise Well Rounded Entertainment's Return to Castle Wolfenstein First Look is online.

Jason "DarkReaper" Rodzik who helped organize the No Cheating Drivers Petition forwards an email that was issued by ASUS regarding the future of the cheating drivers, along with information for server operators on how to combat them:

Dear sir,

Thanks for your kindly reminding! To respect the preferences of the majority of our customers and users around the world, ASUS will disable “see-through” capability in all future graphics drivers. Although ASUS did not officially release the “see-through” feature in the current 11.01, 12.00 and 12.10 drivers, this feature-enhancing codes were enabled by non-ASUS programmers and posted on various unauthorized websites.

ASUS recognizes that these features may offer unfair competitive advantages for some users and will take actions to curtail the use of these drivers. All codes related to these features will be removed in all future versions (Version 12.40 and up) to prevent any further tampering that may enable “see-through”. ASUS will also provide a way for web hosts to detect and disable “see-through” functionality.

How to Detect and Disable “See-through” Mode
This method of detection is intended for web hosts of online games.
Web hosts should enumerate all keys (0000, 0001, etc.) under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesClassDisplay" and do the following patches.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesClassDisplayXXXXUI]
"DisableD3dWireframe"=dword:00000001
"DisableOglWireframe"=dword:00000001
"DisableOglTransparent"=dword:00000001
We respect the opinions of all our customers and thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

Best Regards,

Kent Chien
Multimedia Business Dept.
Sales & Marketing Division
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.

Star Trek: Bridge Commander Interview on PC.IGN.com corners Activision producer Parker Davis to talk about this capitol ship space sim under construction at Totally Games. He summarizes the current state of the game, the missions and gameplay that can be expected, and a few other topics. And elsewhere, German site Gamesmania has conducted a quick Q&A with Larry Holland for which fansite The Bridge has posted an English translation, quizzing the Totally Games CEO about his game and confirming a note in GameSpot's preview (story) that the game's multiplayer side has been scrapped.

GameSpy.com has posted the first details and screenshots of Midgard, apparently not to be confused with one of the Realms in Mythic's MMORPG Dark Ages of Camelot, but a newly announced 3D MMORPG in the works at Norwegian developers Funcom, who are currently finishing up Anarchy Online for a June release. The update features quotes from producer Ragnar Tørnquist who talks about the game's premise, economic system, player roles, and more. Here is a quote that gives a feel for the game's Nordic environments:

Midgard will feature a 3D world of deep forests, fjords, icy glaciers and mountains. Exploring and adventuring will be important diversions once you have gained some experience. Trolls, sea serpents and other creatures of Norse mythology will be found in the wilderness. They have purposely kept the lands of Midgard smaller so that they could it deeper and richer. They are even planning on developing Vahalla, Norse mythology's version of warrior heaven, as a player versus player combat area.

In a surprising twist, PC.IGN.com reports that Deus Ex 2 (originally announced here) and Thief 3 (announced here), the sequels to the critically acclaimed PC action games that are currently in development at ION Storm Austin, are now headed for a console release first before appearing on the PC. Thief 3 is targeted for the Xbox, while no specific console system is mentioned for Deus Ex 2. The decision is motivated in this excerpt:

The reason behind these changes is apparently developer driven. We were told that because of the particular restraints of the consoles, whether it be RAM, or otherwise, that by programming a game with more restrictions first, it will be easier to open up the games to PCs, which give developers much more freedom, particularly in the RAM department.

Illusion Softworks has relaunched their official Hidden & Dangerous 2 site by hiding all that dangerous DHTML code, and while the site is still missing a few sections, it does have some new information on the game's characters, vehicles, and weapons. Likewise, US publisher Gathering of Developers has opened its own Hidden & Dangerous 2 site as well as their Mafia site (Flash-only) with game information, a mix of new and familiar screenshots, and new download links for the E3 trailers (story) that were removed from TalonSoft's ftp server yesterday.

• Sierra's Triple Dose
  Since they are apparently taking Monday off, Sierra Studios has released their usual screenshots of the week for Arcanum, Empire Earth, Throne of Darkness a bit early.
• Myth II: Green Berets
  There are four new Myth II: Green Berets screenshots on eUniverseGames in addition to the three revealed last night of this squad-based tactical combat game by Take 2.
• TORN
  A whopping 28 new screenshots of Black Isle Studios: TORN are online at Freelancer, depicting new scenes in the 3D role-playing game being crafted at Black Isle.
• Divided Ground
  Adrenaline Vault has posted ten new Divided Ground: Middle East Conflict screenshotsof the turn-based wargame formerly known as Arab-Israeli Wars.
• Anarchy Online
  The neverending series of Anarchy Online screenshot triplets is continued at EuroGamer and MOO@Gameznet.

Sovereign Vault has conducted an interview with Geoffrey Zatkin, talking to the Verant lead designer about this massively multiplayer strategy game. Geoffrey talks about the changes in the game since it was last shown in public at last year's E3, some of the design challenges, communities in massively multiplayer games, how the game copes with offline players in a persistent universe, and quite a few other topics.

id Software's Robert Duffy updated his .plan with a brief status report on the upcoming point release patch for Quake III Arena, which was originally anticipated a week or so ago. Here is what he has to say:

"Early next week". Did I say that ? The point release is coming, we continue to update and tweak things as well as fix some issues. Mod Authors have and have had the source etc and it is in the testing loop at Activision. Soon is the best I can say, but we hope this will address all of the cheats, hacks, adds a multitude of new things request wise, fixes lots of bugs etc. A Linux beta will be available right around the same time too as well as Mac.

I did not attend E3 this year but it looks like it went great. Lots of neat looking games from the look of the movies and the word back from everyone there.

The official Halo Xbox site offers a new E3 trailer in streaming Windows Media Player format of the 3D action game Bungie is creating for PC, Mac, and Xbox. The movie runs for some two and a half minutes and sports plenty of gameplay footage in high-res and low-res streams (but beware that the server seems rather slow at times). Thanks halo.bungie.org.

• GoD
  GodGames E3 2001 Coverage continues with two more entries in Askin' Haskins from the Promised Lot talking smack about E3 parties and such.
• RPGDot
  RPGDot@E3 - day 2 has their coverage from the show of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Balder's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal (apparently not to be confused with Baldur's Gate), Neverwinter Nights, Sea Dogs II, and Armalion.
• FiringSquad
  FiringSquad's Day 1 E3 Report with coverage of Halo, Pirates of Skull Cove, Dead or Alive 3, Random X-Box announcements, WarCraft III, LithTech, BioWare, and Neverwinter Nights.
• PC.IGN.Com
  PC.IGN.com rolls on with looks at Global Operations, Sims Online, Age of Mythology, Rim: Battle Planets, Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising, and Disciples II: Dark Prophecy, and a few of ShakyCam movies from the floor a Mafia Movie (Godfather 4?), Halo Movie, a Freedom Force Movie, and a Die Hard Nakatomi Plaza Movie (Die Hard 4?).
• GameSpy
  GameSpy.com's E3 Coverage rolls on with a Myth 3 preview, an EverQuest: Shadows of Luclin first look, Imperium Galactica 3 and Divine Divinity first looks. a Warcraft 3 preview, a Sigma preview, a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic preview, a Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction preview, an Age of Mythology preview, and a Jedi Outcast: Jedi Knight II preview.
• GameSpot
  GameSpot E3 2001 PC continues with previews of Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Asheron's Call 2, Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates, Torn, World War II Online: Blitzkrieg, Disciples II: Dark Prophecy, Aliens Versus Predator 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, PlanetSide, and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal
• Miscellaneous
  More coverage is online, including CNET.com's E3 Coverage (thanks Mulder), Maximum3D's selective E3 coverage, and GamePen's E3 coverage Day two.
• Photos
  And where are the booth babes? Well, there are loads of photos of all sorts of stuff on E3 Command at Gamer's Pulse, HomeLan, and Fragland.net.

Emperor Battle for Dune is gold on GameSpot (thanks BG:CNC) reports that during an interview with Louis Castle the Westwood Studios co-founder spilled the beans that Emperor: Battle for Dune is gold, and in fact, their upcoming Dune RTS game was completed a few weeks ago, was shipped off to manufacturing on May 16, and is expected to start showing up in stores during the first week of June.

The final installment in the week-long spate of updates on the Shadowbane website sees a new World Info entry on Economy and a new Tradesmen journal entry. They also have links up to some of the reports from E3 based on checking out this upcoming MMORPG.

• NVIDIA Linux Drivers
  NVIDIA contacted us earlier in the week to say that they had new Linux Drivers available, and while we wish we were partying with them lately (in spite of repeated insistence from them it was, that page is still not updated as of this writing), the new Linux NVIDIA drivers are at least finally available on their FTP server.
• N-Bench
  RIVA Station has posted a new AMD benchmark utility called N-Bench.

The TORN Designer Diary, Chapter 4 on RPG Vault is online with the latest on what's going on at Black Isle Studios as development continues on their upcoming RPG. The entry covers the action at this year's E3, and discusses reactions to the showing of TORN at the show.

Now that the new TRIBES 2 patch has been un-retracted, or re-released, or however you would describe it, the HomeLan Fed News page has word on how to undo the TRIBES 2 Admin Hack Fix they created to protect servers, since the fix is now broken under the new patch.

Interplay, Digital Mayhem and Planet Moon Studios Announce Giant New Game For Xbox (PRNewswire) announces plans for an Xbox version of Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Thanks AVault. The new Project Ego concept art and screenshots on GameSpot call P.E. "Peter Molyneux's New RPG," though that's sort of a stretch, since the game is to be crafted by Big Blue Box, which is actually one of Lionhead's semi-independent development teams, though if this is the secret project referred to Something Big and Blue in the 'Box on Xbox.IGN.Com a couple of weeks ago (story), then "word has it that Peter Molyneux himself is personally overseeing the final stages of construction of this Death Star."

The UpsetChaps Tribes2 Guide has been updated with new information to keep it up-to-date following the release of the new version 22755 TRIBES 2 patch.

Kokak's Doom Page has a new version 0.66 of ZDoomGL, described as the same package as the 0.66 beta with the addition of a small Voodoo3 change. The new release offers virtually unlimited resolution support, and is said to be much more stable than the previous full release 0.6b.

The Mean Arena has the release of a small new texture pack for Bones- Legacy Of The Vadrigar, their upcoming release, with the idea that the best two maps created using these textures will be included with the release.

• Black & White on GamePen.
• Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns on Online Game Review.
• Robot Arena on Happy Puppy.
• Serious Sam on The Dragon Network and Guru 3D.

• Altec Lansing AVS500 speaker system on SoundCardCentral.
• Celeron cooler shootout on TechnoYard.
• Iwill KA266 motherboard on Savagezone.
• Zalman Heatsink roundup on Mikhailtech.

• 'Quake', 'Doom' creator signs movie deal has word that American McGee (who apparently never saw Wing Commander) has signed a development deal with Dimension Films to create a movie based on Alice. Thanks Pongo and chanur...
• After considerable downtime, mame.dk is back online. Thanks Ant...

Well the rush of E3 traffic was pushing the loads so high here the site has been difficult to update (it took over two hours to get the first posts of the day online yesterday) so furn has disabled the messageboards to see if they are partly to blame, the boards' clunkiness in the past has been a contributing factor to the unimpressive amount of use they get, which itself says taking the boards offline is probably worthwhile trade for the moment if it helps the site run better. Between the load problems and Frans' cable modem biting the dust (or whatever it is modems do when they go kerblooie--perhaps it's byte the dust?) we've had our share of adventures covering the show, but hey... that's what keeps life interesting.

Link of the Day: Jobs Unveils iGun. Thanks Christopher Reimer.
Story of the Day: Britney Spears Ventures Into Video Games (Reuters). Thanks Gudlyf and EvilToast.
Bonus Story: Murderer confesses on Anandtech forum (The Register). Thanks Nicholas C. Weaver.