There's a second Black & White Creature Isles movie on Multiplayer.it with more of their ShakyCam™ footage from ECTS, following the part one they posted a while back (story). The movie is a DivX codec AVI, and is a 27.3 MB download which a Babel Fish translation of the site's native Italian explains makes it "possible to see also all the new creatures" in Lionhead's upcoming Nero e Bianco add-on. Thanks PlanetBlackAndWhite.

The Sunday update has appeared on the Croteam website offering more detail on what to expect from Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, the now officially-announced Serious Sam sequel. Included is word on plans to include "excellent multiplayer support," including the latest version of the Seriously Warped Deathmatch mod, as well as the now-compulsory small print update on the possibility that the follow-up will include more of those darned Egyptian levels:

It's Sunday and it's time for our regular Sunday update.

Since Take2 officially announced "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter", we are getting huge positive response. Regarding that we need to clarify some issues and answer some questions that we got so far.

Those who finished "Serious Sam: The First Encounter" know about "To be continued..." ending. Many fans already assumed that the next episode is our next logical step. So, the second episode called, unexpectedly, "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter" is at your door. (fanfare sound)

SS: SE is priced at 19.95$, same as the first episode, which was welcomed by ALL Serious Sam fans. The release is planned for Christmas, making it very popular and cheap gift ;)

SS:SE will install as standalone game, either in different folder or as part of the first episode. This is important to keep compatibility with all mods and maps that were made by our community.

We have great news for multiplayer junkies out there. "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter" will feature excellent multiplayer support. We are proud to announce that SS community's famous "A Few Screws Loose" guys will take care of the multiplayer part of the project. Their acclaimed "Seriously Warped Deathmatch" MOD (version 3) will be included on "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter" CD. They will surely provide many exciting maps to play, different mods of playing and other cool stuff.
For more information go visit their site at www.3dactionplanet.com/serioussam/warped. Of course, beside it, there will be our unbeaten cooperative play through all single-play levels. Croteam is very proud on this feature, sadly so rarely seen in FPS games.

For more information, next Sunday, same place, stay tuned.

Admir Elezovic

P.S. - We were getting many requests from top developers, which licensed our engine. Most of them apparently have Egyptian theme in their upcoming games, so they are a bit worried. So, decision has been left to the shareholders. In their meeting last week, vote was: 6898 for Egypt levels and 6898 against. Since there weren't enough votes for each side, Miss Take Mee, our cleaning lady was asked to make final decision. She decided the following: "There WON'T be any Egyptian levels in SS:SE". Those against Egypt immediately filled the official complaint, which should be discussed at the next meeting.

P.S. The Second Encounter - Well, we saw many questions about what this "The Second Encounter" is? Serious Sam 2, Mission Pack, Second Coming or 3rd person action adventure based in small, dark urban environment? Now this mystery will be revealed. It's neither of that, it's simply the second episode! Seriously ;)

There's a Translation of the Gamesmania World of Warcraft interview on Infoceptor's Official Forums, with the English version of Gamesmania.de's interview with Chris Metzen of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft team (thanks RPGvault). The Q&A offers some info on gameplay, including a rundown of how characters will be handled starting with the creation process and offering a narrative of what their interaction with the game world will be like, including a fairly good bit of detail. Here's a spellchecked excerpt that describes how they are looking to appeal to fans of the original Warcraft, hardcore RPG players, and casual gamers all at the same time:

But I can tell you this much : We are striving for a more open world than the one you will know from the Warcraft-RTS games. There will be several Kingdoms and sub-areas in which players will be able to be.

For the Hardcore-players there will be a classic Quest-system. Whoever counts himself to that group, and is 40 hours per week in the Online RPG, he will be able to join Guilds and can let himself be part of giant quests that will take several weeks of time to complete in part.

For the casual player we are making game modes that make it possible to play half hours during the midday pause and still reach a level of gameplay with depth. In addition there will be tasks and quests that won't take much time to complete.

Our main goal is for the target audience, be it Hardcore or casual player, to create a world that is constantly changing and bringing forth new challenges.

HomeLan Fed's Real War Preview is online, looking at the beta version of Simon & Schuster Interactive's upcoming RTS war game based on a product developed as a training tool for the US military, even as shipments of the full retail version of the now-gold product are heading for store shelves. The preview examines gameplay, with observations on the interface, resource management, the graphics, and more, while pointing out the potential for controversy in the fact that the game's fictional terrorist opponent has a suicide attack as part of its arsenal, albeit not against civilian targets.

There's a new AquaNox movie on gamesweb.com offering a look at gameplay in the upcoming undersea shooter from Massive Development. The movie is in DivX AVI format and is a available in a smaller 27 MB 320x240 version, and a larger 62 MB 640x480 version. You may want to pop some popcorn as you download this one for when you watch it, as it runs more than four minutes.

A post on Planet Half-Life points the way to a security alert on SecurityFocus with word on a hole in the new Half-Life release that, in a reverse of the norm, could allow a server to exploit the client. The report says: "Valve Software was contacted on September 18, 2001 and informed me it will be fixed in the next patch (presumably v1.1.0.9). They did not believe it to be a serious threat." Here is a bit on the nature of the problem:

By running the command with around 128 characters it is possible to overflow the buffer and execute arbitrary code. While this problem is on the client side it is still a serious issue, since servers have a function named "g_engfuncs.pfnClientCommand" which allows the server to force clients to execute whatever console command they want. This means that this overflow can be exploited remotely by means of this function. A server administrator could easily easily take advantage of this and exploit clients automatically as they connected to the server.

This LucasArts E3 2001 page has a new trailer from Star Wars Starfighter: Special Edition showing off the upcoming Xbox version of their force-loving flying shooter. The movie is 4.2 MB in QuickTime format. They also have word of a pre-order deal: "Company Store Exclusive! Pre-order Star Wars Starfighter: Special Edition today to secure your free Star Wars Starfighter iron-on transfer and FREE shipping & handling, too!" The free shipping deal is for standard delivery within the US only.

This cache Films TRIBES page has a bit about "Tribes: The Animated Series," which is apparently being proposed or maybe even developed at this time. The page offers a storyline, along with some concept art that seems to indicate the series will have a certain anime influence (Speed Racer the TRIBES warrior). According to TribesRoleplayers, who sent this along, the concept for the story appears to be written by Blake Hutchins, which indicates this is somehow an "official" project, but details are a bit sketchy at this point.

A story on ZONARED (thanks XIS ZRN) in Spanish (as always Babel Fish translation available of you don't habla) has word that Spanish publisher Dinamic Multimedia has closed its doors, citing a debt of "several thousands of million pesetas" as the ultimate cause for this move. Games published by Dinamic included Runaway, Grouch, ExcaliBug and the upcoming The Prison, and the translated report goes on to say: "The service online of the Prison and the development of the games that were in creation process (PCFútbol 2002, for example), will be suspended."

• New PowerStrip
  A new version 3.02 of PowerStrip has been released. Thanks File Flash.
• On WinXP
  Windows XP A Gamer's Friend? on GameSpy.Com is an article that attempts to examine the viability of Microsoft's new OS as a gaming platform.

There's a Midgard Preview on EuroGamer looking ahead to FunCom's next MMORPG project after catching up with Ragnar Tornquist and Sverre Kvernmo at ECTS. The article offers a brief introduction to the game, and a quick quote from Ragnar, though there's no evidence of Sverre's participation.

There's a HoveRace compatibility test v0.1 on 3D Gamers offering the first compatibility test demo of HoveRace, GSC Game World's upcoming hover vehicle racing game. Word is: "This is not an official demo and you may experience graphical glitches depending on your system configuration, but it is playable and offers a single track to race with a choice of four vehicles."

There's a First-Person Shooter Guide on CFGN with tips for Counter-Strike, Half-Life, UT, TFC, and Q3A.

Lesson 11 in the Neverwinter Vault Scripting Course is online, continuing the greatest flood ever of editing information about a yet-to-be-released game.

• Combat Command 2: Desert Rats on GameSpy.com.
• Commandos 2: Men of Courage (in German) on Gbase.ch.
• KISS Pinball on Gamitopia.
• Max Payne on OnePC.NET.

• 80 MM Fan Comparison on bluescreenofdeth.net.
• AOpen HX08 Case on TacoNuts.com.
• Corsair PC150 256mb CAS 2/2/2 SDRAM on atlantaoc.
• CPU cooler round-up on Dan's Data.
• Plextor 24X and Liteon 24X CD-R/W on t-break.
• Solarism LM 1503 LCD Display on Target PC.
• Speeze Coolers (video) on 3dGameMan.

• There are details on a limited edition version of Civilization III on GamePen...

We're starting to believe the Vet hit his diagnosis of why Hudson the wonder dog had developed a slight limp right on the head, it seems the poor little girl has somehow managed to pick up Lyme Disease. Now that she's feeling better, we feel a bit guilty that it took her development of a limp to spur the Vet trip, because it explains a few other symptoms she was experiencing, not the least of which was some lethargy. The trouble putting the right two and two together on that is the fact that she's just turned a year old, so what was actually the impact of the disease was being mistaken for some newfound maturity. Now, after being on antibiotics for a very short time, enough of her irrepressible energy has returned to support the Lyme theory very strongly... so much so that we are tempted to double-check to make sure the doc actually prescribed antibiotics and not something along the lines of speed.

Happy birthday Bagpuss!

Link of the Day: Word Perhect. Flash required. Thanks Antony.