Westwood sends word that a new patch for Earth & Beyond has been issued for the ongoing beta test of this massively multiplayer space RPG, adding new grouping features, an upgraded skill system, and an improved chat interface. Full details are presumably available in the Beta test section of the official site (which is restricted to testers only), and phase 7 of the beta test is slated to commence tomorrow. Also, there's a minor upgrade of World War II Online available via the auto-updater or a manual 977 KB download, and this version 1.66 patch addresses issues with tracer effects and a few other problems. Finally, the official Mimesis Online site announces patch version 1.23 for this sci-fi MMORPG by Tannhauser Gate, implementing psionic skills among other changes.

• Primal Hunt
  AvPNews has posted five new screenshots of Aliens Vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt, offering more scenes in the three-way first-person shooter expansion in the works at Third Law Interactive.
• Sea Dogs II
  The official Sea Dogs II site has been updated with a new screenshot of the week for this nautic 3D role-playing game under construction at Akella.
• Galactic Civilizations
  Stardock has issued a single new Galactic Civilizations screenshot to show more from their 4X space strategy game in development.
• Enigma
  HomeLan Fed serves up half a dozen new Enigma: Rising Tide screenshots, revealing more from the massively multiplayer naval combat game by Tesseraction Games.

XGR has posted a three-headed Battlefield 1942 preview, offering separate impressions written by Fett, by North, and by Gear, in a trio of articles based on getting to play with a beta build of Digital Illusions' upcoming World War II action game. Each article offers impressions of the pair of maps included in the beta, the weapons, vehicles, and a bit of gameplay, each article illustrated by a separate series of new screenshots.

The show has long faded in the rear-view, but the articles keep on trickling in. There's a preview of Warthog's Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter on Games First, Wolfpack Studios' Shadowbane on Games First, TimeGate Studios' Kohan II on PC.IGN.Com, Nival Interactive's Blitzkrieg on Stratos Group, Strategy First's Nexagon: the Pit on Games Domain, there's a strategy games round-up on UGO, a console action games round-up on UGO, a wrap-up on Neoseeker, and best of show awards on Game Revolution and SimHQ.

RPG Vault's Black Moon Chronicles Developer Diary #16 is online, further (Black Moon) chronicling development of Vircom's upcoming MMORPG. In this installment lead scriptwriter Daniel Bisson "gives us the story of how the interface evolved for its colorful persistent state world," demonstrating this with illustrated examples showing their original interface, a "technical interface" to introduce new features, and the cleaned up version of the interface that will be present in the game.

GameSpot's Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom Preview offers a look at BreakAway Games' upcoming empire-building game. They describe the history of the series starting with Impressions Games saying the new game will make "any fan of the series feel right at home" based on their play with an early build. They describe the 3,00 year span of Chinese history the game covers, the choices in structure building that comprise the essence of such games, the emphasis on feng shui, activities for your population, the multiplayer support (a first for this series), and more. Included are 22 new screenshots, and another three screenshots are up at GameSpyDaily.

Activision sends along the public Linux source code for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, allowing mod authors to bring their creations up to version 1.33. This 7.1 MB download contains the game code for both the single- and multi-player sides to the first-person shooter by Gray Matter and Nerve Software.

Sunstorm, ARUSH and 3D Realms have released a playable demo of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project, their recent 3D platform action game, for download from the official site and 3D Realms. The 50.3 MB download contains the entire first episode called Rooftop Rebellion, complete with "3 sections, 4 powerful weapons, enemies such as PigCops, FemMechs and HoverMechs, 30 hidden nukes, 3 hot babes waiting to be rescued and one enormous boss fight high over the streets of New York City." Also, a 1.5 MB patch for the editor is available from 3D Realms to fix a problem introduced with the retail v1.01 patch last month.

GameSpot's Imperator Q&A talks with Mark Jacobs of Mythic Entertainment to discuss plans for Imperator, their upcoming science fiction MMORPG. The conversation covers things like his role in the game's design, the reasons for placing the game in a futuristic Roman empire, some background on this unusual setting, playable races, the role of classical Roman culture, elements from DAoC that will be making an appearance, lessons learned from DAoC, the current stat of MMO gaming, and more.

U.S. Army Launches "America's Army" PC Game on the Internet is the press release with further details on the plan to release "a special 'Recon' version of 'America's Army,' an innovative, realistic computer game providing civilians with an inside perspective and a virtual role in today's premier land force: the U.S. Army." This is a 10 level version of the "Operations" action-oriented portion of the game that will be a massive 220 MB download. Here is more on this release:

In the July 4 "Recon" version the virtual soldier experience begins with basic training missions that include the rifle range, obstacle course and McKenna Urban Training Site at Fort Benning, Ga. After completing basic training, players progress to online multiplayer missions ranging from defense of the Alaskan Pipeline against terrorism as a member of the 172nd Infantry Brigade (Separate) from Fort Wainwright, Alaska, to homeland defense as a member of the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) from Fort Drum, N.Y. Throughout the summer the Army will make additional missions available for download, culminating with CD release of the full game at the end of the summer. The game was developed using the latest version of Epic Games' "Unreal Engine." and is optimized for NVIDIA GeForce2(TM) graphics processors.

While it had been known to be in development since last year and even was the subject of a recent preview (story), Ubi Soft has now formally announced Battle Realms: Winter of the Wolf, the upcoming expansion pack to the 3D real-time strategy game by Liquid Entertainment. Winter of the Wolf is slated for a Fall 2002 release, the press release also mentions a rebate offer for owners of the original game, and offers this description of the game's premise:

Battle Realms is a fantasy, real-time strategy game inspired by Japanese mythology and traditional kung-fu cinema. The depth of the Battle Realms mythology intertwines stories from several clans, each with its own unique origin and culture. Winter of the Wolf takes place seven years prior to the events in the original Battle Realms and accounts the proud Wolf people's rise from oppression and slavery under the Lotus Clan. The Wolf Clan's rise to power occurs over the course of twelve all-new scenarios. As heroic Wolf leader Grayback, players must journey through dark mines and snowbound forests to free the clan from the tyranny of the Lotus Mages, and save the land from a fierce, magical winter.

Additionally, the press release is accompanied by three high-res screenshots, although two of them were already included with the aforementioned preview in a lower resolution.

There's a Ghost Master Q&A on Computer and Video Games talking with Sick Puppy's Gregg Barnett about Ghost Master, the unusual upcoming strategy game that puts players in the role of a ghost trying to scare humans in the best traditions of Beetlejuice and Casper. Topics include the game's premise, how it combines a elements of sims; RTS; adventure; and god games, some of the included scenarios, ghostly powers, the role of "plasm," the lack of multiplayer support, and more. Included are half a dozen new screenshots.

There's a Rise of Nations Preview on Games Domain looking at the upcoming RTS game in the works at Big Huge Games. Starting off by describing company founder Brian Reynolds' history at Firaxis prior to this project and a bit on the formation of Big Huge Games, the article goes on to offer impressions of the project, discussing the long-term scale of the game, how gameplay unfolds, territorial expansion, combat, and more, all based on seeing the game demonstrated by Brian Reynolds.

The Inhuman Games Beta Center is taking applications from folks interested in beta testing Trash, their upcoming RTS game (thanks Adrenaline Vault). While they are accepting sign-ups, testing isn't actually quite underway yet, as the page says: "Let us know and we will let you know when the beta is ready to begin." Here is the description they provide of the game, where garbage will be the gasoline to this game's Mad Max: "Trash is a 3D RTS based in a post-apocalyptic future. The surviving humans, mutants, and intelligent machines are the three races battling for control of the primary resource: Trash"

HomeLan Fed's Enigma: Rising Tide Developer's Journal Part 2 offers further thoughts from Blake Hutchins of Tesseraction Games about progress on Engima: Rising Tide, their upcoming massively multiplayer game of naval warfare. Today's installment discusses some of the pre-production design decisions behind the project, including the reasons for settling on their seafaring World War II setting, their "cinematic" approach that "falls somewhere between 'hardcore simulation' and 'arcade,'" the pluses and minuses of pay-to-play, the alternate history they're creating, and more.

The Dragon Empires Website has news of a pair of developer chats today on moonshade.com to discuss progress on Codemasters' upcoming MMORPG. The first chat is scheduled at 2:00 PM EDT today and the other at 2:00 AM EDT tomorrow morning (neither particularly suited to the U.S. east coast, these times seem aimed at the West Coast and Europe). To join either session, use the Java client on www.moonshade.com or using an IRC client join #moonshade on irc.stratics.com.

There's a Lonelycatgames Q&A on Hidden & Dangerous 2 hideout talking with the folks behind the Hidden & Dangerous Deluxe, which adds all manner of deluxeness to Illusion Softworks' stealthy World War II shooter. Topics include how they came to work on this project, its goals, the possibility for changes to the game when it's released in the U.S., and more.

• New Matrox Drivers
  A new Matrox Graphics Windows 2000 and Windows XP Driver Version1.00.01.226 driver (thanks 3DChipset.com). According to the update: "This is a fully supported driver release for Matrpx Parhelia boards." We assume it will work on Matrox Parhelia boards as well.

A new version 2.8 of the neur0soft Deathmatch Tournament Generator is now available, updating this Windows utility that allows you to construct and manage a tree for a gaming tournament or league. The program offers an HTML remote interface as well as HTML output.

A new version of MultiEx Commander is now available, updating this utility that allows the extraction of data files from various games. This new version 3.5 is described as the final release of the program, but is offered in the "Pro" configuration, which "includes the tools necessary to create additional support for new game archives." Also, a new edge and vertex tool tutorial has been added to the Radiant section of the JK2Editing.cjb.net website. Also, a new version1.1.1 of the Aztec modeling utility for Win32 is now available, accompanied by the latest source code. Finally, the folks behind Crystal Space send word their contest to design a game using their free 3D engine ends in a month.

• Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza on GamePen.
• Grand Prix 4 on epiGamer.
• Grand Theft Auto III on ESCMag.
• The Sum of All Fears on GameSpy.com.
• WarCraft III: Reign on Chaos (first impressions) on Gamer's Hell.

• Altec Lansing XA3021 2.1 Speaker System on Gamersclick.
• ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 Video Card on Bytesector.com.
• Cambridge Soundworks MegaWorks 510D Speakers on OcPrices.
• CoolerMaster Rounded Cables on BurnOutPc.
• FIC VC19 I845E Motherboard on TweakTown.
• Gigabyte GA-8IEXP Motherboard on Tweakers Australia.
• MSI 845G Max-L i845G Motherboard on Hot Hardware.
• Samsung 181T TFT Monitor on Deviant PC.
• Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra Motherboard on The Tech Report.
• TherMagic heatsink compound on accelenation.com.
• Thermaltake Volcano 7 Cooler on MonkeyReview.

• The Shrapnel Games Website has word that Space HoRSE, Gilligames' modernized version of the classic MULE, has gone gold...
• There's a Bring us a new Star Wars X-Wing game Petition online looking to inspire a sequel from LucasArts...

Happy Canada Day! I'm feeling much better today, as the segue from prescription pain relievers to the over-the-counter variety has done my stomach a world of good. I'm guessing this was probably the way to go to start with... I want to take the pain-killer bottle and write "easy for you to say" right under where it says "take with food" and send it back to the pharmacist, but I'll probably just satisfy myself with contemplating it.

R.I.P.: Arthur 'Spud' Melin, Toy Executive Who Gave World Frisbee, Hula Hoop, Dies. Thanks theAntiELVIS.

Play Time: Earth Day Footprint Quiz. Ouch. Thanks Mister Johnson.
Story of the Day: The Science Behind Bad Words. Thanks zombie69.