Here's an article on Unreal Tournament Skins written by Shane Caudle, level designer, 3D modeler & artist for Unreal and Unreal Tournament. The article shows artistic types how to create their own skins for UT, and there are some cool images of the skins, models, and the process for matching them up for those, like me, who just like the purty pictures.

Beyond 3D interviews John Romero, discussing the current state of affairs at ION Storm, and progress on Daikatana, about which John has this to say:

There are no more delays, we are currently working on finishing the game in the next several months and hope to release it sometime during the summer.

I've had the whip out putting loony to work, you can see his first posts below, and he's also edited up the long, long-overdue Mailbag, which will be posted every Sunday from now on. Here's the new and de-uglified April 4 edition of the Mailbag. This week: Complaints about Q2 DM, "Is Sin the most under-rated game of all time?," more on Mech(tm) names, the return of the blank space mystery, still more clarifications, old-school hard-drive talk, Q3A jerseys, and the inevitable more.

True Gamers International has posted the results from their tournament this weekend (the largest international Quake tournament ever, apparently)...check 'em out on their Live Coverage page. They've posted a quick interview with Lakerman, the winner, and you can find another one here (thanks FPS Spectator).

KillQuake sends along word that the Half-Life Game Launcher has reached version 1.0. Here's a quick rundown of the features on this bad boy:

• Allow Cheats
• Allow Console
• Launch the game in "Dev Mode"
• Select what map you want launch
• Type any additional parameter(s)
• Select your game type (Multiplayer or Single player)

The Half-Life Deathmatch Maker and Map Cycle Editor will be part of version 2.0...you can check out some screenshots of these over on their screenshots page.

Hiya! This is my first post here at Blue's News...and what a whopper it is, huh? Just wanted to post here and introduce myself: yep, I'm the new guy here at Blue's News, although I've been working on the site in one way or another since back in the days of Blue's Quake Rag...I'll make sure the site stays exactly the way you like it. If you've got a suggestion for the site or just want to drop me a line, I appreciate the feedback...send it along to jason@loonygames.com. Oh, and until we get a real news@bluesnews.com e-mail setup, I'd appreciate it if you could CC me in on any news sent to the smurf colored guy. Thanks, and I'll return you to your regularly scheduled Blue's News now. :)

Ritualistic has posted news of a Sin arcade game under development by an Arizona-based company called Ferris VR that will offer Sin multiplayer play in a LAN-like setup, as well as single player play versus the Redemption Bot (the update comes courtesy of Riever, author of the Redemption Bot). When I checked the Universe Arcade Software page referenced in Riever's update, I see that they also have arcade games in the works based on Jedi Knight, Heavy Gear, and Heavy Gear II. No word on when these will be appearing in arcades.

Xatrix Programmer Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin updated his .plan with words of encouragement for TNT owners, and prospective TNT2 owners, about Kingpin performance:

For those of you running or expecting to run Kingpin on TNT/TNT2 boards upon release, will be glad to know nVidia are doing a great job of optimizing their drivers for better FOG performance.

You can expect a healthy jump in performance on TNT based chipsets in the final release.

The following announcement on The Official glDoom Homepage is sure to disappoint the many looking forward to future releases of this suped-up re-working of the Doom source code. Thanks Darkstarr. Here's the update:

glDoom project on indefinite hold

Due to circumstances beyond my control, the glDoom project is on hold indefinitely. The news sites will be informed when and if the project is resumed. No source code is available for download at this time. This includes ALL ports of glDoom; Win32, Mac, Linux and BeOS. Please do not ask for the source code or why the project is on hold more information will be forthcoming.

CTF Survival Guide has the rest of their map-specific guides for TRIBES, covering Stonehenge, Scarabrae, Snowblind, Iceridge, and Broadside-Blastside. Word is that with this accomplished, SinCTF guides will be their next project.

Hoping "to revive the Hexen2/HexenWorld scene," beta version 0.90 of the Rival Kingdoms mod for Hexen II is now available. This is a teamplay mod that requires version 1.5 of HexenWorld (in addition to Hexen II), and offers eight player classes to choose from, and three new maps in the beta, with a total of ten maps planned for the final version. Here's the description of the mod from the page: "Two castles sit atop hills opposite of each other. You now become both defender and attacker. Your objective? Find and secure the one key necessary to capture your Rivals crown and unite the Crowns under one unified Kingdom."

CrazyPete´s Toolbox has the English version 0.5 Beta 2 of the Grissly Half-Life front-end for download, supporting Half-Life through version 1.0.0.8 only. The new release features a couple of bug fixes.

The Console Stats Homepage has version 1.1 of the Console Stats Preview. This Quake II file analyzer will let you produce stats from Quake II log files and demo files (multimap demos are supported), including many popular mods, and output them on screen or in HTML format.

Iikka Keränen's Quake-related utilities page has a new version of the IKBASE texture set for Quake and Quake II, adding about 35 new textures to this pack that's a favorite of many level authors.

• Registration for DC-CON 6, planned for July 16, 17, and 18, is now underway.
• Today is the second annual Quake Easter Egg Hunt, By Mortal Funk. Starting at 8:00 PM Eastern, players can hunt for eggs in their Quake II mod competing for a first prize of $75 cash and a copy of Extremities signed by all the people at id Software. Head over to the page for more info and downloads of the client.

• Anandtech.com reviews the 3dfx Voodoo3, looking at all three flavors in a huge write-up.

• Understanding the K7 Hype or Next Generation CPU? is a new analysis on Ace's Hardware. Thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme...
• Weapons Factory servers are strongly encouraged to get the latest version of this Quake II CTF mod by an update on Captured.Com that says "Looks like some nasty folk have found a way to rename players, send false messages and shut down Weapons Factory servers." Thanks FX ~ Scott...
• The Windows 98 update dealie now has a fix for that Windows will crash after 49.7 days bug mentioned here recently, fixing perhaps the hardest to reproduce bug in computing history...

Announcement time: As of today, Jason "loonyboi" Bergman will be serving as editor here at Blue's News, responsible for helping manage the content on the site, and providing additional coverage on the news desk. Coming after close to four years of continuous operation as a one-man website, this is a pretty dramatic move: The level of infinite control I have doing everything myself is wonderful, and addictive, it's difficult to give up. The upsides to this radical 100% expansion in the staff have finally swayed me, however, and I'm hopeful that this is a move that is as welcomed by all of you as it is by me, it will result in improved attention to the non-news content, a bit more consistent news coverage, and much better coverage while I'm travelling. Jason is extremely well-qualified for the role: He was one of the original folks who dug up news to send in here long ago (and was damn good at it), and the job he does as Editor-in-Chief of loonygames (which will continue on as before, btw), speaks for itself. So I hope you'll join me in welcoming Jason in his new role.

Link of the Day: Kevin Spacey doing Christopher Walken's Han Solo screen-test on SNL in streaming video format. Thanks Evan 'Moltar' Chantland. Now let me drag this dead horse out to that stinky stable.