GameFan interviews Thirdlaw Interactive ganging up on Lead Designer Sverre Kvernmo, Artist Andy Chang, and Programmer Jonathan "Nelno the Amoeba" Wright, for a group interview discussing their upcoming shooter based on KISS: The Psycho Circus. The interview also includes a dozen high-resolution screenshots that were previously only available at 640x480.

True to their word Q3Center's Q3Tweak page has a new version 1050 of this tweaking/front-end program. Among the fixes and new features is now an integrated colored name editor.

3DFiles Game Demos - NHL 2000 has a demo of NHL 2000 that's 41.5 MB. Yeah it's a sports game, but hey, it's free software (besides, there's lots of carnage in hockey).

A Talent For War has word that the Resource Bay on The Official Homeworld Web Site has a bunch of new screenshots from Sierra's upcoming strategic space sim, and the main page offers another new tune from the soundtrack.

To celebrate Tom Clancy Day (I've got to get a better calendar, I can't find it listed anywhere), there's a new preview of Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear on GamePen. While they were in a forward-thinking mood, they also posted part two of their Sovereign preview looks at Verant's Sovereign, "a massively multiplayer strategy game currently under development."

StrangeCompany, those guys best known for their Quake II demo utilities, have announced that they are going to be partnering with Monolith to make the LithTech Film Producer, a tool to make 3D movies. Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"LithTech Film Producer will use techniques developed for the computer games industry to allow film-makers to create films rivaling the output of some of the best graphics programs in the world," says Hugh Hancock, Chairman of Strange Company. "By generating an entire film via computer animation, it is possible to do things and go places that would be impossible in low-budget live-action films. Additionally, because artists will be able to create the sequences on a relatively inexpensive home PC system, this will dramatically reduce the high-cost entry barrier that typically prevents people without major funding from working on the film of their dreams."

GameStrategy has posted an article on HumanHead Studios, the fine folks behind the Unreal 2 engine title Rune. The article chronicles the history of HH, and points out that today is the two year anniversary of the original founders departure from Raven Software to start the studio.

This week's Diablo II shot of the week is out, and shows the Barbarian beating the crap out of a Bone Mage. You can view the image on DiabloII.net complete with a detailed description.

Raven's Kenn Hoekstra updated his .plan again, with a clarification of who's to blame for the inaccuracies mentioned earlier (story):

Just a note of clarification on MY part... Ultimate Games is not responsible for the errors in the Soldier of Fortune preview. They were only reporting what they were told by whoever was doing the demo of the game at ECTS. The fault lies with the person who was demoing the game, not the reporter. All of the corrections that I noted were quotes from the person giving the demo, not the reviewer. My apologies to Alastair Bennett (the reporter) and Ultimate Games for the pile of flaming e-mails they are receiving. Sorry, guys... Time to track down the demo guy... =)

Next-Generation Online has posted a piece titled, "Team Fortress 2 will take the multiplay FPS genre into a new age" which has Valve's Robin Walker talking about TF2 (thanks Frans). There's literally nothing said here that hasn't been reported elsewhere, but if you haven't kept up with the TF2 press you might find this interesting.

3DGameGeek has posted an interview with the man known only as Levelord, talking about his work on Heavy Metal: FAKK2, his "all-star" level for the Half-Life mission pack Opposing Force, and his bachelorhood, which he'll be losing in a few short months (okay, so seven, but that's still a frightening notion).

Monolith and Be made an announcement this afternoon that the LithTech (1) powered shooter Shogo: Mobile Armor Division will be ported to the BeOS, and will (ahem) be available later this year (thanks Sean Graham).

Raven's Kenn Hoekstra updated his .plan with a number of corrections to one of the ECTS previews we posted yesterday. It would appear that many of the statements in the Soldier of Fortune preview in question are either false, or aren't telling the whole truth.

After a few false starts, the Rogue Spear demo has been released, and is available for download from PCGamer via either the Gigex delivery system, or a direct download (thanks CajunHawk, and earlier the Rogue Spear Retreat). At over 50 MB it's a hefty one, so modem users would be advised to go the Gigex route.

Rogue Spear's Greg Stelmack updated his designer log with details on the technical aspects of the RSB files they use for the game for anyone interested in writing texture tools (thanks Frans).

3DActionPlanet has posted an article titled, "Licensing: How Does It Work?" which explains the often complicated and strange world of engine licensing. If you've ever thought about licensing the Quake or Unreal engine for some strange reason (and let's face it - who hasn't?) this should make for an interesting read.

Valve's Yahn Bernier has returned with a new edition of his Yappin' With Yahn column on Halflife.org. In this edition, Yahn talks about the tool changes from Half-Life to Team Fortress 2, TF2's video card requirements, the HUD in the game, and more.

WON.net has released the theme song to Homeworld, which is performed by Yes. The download is in Liquid Audio format, so you'll need to grab the LA player before attempting to get the song.

HumanHead's Mike Werckle updated his .plan with details on the screenshots from Rune that have been popping up on various sites (including these), as well as a general status report on the game:

Currently, Tim and Paul are at ECTS in London showing off the newly redone Ragnar. This one is a vast improvement over the one we showed a month ago at GenCon. His mesh is far improved, to make him look bigger and show more detail, and his animations are much more polished as well. Also of note: Ragnar now has the long, flowing hair that a Viking of his type needs in order to be cool. And I also put in extra bones in his shoulders in order deform his arms better. With so much sword swinging in this game, Ragnar needs to have very flexible, good looking arms.

Also in the screenshots and the ECTS demo you will see Jeff and Paul's super cool Goblins. They hold axes or shields, chatter and jump around, and when you try to attack them they hold up their shields, or jump out of the way of you swing. A very impressive animation and AI job on these guys. The coolest thing is when you chop off both of their arms, they try as hard as they can to stay away from you, as if they are scared. Also notice that the goblins all look slightly different. Because of the skeletal system you will be hard pressed to encounter two that look exactly the same at the same time.

Jim's gorgeous levels are now starting to be populated with super cool stuff! In addition to the goblins, there are now bubbling and belching pits of mud, realistic falling boulders and even an underground geyser. This is the part of the game where Ragnar is moving out of the deep sea caves into an area of seismic activity...

Third Law's Jonathan "Nelno" Wright sent in the following clarification about a misleading GameSpot UK report regarding a KISS title currently in development (that has nothing to do with the LithTech 2 engine title Third Law is making):

I just want to point out that Gamespot UK's article entitled "Will KISS Finally Find Their Way" is misleading in that it claims Take 2 Interactive is working on "KISS Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child".

In reality, Take 2 has rights to a non-PC KISS game that is entirely different from "The Nightmare Child", which our company is creating. Neither does Take 2 Interactive have any rights to use the content from Todd McFarlane's very successful "Psycho Circus" comic books, which Third Law Interactive has licensed exclusively for our own game. The article also makes it appear, by associating "The Nightmare Child" with Take 2 Interactive's endeavor, that we have not decided what type of game to make. It should obvious from our recently released screen shots that this is not the case and that Third Law's design for "The Nightmare Child" has been complete for some time.

Their previous article, entitled "KISS Psycho Circus Hits Town" is a much better representation of the game we are making.

SWAT Game Rewards Non-Violence is the name of an article on CNN Interactive, that previews SWAT by pointing out its emphasis on problem solving over violence (thanks Trimboy). The article has quotes from Ken Thatcher, a LAPD veteran who helped consult on the game, and who "talked game developers through how a SWAT team would respond to barricades, hostage situations and VIP details." There's a downloadable MPEG movie as well as a bunch of screenshots, although the shots look familiar to me, so I can't be sure they're all new.

Activision and WON.net announced today that they are supporting the online gaming network WON.net with several of their upcoming titles, including Vampire: The Masquerade, Star Trek: Voyager, Soldier of Fortune, and Interstate '82. With TEN geting out of action gaming altogether, WON.net (which used to be exclusively partnered with Sierra's titles) looks to be taking their place as competition for HEAT.net and MPlayer as a full online gaming network.

Inside Mac Games Magazine Interviews John Carmack In this exclusive interview with IMG, Carmack talks about Apple, Macs, the hot new G4's, and of course, how well they all run Quake III Arena.

Qamex Games Centre's ECTS Awards List gives several rundowns on exhibits from this year's European Computer Trade Show that rate special attention. Best PC Game of the Show: Grand Prix 3.

I kind of unburied this from a previous post, more from ECTS comes in the way of GameSpot UK's Thief 2 preview from the show, which includes five new Thief 2 screenshots.

Unrealism has posted their writeup of the Unreal Press Party that's being thrown at ECTS, which featured Unreal Tournament running on 20 Athlon 600s with TNT2 Ultras and Dual Voodoo 2s. In addition to a rundown of UT's features, there's lots of pictures of the party, showing happy fans (and one really cool looking statue).

The ECTS news never stops, it would appear. GameSpot UK is reporting that Half-Life is "significantly" in production for Dreamcast and U-Games has posted a preview of Rune, which is being shown at ECTS as well.

Human Head's Mike Werckle sent along another few screenshots of the hero in their upcoming Norse-tinged third-person action game Rune, currently under construction using the Unreal 2 engine. The shots (exclusive this time) offer more views of Ragnar, the game's badass Viking hero in action, this time batting a bunch of Stimpy's Magic Nose Goblins in the dreaded GoblinCave. No spoilers here, they're stashed off in this hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar, ready for your perusal.

• Sharky's Private Eye Volume III on Sharky Extreme offers our fine-finned friend's insights into software, hardware, and his favorite Hall & Oates song.
• There's a Vortex 2 Soundcard Shootout @ bxboards.com.
• Speaking of sound, 3DsoundSurge reviews Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400, the first THX® Certified speaker system for multimedia applications, pumping a staggering 400 watts (now that's a boomstick), at a relatively modest $249.95 MSRP.
• Sharky's Mac G4 Preview article has been updated with some new info, including "word from a reader who spotted some information hidden deep within the Apple Europe web site. The PowerMac G4 models that include the Apple Cinema Display will use a Rage 128 Pro video card instead of a regular Rage 128 video card."
• Ace's Hardware Understanding the Performance of the Athlon Part 1: Memory and Cache Architecture takes you "Traveling Through the Microarchitecture of the Athlon."

Saw on A Talent For War (by way of Lanced.Net) that there are a bunch of new Starlancer Screenshots on Microsoft Starlancer site (the site is a pretty twisted pretzel, but I ferreted out the page). The shots show off several new views of the eye candy in Microsoft/Digital Anvil's upcoming space shooter.

The CronosBot site has a pair of new updates for this AI opponent, offering both a new version 1.05 of the Chronos bot for Quake, and a new version 1.01 of the Chronos bot for Hexen II. The new Quake release adds "slight bug-fixes for dynamic waypoints" as well as fixed waypoints for DM6, and the Hexen II update fixes the bugs that caused the bots to fail to use all the weapons, a waypoint problem, and the "useless" imps. Thanks Bot Epidemic for both of those.

A new version 2.02 of Server Watch is now available. Server Watch is a system tray utility that automatically pings a game server and displays the number of players currently on that server in the tray, perfect for knowing when is the perfect time to jump into that LAN game. The new release adds Q3Test support as well as support for Starsiege TRIBES and Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Version 2.02 will remain available only as a patch for previous users unless there is reasonable demand for a new full installer.

Randy "DuvalMagic" Pitchford updated his .plan pointing the way for press and hardware vendors to harass John Faulkenbury as he braves New York City to show off Half-Life: Opposing Force, Gearbox Software's upcoming Half-Life add-on off at the Ground ZERO event this weekend.

The ZDoom website has a new version 1.18 of ZDoom, a Win32 port of the publicly-available source code for id Software's Doom. The new release offers several bug-fixes, and adds a little carbonation to the way the game handles H2O by adding water warp, as well as the ability to swim. Also, Kokak's Doom Page has a new model pack for DoomGL offering a new cacodemon, lost soul, knight & baron of Hell, pink demon, boss cube, medikit & stimpack. Thanks Violent Ed.

GA-Source Impressions of Soul Reaver gives a hands-on preview of Eidos' upcoming third-person vampire game.

Privacy Groups Dismiss Microsoft NSA Denial is a TechWeb story with more follow-up on the startling allegations that recently sprung up of a backdoor built into the Windows OSes for the National Security Agency (story) that Microsoft called "inaccurate and unfounded" in response (story). The new article offers the opinion of Caspar Bowden, the director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), who disagrees, saying "Microsoft's argument is inconsistent with its operating procedure."

• Wemmick's Temporary Sanity on Gamers.com points out that if you take a bunch of the suggestions in Gamecenters Q3Test tips, and do the exact opposite, it might help, pretty accurately calling it Quake 3: What Not To Do...
• Strange Company has released a new version of their very strange Quake II movie Eschaton: Nightfall called Eschaton: Nightfall Special Edition. Available as either a patch or a full download, ET:SE "features lip-synching and simple emotion modelling, as well as new models, skins and animations improving upon the original release"...
• There are some new Dark Reign 2 Screenshots from ECTS along with U-Games' Dark Reign 2 Preview, and more RTS stuff, as The Adrenaline Vault previews Abomination The Nemesis Project, a "new squad-level action-oriented RTS" they say "dares to color outside the lines, offering a set of features unique to the genre that complement the stomach-churning visuals."...

Thanks to all of you who've sent in suggestions for dealing with the Eudora to Outlook conversion outlined yesterday. Unfortunately loony was unavailable for a good part of the day, so I haven't been able to experiment with any of the offered suggestions yet. I did decide to get in a little Q3Test after things quieted down later in the evening, and had a funny experience. MrCoffee and I joined a server called netmegs-something or other, and quickly noticed it was one of those servers, those being the bizarro timelimit servers, in this case the timer was already on 70-something. Someone checked and announced to the game that the server has a 500 fraglimit and a 120 timelimit, and another quick-witted player, without missing a beat, typed back "Maybe this is what Carmack meant by a persistent universe." Gotta love a good Quake joke.

Oh yeah, a little pop culture yesterday, not the Matrix (as so many offered), that was William Hickey in Prizzi's Honor (remember the quotes are always in some sort of context--in this case hitman). William Minton-Marshall gave this quote in reply: "We Prizzis forgive nothing!"

Link of the Day: Were we bored offering the cinematic triumph "The dance of the Bru Bottles," described by the filmmakers as "Cheesy, Crap and Soft Centered this is a stopmotion masterpiece made by three bored students with a free digital camera." With a description like that it was born to be an LoD. Think death takes a holiday with a plastic bag as death. Or maybe it's just stop-motion dancing bottles.
Image of the Day: APOD August 12, 1999 - Deploying Spartan. Yup, another Astronomy Picture of the Day, proof that NASA has been conducting a secret war with the Borg in low-Earth orbit. Thanks THEgrimreaper.