GameSpot has posted a new installment of their Dark Reign 2 diaries, with Pandemic's Greg Borrud discussing the progress in programming, art, and mission design, as they are heading into the final stretch of the development of their 3D RTS title. He also mentions some of the responses to his previous diary, and includes a few new screenshots to illustrate the final layout of the game's interface.

A new movie of the day is online on the official Nox site, showing off more gameplay from Westwood's soon-to-be-released isometric action-RPG. Past movies are now available on their movie archives page, not just in the originally released 320x240, but also in glorious 640x480 if you have a little more bandwidth to spare. And those curious about next week's movies can already have a sneak peek on their ftp server.

Alternating new characters and areas of Wonderland, the official American McGee's Alice site reveals a new section of the Mushroom Forest map, called Caterpillar Garden.

InciteGames has posted a 35 MB MPEG movie that features gameplay footage from Thief 2: The Metal Age (taken from their alpha build of the game), as well as an interview with Looking Glass director Steve Pearsall.

The newly launched Quakeidge.com has posted an interview with id Software's CEO Todd Hollenshead. The interview covers all kinds of subjects, from what it's like to work at id, to how he feels about putting all that hard work into Quake III Arena only to be beaten at retail by Regis Philbin.

Unreal Universe has posted an interview with Jeff DeWitt, an animator on Rune, Human Head's Unreal engine title of drunken viking glory. Jeff talks about animating, Chris Rhinehart's sword collection (he should challenge Paul Steed to a door killing contest) and even Frisbee golf, which I suppose, if you're drunk on grog all day long (and I can only imagine they all must be over there) is no doubt lots of fun.

IMG Magazine has posted a brief Q&A with Ken Gordon (scroll down their news page to find it), the producer of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen, an Unreal-engine, third person action game from Simon & Schuster Interactive.. As the game was recently delayed, the Q&A focuses on that, with Ken explaining why the game was pushed back from early spring until August. Here's an excerpt:

One of the biggest challenges we see ahead of us in bringing the Fallen to market is the perception about Star Trek games that is out there. Let's say that it is less than stellar. This is outrageous, too, because the franchise, the world of Star Trek, is so wonderfully rich that to put anything less than a great Star Trek game out is so wasteful it's sinful. Simon & Schuster Interactive has published fantastic Star Trek Reference titles, but the Fallen is our first title under our gaming license. We see a gap in the marketplace -- the market needs a great Star Trek title and we will not release the Fallen until it has met its potential and matches the franchise with as rich a game. At this point, we are on track to release such a game with the Fallen (and with Dominion Wars, too, I might add). It took us extra time to get here, but let me tell you it will have been worth it. All great games go through such birthing pains and this one is no different.

Eurogamer has posted an article titled "Inside Insidia" which features conversations with developers at Insidia, who are working on a first person adventure called Malleus. There are also four screenshots posted to give you a first glimpse at the game.

Polycount has posted new Character Studio BIP files from Paul Steed. These files allow owners of 3D Studio Max' Character Studio to apply the animations he created for the various characters in Quake III Arena to their own custom models. Swing by Polycount to download them and get animating.

Stomped has posted a Q&A with Monolith's Jason Hall, talking to him about their recent announcement regarding their plans to start up a separate company to handle their LithTech engine. Here's an excerpt where Jason explains the reasoning behind this decision:

There are many reasons for forming a subsidiary. Without giving a lecture on "Managing and growing a successful business" I will just say that our reasons primarily have to do with following a carefully planned business strategy, increasing team focus, multi-platform and new technology projects, etc. The engine licensing business to us is just that, a real business. In order to service our customers in the best possible way it is important for us to be very organized and keep everything as scaleable as possible.

The industry is maturing and the historically mixed message of "game company selling an engine" also needed to be clarified. There are many advantages to this type of approach. Most of these advantages will amount to strong support, more rapid technological advancement, solid partnerships and extensive and comprehensive tools. There are still many unannounced things with regard to LithTech Inc., but rest assured you will hear about them soon, and get even a better vision of how exciting what we are doing is. LithTech is a strong technology with a solid strategy and plan behind it. Our licensees (the vast majority of which are unannounced) are going to benefit immensely from their decision to build their game team's competency in the LithTech technology. Few things are worse than paying for extremely expensive people to learn a system that is going nowhere. That is just a ton of wasted money. With LithTech, not only can we show you that the technology is growing and moving towards the future, we can prove it.

The Rogue Spear Retreat has posted the latest in their series of "interactive interviews" where they ask their readers to submit questions and which are answered by members of Red Storm's Rogue Spear team. This latest edition focuses on the recently announced add-on pack Urban Operations.

There's a Dave Perry interview on ActionTrip talking with the top dog from Shiny Entertainment about what's going on over there in finishing Messiah, their third-person action game where you play Bob the chubby cherub, who accomplishes his cherubic goals by possessing those around him, and Sacrifice, their upcoming RPG. Word is "Messiah 'should' ship in March," and more info on Sacrifice should be forthcoming "in a big way before E3."

IMG interviews Westlake Interactive, talking with the folks behind some of the highest profile recent and future ports of PC games to the Macintosh platform (Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Total Annihilation, The Tomb Raider trilogy, etc.). The Q&A discusses the state of Mac gaming, and the payoff on their decision to view the genre as a niche worth pursuing, rather than a dying market.

Ritual's Berenger "Zor" Fish updated his .plan with word that the official site for the Sin anime movie has gone live. The movie is scheduled for a June release (direct to video) and the site features stills as well as a downloadable trailer (in either AVI or real video format).

GameSpy.com has posted an article by id Software's Graeme Devine, where he examines the state of persistant world online gaming, looking at the pros and cons of games like Ultima Online, Everquest, and Asheron's Call.

AGN3D has posted an interview with Westwood Studios' Aaron Cohen, who talks about Nox, their isometric action game. Like the previous interviews posted on the site, it's transcribed from one of their shows, which features live video footage of the game (and is linked from the text interview). Nox has gone gold, and should be shipping on February 15th.

A new service called Mod on Demand has gone live. The service consists of a client side program that downloads and installs mods, maps, skins and player models automatically, and while it's currently only limited to Quake III Arena, support for other games is planned as well.

StormTroopers has posted their unedited chat log from last night's Deus Ex developer's chat. The log is slightly chaotic, but there is some good info in here, including word that the current target date for going gold is March 31st, which "we might actually make" according to Harvey "Witchboy" Smith.

GASource has posted a Q&A with Dave Taylor, who worked at id Software and founded Crack.com before starting his current gig at Transmeta. Dave explains how he wound up at the hardware company, what it's like to finally be able to talk about their Crusoe technology, and and of course, what Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux) is really like.

You may not have heard of Doug Church, but you've played his games is an interview with the Looking Glass project leader and programmer of the two Ultima Underworld games and System Shock, and contributor to Thief: The Dark Project and Flight Unlimited. The interview talks about the fame and credit, or lack of it, for Looking Glass' innovation in 3D games, the advancement of technology versus game content, and more. Here is a quote on his design philosophy:

We’ve always striven for "immersion" in the gameplay, but as we’ve grown (well, changed, at least) as designers, our sense of that has changed. While the details of this attempt vary from game to game, the core goal has been to provide a range of player capability in the world. With this breadth of capability, the player hopefully feels more involved in their decisions. An Underworld player can open a door with the key, by picking the lock, by breaking it down or by casting a spell. If the player can choose their own goals, and their own approaches to an obstacle, then when they reach the goal it is far more satisfying. Flexible simulation of game elements is a powerful way to enable the player to make their own way in the world.

A fresh installment of the Summoner diaries is online at PC.IGN.com, and this time Volition's lead artist Adam Pletcher examines the creation of real-time 3D visual effects in their upcoming 3D role-playing game. A couple of screenshots and a brief movie illustrate his description of an effect that has "the Stone Golem come up from the ground and form out of molten rock that bubbles up from a crevice in the earth."

PC.IGN.com has updated their preview of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - the Fallen with an interview with executive producer Ken Gordon, as well as 40 new screenshots of this upcoming Unreal-engine powered action game. The article also updates an earlier report of a March release, saying they are now expecting to ship the game in August.

There is a new preview of Nox on GamesMania, looking at Westwood's isometric action RPG offering that recently went gold. The article runs over the gamut of game features, including the single-player campaign and its maps, the interface, and the multiplayer matches.

Garrett keeps stealing previews everywhere, as there is now a Thief II: The Metal Age preview on Daily Radar, offering the usual overview of the game's features, as well as a bunch of (mostly new) high-res screenshots.

Quake Lives, "The QuakeWorld Revitalization Project," has new versions of their front-end proxies for both QuakeWorld servers and clients that attempt to restore fair play in the brave new world created by the release of the Quake source code. Servers that are running the server front-end will not allow access to clients that are not running the client front-end, which will allow for the verification of the client's executable.

An update to Raven Sound and Music Designer Chia Chin Lee's .plan details some of the speedbumps encountered on the road to implementing both A3D and EAX positional audio in Soldier of Fortune. Saying "I would love to talk to other developers to discuss your experience with 3D audio," the update points out that "The future of 3D audio is promising, but like any technology in its infancy, it contains a few quirks. Many of these problems are due to divergence of features and standards found in different soundcards and drivers. This divergence can make the sound designer's job difficult in achieving a good mix balance between all the soundcard chipsets."

• This is the page on the Creative Labs site is where to register Annihilator and Annihilator Pro cards for the Unified drivers, points out a response on the RIVA 3D Forums from Creative's Bill Ball that points out the solutions to problems folks are having with this (story). Thanks Lawgiver.
• A quote on 3DGPU.com from Raven confirming that the "Hardware" option in the Soldier of Fortune Demo makes full use of the GeForce 256's hardware T&L support. They have also posted an article titled: The Present and Future of Texture Compression.
• CES 2000 Part 3 on Thresh's FiringSquad concludes their coverage of this year's Consumer Electronics Show.
• NVIDIA Wins the Microprocessor Report Analyst's Choice Award for Best 3D Accelerator. Thanks Haakon Larsen.
• There's a new Hmonitor Pro V. 3.1.2.4 and Hmonitor Lite V. 3.1.2.4 on the Hardware sensors monitor page. Thanks Tweak Files.
• iXBT NVIDIA GeForce 256 Graphics Cards Comparison. Part 2 is online.
• Game-Guru's guide to Overclocking is online.
• AMD and Overclocking Mods on HardOCP.
• Hercules 3D Prophet DDR-DVI is reviewed on 3DRage.Com.
• Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla soundcard is reviewed on Speedy 3D.
• Creative's FPS 2000 four-point speakers are reviewed on 3D Wars.
• Gigabyte GA-71X Athlon motherboard is reviewed on Gamers Depot.
• ASUS P3C 2000 Camino motherboard is reviewed on Hardware One.
• MSI MS-6153 motherboard is reviewed on 3D-Unlimited.
• PC Cooling on Fast Graphics looks at the art of keeping your machine cool like the Fonz. Ayyyyy!
• Maximizer Gold Finger Athlon overclocker is reviewed on HardOCP.
• There's an SECC1 (Athlon/P2) Cooler Comparison on Overclockers Australia.
• 917 ATX Case is reviewed on The Tech Zone.

The first release of Battle Arena 3 for Quake III Arena is now available, unashamedly declaring itself "The Rocket Arena-like mod for those who can't wait!" Word on the page is "Battle Arena was not intended to compete against Rocket Arena or steal their ideas," but "It was made mainly as a backup in case Rocket Arena 3 wasn't made (which is what crt's post on the RA site sounded like), and to feed the craving for Rocket Arena in Quake 3."

There are six Side-Scene screenshots on TeleFragged showing off gameplay from this pre-WWII action/horror RPG. There are six new high resolution movies on Gamers Central showing off action from MicroProse's upcoming helicopter combat game, and also on the chopper (not the Pulp Fiction/Easy Rider variety) front, there are Ka-52 Team Alligator screenshots on Matrox G400 Enhanced Games page (thanks Killjoy) showing off this helicopter sim from GT Interactive/Simis in its bump-mapped glory, with an AVI gameplay movie there as well. Also, 3DGN's Metal Fatigue preview offers new screenshots of this upcoming RTS.

Relic News interviews Erin Olorenshaw Animator/Artist, and Cheerios eater from Relic Entertainment who is currently "working on.. COUGH caogh KHAA! Heh hem... fur ball." The Q&A talks about her work on Homeworld, Relic's galaxy-spanning strategy game.

Speaking of space, there's another A Talent for War Multi Developer Chat scheduled for tomorrow, offering an opportunity to talk online with representatives of the teams behind Deep Space 9, FreeSpace 2, Klingon Academy, Parsec, Silent Space, Starlancer, Terminus, and UFS Vanguard. The session starts at 1:00 PM EST (6:00 PM GMT) on the Gameslink IRC Network (a server list can be found here) in the Channel #space-sim. The majority of the chat will be moderated, but there will be an unmoderated portion as well.

Also on the space chat front, The Omega Project sends word of no less than nine upcoming developer chats with folks involved in the various upcoming Star Trek games. The first chat will focus on Star Trek: Hidden Evil, and is scheduled for this Monday, January 31 at 7:00 PM EST (4:00pm PST/00:00 GMT) on the IRC server omegaproject.net in the channel #lobby. Slated to attend are Eric Dallaire, Laird Malamed, Mike Webster, and/or Jonathan Knight, and plans are to give away a copy of Star Trek: Armada.

SpecForce has posted some news that Zombie is working on a "major" patch to fix bugs in the current release of Spec Ops 2 for both D3D and Voodoo users. D3D users can expect fixes for the shadows, flashlights, crosshairs in scopes, and more, and Voodoo users will be getting higher screen res support. The patch is reportedly "several weeks away," currently expected in early March.

Monolith CEO Jason Hall made another update to his .plan announcing Monolith is hiring:

Last little tidbit -

We are hiring. Categories are: Engineers, Modelers, Texture Artists, Animators, etc.

There are some big time exciting projects going on, and now would be the time to get involved.

We will pay for relocation, competitive salaries, etc., if you kick ass in your field.

e-mail me at Hall@lith.com

The CPL folks send word of a detail they failed to mention in their reminder that registration for the Razer CPL Event begins February 1: To register you will need a valid credit card. Also, if you are planning to walk-on, they will not accept credit cards or checks at the door.

• Asheron's Call on SystemLogic.
• Dirt Track Racing on GameSpy.com.
• Flight Unlimited III on Gamezilla.
• FreeSpace 2 on loonygames.
• Grand Prix Legends (second opinion) on Games Domain Review.
• Jane's F/A-18 on Gamecenter.
• Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer on HipHardware.com.
• Mortyr on Gone Gold.
• NASCAR Legends on Games Domain Review and Electric Playground.
• Planescape: Torment on GamingChronicle.com.
• Pong 3D on Gamecenter.
• Razer Boomslang 2000 Mouse on The Labyrinth. Also, 3D-Unlimited interviews Robert Krakoff, of Karna LL, manufacturers of these rodents.
• Soldier of Fortune Demo on SkittleBox.
• Test Drive 6 on Gamecenter.
• Urban Chaos on GamePower and (second opinion) on Games Domain Review.

• Kudos to Ensemble Studios, id Software, Gathering Of Developers, Gearbox Software, Reel FX, Rogue Entertainment, Terminal Reality, US Web, and The Levelord™ (as the Beaver), all mentioned in Gearbox' Randy Pitchford's .plan as participants in the Dallas Toys For Tots campaign...
• The Ravenhurst Mission Pack for Hexen II Portal of Praveus Page has version 1.0 of RavenHurst: Resurgence of Evil, offering "two maps, music from the original Hexen, and a whole lot of Hexen II goodness"...
• Microsoft sends word that their RTS sequel Age of Empire II: Age of Kings has now shipped over two million units, which is a considerable milestone for game sales. While they were sending out press releases, they also sent word that the Titans upset the Rams 17-12 in their NFL Fever 2000 simulation of the Super Bowl, highlights are here...
• Though not yet available, the MotionWare Infopages offer information about this upcoming motion simulation device they say represents the future of virtual reality. It is expected to be available in 12-18 months at a retail price of less than $100. Thanks Capt_Beefheart...
• A new version 2.0 of the SETI@home client software is now available. Thanks CiKoTiC...

Recent anniversaries: It's been a bit over three years since disruptor was plucked from the community and hired to work at id Software (it surprised me it was that long ago... a couple more years and we'll have to stop thinking of him as the new guy). It also must be right around the 9th birthday for John Cash's oldest son, noteworthy for being able to beat older players at the age of six (we don't mention esses in connection with this anymore with hopes he will live it down). He's probably now a contender for one of these upcoming $100,000 tournaments.

The double-click opt-out link I posted here yesterday was incorrect for a while, it just lead to the static page claiming to confirm your action (thanks Teq). If you are looking to protect yourself from the marketing tracking thingie mentioned yesterday, this is the correct link to opt out. Want an even wilder story from the world of computer privacy and the Internet? Texas company accuses Yahoo of privacy violations is a CNET story reporting: "Yahoo has been accused by closely held Universal Image of violating Texas' anti-stalking law by allegedly tracking computer users' every movement on the Internet without their consent." Thanks Chris McCue. Stalking! If all this big brother stuff alarms you, Tony Fabris sends word of Window Washer, a cookie monster to eat all the cookies on your machine. It can also eliminate other insecure bits from your system. To finish the cookies discussion, here's a link to the Keebler Homepage and another to the Nabisco Homepage... I'm an Oreo man myself.

Link of the Day: The Punk Rock Dating Page! Fun nicknames and photos here. Thanks Bill MacEachern.
Story of the Day: Oregon company makes top bid for Microsoft check. Thanks Jeff Magill.
Bonus Story: Linus Sucks At Quake; Geeks Horrified on Be Dope. Thanks Will Pesky.
Bonus Story II: Robbery suspect writes stick up note on personal check. Thanks Grendel.