Here are local copies of the ThreeWave CTF maps for Quake III Arena mentioned below. Here's a local copy of the zipped version (7.8 MB), and a local copy of the Win32 executable installer (8.0 MB), each page with a list of mirrors.

As promised earlier today, the Threewave CTF maps for Quake III Arena by Dave "Zoid" Kirsch have been released, as a Win32 installer and a zip-file for Linux users (about 8 MB each). Zoid's post on the Quake3World forums has more word on the three maps, including a brief description of each.

As promised last week (story), Westwood has released downloadable patches of their version 1.17 update for Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun in four languages, which should be helpful when the auto-update feature in the game does not work for you, or if you prefer to do your patching manually. As mentioned, this update features mainly multiplayer improvements, including improvements to the interface and fixes for latency issues in addition to bug fixes and gameplay tweaks.

There's a Q&A with id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead on loonygames, the next installment in Game, Set, Match!, their professional gaming column. The interview talks with the id Software CEO about id Software's feelings about Quake and its variants being the primary shooters used in most professional gaming leagues and tournaments. The Q&A caps with a revelation of who won an internal deathmatch tournament at id Software (the answer may surprise you).

The official Tread Marks site has been updated with word that the game is code complete and should go gold soon. The full version of this tank racing (and shooting, of course) game, which will be sold through the Internet, will then be available early next year.

Like the Descent source code almost two years ago, Outrage has released the source code for Descent II, their venerable 3D action shooter. The package does not include some low-level sound and modem code, so it will need some massaging to compile, but otherwise includes everything you need to rebuild Descent II, version 1.2, if supplied with the data files from that retail version of the game.

Redwood sends word that he's posted nine screenshots on Stomped showing off three levels from Zoid's upcoming Q3A Threewave CTF maps that should be released soon. If you're confused, Zoid did work on the retail version of Q3A CTF, but he didn't make any of the included maps - the Threewave ones are his own.

There is a new patch for Driver on GTI's support site, which adds or improves various control options, in addition to other changes, in the US version of their action racing game.

The following open letter was posted to the official Ultima IX: Ascension site, promising a new first CD to registered owners of the current version of the game (thanks X-Zone):

Dear Ultima fans and U9 customers,

Three weeks ago, we shipped Ultima IX: Ascension. In the time since its release, we have heard from many of you who are enjoying the game and are getting the full immersive experience that U9 offers. Unfortunately, we have also heard feedback from users who are expressing concerns about the game. This does not satisfy us here at Origin. We believe U9 is a great game, and we are committed to making sure that you have the opportunity to experience it.

The U9 development and quality assurance teams continue to work around the clock to address the concerns expressed by some of our customers, such as D3D compatibility. We urge you to keep checking our official website at www.ultima9.com for more news and patches as they become available.

We also believe that every single one of you who have purchased and registered a copy of Ascension should have easy access to these changes. To that end, Origin has committed to send out new copies of the Ultima IX: Ascension install CD (CD #1 in the box you purchased) to all officially registered customers as soon as development and testing on the patches are complete and we are satisfied with the results. Please note that the only way we can get this updated CD into your hands is if you register. You can find detailed information about how to register your game on the U9 website here.

This offer to receive a copy of the new installation CD is good until March 31st, 2000. Future builds of the product will include the latest version of the software.

Thank you for your concern and your feedback. We hope this course of action will maximize your play experience.

Sincerely,
Jack Heistand, General Manager
Origin Systems, Inc.

Ritual's Tom Mustaine actually sent his Quake III Arena maps mentioned below over here as well, so I've posted a local copy of Tom's Q3A maps (1.5 MB), along with a mirror list.

Stomped has posted two maps for Quake III Arena created by Tom "ParadoX" Mustaine, a level designer at Ritual Entertainment. One of the maps is a 4-6 player deathmatch arena, while the other is the same thing without powerups (intended for one-on-one matches). Go grab 'em from Stomped.

Jim Molinets updated his .plan with some thoughts on Rogue's five-year anniversary (which was yesterday). The ever-astute Redwood noticed that among the list of "people who are here now" that he thanks is Brandon James, a former level designer at id Software.

Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan with word that Soldier of Fortune will be supporting IPX (he did a quick survey to see if people still wanted it or not). Here's the scoop:

Well, I got a whole ton of responses over the IPX. About 65% of the people said to drop IPX. People who wanted IPX in were mainly those who run LAN parties a lot and find IPX easier to configure and get going. So with that, SoF will support IPX. I brought over the bug fixes I did for Heretic2 and we'll do some testing on it to make sure it works. So once the demo is released, please let me know if there are any issues with IPX that need to be addressed for the final game...

There's no announced date yet for the demo (learned that lesson from the past...) but once we complete it and get it QA'd, we'll pick a date for it to be released...

Microsoft has announced that Windows 2000, their long-awaited new OS, has gone gold and is off to manufacturing (thanks Cassini). Don't get too excited yet - it won't be available until February 17th.

The Mesa 3D Graphics Library page has a new version 3.1 of the Mesa library that allows some OpenGL applications and games to run under all manner of operating systems including Amiga, Apple Macintosh, BeOS, NeXT, OS/2, MS-DOS, VMS, and Windows 9x/NT, though its original (and still best supported) platform is Unix/X11. Thanks Jacek Fedoryñski. The new version is available as Unix compressed tar files, Unix gzip tar files, and .zip files.

Shadar Logoth (a place of tainted ground - don't go there unaccompanied) has posted a strategy guide for Wheel of Time's Arena (deathmatch) mode. This first part covers the different offensive and defensive Ter'angreal, featuring in-depth tips for each, including this one for the Air Pulse: "If this is all you have you are cannon fodder."

IMG Magazine has posted word that the Macintosh version of Unreal Tournament has gone gold, and will be shipping in "early January". This should come as good news indeed for those Mac owners out there who can't wait to get their hands on the full game.

id Software's John Carmack updated his .plan (the .plans are actually working, it's just the list above that's broken) with word on what's up with Anna Kang, referred to in the recent GameSpot Q3A article (story) as "id's former director of business development." This turns out to be the case, as Anna has left id, though it turns out, John will still be keeping in touch, as he's announced that they are getting married (congratulations!). Here's the deal, which also announces the winner of the Doom chess set competition:

Anna Kang left Id a couple weeks ago to found her own company - Fountainhead Entertainment.

It wasn't generally discussed during her time at Id, but we had been going out when she joined the company, and we were engaged earlier this year. We are getting married next month, and honeymooning in Hawaii. At her thoughtful suggestion, we are shipping a workstation out with us, so I don't fall into some programming-deprivation state. How great is that? :-)

Now that Q3A has shipped, the official winner of her Id Software figurine chess set contest is Rowan Crawford for his prose and art.

An honorable mention goes to Reine Hogberg and Peder Hardings for their Q3A Blair Witch Project. They will receive silver Q3A medallions.

The one thing that broke when everything else got fixed (yeesh!) is the .plan tracker, but it turns out that Robert Duffy updated his .plan with more on the just-released Quake III Arena tools (story). Here's the deal:

A small update. To build a map, q3map requires that 'quake' exists somewhere in the path. It uses this to derive the base path to figure out where to find things. What this means is that if you installed Quake III Arena ( and the tools ) to 'c:\q3' then q3map will fail with a < SetQdirFromPath: no 'quake' in C:/Q3/baseq3/maps/unnamed.map > error. I realize this can be somewhat of a pain but it is the way the tools work ( it is also the way the tools have always worked ).

If you installed the game and the tools to the default or the name you chose has quake in it then this will not apply to you. If you installed to a path that does NOT have 'quake' in the name you will need to rename it to get q3map to work properly.

Hyperion Software has announced that they have acquired the rights to port Volition's Descent: Freespace - The Great War to the Amiga platform (thanks TB). Details are available on their site, including projected system requirements.

GASource has posted a hands-on preview of Evolva, Computer Artworks' 3D action game, based on a full beta build of the game that was sent to them by Virgin Interactive.

With development slowly finishing up on Messiah, it's time for the folks at Shiny to start promoting their next title (which naturally won't be out anytime soon). Sacrifice is the follow-up to Messiah, and it uses the same engine, but for a dramatically different game. While information is pretty scarce for the time being, Games Domain Review has posted a brief preview based on a demonstration of the game and a conversation with Shiny frontman Dave Perry. Here's an excerpt, describing the gameplay:

On the screen was a view of a tall gent, wearing a horned helmet and flowing cloak, standing on a small hill, surveying what looked like everyone's idea of paradise. The sun streamed through gaps in the clouds, picking out strange-looking stone structures on the grass ahead. In the distance, sweeping foothills could be seen, silhouetted in the light. And as Dave moved his character up to one of the stone outcroppings, the world spun around him convincingly - clearly the engine is well up to the task of creating Shiny's imaginary world. Picture the fantastic looking Ultima Ascension, with a reasonable frame rate - oh, and a good deal more style - and you'll be close.

He described Sacrifice as being played a bit like chess. Your altar is the link to your god and, like your king, must be protected at all times. If you lose it, you die. Your character, the wizard - the gent in the helmet and cloak - is the most powerful piece on the board, like the queen. The ultimate aim is to sacrifice another creature on your enemy's altar, thus convincing their god to change to your side. At this point, you start receiving new, different spells from them. And, before you ask, you will be able to take on your friends. Sacrifice will be Shiny's first game to include multiplayer action.

Games Domain has posted the first installment of their C&C Renegade Designer Diary, in which producer Louis Castle talks about how they came up with the concept of creating an action game in the Command & Conquer universe.

The official Messiah site has confirmation of a rumor that was going around after the U.K. release was delayed until next year (story), in that the game will not be out anywhere before Christmas due to the need for "some extra time to polish the game."

The Pit has posted an interview with David Farmer, the designer of the spells and spell movies in the recently released RPG Planescape Torment. In addition to PT, he's worked on such games as Descent 3 and Fallout 2, and he's got a fairly extensive film background as well, having worked on both Mortal Kombat movies and The Mask in addition to others.

David "crt" Wright has announced that work has begun on Rocket Arena for Unreal Tournament. This version is being developed by c0mp1e of the Unloaded TC for Unreal and Epic's own Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart, and they will be looking for user-submitted maps. Details are available on the new UT Rocket Arena site.

The Quake 3 Arena news page has been updated with the first release of the editing tools for Quake III Arena. As is always the case with the tools that should help get folks started making levels, modifications and other goodies, the Q3A tools are an unsupported release. Here is a local copy of the Q3A Tools (4.5 MB) along with a list of mirrors.

The Quake 3 Arena demo page has been updated with the final version of the Quake III Arena demo for Linux (thanks Patrick Schwarz). Here is a local copy of the final Q3A demo for Linux (47 MB), along with a list of mirrors.

There's a New Ragnar Screenshot on GA-Source showing off another shot of Ragnar, the Viking hero of Rune, Human Head's upcoming Unreal-engine game inspired by tales of Norse mythology.

• This S3 drivers page has new drivers for the Diamond V770 (non-ultra) posted a couple of days ago. Thanks Joel Webb.
• This Press Release announces that Creative has lost the patent infringement suit they recently brought against Aureal. Thanks Pestilence.
• Word on Paul Thurrott's WinInfo and ComputerWorld (thanks raijin) is that Win2K has gone gold.

Rorshach, our favorite Watchman, has updated Rorshachs Journal with a bunch of stuff related to making skins for Quake III Arena models. Among the new goodies are 20 new original Q3A skins for download, Wireframes for Q3A made by id Software's Kenneth Scott, the release of Npherno's GL Viewer for Q3A, Quake1, Quake2 and Quake3 custom texture paks (60+ textures), a Clan PMS skin from Paul Steed's PMS Model, and even a Pointilism MessageBoard for skinners and texture artists.

The SpoonBot homepage has a new version 0.5g of the SpoonBot for Starsiege TRIBES. While much improved, the new release still has flaws, and is therefore described as a development version.

Bagpuss sends word that the new release of Webdog has been causing some mysterious problems for some folks, so in addition to warning that until this is pinned down the new release should probably be avoided, he is also requesting help from any programmers with any ideas on why installing a Visual Basic 6 program can cause Explorer.exe to produce an invalid page fault as soon as it boots up (one user even found that the explorer.exe on a machine so impacted was 8 KB smaller than the one on his good machine!). If you can offer any help, please email Bagpuss.

• Abomination on Gaming Age.
• Age of Wonders on Game Over.
• Falcon 4.0 v1.08 on CombatSim.com.
• FreeSpace 2 on RIVA 3D.
• Hangsim on Games Domain Review.
• Homeworld on Electric Games.
• Interstate '82 on Game Over.
• Messiah Demo on 3DGaming.net.
• Nerf ArenaBlast on Gamecenter.
• Odium on GameSpot and 3DGaming.Net.
• Omikron: the Nomad Soul on GA-Source.
• Planescape: Torment (first impressions) on GA-RPG.
• Quake III Arena on MakeItSimple.com, and Woodenmen.org.
• Seven Kingdoms II on Desktop Watch.
• Sim Theme Park on Insane Gamers and PC Gameworld.
• Slave Zero on Gamecenter.
• SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle on Gamers Depot, Computer Games Online, Gamecenter, and GamePower.
• Thief: Gold on Adrenaline Vault.
• Ultima IX: Ascension on Game Addict.
• Unreal Tournament on GamesXTREME and CNN.
• Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition on Computer Games Online.
• Wheel of Time on Well Rounded Entertainment.

• The 41st Diablo II Screenshot of the Week is up, titled: "Paladin invades the Temple." Thanks Diabloii.net. No word on if the 52nd one will be the screenshot of the year...
• It's No Game is a Fox News article on state-of-the-art console systems. Thanks theAntiELVIS...
• Word from Electronic Arts is that Jane's F/A-18 has gone gold, and is off to manufacturing...

Argh. The DNS switch was screwed up last night, so for a good time in the wee hours this morning, this site was producing an error. The good news is that Kevin at Pair networks apparently works the kind of Vampire hours I do, so we were actually able to straighten this out as the farmers were just getting to their cow milking. The even better news is that now that the DNS glitch has been smoothed out we should be past the problems resulting from our move, but I've been wrong before (as my Nana, Nana Rosanadanna used to say...). So (hopefully) for the final time in this go-round of technical difficulties, your patience is appreciated. BTW, the DNS screw-up also caused a lot of mail to go away, so if you wrote someone on the site last night, there's a good possibility that your missive ended up in the bit bucket. Other than that, as of now, cookies and messageboard preferences should work again, so if there is anything on the site that isn't back to the way it was prior to the move, please feel free to drop a line and complain to us about it, because we're not aware of any remaining issues.

Link of the Day: Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division. Apparently the original source of much of the material in yesterday's LoD. Thanks Sir Asi9.