GameSpot has posted an extensive guide to Quake III Arena, providing strategies for general deathmatch and one-on-one games, the use of weapons and powerups, a run-down of all deathmatch, tournament and CTF maps, and more.

Raven's Kenn Hoekstra updated his .plan to point out several updates to the official Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force site, and to inquire after some goodies he and colleague Eric Biessman are interested in. Here's the part about the site updates:

The Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force website has been updated with new information on several aspects of the game including new weapons, characters and aliens. Drop by and take a look! Kudos to Rob Gee, Mike Gummelt and Kim Lathrop for their assistance with this update...

Additionally, the second volume of the Elite Force FAQ that was posted to Raven's forum a while back (story), has been added to the site as well.

Exxtreme3D has posted an interview with Russell Ritchie, managing director on Picassio, the non-violent game where you attempt to steal some of the world's greatest art. It's a pretty good interview, with a few new details about the game, including an estimate for how long it will be (fifty to sixty hours) and word that it will be multiplayer, with "Capture the Art", head to head, and teamplay modes.

Under the label "better late than never" comes today's game postmortem of Die By The Sword, an article that appeared in the January 1999 issue of Game Developer magazine on the 3D hack-n-slash fest by Treyarch and Interplay that was released in March 1998. Programmer Jamie Fristrom accounts the history of the game, technical aspects of its development, what went right and wrong, and the aftermath of its release.

Back from his vacation, Epic's Brandon Reinhart updated his .plan with a general update on the Linux port of Unreal Tournament, which he will be making open source according to the Artistic License (they can't release it according to the GPL, as this is just the Linux part of the engine they're releasing). It's a big update, but here's a brief excerpt with some details:

I'm back from visting relatives and I've been rolling on the Linux open source stuff. I've got my project approved with Source Forge. Once I get everything set up, I'll announce the URL but I'm sure the sneaky will be able to find the page.

I've chosen the Artistic License. I feel that it allows mod developers a lot of freedom with the open code, while not putting Epic into any weird positions with the undisclosed part of the engine.

I plan on open sourcing the following libraries:
XDrv
XMesaGLDrv
GlideDrv
Audio
XLaunch

In addition, the release archive and rcs will include the public headers for the other engine libraries (core, engine, etc). Some of the above libraries compile both under Linux and Win32. I'll write up some specific guidelines for contributing authors. For example code that is contributed to the GlideDrv library must compile under both Win32 and Linux.

A new version of The Heretic Fortress, the class-based multiplayer mod for Heretic II has been released. This new version adds new player models, as well as support for custom models in every class in addition to other changes.

GameSpy has posted an interview with Lennart Sas, designer and director at Triumph Studios on their recently released turn-based strategy/fantasy game Age of Wonders, talking about the game's two and a half year development cycle (during which two entirely different versions of the game were created).

A new version of the Java MD3 Model Viewer, a windowed Java app that allows you to view Quake III Arena's MD3 models as well as export them to VRML format has been released. The source code is included as well for budding Java programmers to check out.

Well ok, just two: GameFAQs has posted a new guide/walkthrough for Half-Life: Opposing Force, offering detailed help on finding your way through Gearbox' expansion pack. It even includes mention of an Easter Egg in the game that hails back to the days of DOOM II. Elsewhere, Core Design has posted a brief technical support FAQ for their 3D action adventure Tomb Raider: the Last Revelation, including the patch that was released last week.

Eric S. Raymond, the Open Source guru, comments on Slashdot (thanks Jacek Fedoryñski) on the controversy about the potential for cheating described in this Slashdot article that's been raised by the release of the Quake source code (story). The new article discusses cheating in computer games in general, and in particular, one of John Carmack's proposed ways of addressing this (story), a closed-source launcher for this now open-source game. Here's a bit:

Carmack's argument seems watertight. What's wrong with this picture? Are we really looking at a demonstration that closed source is necessary for security? And if not, what can we learn about securing our systems from the Quake case?

I think one major lesson is simple. It's this: if you want a really secure system, you can't trade away security to get performance. Quake makes this trade by sending anticipatory information for the client to cache in order to lower its update rate. Carmack read this essay in draft and commented "With a sub-100 msec ping and extremely steady latency, it would be possible to force a synchronous update with no extra information at all, but in the world of 200-400 msec latency [and] low bandwidth modems, it just plain wouldn't work." So it may have been a necessary choice under the constraints for which Quake was designed, but it violates the first rule of good security design: minimum disclosure.

When you do that, you should expect to get cracked, whether your client is open or closed -- and, indeed, Carmack himself points out that the see-around-corners cheat can be implemented by a scanner proxy sitting between a closed client and the server and filtering communications from server to client.

Here's how the article concludes:

To recap, the real lessons of the Quake cheats are (a) never trust a client program to be honest, (b) you can't have real security if you trade it away to get performance, (c) real security comes not from obscurity but from minimum disclosure, and most importantly (d) only open source can force designers to use provably secure methods.

So, far from being a telling strike against open source, the case of the Quake cheats actually highlights the kinds of biases and subtle design errors that creep into software when it's designed for closed-source distribution and performance at the expense of security. These may be something we can live with in a shoot-em-up, but they're not tolerable in the running gears of the information economy. Avoiding them is, in fact, a good reason for software consumers to demand open source for anything more mission-critical than a Quake game.

Finally (for the moment), the preliminary QuakeWorld Forever proposal describes plans to use "a Netrek type system of blessed 'binaries'" to create QuakeWorld security based on concepts found in this mostly unedited log of a chat on #qwforever on GamesNET (209.1.245.35:6667). Here is a copy of the email they sent along.

The Iron Gauntlet interviews Travis Williams, producer at ASC Games (and, as it turns out, a former employee of White Wolf Game Studios) talking about Werewolf: The Apocalypse--Heart Of Gaia, the upcoming Unreal-engine game that will recreate the Werewolf filled world of the pen-and-paper role playing game from White Wolf.

• This file (direct link) has updated drivers for the 3D Prophet GeForce 256 DDR series. Thanks French Frag Factory.
• RIVA 3D has posted a daring-sounding homebrew mix of drivers that combine the NVIDIA Athlon only drivers and Creative Labs' latest Annihilator GeForce drivers to create a new hybrid for CL cards only that they say enhance D3D performance while maintaining Athlon compatibility.
• Tech-Review's weekly CPU Price list has been updated.
• Sharky Extreme reviews the Intel Pentium III 500E CPU and 550E Flip Chip-Pin Grid Array Coppermine CPUS.

The Q3Logger Homepage has a new beta 2 version 1.0.1.0 of the Q3Logger log parser for Quake III Arena. This freeware Windows program can generate HTML pages with statistics from games played on a Q3A server, offering game-by-game and lifetime stats as well as Doom-like Killer/Killee tables broken up by specific weapons. Sample output can be found on this page.

The OnTheWay page has a new version 1.3 of the original Quake II version of this server launcher/front-end dealie. The new version, which adds a couple of small features and fixes a few bugs, is planned as the last Quake II version of the program, as they plan to concentrate on the Quake III Arena version in the future.

Jimmy's Mods has the debut release of a pair of new Sin mods. In Hunter, the aim is to become the mutant, and evade or kill the "Hunters" in order to stay the mutant, and score points. Killing Spree is modestly described as a "simple" modification to add enhanced feedback to Sin, "inspired by Quake3 and Unreal Tournament." Though they don't add to your score in any way, when you rack up 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25+ frags in a row without dying the game will now give feedback on the screen with messages familiar from UT like "You are on a Rampage." Also, when you pick up a pair of frags within six seconds, the game will give a Q3A-esque "Excellent!"

Rich's Project Warehouse has the first version of The Genebot Project, a server-side bot for QuakeWorld based on the recently Quake source code (story). This bot, designed by the author of The Jumbot for Half-Life and The Famkebot for Quake II is said to operate exactly like a real player, and is usable with any mod. The source is included (as should the source for any GPL software), and TheFatal, the bot's author is hoping someone will advance his work, as he's "done all the grunt work by hacking through the engine to make it accept clients which have no net channels," but points out his work prevents him from further refining the AI.

Andre' Werthmann's Homepage has a new version 1.0.3 of Heretic for Linux, adding multiple game resolutions and SDL support (and a natty Penguin Heretic logo to boot). Thanks Jacek Fedoryñski.

Wireplay's Fragfest 2000 is a Quake III Arena competition offering £100 to the winner who gets through several FFA rounds. Though the competition is UK-based, it is open to anyone who whishes to enter. Thanks Faceache. Also, Unreal Tournament Winter Conquest 2000 is holding a spontaneous 32-player double-elimination one-on-one tournament tonight (spots may still be available if you hurry) co-sponsored by iGames and GT Interactive. The tournament will start at 8:00 PM EST (5:00 PM PST).

• Close Combat IV: Battle of the Bulge on GameSpot.
• Gangsters on Games Weekly.
• Half-Life: Opposing Force on CTNews 3D and Thresh's FiringSquad.
• Planescape: Torment on Adrenaline Vault.
• Quake III Arena versus Unreal Tournament on Game-Guru.net.
• Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars on GameSpy.com.
• Slave Zero on Speedy 3D.
• Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict on Computer Games Online.
• Ultima IX: Ascension on Gamers Central.
• Unreal Tournament on GamePen.

• The Outrage Entertainment Jobs listing has a bunch of new help-wanted ads for folks to work on games starting production for both the PC and the PlayStation...
• Peej's 1999 Quake Map Roundup is the latest annual recap of the best Quake (1) maps created throughout the past year...
• Quake 3 editing page by Derek c Foley has a Q3A RailGun mod offering enhanced sound and a custom camouflage skin as well as an article detailing its creation, along with an article on creating skins, and the lowdown on level editing for Quake II level designers...

As I'm working on this very update, the "guilty pleasure" movie on HBO in the background, a straight to cable classic called New World Disorder with Rutger Hauer and Andrew McCarthy (hey, I watch some good stuff too!), just offered a brief debate on the merits of Doom versus Quake where the participant who favored Doom preferred its gameplay over Quake's state-of-the-art-ness. I thought that was a bit more sophisticated than most mainstream mentions of such games, and it certainly caught me by surprise when it popped up there.

Link of the Day: The Tripping The Rift page has an improved version of TTR. Thanks CardinalFang.
Story of the Day: Girl Turns Orange Over-Imbibing Sunny Delight. Thanks Anne Curr.