Adrenaline Vault has given their one, lonely screenshot of Aliens Versus Predator Gold a little company, by adding 10 more high-res images to the same page. As reported earlier today (story), AvP Gold is an expanded and updated version of Rebellion and Fox Interactive's first-person shooter.

The now smoke-free Kenn Hoekstra (congrats, welcome to the club) updated his .plan with word that the Soldier of Fortune demo has been downloaded enough to put it in the big leagues with the Quake III Arena demo, as well as details on a major sound problem people have been experiencing. Here's the scoop:

I'm continuing to lead the tech support charge on our message boards and we seem to have most problems nailed down. The biggest one that I'm aware of is the fact that the demo hangs on a blue/gray screen for users who have a YAMAHA DX-SG sound card or similar YAMAHA model. The problem is with the demo's auto-detect features looking for A3D support. These YAMAHA cards have limited A3D support (1.0) and Soldier's auto-detect code is looking for 2.0 or 3.0. This is what's causing the hang. Adding "+set snd_dll defsnd.dll" to your command line shortcut has fixed the problem for some users, but most YAMAHA owners are pretty much out of luck at this point. Jake "The Gent" Simpson is talking to his sources now to see about fixing the problem. As soon as we know something, you'll know something. According to Rick, future Soldier of Fortune releases are going to start up with default sound to avoid these sound support issues. Amen to that... =)

The sad thing? I have one of those DX-SG cards in my machine and it works. Probably because the drivers are the 1998 factory installed variety... *shrugs*

Gamecenter has posted their Fast Track Guide™ to Ultima IX: Ascension. The guide is essentially an excerpt from the book published by Prima, but it does feature detailed tips for virtually every area of the game (it just doesn't have the maps, the Avatar's Journal, or other extras included in the full book).

GameProWorld has posted a hands-on preview of Soulbringer, which is based on a full build of the game. They describe the game as, "Diablo meets Darkstone with a real strong emphasis on the story" and there are a whole bunch of shots for you to look at if that makes no sense to you.

InciteGames has posted 8 new screenshots from Thief 2: The Metal Age, offering a look at the game's architecture (which like the first Thief game is pretty impressive).

There are four new screenshots of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - the Fallen on GameSpot, showing off scenes from the Unreal-engine powered third-person action game by The Collective and Simon & Schuster, which they say is still slated for a March release.

NWGN has posted a brief interview with Mark Frohnmayer, talking to the lead programmer of TRIBES 2 about their upcoming team-based first-person action game. Here is a bit about the planned gameplay modes:

Tribes 1 actually supported 5 distinct multiplayer game types, CTF, capture and hold, find and retrieve, Defend and destroy, and deathmatch. We're enhancing some of the Tribes 1 modes (D&D and F&R), and adding in 3 new game types.

Although the game didn't get a very positive review on GameSpot, they have now posted a full-fledged game guide for Mortyr, offering general strategies, an enemy guide, weapon and multiplayer strategies, and a complete walkthrough for Mirage Media's first-person shooter.

3dfx keeps churning out the drivers, and has now released these Voodoo2 Windows 9x DirectX 7 Drivers - Version 3.02.02. Thanks Ant. The new version fixes problems with resolution switching and the control panel, as well as bugs on various games.

Skinning 101 has the latest release of the Skinlinker utility for Quake III Arena that creates the .skin files needed to link the skin image files to the models in Quake III Arena. The new version now allows to create bots, mostly with default characteristics, "but you do get to set speed, aggressiveness, accuracy, alertness, sex and a few other things."

Monolith's Jason Hall updated his .plan again with a clarification to his earlier update about the recent formation of a separate company to handle their LithTech engine, particularly about the term "3D Game Operating System" (see earlier story):

Some quick clarification.

LithTech has become extremely elaborate over time, and currently the best method to describe it to a developer in a way that makes sense (given its full capabilities) is to describe it as a 3D Game Operating System.

This helps developers make the mental distinction and understand the different contexts of uses between technologies like Renderware (3D Renderer), Unreal (3D Engine) and LithTech (3DGOS).

Agreed that perhaps it's not a complete OS in every technical sense of the term, but the context in which a developer must look at it and work with it is closer to that than any other easy-to-understand description.

Just wanted to clarify that a little more.

Also, I can only stress that we are just getting started with our announcements. We have been very busy as you will see! It's quite exciting.

Adrenaline Vault has posted the first screenshot of Aliens Versus Predator Gold, the just announced expanded version of the game that is due to be released in the Spring (story). The shot displays a marine opposing a Predator, guns akimbo, with an Alien looking on to jump the survivor :-)

There is an interview with sound programmer Tony Bennett on Aureal's A3D.com, and naturally the topic of discussion is his work on the audio code in Messiah, the hopefully imminent third-person action game by Shiny.

Tonight marks the first Deus Ex developers chat, so hop over to ION's web based chat, or point your IRC browser to www.ionstorm.com at 8:00 CST and join #ion to talk to Warren Spector and others from ION's Deus Ex team.

Monolith's Jason Hall updated his .plan with some comments on the formation of a separate company to handle their LithTech engine (story), saying their intent is to create a 3D gaming OS with the engine (although he doesn't give a real definition of that term). Here's what he had to say:

This announcement is extremely significant. We have been working hard to make sure that LithTech is geared and ready for the future. This announcement shows that we are moving in the right direction.

It is the highest compliment to be able to attract someone of Dr. Whitten's caliber. This guy really knows solid technology when he sees it.

I am looking forward to watching LithTech grow and proliferate as a true 3D gaming operating system (3DGOS). The end result of all of this is an even more robust development toolset that has a clear direction and a solid future - and more importantly, great support!

More cool announcements soon...we are just getting started.

3dfx has posted new drivers for their Voodoo 3 based cards (thanks CiKoTiC). These drivers fix a problem some users were having with the 3dfx Tools program, and say that you should only download these if you were experiencing problems.

Raven's John Scott updated his .plan with some new stuff for fans of the Soldier of Fortune demo. He's posted a TXT file with a list of DMFlags for the game, as well as a JPEG with the character set they used for the fonts for those interested in creating fun names (although he says you'll have to manually hack your CFG file).

incitegames has posted more materials from Star Trek: Klingon Academy, showing off Interplay's space-combat RTS in nine screenshots and four brief movies of Gorn-Klingon battles.

Black Isle and Interplay have now released the official version 1.1 patch for Planescape: Torment (as opposed to the beta patch awhile ago), a 3.3 MB download that fixes a number of issues with the game, most notably the recurring slowdown problems.

StormTroopers has posted an interview with Deus Ex programmer Scott Martin, talking to him about his work on the AI in the game. It's interesting stuff, as he talks about how the NPCs in the game will function, but also about his "process" for developing the AI for each class of character. Here's an excerpt where he discusses how the NPCs will function:

I wanted NPCs to react to the world in roughly the same way that real people do. The key to this was to make the AI recognize things based on sight and sound. The Unreal engine has a decent pathfinding system built into it (written by Epic's Steve Polge), so thankfully I didn't have to build one from scratch. But because the original Unreal was a single-player shooter, its A/V event handling didn't consist of much more than "I see the player, so I attack" and "I hear the player, so I attack." I built an audio/visual event manager into the Unreal engine so NPCs could detect things like footsteps, gunshots, smashed windows, objects hitting the ground, drawn weapons, screams, distress, etc. -- and more importantly, it could distinguish between them. I also wrote behaviors for the NPCs so they could react appropriately to these events.

Monolith sends news of the formation of LithTech Inc., "a subsidiary dedicated to creating the standard in real time 3D development and networked multimedia operating systems." Here's the full release, which also announces the hiring of Dr. Gregory Whitten as Chief Software Architect:

Kirkland, WA (January 27, 2000) Monolith Productions today announced the formation of LithTech Inc., a subsidiary dedicated to creating the standard in real time 3D development and networked multimedia operating systems. As its first official action, LithTech has named Dr. Gregory Whitten-19 year veteran of Microsoft, as Chief Software Architect.

"LithTech Inc.'s ability to attract someone of Dr. Whitten's caliber confirms our belief that our technology implementation is state of the art," comments Jason Hall, CEO for Monolith Productions and LithTech Inc. "Our vision is to combine strong leadership with experienced professionals to create the first company dedicated to serving the maturing real time 3D market."

Dr. Whitten is currently Co-Chairman of NumeriX Corporation. He retired from Microsoft in 1998. His research interests revolve around large-scale, concurrent object oriented systems and software architectures. During his impressive 19 year career with Microsoft, Dr. Whitten designed and implemented many pieces of the BASIC, Quick BASIC and Visual BASIC interpreters and compilers and the common cross-language compiler and runtime technologies. In addition, Dr. Whitten started the Windows project, architected the GDI graphics and device model as well as the memory and programming models for Windows and OS/2. He was also responsible for initiating Microsoft's company-wide object oriented software strategy including leading the design groups for OLE 1.0, 2.0, COM and OLE controls which became DCOM and ActiveX. Additionally, he worked on software strategies for the Office, Back Office and Windows product lines. Dr. Whitten has a Ph.D. from Harvard University where he did original research in numerical analysis, analysis of algorithms and econometrics.

"LithTech is a perfect complement to my technical interests, and I look forward to joining the team," says Dr. Whitten. "Together we can move gaming to a new level of sophistication and capabilities."

The LithTech 3D Engine is a licensable technology for multiple platforms that functions as a complete 3D game operating system, which allows developers to easily design, develop and focus on content without reinventing technology for each project.

A new version of the Jumbot for Half-Life has been released. This version fixes a slew of bugs that showed up in the previous release, and will be the last for the immediate future (unless still more bugs pop up, of course).

According to this story on PSXNation (which apparently is based on a quote from this interview on Unreal Universe, although no credit is given), Epic will be showing Unreal Tournament running on the Playstation 2 at this year's Game Developer's Conference. I asked Epic's Brandon "greenmarine" Reinhart, who is working on the port about this, who confirmed that, "the plan is to bring our dev kit and show off what we have."

Aliens Versus Predator is Back and It's Pure Gold is a press release from Fox Interactive, announcing their plans to release a Gold Edition of Aliens Versus Predator this Spring. The update will feature nine new levels, new weapons, and other enhancements, and will also include the official strategy guide.

There are more new screenshots of Evolva on GA-Source, as well as a little info on the AI system in this colorful action/strategy title currently under construction at Computer Artworks.

WAGZ (short for West Australian Gaming Zone) has posted an interview with Jeff DeWitt, animator on Human Head's upcoming Viking slashfest RUNE. The talk covers his work on modelling and animating the game's protagonist Ragnar, applying the Unreal engine to a third-person title, and more.

There are three new screenshots of Metal Fatigue on 3D-Unlimited, showing off scenes from Zono and Psygnosis' upcoming 3D real-time strategy title.

GameSpot UK has posted a brief but hands-on preview of Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, the Q3A-engine based action game in development at Raven. Unusual for a hands-on preview, most if not all of the screenshots in the short gallery are already familiar, though.

• The unofficial Unreal Tournament FAQ by Droogie has been updated with new info and tips on Epic's acclaimed first-person shooter.
• Raven's official Soldier of Fortune support FAQ was updated with more tips on their recently released demo.
• There is a detailed walkthrough of Half-Life: Opposing Force on Daily Radar.
• Commander Keen's Console page has updated lists of the commands and variables in Quake III Arena's point release (thanks VE).

PC.IGN.com has updated their preview of Thief II: the Metal Age with some 40 new screenshots taken from a recent build of the game (with these numbers, thumbnails would have been welcome).

Epic Programmer Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated his .plan with a lengthy essay focusing primarily on the user-made mod community, and how vitally important it is to the success of games in the shooter area. Brandon points out that "Minh Le, the author of Counterstrike, has effectively more people playing his game online at any one point in time than either Quake3 or UT. Consider this very closely if you work in the 3D industry. This is important." He goes on to repeat his belief we are in the midst of "a 'renaissance' in garage game development," and points out that some of Half-Life's longevity on the sales charts and online are due "to Valve brilliant and unrelenting support of the mod community," saying "This is NOTHING NEW to Valve, but quite new to the rest of the industry." Some of GreenMarine's update serves as a warning to mod authors to make sure they are not taken advantage of. Here's a bit on that:

Here's what I want to say to the mod authors: Remember what I said about companies taking what they can get? They do and they will. If a company offers you some money or a contract, get a lawyer. Do it right. Don't be afraid to ask what you think you are worth. You damn well know that if a company is seeking you out, you are worth something to them.

The garage mod authoring scene is driven both by groups and individuals. Individuals are more likely to find jobs at game companies through their work on notable mods. I think that what Valve has done with Team Fortress is probably an exception. I don't know any of the TF team, what their positions are at Valve, or even if all of them are actually working there. I do know, however, multiple individual mod authors who have found jobs in the industry because of their skill and initiative. Mods prove to game companies that a person has talent and the ability to complete a project.

The lengthy update goes on about the impact mods will have on the future of UT, and gives plenty of good advice to authors on planning and publicity, while warning against over-hyping, making note of our policy here of not honoring any of the dozens of requests we get each day to post screenshots and such of yet-to-be-released mods (so many fall by the wayside, as he admits one of his own past projects did). It's an insightful and informative read throughout, in spite of its massiveness.

Working the printscreen key like concert pianists, the folks at GameFan have posted another 32 MDK2 screenshots showing off action from BioWare's imminent sequel to MDK, hot on the heels of the half-dozen shots they posted the other day. The shots are from a beta build of the upcoming third- and first-person action title. MDK, of course, stands for "Men Don't Knit."

The Gallery over at Majesty - Dragon has been updated a few times recently, offering a bunch of screenshots of a beta version of Majesty, an upcoming RTS. The Majesty preview at PC.IGN.Com was recently updated based on playing a new build as well. Also, there's a new Theocracy preview on Eurogamer.net with a look ahead at this RTS from UbiSoft and Hungarian developers Philo Laboratories, with nine new screenshots of gameplay. Finally, screenshots on Dr.TwisTer's Shadowbane Alert show off some of the frontal nudity that will be featured in this upcoming RPG, purely to advance the plot, no doubt.

• The 3DSL Home Page has word of some new version 2041 Aureal drivers, as well as word from Aureal on the deal with the long-planned EAX support, which criticizes the inconsistent way that EAX is implemented in different games.
• There's new Microsoft IntelliType Pro 1.1 software if you have one of those new keyboards with all the extra buttons. Thanks Sigurdur G. Gunnarsson. The new version offers Win2K support.
• Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU Prices have been updated, as have GamesXTREME's UK CPU Prices and CPU Review's Athlon/Pentium3 Price Comparison.
• The RIVA 3D Forums are hosting a petition they will forward to Creative Labs to get the Unified Database to accept Annihilator Serial Numbers.
• Tech-Junkie's interview with VIA Technologies offers VIA's stand on the Joshua and RAMBUS.
• What's Behind the Coppermine on tech-Review tries to shed some light on the guts of the most recent PIIIs.
• Guillemot 3D Prophet-SDR is reviewed on Gamers Depot.
• Voodoo3 3500 TV is reviewed on Ars Technica.
• ATI Rage Fury Maxx is reviewed on Thresh's FiringSquad.
• S3 Monster Sound MX400 is reviewed on GameSpot.
• Maxi Gamer Sound Fortissimo soundcard on Tac-Sim.com.
• Soyo 6VBA 133 versus Tyan S1854 motherboard comparison on Ars Technica.
• Coolermaster ATC-200 Thermal Case is reviewed on GamePC.

The finalists for the GDC 2000 Independent Games Festival have been announced. Congrats to Blix by StationBlix.com, Hardwood Hearts by Silver Creek Entertainment, King of Dragon Pass by A-Sharp, Moonshine Runners by K-D LAB, Quaternion by Spin Studios, The Rift by Thrushwave, Rogue Wars by ReAllis, Seed by HS Games Hungary/Humansoft, and Tread Marks by Longbow Digital Arts, who will all compete for the grand prize at the Game Developers Conference this March in San Jose, CA.

PC, video game sales skyrocket reports the USA Today, while also noting "Sales of video and computer games with 'Mature' ratings for violence, language or sexual content fell from 2.6 million units in 1998 to 1.2 million in 1999, according to figures compiled by the NPD Group and released Wednesday by the Interactive Digital Software Association," though their take on this is "...analysts said that may have more to do with the phenomenal popularity of Pokemon than concern over tragedies such as the Columbine High School massacre." Thanks Toughguy. Also, the latest GameDAILY Top 20 Selling Entertainment Titles for January 9 - 15, 2000 is online, with Q3A holding at #6, UT up to #8, Rogue Spear up to #10, and Half-Life dropping to #19 (it looks like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, in the #1 spot, is going to be as hard to move as Regis' hair). Also of note is the GameDAILY Top 10 Selling Mac Titles for January 9 - 15, 2000, where the top two spots are held by Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, in that order. Till next time, I'm Casey Kasem, saying, "keep your hands in your pockets, and your feet in the air."

The startlingly barebones Challenge website has a new Quake III Arena modification called Challenge. The author doesn't have time to maintain the page, and didn't really send along a lot of info about the mod, so I guess part of the challenge is to figure out what it does. Described as a "battleground like mod for quake 3," word is: "It has some cool features like playing sound to your teammates..."

It's good news and bad news here, the bad news first: "It is with a sad and heavy heart that I announce that GamesCon in the Bay Area is cancelled and that GamesCon has decided close it's doors," is the way the letter from GamesCon founder Mark "Rick" Chandler kicks off, with the unfortunate news that this event/trade show that aimed to be the E3 for gamers has been cancelled, and the organization is now defunct. The site has the full press release detailing the reasons for this unfortunate turn of events. On a happier note, word from the Razer CPL Event is that admission prices for this upcoming $100,000 tournament have been lowered to $30.00 in advance, and $40.00 at the door. Online registration is scheduled to begin Tuesday, February 1 at 5:00 PM EST (4:00 PM Central Time). Finally, Eurogamer.net's xsi coverage is complete, with a wrap-up of the event.

• Battlezone II: Combat Commander on Sniper's Alley.
• Carnivores II on PC.IGN.com.
• Demise Demo on new reality gaming.
• Descent 3: Mercenary on Adrenaline Vault.
• Final Fantasy VIII on Daily Radar.
• Flight Simulator 2000 Professional Edition on GameProWorld.
• Hangsim on Electric Games.
• Jane's F/A-18 on Happy Puppy.
• Logitech Wingman Mousepad on Teamplay.Net.
• Microsoft's Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro 3.0 on HardNews.org.
• Mortyr on Gamers Central and GameSpot.
• Panzer Elite on Electric Playground.
• Planescape: Torment on GamesMania.
• Quake III Arena on GameCritics.
• Quake III Arena versus Pokémon (the Battle for America) on Gamecenter.
• Razer Boomslang 2000 on Teamplay.Net.
• Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear on Electric Playground.
• Soldier of Fortune Demo on Damage Gaming.
• Supreme Snowboarding on Game-Forge.
• SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle on Electric Playground.
• The Wheel of Time on Wewp! Entertainment.
• Tread Marks on Gamelinks.net.
• Ultima IX: Ascension on MPOG.
• Unreal Tournament on GameCritics.

• The History of Computer Games - Part I is by gaming historian Rich "Zdim" Carlson of Looking Glass Studios, and Chasing Technology looks at the current art of the RTS (that one's fun to read aloud) from Greg Borrud of Pandemic Studios, both part of GameSpy.Com's Developer's Week...
• ValveWorld interviews Cliffe of the Counter-Strike mod including word of "how to get a weapon in the game that costs more than any amount of cash you can get in the mod"...
• AGN3D's The Sims interview is a transcript of a recent GameTime appearance by Patrick Buechner of Maxis talking about their latest, the Sims, which sounds even simmier than ever...

Here's an issue I imagine will be of interest to many who read this site, as I recall many of the passionate discussions in the past of cookies, security and privacy issues. Activists charge DoubleClick double cross is a USA Today story detailing how DoubleClick's recent acquisition of Abacus Direct Corp. has provided them with the opportunity to turn cookies left in your browser into breadcrumbs (as in Hansel and Gretel) to track your movements and purchases across the World Wide Web. Thanks Jamie Wood. This is likely not the last we'll hear of this, as word in the article is a complaint will be filed next month with the Federal Trade Commission by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. In the meantime, DoubleClick assures users unhappy with this that they can opt out from their tracking program, which you can apparently do by clicking this DoubleClick Privacy link. Interesting stuff. As always, if you opt to use cookies for our messageboards, we promise not to do anything with them but help you save your settings.

Link of the Day: Treasury of Geriatric Erotica. Thanks ChiQ.
Story of the Day: DeCSS Author Arrested, on Slashdot (one of many /. threads on the subject). Suggested by Jimmy Sieben as a follow-up to yesterday's link to a news article on the subject, pointing it is of "great importance in the coming digital age," and suggested the Slashdot forums provided word from all sides of the issue, which is more complex than the simple "cracking" story suggests.