It seems that Gamespot has an exclusive look at Thief III, the latest in the stealth action FPS series from Looking Glass Studios and now Ion Storm Austin. The PC and Xbox game shares an engine with the other new Ion Storm project, Deus Ex: Invisible War (also previewed on Gamespot recently), hence similarly advanced AI and use of dynamic shadows, but claims much more focused gameplay goals compared to DX2, as well as its markedly different medieval setting. Looks like this new Thief could continue the Looking Glass tradition in fine style.

ascii writes "Japanese company Boxmaster Lupo is offering the PCBox: a foldable PC case made entirely out of cardboard?! I have no idea about the target group although I reckon it may appeal to some casemodders *grin*. Overclockers should watch out though! You wouldn't really want to turn your shiny new case into a pile of ashes just for those extra few fps in Q3 would you?" And Arab writes "They arent really case mods, as such. But a friend sent me this link to a guy's webpage who has made humanoid cases. there is a girl one, one that looks like a Gundam, and one looks like some kinda bizzare fish dragon thing. The site is in Japanese, so I have no idea what it is saying, although it looks like there are step-by-step intructions."

According to Gamespot, who have exclusive details and a single piece of concept art up, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has been announced for PC, courtesy of publisher Activision and developer Troika Games (of Arcanum and former Fallout-involvement fame.) Quite apart from the excellent RPG pedigree of the team working on it, this is an FPS blend which is the first announced third-party title to utilise Valve's Source Engine, as being used in the gorgeous-looking Half-Life 2.

Guy Welch writes "Sierra and Monolith have just released the No One Lives Forever 2 toolkit, including the complete editing tools and source code. This toolkit allows users to create mods and all sorts of other changes to this first person spy shooter." Coming mere months from the original release date, this is good news for mod authors and creators who want to tinker with a slightly different flavor of FPS.

suedehed writes "The Star Trek: Elite Force 2 demo is out. And it ROCKS! Here's the Fileplanet link." Bonus links to Fileshack and Happy Puppy (registration required) - this is another worthy FPS demo (courtesy Ritual and Activision) that should be well worth checking out. Update: 05/02 22:02 GMT by S : Here's a BitTorrent link.

Victum_ writes "Over at Gaming Horizon they have posted some new Counter-Strike Xbox screens. These are supposedly the very first screenshots that have been released of the Xbox version. They look pretty much identical to CS:CZ screens, save the lower resolution." Anyone else feel like innovation in the FPS genre has stagnated since the introduction of Counter-Strike? I played this mod in college and loved it, and while I don't play it much anymore, I can't find another game that gives a better FPS experience.

An anonymous reader writes "MyGamer.com has a preview up on the upcoming MMOFPS Planetside. It's pretty in-depth and paints a pretty good picture of what the game should be like. Check it out." Even more massive than the massive 64 player Rocket Arena, and with a persistent world. I don't usually plan on living more than 10 minutes max when I play an FPS, but it sounds like they've already incorporated a myriad of ways to get fragged players back into combat.

ApharmdB writes "CNN has an article on the US military's fielding of a bandage containing clotting agents that can stop blood flow within two minutes. Obviously, the hope is that they will save a lot of lives. What's next straight from your favorite FPS? Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?" Those have been around for quite a while.

aszoth asks: "I working on a project that is going to require approximately 4 hours of video recording per day for about two months. We are currently using DVM tapes, however the extraction and compression time has left us with a large library of tapes un-converted. We are considering other methods, in particular real time MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 Compression. We also would like to be able to slow down our frame rate from the 29.7 fps to something along the lines of 5-15 fps. I am wondering if any one has any suggestions on possible ways to do such compression (or get similar results) with a Linux box. Thank you for any help you can give."

Obiwan Kenobi writes "Looks like they guys at Maximum PC got lucky -- they scored the first ever GeforceFX benchmarks via an Alienware prototype machine. Two 'marks to notice: The Geforce FX scored 209 FPS in Quake 3 (1600x1200x32) and 41fps in 3dMark Game4 demo, while the Radeon 9700 Pro attained only 147fps in Quake 3 yet came back with 45fps in the 3dMark test. It seems that the GeforceFX is the clear leader in pure processing power, but in memory bandwidth the 9700 Pro is still king."

Let's shoehorn a few gaming submissions together: tabby writes "For those not in the know here's the most amazing game I've played in ages. Its a Half-Life mod called Natural-Selection. Try to imagine CounterStrike + StarCraft. Its essentially a multiplayer First Person Real Time Strategy game." real_b0fh writes "I'm surprised no one mentioned it here yet, but Silicon Ice Development has released the beta 2.6 for their very cool Quake 3 Arena mod Urban Terror. Have played it a bit and it features cool things like better weapon hit model, some anti-cheat features, improved maps and some new nasty bugs. Well worth a try if you are into FPS games." And on the lighter side, LSDsmurf reports that there's a patch for Doom III Alpha. Yes, you read that right.

Alex_Ionescu writes "The Doom 3 E3 Demo Alpha has leaked to the public. It looks promising, altough I'm only getting 12FPS on a Radeon 7500. Did anyone else have the chance to play it and could post their FPS? Here are some sites with more information and screenshots: here , here, here, and finally here. "

captainstupid writes "The friendly folks at EPIC have working hard getting a build of the UT2003 demo ready for release. The official word from Mark Rein (VP of Epic games) is that the demo is done and it's being uploaded to the Infrogrames site as we speak. PlanetUnreal has the scoop including snippets from the IRC chat log. The linux demo is on the way as well! Gentlemen! Start your downloads!" With Icewind Dale 2 coming out recently, who has time for a FPS? Update: 09/15 02:00 GMT by T : HyperMagma submitted a link to the Linux version (as found on linuxgames.com) as well -- thanks.

Slashback this holiday evening with just a few quick updates and follow-ups (below) -- I hope those to whom the Fourth of July is a significant holiday are out (responsibly) making things explode.

porciletto writes "As seen on Ace's Hardware, this article features Quake 3 benchmarks comparing an 800 MHz ClawHammer sample to Athlon MPs at 800 MHz and 1667 MHz, as well as a Willamette Pentium 4 (256 KB L2, 400 MHz FSB) at 800 MHz and 1600 MHz. The benchmark results indicate a 40% performance increase over an Athlon MP for the ClawHammer. Additionally, the 800 MHz ClawHammer manages to tie (actually outperform by 1 FPS) the 1667 MHz Willamette Pentium 4."

Paul E writes: " An atlanta company seems to have developed (modified?) a linux clustering platform that is very conducive to FPS games. These guys apparently have built a cluster that will be pushing 2 TerraFlops, which would easily put it between Blue Pacific and Blue Mountain . Interesting that the same time the .mil starts making FPS's, FPS platforms are outperforming some of the top defense labs."

Warped-Reality writes "GameSpy has a new Doom III Preview covering aspects of the storyline and how Doom III will be different from the rest of the FPS genre. It includes some pictures of the E3 Doom III demo booth. As the article says, "This is DOOM III, and it's going to scare you to hell."" Looking at these images, I can only say two things: Wow and Cool Toilets. Update: 05/22 19:55 GMT by M : There's also an interview with Carmack giving a few more details about the game.

ubergamer asks: "Logitech's Dual Optical boasts two 800dpi sensors taking 2000 shots a second, Microsoft's Explorer 3.0 only has a single sensor at 400dpi but takes 6000 shots a second. Then there's ofcourse the Razer Boomslang 2000 with a single 2000dpi sensor but is partially mechanical (dust argh!) So which is best for playing my favorite FPS?"

R Jason Valentine writes "Before Ogg was an encoding standard it was a verb. Before the internet enabled the masses to play against each other in Quake and Ultima Online, there was a cross-platform multiple player interactive online game called Netrek. Netrek can trace its history back to 1972. It's an interesting, though incomplete, read, that includes travels through places like Berkeley's XCF. Netrek generally peaked in play in the early 90's, from about 1992 to 1995 or so, and was popular enough to even get an article in Wired. With this explosion of players, several variations on the original style, called Bronco, emerged. These were Chaos (similar to bronco), Paradise, and Hockey. The Chaos and Paradise variants are all but dead, mostly due to lack of players and an expired Paradise-capable client for Windows. A Bronco pick-up game still occurs daily, and usually once or twice a week, there is a hockey game. League games still exist, and this is the 10th year of league play, with around 200 players registered for the 2002 draft league."

batobin writes "Looks like Apple is expanding their grasp on the film editing industry with their new release of Cinema Tools for Final Cut Pro. It enables FCP 3 to better manage film and 24 fps high density video. The product is expected to ship in May."