Z00L00K writes "The Swedish defense industry has licensed the engine from Battlefield 2 by Digital Illusions for 4MSEK (about US $540,000). The engine will be used to develop training simulators for defense, and support of new command methods in the defense."

dolphin558 writes "Warp Pipe may be in partnership with Nintendo to bring online gaming to the Nintendo DS! What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming that hasn't been seen before. A press conference is scheduled for October 7th. I cannot wait!" This would seem to partially confirm earlier speculations, and partially explain Warp Pipe's decision earlier this year.

figa writes "Tony Scott at beflix has come up with a novel technique for creating art: load emulators with corrupt binaries and capture the output. The results are fantastic."

Digital_Quartz writes "Students at the Vienna University of Technology have come up with an augmented reality game in which players control virtual trains on a real wooden track. Players can adjust railway switches, and must prevent the trains from colliding. The catch is, of course, that the trains don't exist; they are viewed and controlled using networked PDAs with cameras. The system is based on the custom Studierstube framework for creating augmented reality applications for handhelds."

malfaetor writes "My colleagues and I are interested in improving on an annual public LAN Party that we first held last year. Before the event, I asked Slashdot, and received some terrific suggestions. The event ended up being quite a bit of fun, and we had very few technical issues. However, there were some non-technical improvements that could be made. We did not break even financially, and ended up having to divide the loss among the seven of us. The biggest financial killer for us was insurance, at nearly $500 for the event. What have other LAN party organizers done about insurance and legal issues? Has insurance (or lack thereof) come back to haunt anyone in the past?"

Thanks to simon for the heads up that casual online game BNB has a record of 700,000 concurrent users. The Chinese game is a casual online experience where families pit themselves against other families. For comparison the game Eve Online regularly has 10,000 concurrent users.

mausmalone writes "Katamari Damacy is completely sold out at most game retailers." The relatively unknown game is completely out of stock because retailers base their orders on preorders...which they didn't allow for this title.

AssaultOnBattery writes "The fine folks over at GamesIndustry.biz are reporting that Sony has found a unique solution to the problem of battery life on the PSP - making their game developers solve it for them. According to the story, Sony is going to give devs a battery emulator which will tell them if their game is within acceptable power consumption limits."

inotocracy writes " The next 3DMark benchmarking application has been released. 3DMark 05 weighs in at about 280mb (give or take) and is sure to bring your system to its knee's." Thanks also to Steve for the article taking a look at the new version.

Bored with regular controllers and sitting on your butt to game? jimm wrote to tell us about FPGameRunner, a treadmill that acts as a keyboard and mouse. Reenz wrote in about a lightsaber controller "in production" by GameTrak (the folks who brought us the award winning Cyberglove). And just think, you could use both in Jedi Academy. (warning: running on a treadmill with a lightsaber not recommended)

pillageplunder writes "Businessweek talks about Jamdat Mobile and its upcoming IPO. It also goes a little in-depth about the U.S. Wireless Mobile Gaming market as a whole. Estimates (From the article) show that by 2004, the industry should more than double, from 91.3 million in 2003 to 203.8 million in 2004 and even as high as 1.8 billion by 2009. Hmmm...perhaps a new career?"

James DeSimas writes "Halflife2.net was able to get an exclusive interview with Chuck Osborn from PCGamer. In the interview he found out that Counter-Strike: Source is indeed the only Multiplayer for Half-Life 2." This comes on the heels of the news that PC Gamer will feature a special HL2 Review in its upcoming issue. Full Steam and Retail packaging details about the game are also available from many sources today as well.

Rogerpq3 writes "The first non-beta patch for DOOM 3 has been released. The patch addresses many issues found in multiplayer and single player portions of the game. It also adds a Win32 dedicated server executable. You can download the patch at: FileFront, Doom3HQ, FileShack, Worthplaying, and GamersHell."

Kamalot writes "It looks like Nintendo is preparing a wireless peer-to-peer network of Nintendo DS ' to allow a new way of playing games online. Each Nintendo DS could includes a repeater hub to extend and share an 802.11 signal. A thread on GameCubicle unveils more, including a service called MarioNette and some disturbing marketing pieces with hidden images and messages." As with everything involving the new handhelds, take this one with a grain of salt.

BlueMoon writes "Spong.com posted an article about a new Microsoft job offering. The job details not only confirm the internal codename of the next generation Xbox console is Xenon, but it also reveals more information about Live features. It looks like many games will have a 'Xbox TV' feature allowing some sort of spectator mode with tickers at the bottom of the screen featuring recent high scores and game highlights, a tournament system, and tradable trophies."

An anonymous reader writes "Outwar.com (an online game) has posted instructions on how to spam their unique link using underhanded and fraudulent techniques such as misleading URLs in forums and emails." Evidently by having people click on their link, players gain in-game power. These tips seem to directly contradict their stated spam policy. Shady.

2bluemike writes "Porn stars and wanna-be's rejoice, Rockstar has released a second trailer for GTA: San Andreas." The official site has also been updated with new info on the gameworld.

Grey Ninja writes "GC Advanced has reported from the Tokyo Game Show that the PSP will retail for $349.99. Coupled with the previously announced price of the Nintendo DS at $149.99, it's going to be interesting to see if Sony will be able to convince developers and consumers alike that the price point is a good one. It's looking more and more all the time like Nintendo's going to take this one." Update: 09/28 17:24 GMT by Z: The story seems to have devolved into rumour under examination. Take this one with a grain of salt.

Lochlan writes "The Rare Witch Project has done it again, this time unlocking yet another "removed" feature within the Nintendo 64 game, Banjo-Tooie. Bottles' Revenge, a feature which allows a second player to actively control enemies adds a whole new style of gameplay to the popular adventure game."

sckeener writes "The latest Wizards of the Coast D&D product Frostburn has also been release as a PDF. There are also older D&D products in PDF format at RPGNow. The current products are being tested at Drivethrurpg.com with the catch being Adobe DRM locks on the PDFs."