SJrX writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists have detected "the biggest explosion observed by humans within [the past 400 years]". The explosion luckily occured about 50,000 light years away form us, on the far side of the Milky Way, as the article goes on to say that had the explosion been within 10 light years of us, it "would possibly have triggered a mass extinction.""

HatTriQk writes "Maybe if your skillz are lacking you should become a Counter-Strike tourney commentator? The BBC has an article on the role of the Pro Gaming Commentator." From the article: "E-sports, sometimes called v-sports, are growing at a dramatic pace with games such as Unreal Tournament, Quake and Counter Strike letting gamers not only participate in online duals but also spectate online. The games are played at a frenetic pace, making real sports such as football and rugby look like petanque, and often it can be difficult to follow the intense action."

Moe Napoli writes "Machinima producer/author Paul Marino recently posted on his blog that he will be attending Sundance later this month (Jan. 26th to be exact) to moderate a panel discussion about the rising artform of machinima (using 3D games like Half-Life 2 for filmmaking purposes). Amongst the panelists will be Red Vs. Blue/The Strangerhood creators Burnie Burns and the Rooster Teeth team (also featured in the Jan. 2005 issue of Wired), who will also present a live demonstration of how they produce their hilarious RvB machinima series. Pretty cool to see Sundance embrace this new form of independent filmmaking and even cooler to see how far it has come since some gamers started making Quake Movies."

Time Doctor writes "John Carmack moved to a blog format, and updates everyone with his thoughts on graphics and why licensing delays the (still) inevitable Quake 3: Arena source, when it was expected before the end of 2004."

kernel panic attack writes "This week's deadly Asian Quake and Tsunami may have been so powerful, that it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds. A second article says the quake moved undersea tectonic plates by up to 98 feet, shifting islands near Sumatra out to sea an unknown distance. Also, a USGS team wants images from commercial satellite operators to help pinpoint coastline damage. Lastly, an interesting article from the Australian Spaceguard Survey about the need for a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves." The current estimated death toll is now nearly 70,000; Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.

Snaller writes "Yahoos GameDomain are looking ahead to 2005, and have the first pictures of Quake IV. For all those who have missed the Stroggs since Quake 2 - fear not, they are baaack! Quake IV will be made by Raven software using the Doom 3 engine."

pfb writes "From reuters, 'The world's fifth-largest quake in a century has hit southern Asia, triggering a speeding tsunami that crashed into Sri Lanka and India, drowning hundreds, and swamping tourist islands in Thailand and the Maldives.'"

hansoloaf writes "In 1906 San Francisco had a devastating earthquake - registering around 7.7 to 8.3 on the Richter scale. George Lawrence had devised ways to take aerial photographs and went to SF to showcase his technology. He used kites and custom built cameras that could take photos while up in the air."

We passed on your questions to Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade a while back, and today we have their answers. Tycho primarily answered the questions with consultation from Gabe and discusses the PA comic creation process, their views on the industry, and the possibility of an animated Penny Arcade venture. As usual, they do so with wit and verve: "I am not an industry analyst, so I dont feel like I'm qualified to talk about ebb and flow of hojillion dollar industries. However, it is easy to imagine a universe where small developers don't huddle in blasted out wreckage, waiting to be vivisected by the the next wave of EA Scion-class sawbots." Read on to check out their responses.

Rogerpq3 writes "id Software animator Fred Nilsson has decided to leave the company and head back to Hollywood to work for Dreamworks. Fred joined id Software during the development of the Quake III mission pack "Team Arena", but his main work at id concentrated around the animation for their blockbuster hit DOOM III. Unlike the rest of the id crew, Fred could regularly be found on Quake3 game servers and he always hangs on IRC. In 1995 he moved out to Northern California to work at a company called PDI/Dreamworks. He worked on such films as The Arrival, Antz and Shrek. "Fredo", as he's known online, was a prominent figure at the QuakeCon 2003 and 2004 events. In 2003 he was one of the id Software employees taking part in the Quake3 id challenge tourney and in 2004 he participated in a Doom3 id challenge contest. In a interview with PlanetQuake3.net a few years back, Fred discussed how he went about getting his job at id. The entire id Software fan base wishes Fred the best with his new job and thanks him for all his hard work."

VirtualUK writes "Back in 1974 the first 3D networked multiplayer first person shooter game Maze War set the ball rolling for todays games like Quake and Doom. Initially written on a Imlac PDS-1 players represented as an eyeball fought it out inside what could be considered a minimalistic graphical adventure in comparison to the texture mapped, hi-res extravaganzas on the shelves today. On November 6-7 at the Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 held at the Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA) there's a special 30th anniversary special event for Maze War. Brude Damer's digibarn site has a great article about it here."

An anonymous reader writes "What's next for the maker of Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein? Chris Morris of CNN Money talks to id's CEO, who tells us the next id game won't be anything like the others. Rather than a re-hash of its sci-fi or WWII themes, CEO Todd Hollenshead says, 'I'd like to try something new.' [Hollenshead also notes that an as yet unidentified developer with 'a name that people recognize' has licensed the Doom 3 engine.]"

Thanks to 1UP for its 'Freeloader' article profiling little-known but free multiplayer party games for the PC. The author explains of the featured games: "All of them are quick to download, easy on the system requirements, free of charge, and support six or more players. Perfect for the next time you throw together a quick gaming session", before pointing to Little Fighter 2 ("Super-deformed kids hitting each other in the face with baseball bats"), Soldat ("about as close as you can come to a side scrolling Quake deathmatch"), and Liquid War ("Definitely the most fun you'll have playing with puddles since you were six.")

An anonymous reader writes "The Halo 2 movie trailer hit theaters last week and rabid fans have been passing around 'cam' versions since then. A lower quality streaming version went up on MSN and Xbox.com yesterday, but today GamePro.com premiered a high definition 1920x1080 5.1 surround sound version of the trailer for the home theater purists. More interestingly, a Halo.bungie.org newspost reports on subliminal messages within the ad, when 'the Xbox logo changes, for a frame or two, from www.xbox.com to www.ilovebees.com', an apparently legit website where 'some very, very strange stuff is going on' - there's already speculation and a little evidence this could be from the same Microsoft group who stealthily made the AI web game?" Elsewhere, an anonymous reader writes "Remember Quake Done Quick, the effort to complete Quake as fast as possible? Well, halo.bungie.org recently wrapped up its Going Nowhere Fast contest, which was an effort to do much the same thing for Halo. You can view the results and download the videos, though some are still being posted, at the Going Nowhere Fast contest page."

Toddd writes "Everybody knows that the Doom and Quake engines are opensourced. But the game data (such as graphics, sound, and maps) are not. Therefore, if you want to check out the quality of today's source ports like Doomsday for Doom or Tenebrae for Quake, you either need to download the shareware versions or buy the retail boxes. However, what is less well-known is the existence of projects like the recently updated Open Quartz, offering 'GPL-compatible content - including models, maps, sounds and textures - which are required for a fully GPL game using the GPL Quake source.' FreeDoom also does similarly for Doom." We recently covered a new release of Doomsday.

Lewey Geselowitz writes "A lot of games nowadays have stencil shadows, but they are very rarely there for any reason other than just to look cool. So I wrote Shuzzle, a 3D block puzzle game for Windows where you can't see the objects, only their shadows. This forces the player to conceptually imagine the board and pieces, because they are not given the normal 'crutch' of being able to see them, only their projection from the light. It adds a whole new dimension to the standard 'soma' game and promotes a new form of thought which you cannot find in the physical world. I believe this uses more of the potential of shadows, and I'm looking forward to how they are used in the future, bringing new forms of gameplay, not just pretty pictures. [These are from the same developer who created Quake 2 AbSIRD (a Quake 2 Magic-Eye mod) and Freed Go (Go on a Mobius strip), both previously featured on Slashdot Games.]"

theodp writes "Kids at NYU's Intensive Video Game Creation are trading open lakes, green mountains and plentiful daylight for air-conditioned classrooms in the city. Those attending the $5,125, five-week camp - all guys aged 15 to 20 - will use the Center for Advanced Digital Application's facilities to learn the techniques behind Doom, Quake and Madden. It's the first summer camp for game builders on the East Coast. Last year, WA-based Digipen held its first video game creation camp in California, and the University of Illinois hosted one for girls."

An anonymous reader writes "It's 1998 all over again gamers. A major release from ID software, and an expensive hotrod video card all in one year. However, rather than Quake and the Voodoo2 SLI, it's Doom3 and Nvidia SLI. Hardware Analysis has the scoop, 'Exact performance figures are not yet available, but Nvidia's SLI concept has already been shown behind closed doors by one of the companies working with Nvidia on the SLI implementation. On early driver revisions which only offered non-optimized dynamic load-balancing algorithms their SLI configuration performed 77% faster than a single graphics card. However Nvidia has told us that prospective performance numbers should show a performance increase closer to 90% over that of a single graphics card. There are a few things that need to be taken into account however when you're considering buying an SLI configuration. First off you'll need a workstation motherboard featuring two PCI-E-x16 slots which will also use the more expensive Intel Xeon processors. Secondly you'll need two identical, same brand and type, PCI-E GeForce 6800 graphics cards.'"

LehiNephi writes "Apparently, GameStop has an updated product page for long-awaited PC FPS Doom 3, along with the note: 'Official launch date of August 3rd, 2004 confirmed!', although the official Doom 3 site hasn't yet been updated, sporting just a 'coming soon' notice. [Blue's News also has further info, noting 'that the British Board of Film Classification has a DOOM III Listing with a rating for the game, a seeming indication that they've already been able to review all its content'.]" In related news, Ag3nt writes "One of the biggest leaps in PC gaming technology, Quake, celebrated its 8th birthday yesterday, according to an AmpedNews piece - there's also a birthday note on John Romero's homepage."

Lewey Geselowitz writes "Freed Go is a new freely downloadable game for Windows and Mac OS X that extends the 'game of Go' on any arbitrary 3d graph. These include Mobius strips, spheres, tori, cubes and so forth, and even a few flat boards but with 3, 5 or 6 neighbored nodes. To anyone who has played the game, or is interested in this great game, I assure you that you will find this site interesting and it will help you expand your understanding of the game." There's also Freed Invasion - looks like these are both from the author of the similarly unconventional Quake II stereogram implementation, as previously mentioned on Slashdot Games.