New Arcanum Behind the Scenes - WorldEd pimpage
A new behind the scenes article from Troika got posted at PC.IGN. The article praises the magnificent glory that is WorldEd, the Arcanum editor that will ship with the game.

Also, the official site now has all the necessary riddles available for the get your name in the game contest! If you're at least 18 years old and live in the USA or in Canada, you can get a shot at having your name in Arcanum by solving the riddles.
News post made Saturday, March 10, 2001 by Calis

@terra-arcanum.com e-mails temporarily unreliable
Because we're switching hosts, our @terra-arcanum.com addresses will probably be down for a while. The entire site might experience a bit of downtime as well during the next few days.
If you want to reach any of us, here's a list of staff member e-mails:
Calis - r.arts@student.utwente.nl
Xerophyte - xerofyt@email.com
Monkeypunch - djmoses@guerrilla.nu
Ratster - sandman283@home.com
Stick with us in the mean time...

News post made Friday, March 9, 2001 by Calis

New info from Wartoy on IRC
Stravaig and Scratch pummeled Troika tester Wartoy last night on IRC. Here's what they got from 'im:

* 5 starting CPs is what they're /still/ using, so it looks fairly likely that it'll stay that way. No promises.

* NPCs no longer ignore you when you drop lit dynamite at their feet. Seems they have figured out that it's not a pretty little sparkly present after all.

* Fists are decent weapons. No clarification really on how they stack up against swords and such, though. But doing massive Fat damage is a very viable technique. Wartoy mentioned (read: boasted) that he took out one of Seymoore's 'unbeatable' monsters with a Hammer of (devastation? I don't recall the actual name of the item... sorry).

* Scripting is tricky, but no special programming skills are required (i.e., it may help to know C++, but it's not based on any language).

* They haven't determined the final install size (in megs).

* Sierra (gawd love 'em) is /insisting/ that the game be optimized to run on machines that only have 32 megs of RAM. This would likely increase sales, so that's a good thing (think Arcanum 2), but it may mean some more tweaking and such - hopefully it won't delay the game.

* Diplos are arguably more cost efficient (CP-wise) than other character styles (see the diplo question thread for my thoughts thereon), but Wartoy brought up two valid points: if a Diplo is depending on NPCs to do his fighting, he will 1) need to spend more $$ keeping his bodyguards outfitted and 2) will earn fewer XPs from fights.

Hi-res box art + new staff member!
Shellman, the Troika operations manager we all know & love, was kind enough to send me a nice, high-res version of the box art. Pretty cool, huh? It weighs a modest 633 Kb's. If you want to have a local copy, grab this .zip.

Also, I'd like to announce that Ratster is now on our staff! That puts him firmly in the "senior staff member" seat, an honor previously taken by Master Monkeypunch. Ratster will basically be doing what he was doing, but now I get to try to boss him around while he's doing it. :)
News post made Tuesday, March 6, 2001 by Calis

New screenies!
Even more exclusive screenshots have reared their visually attractive heads over at RPGVault. There's not one, not two, not even three but, in fact,
FOUR of the little babies! Yay!
News post made Saturday, March 3, 2001 by Xerophyte

Preview over at Gamerush
A site called Gamerush has added their contribution to the ever-growing pile of Arcanum previews. And, like all the other previews, it's based on the same old Press Beta and offers nothing new. . . ah, well. This particular preview is guardedly positive on the future of our beloved game, stating that serious cRPGers will probably be thrilled but somewhat concerned about the reactions of the rest of the populace. In order to goad our readers into reading this article and thus become even more addicted to Arcanum, here's a snippet:

As you enter the first town in Arcanum it immediately becomes apparent that you are the master of your own destiny. Who should you side with? Where should you go? There are small quests and sub-plots that will keep you busy and ultimately help you decide how your character will act in the world. There are obvious good and evil decisions that need to be made depending on who you talk to and we found it hard to find a balance between the two, say the wrong thing to an NPC and you could come to a sticky end.

There, you no longer have a choice. Go over and read the preview!
News post made Saturday, March 3, 2001 by Xerophyte

Behind the Scenes
A new Behind the Scenes article is up at PC.IGN. In this installment, the Troikalites basically pimp their world, using catchy phrases such as The Journey of a Lifetime Awaits You and Come. An entire continent of wonder and diversity lies before you.
;)
News post made Friday, March 2, 2001 by Calis

New shots at Gamespot
Ainamacar was kind enough to alert me to the presence of 5 brand new screenshots at Gamespot. Since they show some extremely interesting new stuff, I suggest you go check them out.
News post made Friday, March 2, 2001 by Calis

Box art
Shellman confirmed that the box art seen at Amazon.com is, in fact, final. Dig it...
News post made Friday, March 2, 2001 by Calis

New backgrounds on official site
A number of new backgrounds were posted on the official site. The new ones are: Tomboy, Barbarian, Nietzche Poster Child, and Dark Elf Follower.
You can find them on the backgrounds page of the official site.
News post made Wednesday, February 28, 2001 by Calis

New poll - old poll results
The results of the old poll, titled "When do you think Arcanum will be released?" are as follows, with 243 votes:
May 2001 41.9%
June 2001 19.7%
April 2001 19.7%
Q3 2001 5.7%
September 2000 ! You mean it isn't out yet? 5.3%
Q1 2002 4.9%
Q4 2001 2.4%
The new poll is titled "How many characters have you made with ACP so far?" and can be found at the bottom of the page
News post made Wednesday, February 28, 2001 by Calis

Specific mage backgrounds
Troika tester Chubaka gave us some unofficial info on Mage-specific backgrounds in the game, on the official forum:

not officially...

Night - more powerful (as in magickal aptitude) between 6pm & 6am

day - more powerful between 6am & 6pm

Sky - more powerful when out in the open (not in caves, not under heavy canopy, not indoors)

Nature - more powerful when out in nature (not in cities, caves)

That's it right?

For example, a night mage gets +20 magick aptitude at night, -20 during the day.

Magick section updated
I've updated the magick section to reflect the new info released recently by Troika tester Wartoy.
News post made Tuesday, February 27, 2001 by Calis

Java ACP by Nollidj
Nollidj was gracious enough to let us put his Java-based port of Ratster's Arcanum Character Planner on our site. You can find it here.
News post made Tuesday, February 27, 2001 by Calis

Arcanum board RPG
Sleeperservice started an Arcanum forum RPG. You can find his forum here and his website here. The website could use a little work, but the forum RPG looks like a well-thought out idea, with rules that were inspired by this Fallout board RPG.
News post made Tuesday, February 27, 2001 by Calis

New Behind the Scenes
PC.IGN has part 3 of the Behind the Scenes series available. This one deals with character creation, and offers a nice overview of the character development system in the game.
News post made Saturday, February 24, 2001 by Calis

Arcanum Thursday at Dailyradar
Daily Radar has posted the next installment in their Arcanum Thursday feature (and this one actually consists of some content that WASN'T posted in August 2000). This one deals with magick, and doesn't really offer anything new, but it's a good overview of the magick system anyway.
News post made Friday, February 23, 2001 by Calis

Concept art at Gamespot UK
Gamespot UK posted a gallery with 16 pieces of concept art.
While most of the items in the gallery look extremely familiar, all items are in a higher resolution than what has been seen before.
News post made Friday, February 23, 2001 by Calis

New Chad Moore journal at PC.IGN
The ever-funny Chad Moore got another of his developer journals posted at PC.IGN. To explain what it's about would be beyond my limited capacities, so I suggest you just go read it.
News post made Thursday, February 22, 2001 by Calis

New Gamesmania beta journals
I haven't posted about these in a while, but with the steady stream of new ones Jason has been cranking out, I thought I'd mention 'em again in case you've never seen 'em. Anyway, a number of new beta journals are now up at Gamesmania, bringing the total up to 31.
News post made Tuesday, February 20, 2001 by Calis

Java port of ACP
Nollidj ported Ratster's Arcanum Character Planner to Java. You can find his version here.
News post made Tuesday, February 20, 2001 by Calis

Editor Chat log
Last night's chat with Michael McCarthy, hosted by AGES, went extremely well, by all accounts (I didn't attend, it was 3 am for me). You can find an edited log here.
News post made Monday, February 19, 2001 by Calis

Screensaver by Zed Blacksword
Zed Blacksword has opened his site, on which he has an Arcanum screensaver available.
News post made Monday, February 19, 2001 by Calis

New preview at Eurogamer
Eurogamer published a preview based on the press beta (they sure took their time in getting that written). The preview offers criticism on various aspects of the game, but also touches on its positive points. Some spoilers are present, so read at your own risk.
News post made Monday, February 19, 2001 by Calis

A Reactive World Where Every Decision Counts
... is the title of the second article in the contest series. As always, the riddle is found at the bottom
News post made Saturday, February 17, 2001 by Calis

New screenshots at Eurogamer
They don't really show anything new, but you can check 'em out here anyway.
News post made Saturday, February 17, 2001 by Calis

Character Backgrounds at the Official Site
The Official Site has finally been updated again, this time with a list of Character Backgrounds. Only four of the backgrounds have had descriptions added, namely Super Model, Educator, Idiot Savant and Escaped Lunatic. For example, the Idiot Savant background:

Idiot Savant
Race and Gender: Human and Human Hybrids Only
You were institutionalized at a young age and believed to be mentally handicapped. After several years, the institute lost funding and you were turned out onto the street with nothing more than the clothes on your back. You are brilliant with a keen grasp of numbers and mathematics, but you are barely able to talk. You gain +6 points of Intelligence and +3 to Gambling, but years of being locked away makes you suffer physically and emotionally. You talk as if you had a much lower Intelligence and you suffer -1 to Strength and Constitution, and -2 to Dexterity and Willpower.

The others are just as interesting, so go read now!
News post made Wednesday, February 14, 2001 by Xerophyte

New Developer Journal at IGN
The Imagine Games Network have updated their Developer Journal with this piece, describing the Magick/Tech dichotomy at length. Although not exactly telling us anything we didn't already know, it's a good read for those looking for more in-depth information on how Magick and Technology interact and the reasoning behind it.

Update: Turns out that this Developer Journal was actually the "A World Where Magick & Technology Collide" article mentioned in Calis' post below. Silly me for assuming otherwise.
News post made Wednesday, February 14, 2001 by Xerophyte

A World Where MAGICK & TECHNOLOGY Collide
The first article of the "Get in the Game" contest has been posted on the official site. The article is titled A World Where MAGICK & TECHNOLOGY Collide, and it explains magick & tech aptitudes, among other things. The first riddle of the contest can be found at the bottom of the page.
News post made Wednesday, February 14, 2001 by Calis

New poll
I've put up a new poll, titled "When do you think Arcanum will be released?"
The results of the previous poll, titled "Which part of Arcanum are you looking forward to the most?", from a total of 348 votes:

• 40.5% of you are looking forward to the world of Arcanum most
  
• 22.9% are going for NPC interaction
  
• 17.8% is looking forward to the story
  
• Belle the Sheep got a surprisingly low number of votes, 8.3%.
  
• Combat got 8% of the votes
  
• Sound took 1.1%
  
• Graphics also brought in 1.1%
  

Character database
Stonecourier set up a first version of an Arcanum character database! You can just copy-paste the info from Ratster's character planner right into the database. Pretty spiffy.
News post made Tuesday, February 13, 2001 by Calis

Get in the Game contest
Sierra has launched a contest named "Get in the Game!", that gives us fanboys a chance to star in the game. Later today, the first part of a riddle will be posted here. A new part will then be posted weekly until March 9th, and the first person to correctly solve it all will get to have a character named after him or her in Arcanum. Be sure to check out the contest rules as well.
News post made Tuesday, February 13, 2001 by Calis

Michael McCarthy Talks WorldEd and Arcanum Mods
The Arcanum Geographical Exploration Society, a most spiffy organisation dedicated to the fine art of Arcanum map- and mod-making, have managed to goad illustrious Troikaite Michael McCarthy into participating in an IRC event on Sunday. Anyone interested in making mods for Arcanum is invited to ruthlessly question Michael and slowly wring him completely dry on all the information he has on the usage and abusage of WorldEd.

The specific time and place for the chat is 2am GMT (6pm PST), in channel #ages on irc.gamesnet.net. Either use a specific IRC client for this, such as mIRC, or connect with this handy Java client.
News post made Monday, February 12, 2001 by Xerophyte

New fanart gallery - miscellaneous
For artists who want to submit fanart but don't feel like sending in a dozen pieces at once, I made a general fan art gallery. The first piece has already been entered! It's a crayon-like drawing by Zed Blacksword.
News post made Monday, February 12, 2001 by Calis

New Character Planner
Ratster put up a new version of his Character Planner, bringing it up to version 1.5. You can find it in our downloads. For a full list of changes that went into the new version, check out Ratster's official ACP page.
News post made Friday, February 9, 2001 by Calis

Poll at Gamespot - go vote
Ainamacar pointed out that Gamespot has a poll on most anticipated RPGs, and Arcanum is in the list... go vote, everybody :-). The poll can be found on their front page.
News post made Friday, February 9, 2001 by Calis