In its holiday issue, soon to be on store shelves, PC Gamer may have inadvertently announced Gears of War for Windows. On page 28 of the Holiday 2006 issue, a display stand photographed on the Microsoft campus shows Gears of War among several upcoming PC games.

HalfLife2.net: Are there workings of new gameplay ideas or mechanics that were not previously brought to the publics attention before?

UNSC �Shortsword� bomber - A ground based atmospheric bomber that is used primarily for short range, heavy payload, runs against ground targets. Primarily developed as a low altitude bomber the shortsword has proven to be very effective against Covenant installations.

Epic commenced on the work, dubbed �Project Warfare.� It would slow the pace down compared to a typical shooter game. The character would partially obscure the player�s view of the scene. CliffyB thought back to the chaos that followed 9/11. He was struck that a surprise attack could bring down something so grand. He thought of the ruins of a cathedral and of the last scene of the film �The Planet of the Apes,� where Charleston Heston discovers the fallen Statue of Liberty. He recalled the hysteria about Anthrax and people going to buy duct tape to protect themselves against terrorist chemical warfare attacks. The theme of �destroyed beauty� occurred to him and it mixed with his demons from �Over Fiend.� CliffyB wanted to call it �Apex War,� after a small suburban town near Raleigh, N.C. He thought of the ruined cities of Europe in World War II, where soldiers had to hide under cover and take pot shots rather than run through the streets with guns blazing. �What if you had enemies that take cover?� he wondered. �They�re smart and they think about what they�re going to do.�

• Improved code for Doom 3 and Quake4 for using the map name being edited without manually changing it.
• Added new "No fill" and "Outline color selection" poly functions to the RMB menu "Background image..." with direct full use Infobase link.
• Started direct linked Infobase docs for RMB menus, their items and full documentation on use.
• Fixed Extruder Shape Builder 2D view editor that was broke.
• Added light color pickers to entities for Doom 3 and Quake 4 and cleanup of the DataD3.qrk file.
• Fixed Access Violation errors when rebuilding and moving in 3D views.
• Added 0 division testing to stop console errors when "wrapping" textures.

The book covers both the visual and artistic side as well as the gameplay aspect of level design. Don�t expect any technical how-to tutorials in this book, this book is about the "why". Rather than writing yet another tutorial/book about how to create a virtual room this book is about how to make that room look cool and play well. Expect tips and techniques as well as explanations of the logic and reasoning behind art and design decisions. How does the gameplay in a level work? What�s the reason this kind of architecture gives this kind of feeling or looks better in situation A or B? Why does this color combination work so well? What kind of floorplan can I best use to improve gameplay and why? What type of sound setup should I use?