After a pretty varied week of news, all eyes are focusing to the second big gaming show of the year - ECTS in London, England. And as always, GameSpot will be there, and this time our GameSpot UK crew will be taking the reins as it reports about news from the show along with announcements from the European market.

　　In a pleasant twist of irony, our two big stories have a UK connection. First, Dungeon Keeper II's producer, Nick Goldsworthy from Blizzard UK, let readers know what to expect from the upcoming sequel. There have been some pretty interesting shots showing up around the Web, and Blizzard was kind enough to give us a series of new ones to curb Dungeon Keeper fans' appetite - for now. In our second major story, we spoke to Valve's Gabe Newell about what's to become of Half-Life as the company starts to show it off to the European market. He also talks about what the European market means to the development of the title. But we still didn't manage to discover a set date on when the game will actually release in Europe or here in the US. "When it's done" is becoming far too common a phrase.

　　A group of from the Ultima Online team has apparently parted ways with Origin Systems and has founded a new development house named Wombat Games. Although the company hasn't talked about its first title, it has said that the company is very focused on the massively multiplayer market. And so it is. Its first task is to aid Origin in supporting the current Ultima Online title and help to build the game's sequel - Ultima Online: The Second Age.

　　Interactive Magic has been making some steam lately. It was leaked out on Thursday that the company is close to making a deal to host its games on America Online. Considering America Online's Internet isn't all that stellar for the average user, we hope that AOL has something in the works to prevent 500-plus ping times. On the other side, I-Magic jumped out of the cockpit and onto terra firma with a new 3D action/strategy title called Shadow Company. There isn't a great deal of information known about Shadow Company, but we'll keep digging.

　　3Dfx is ramping up a good deal of support for its upcoming 2D/3D graphics solution - Banshee. Wicked3D's flavor of the Banshee will include TV-out and 16MB of RAM. 3Dfx is also advancing itself on the API front with the recent release of its custom Glide 3.0 API. New features for game developers include: triangle strips and fans, gamma table support over lighting brightness, vertex layout support, and the ability to add additional functionality and optimizations. If you're a game programming hobbyist, you'll be happy to know that you can download the API SDK from the company's web site. So far, Activision was first to pledge its support for the latest version of the API, and we can expect that others will come out of the woodwork soon pledging their allegiance.

　　In more hardware news, Creative Labs has definitely placed new life into the term aggressive. After seeing some heavy discussion in a gaming audio newsgroup, we weren't surprised to see that Creative Labs is getting ready to release a less expensive "value edition" of its powerful Sound Blaster Live! focused on the ears and wallets of gamers. The US$99 Value edition lacks the Digital I/O and the high-end music mixing software that most gamers would probably never use. Luckily, the special version of Unreal is still included. Backing up its statement that the Sound Blaster Live! audio processor would be tapped for more functionality later on, Creative Labs announced what some of those enhancements might be in its Live!Ware program. If you're looking into buying the new card or already own one, this will give you an idea of what is going to happen. It does seem strange for a company to not maximize its audio card before it hits the market though, doesn't it?