New Enemy Territory beta soon

British developer Splash Damage is working on a second version of the Enemy Territory: Quake War beta to show at the QuakeCon event in Texas this week. Tom's going, you know. He's really excited.

The news popped up on the official website, which expects the public to be able to get their hands on the new beta in the next couple of weeks.

Included in the revamped package is the new Valley map, which is larger than the original Sewer level and has plenty more vehicles to ride recklessly around on. The aim of the scenario is for the goodies, the GDF, to take out a Strogg contamination device polluting a harmless reservoir and probably killing otters in the process.

There's also a brand new statistics website where you can look at numbers until you fall over. It will show your military ranking, your achievements, various leaderboards, and statistics like your favourite weapons, time played, and much more.

Alongside these are a mutated fist full of tweaks and improvements, specifically to player and vehicle physics, bot behaviour, game performance and audio. There's numerous tweaks and bug-fixes on top of that, and Punkbuster support should now eliminate cheaters from the servers.

John Carmack will also be taking to the stage at this year's QuakeCon to talk technology and potentially unveil id Software's new game. We'll be somewhere in the vicinity, so check back later this week for his take on events.