26 August, 2008

Steam updates

Team Fortress 2
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the correct Arena stats from being uploaded

Tank Universal

  • Fixed Level 2 crash some ATI users were experiencing
  • Fixed Enter/eject key remapping issues. Enter/eject messages now display correct key
  • Added minor texture optimization tweaks

22 August, 2008

TF2 updates coming to 360, will cost

Valve's Doug Lombardi has stated that a big TF2 update is coming to XBLA. Because Microsoft is making Valve charge for it Valve want to make one big update so it would be worth the money.

[Source]

GC Videos









Steam updates

Team Fortress 2
  • Fixed startup crash related to loading the tf2_playerstats.dmx file
  • Fixed material system crash
  • Added -noborder command line option to play windowed-mode with no border
  • Fixed an invalid skin crash on TF weapons
  • Fixed a viewmodel related crash when switching classes away from Medic
  • Fixed not getting the Arena team menu after watching the intro movie on Arena maps
  • Fixed some problems with localized textAdded 3 Heavy unlockables
  • Natascha, The Sandvich, The Killing Gloves of Boxing
  • Added 35 new Heavy achievements

Added Arena game mode

  • 5 arenas: Lumberyard, Ravine, Well, Granary, Badlands

Added 2 new maps

  • Badwater Basin, a new payload map
  • cp_steel, a community map by Jamie "Fishbus" Manson

Changes

  • Added server map timeleft to upper right of scoreboard
  • Added new firing sounds to The Backburner
  • Removed the Custom Tab in the serverbrowser, and added the Tags field to the base Internet Tab
  • Increased The Kritzkrieg's uber-charge rate bonus from 10% to 25%
  • 32 player servers can now support an extra slot of SourceTV
  • Made the freezecam item panel description easier to read
  • Players now broadcast whether they chose a team directly or use autoteam
  • Added proper handling of cart blocking recognition to Payload maps

Bug fixes

  • Fixed bug where switching from flaregun-wielding Pyro to another class meant you didn't get a full ammo loadout on first spawn
  • Fixed Spy watch arm not using team skins
  • Fixed weapon switching preventing you from using secondary attacks for a 0.2s window after the primary became available
  • Fixed players getting stuck in a bad animation state when class switching while spinning the minigun
  • Fixed a loophole that allowed players to pickup weapons of other classes
  • Fixed a bug that resulted in players earning more crit chance bonus in large, single damage events than they are supposed to
  • Fixed an issue with the floating HUD +X health indicators that resulted in them appearing incorrectly
  • Fixed a bug which caused the minigun spinning & firing sounds to occasionally stop while the Heavy was still firing
  • Fixes the Loadout player model panel causing the in-game player facial animation to perform incorrectly
  • Fixed spectators not having the target ID labels display correctly
  • Fixed the cart alarm sound occasionally getting stuck on in Payload maps

Smash Brothers Brawl World Records

The Smash Brothers Dojo has put on world records for Target Smash and Home-Run. You can check them out here.

18 August, 2008

Steam updates

Planet Busters
  • Fixed crash after completing Indi 3/Indi 4
  • Fixed difficulty on Daggers in Men's Smiles mission
  • Addressed bug with UTF-8 characters in user names
  • Anti-aliased graphics

17 August, 2008

Disaster: Day of Crisis get's classified downunder

Could this mean the game could still come out?
[Source]

Swords & Soldiers Press Release

- UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS – August 15, 2008 – The developers of the original version of 'de Blob' announce their new game studio Ronimo Games and their first title: Swords & Soldiers.

Ronimo Games is founded by seven developers in Utrecht, the Netherlands. As students the team was responsible for the original pc game 'de Blob.' Being an innovative and fun game, 'de Blob' became popular on the internet and was eventually picked up by THQ. The publisher bought the IP and will soon release the new version of 'de Blob' for Nintendo Wii.

Fabian Akker, one of the co-founders: "de Blob was the eye opener for us, that we can make cool games and function as a good team. The game definitely gave us the opportunity to start our own company".

The team is developing a new game for WiiWare: Swords & Soldiers. Swords & Soldiers is a sidescrolling real time strategy game, in which three distinct factions battle for the powers of the gods. The game will feature a single player campaign and a competitive splitscreen multiplayer mode as well as several other game modes. Three screenshots are included with this press release.
Akker: "We always dreamed of designing an RTS and when Wii Ware came out we immediately figured that this was our chance."

Swords & Soldiers will be the first competitive strategy game on Wii Ware and is scheduled for European, Australian and American release in Q4 2008.

15 August, 2008

Sega president Simon Jeffery "great opportunity for hitting hardcore gamers"


Sega of America president Simon Jeffery is unhappy with the amount of bad games on the Wii and thinks it will come to an end when developers realize they do not sell. He notes that "There is a lot of crap coming out for the Wii in general," but also points out the systems potential.

Jeffery also notes that hardcore games can work on the Wii. stating that:

"The Wii is a great opportunity for hitting hardcore gamers. No one is doing that. With MadWorld from Platinum Games, we are trying to show that millions of Wii gamers want to move on to mature games. They don’t have to have an Xbox 360 to do that."
More 3rd parties are stepping up there Wii games and it just be a matter of time until we see more quality game push out the "shovelware"

[Source]

Overlord Dark Legend, a ground up game for Wii


Codemasters has Climax Studios working on a new Overlord game for the Wii. The game will be made from the ground up and try to take advantage of the wiimote. There are not a lot of details yet but the game will be at Leipzig.

[Source]

Nintendo to target Latin American

Nintendo is setting it's eyes on expanding it's marketing in Latin America. They see the region as having potential and could be worth as much as $2 billion this year alone. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime stated that, "Nintendo has experienced phenomenal growth in the region over the past few years growth that has even surpassed what we have seen in the United States".

[Source]

New games hit Steam

Sega has put up 3 new games and Focus Home also add one to Steam. Sega's games include Space Siege The Incredible Hulk™: The Official Video Game Beijing 2008™ - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games. Focus Home has brought Pro Cycling Manager - Le Tour De France 2008 to the table. If any of these games tickle your fancy check them out.

Steam updates

Unreal Tournament 3
  • Fixed overlay mesh showing up on hidden sniper rifle when un-zoomed
  • Added motion blur menu option for PC (defaults to off)
  • Fixed zero extent collision bug in octree code (finding nodes in Z axis)
  • LOD Hysteresis / LOD Decision making bug fix
  • Fixed default mesh not having proper LOD settings
  • Fixed rare darkwalker physics crash
  • Added player name list to server browser

13 August, 2008

Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway


TF2 getting a Heavy update

It's so big it will be reviled in parts. The update is said to be the largest one yet! It will include several maps, a new game play mode, the Heavy's new weapons and achievements. One of the maps is a community map CP_Steel. One of the new weapons are the Killing Gloves of Boxing (KGB). Each hit gives the Heavy 5 seconds of critical hits. It is slower however...

[Source]

Wii could hit 1 million a month

Michael Patchter believes that the Wii could sell as many as 1 million a month. This would be an increase of around 300,000 units. The Wii's good sales are already well known but could they really hit 1 million a month? Let's wait and see...

[Source]

Left 4 Dead going in tour

Valve is taking L4D on the road/plane to several up in coming events for the public to play. Here there are:

Leipzig Games Convention, (Germany)
Festival du Jeu Video (France)PC Gamer Showdown (UK)
Penny Arcade Expo (Seattle, WA)

Penny Arcade will also get the unavailing of the Xbox 360 version. The came has already won some awards at e3 and will come out soon.

[Source]

08 August, 2008

Weekend Deal

Steam updates

Savage 2: A Tortured Soul
  • Monastery and Sanctuary no longer require an armory or nexus to be built. Note that the siege workshop and charm shrine can now be obtained more quickly due to this change
  • The Academy now requires both the Monastery and Armory to be constructed. The same is true for the Predator Den requiring both the Nexus and Sanctuary.
  • The battering ram no longer has a freeze time before it's attack
  • The battering ram can attack while flames are active
  • The battering ram will only do one fourth of its damage to hellbourne units
  • Steamboost for both the battering ram and the Steambuchet now has a 20 second cool down (down from 40) and lasts 10 seconds (down from 17.5 seconds)
  • Maliken now only receives 150 stamina from souls
  • Maliken Lungs now only return 150 stamina to the wearer
  • Maliken is once again able to be healed. He is no longer flagged as a hellbourne unit, meaning shaman and chaplain attacks will not do bonus damage to him
  • Maliken's soul cost has been reduced to 12
  • Maliken health reduced to 1000
  • Maliken healing per soul reduced to 50 from 100
  • Maliken receives the benefit of spent attribute points
  • Maliken now has a 4-minute buff, in addition to his armor buff, when he spawns. When this buff wears off, he will begin losing life at a rapid rate
  • Soul of Maliken now requires a hellshrine to purchase. Cost increased to 650 from 150. Note you do not have to physically visit the hellshrine to acquire maliken
  • Heart of Maliken cost increased to 1100 from 900
  • Brain of Maliken cost increased to 750 from 675
  • Lungs of maliken cost increased to 900 from 750
  • The chaplain's melee attacks now do 150% damage to hellbourne units.
  • Savage mana regeneration increased from 2.5 to 3.0
  • Decreased the mana cost of the Savage's morale ability from 80 to 50. Increased the health regen bonus from 25% to 50%
  • Token of life cost decreased to 350 from 400
  • Slightly increased the mana drain of the Hunter's venomous ability
  • Hunter's wingspin now has a longer delay on it. It should react more like whirling blade
  • Devourer's rot ability damage per second increased to 25 from 8. Mana cost per second increased to 10 from 7. Range of decay slightly decreased.
  • The Shaman's Storm shield ability has had its buff duration decreased to 12 seconds from 20
  • Slightly increased the unique area around arrow and strata towers. You should no longer be able to place two at one garrison. Note that you can still place two shield/chloro towers or two cannon/static towers.
  • The Shapeshifter's cheetah form no longer allows for dodging
  • The hunter's summonable bat is now closer to the ground, within melee range
  • Added the Rune Builder. It can be located in the game browser or in the persistent item menu at the loadout screen.
  • Added commander impeachment. The button to initiate the vote can be found in the loadout menu when a commander is active.
  • New icon for beast item lynx feet
  • Improved the distinction between regular items and enduring items in the loadout UI
  • The scar prop now uses the hellshrine commander portrait and icon
  • Building tool tips in the commander interface will now properly show multiple prerequisites
  • Improved angle lerping on preview gadgets, the preview that shows up when placing a gadget
  • Fix steam turret and static charge spire shots sometimes striking corpses and foliage
  • Fix several sources of memory leaks/corruption
  • Removed "connection interrupted" message when viewing replays
  • Misc other interface tweaks/improvements
  • Spawnstate and SpawnStateDuration can now take comma separated values
  • Added TargetTypeMaliken to skill toggles and spells
  • Fixed a few places players could get stuck on morning

07 August, 2008

Steam updates

Audiosurf
  • Audiosurf friend lists are now automatically populated with friends from Steam
  • Forced match collections can no longer reset the chain multiplier
  • Soundtrack CDs now use correct artist names instead of "various artists"

Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis and Dracula Origin are both now on Steam. They go for $19.99 with 10% off by the 14th.

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Ready

That is right the game is ready for both Wiiware and PC. It is set to come out on the 11th. As of now there is no news of a Steam release but considering the Sam and Max games are on Steam it could happen!

[Source]

New Clash of Ninja Videos from IGN



05 August, 2008

Nintendo is interested in holographic storage?

A patent filed shows that Nintendo is working with InPhase on holographic storage. holographic disk are a new kind of disk capable of 300 GB to 1.6 TB of storage. The drives and disk are still to pricey for mainstream and Nintendo may not make use of this tech for quite some time.

[Source]

Valve open to acquisition?

For all of us who hoped Valve would stay independent there is some bad news. In an interview with Gamasutra Doug Lambardi stated that the company was open to acquisition. He goes on to talk about relationships with EA and compares them to other publishers.

[Source]

Steam updates

Eternity's Child
  • Improved controller compatibility
  • Allowed configuring which controller axis can be used for moving or aiming
  • Xbox360 controller bumpers can be used as buttons now
  • Birds are twice as fast, and have 35% as much health
  • Fixed crash when switching anti-aliasing
  • Fixed possible achievements issue
  • Changed the title page to fade out sooner for each level
Team Fortress 2
  • Fixed _resetgamestats command causing server crash.
  • Fixed clients earning achievements when a player they've recently damaged suicides

01 August, 2008

Steam updates

Strategy First Game Collection Hits Steam. Includes:
Save over $200 by the 18th

Audiosurf
  • Corkscrews removed when sidewinder camera is used
  • Fixed Pointman/Vegas dropping in 4th lane
  • Fixed achievement exploit
  • [as-wb100] now works as expected
  • [as-monoonly] [as-nogrey] now works as expected

Eternity's Child is now on Steam with exclusive HD resolution, features, and level creator.

Steam Client
  • Fixed not correctly pausing any current downloads when launching a game
  • Improved cache mounting checks. This should decrease the startup time when launching Garry's Mod
  • Fixed startup to only request info about apps once
  • Fixed rare cache corruption caused by defragging
  • Fixed vgui crash when hitting pageup/pagedown in a sectioned list-panel
  • Fixed rare crash when downloading
  • Fixed -voicerelay steam command line to actually force use of the relay