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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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Steam updates

Strategy First Game Collection Hits Steam. Includes:

• 688(I) Hunter-Killer
• Alien Shooter: Vengeance
• Baseball Mogul 2008
• Birth of America
• Culpa Innata
• Dangerous Waters
• DarkStar One
• Disciples II Gold
• Ducati World Championship
• FlatOut
• FlatOut2
• Fleet Command
• Ghost Master
• Iron Warriors
• Jagged Alliance 2
• Making History: The Calm and The Storm
• Sacred Gold
• Space Empires IV Deluxe
• Space Empires V
• Sub Command
• Vegas - Make It Big

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

Steam updates

Here is the list of todays updates:
Children of the Nile

• Made installation of the latest DirectX redistributable more robust

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed team switches on Attack/Defense maps spamming the console
  
• Fixed the Kritzkrieg not working on servers with crits turned off
  
• Fixed some clipped localized strings in various in-game dialogs
  
• Fixed several cases where files were synchronously loaded while the game was running
  
• Fixed a shutdown crash in the material system
  
• Cached rendering of item model panels to improve performance, in particular while weapon selection was visible
  
• Added a gear symbol behind the health bar for Engineer buildings, in both target IDs and freeze panels
  
• Players killing themselves will now give a kill credit to the last enemy who damaged them
  
• Fixed grenades, rockets, and flamethrower being able to fire through grates at round starts
  
• Fixed players being killed and creating ragdolls during team switches
  
• Fixed various exploits and performance problems in CP_Badlands, CP_Well, and CP_Fastlane
  
• Removed health bonus from the Backburner

That last one is a big one. I hope the health was not you reason for choosing the Backburner...

What of Gaming Left 4 Dead video interview

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New L4D Louis screenshot

Like it or not Valve is redoing the L4D cast. Although not ever one my like the new direction there is no doubt the quilt has gone up. Just check out this shot from shacknews:

Left 4 Dead at the EA conference

Do you did the new look?

Valve hires Minerva creator Adam Foster

Adam Foster, creator of the episodic mini-MOD Minerva has been hire to work for Valve Software! Even better yet he will work on Episode 3.

"Like any of my projects, it started off small, but rapidly grew far, far, bigger. It's not finished yet, but this time I actually released something. 'Episodic' worked.

And, I accidentally acquired a job in the process. Oops?"

Great work, and best for luck. Live the dream Adam...

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Portal: Still Alive For 360 announced

Portal is coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade with bonus content. It was announced today at the Microsoft press conference. You can view more here.

L4D interview

Fansite L4D 411 has a email interview with Mike Booths about Left 4 Dead. Here is a snip:

Will there be things like the taunts from TF2 in L4D? I don't think taunts would really fit the games's style, what about things like "Whoop! Nice work people!" type expressions through animation?
The auto-vocalizations in TF2 were added after the dev team played L4D and saw how effective they were. We really do collaborate at Valve, and this is yet another example of the benefits of such cross-pollination.

You can check out more here.

Half-Life 2: EP3 Art wins Into the Pixel award

A piece of EP3 art was entered and has won an ITP award, a video game based art award. It shows a person that could be Gordon facing an Advisor in some strange location.

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Episode 1 Source Engine update

Just in!

Episode 1 Source Engine

• Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch customers running under Windows Vista can now take advantage of 5.1 and 7.1 speaker configurations

Todays Steam Updates

Eve Expanding Via Steam

To celebrate the launch of the eighth free expansion to Eve Online, the popular massively multi-player online game (MMOG) from CCP, the full game is available for 10% off its regular price for one week. The limited-time offer which includes the latest expansion, Empryean Age, is accompanied by the release of an impressive new trailer which is freely available now via Steam.

Now On Steam - Sacred Gold

Sacred Gold, an action RPG from Strategy First, is now available for purchase via Steam.

Sacred delivers a huge, elaborate world comprising 16 regions beset with heroic quests, battle-hardened warriors and horrific enemies. Sacred Gold is the complete Sacred collection in one box, containing the full version of Sacred, winner of the 'Best Roleplaying Game 2004' award from PC GAMER, Sacred Plus and Sacred Underworld.

Pick it up today for just $9.99.

Now On Steam - Elf Bowling: Hawaiian Vacation

Elf Bowling: Hawaiian Vacation, the new casual game from MumboJumbo, is now available for purchase via Steam.

If you thought Santa's elves were crazy before, just wait until you see them on vacation! The zany crew has escaped from the workshop to hit the sand and surf in Elf Bowling Hawaiian Vacation.

Pick it up today for just $9.99 or try the Free Demo.

Source Sdk Update Released

Updates to Source SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Enhancements

• Particle Editor, Material Editor, and Commentary Editor are now included in the Source SDK
  
• Updated SDK source code for Orange Box mods
  
• Added example particle system files to SDK content
  

Bug Fixes

• Updated Linux binaries and makefiles for dedicated servers and server plugins
  
• The Faceposer phoneme editor now pops up a warning message when a phoneme cannot be saved
  
• Fixed crash in 'splitskybox.exe'
  
• Day of Defeat: Source now appears in the list of Orange Box games

Source Dedicated Server Update Released (7/9/2008)

Updates to the Source Dedicated Server have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Source Dedicated Server

• Fixed crash caused by excessive rcon attempts sent with incorrect password set

It's always good to see new updates and new games come to Steam. The Commentary Editor sounds like a great new addition to the SDK!

Team Fortress 2 Dispenser Mod

Bit-tech has an article up on a TF2 dispenceer casr MOD made by TiTON. You can see it and others here.

Team Fortress 2 Update

There just has been a new TF2 update today!

• Fixed rcon crash caused by too many incorrect password attempts
  
• Fixed clients experiencing connection problems during round restarts
  
• Fixed flares not always being removed on impact
  
• Fixed 32 player servers not working correctly with SourceTV enabled
  
• Fixed dropped flags sometimes falling through the world
  
• Fixed number key menu input sending 2 key events
  
• Fixed PING field being clipped in the scoreboard at 800x600 resolution
  
• Fixed broken Medigun taunt
  
• Changed mat_showmiplevels to only be allowed when cheats are on
  

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Garry's Mod update

Garry's Mod

• Reduced entity bandwidth overhead
  
• Fixed SQLite errors
  
• Changed how particles are loaded
  
• Fixed DModelPanel model color issues
  
• Fixed ents.FindInBox only returning half the entities
  
• Fixed ents.FindInSphere only returning half the entities
  
• Fixed cookies not restoring

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Meet the Soldier now in French and German

You can find out more here.

StillAliveDS releases new version

A home made DS game based on Portal? You bet! Version 1.15s came out yesterday and includes the following:

[Level Editor]
+ 5 new elements (see below).
+ Grid (press select to hide/show).
+ You can save your map when you want
+ You now have to upload your maps through the level editor. Only possible if the map was finished.
+ New clear button which deletes everything on screen.
+ The "Build" feature is automatically called when you save/upload a map.

[Game]
+ red energy wall : you can shoot portals through them but can't pass.
+ razor wheels : These will kill you if you touch them.
+ moving platforms : Jump on them to move in the map. They kill you if you're stuck. You can put portals on them.
+ acid pool : Don't try to swim in it.
+ reflecting wall (which is also a slippery floor) : Shoot a portal on it and it will be reflected. Up to 5 bounces are possible.
+ If multiple red plasma switches are set, you have to deactivate all of them to clear the green energy field.

[Menu]
+ language selection
+ customizable controls : just click on a control to change the associated action.

[Other]
- Backgrounds are now loaded from the flashcart
- Updated EFS lib to V2.0 finale, maybe G6 and M3 will load the game now ...

More Valve Nintendo unity! My heart skip a beat.

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