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October 1st, 2010, 18:31 Posted By: wraggster
The last time Blizzard mentioned their new Real ID system, there was a strong backlash from users over privacy issues. Blizzard reconsidered their plans to require real names for forums, and little has been heard about it since. Now, they've announced new privacy settings, allowing users to limit how their name gets shared or to disable the system entirely. Quoting: 'These options provide Real ID users with additional tools for customizing the service based on their preferences, enabling the ability to opt in or out of the Real ID "Friends of Friends" and "Add Facebook Friends" features or to turn off Real ID altogether.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...rivacy-Options
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October 3rd, 2010, 21:07 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15661.html
FreeSynd is an open source project that aims to provide a free Syndicate clone (released under the GPL).
Quote:
FreeSynd 0.5 : Release Notes
----------------------------
Description
-----------
This is a prelimary release for testing and development purposes.
Changes
-------
* Correct positioning by Z axis for all objects
Fixed Bugs
----------
* 0000000 :
Features added
----------
* 0000000 :
Known issues with this release
------------------------------
* Agent AI is not operational.
* The minimap is not complete.
* Tax collection and other functionality of the world map are not done.
* PathFinding requires improvement
* Mission debriefing is not operational
* No animation for trees, doors
* Map drawing is buggy
History
-------
Changes
-------
* Minimap drawing is fixed, should be better now
* Map can be scrolled with arrow keys and scrolling is like original game
* People, objects will not move to unwalkable surfaces
* When weapon is dropped while moving, ped will stop moving
* Static objects: added 4 windows, large doors, added 2 animations
to doors, 1 animation to trees
* Static objects animation setup method rewritten,
animations require adjusting and add new objects correctly
* While vehicle was moving if ped went out, vehicle continued to move
* Game time is visible in the Map menu but not fully implemented
* People and vehicles pathfinding was rewritten
* Fixed highlights in select menu: was possible to highlight more than
one element, also weapon highlight was not working
* Added correct recognition for clicks on scrollable map
* 3029839 : Mouse position is not used on a new Menu
* 3029837 : Menu animation doesn´t stop mouse or keyboard events
* 2307181 : #include missing (it was simply closed, fix
was done somewhere between 0.2 - 0.3 release and was not
closed)
* 3052202 : cppcheck warnings and errors(only third error is important)(tlh2000)
* 3052210 : fixed warnings and resource leak(tlh2000)
* 3005299 : Finished missions can be played again
* 2669454 : Double highlight on weapon list in Team Selection menu
v0.3
----
* Cursors are now available in a png file
* Music files (ogg and mp3) have been moved to data/music
* Ability to turn music and sound on/off during a game
* In debug mode, adds the -m argument to start directly the
game on a given mission
* Fixed agents selection in gameplay menu
* Fixed ranks for weapons, as in some weapons variable data
"w_rank" took place of variable "w_anim"
* Rewritten animation for people
* Added trees
* Small fix to "path walking"
* Added animation to selectors
* Added divider between selectors and weapons
* Mission message system changed, added few new
* It was possible to shoot dead, fixed
* Small fix to mouse display during menus switch
* Group positioning is now like in original, on dest reached
* 1565270 : Graphical glitches with cars
* 2661059 : Automatic selecting next weapon after running
out of ammo
* 3005276 : Absent agent can drop weapon in a mission
* 1744508 : Dead Agents still move if given a pickup-weapon
or enter-car command.
* 2661069 : On game screen when clicking on the screen to move
agent(s) selected coordinates are not exactly the
same that expected.
* 3017274 : When an agent kills a moving enemy, this enemy
keeps on moving to his destination.
* 3005280 : Dropped weapon does not appear on the ground
v0.2
----
* The first level is "playable".
* Most of the menus are complete and functional.
* Sound and music are operational.
http://freesynd.sourceforge.net/
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October 3rd, 2010, 21:07 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15662.html
PrBoom-plus is a Doom source port based on PrBoom.
Quote:
2.5.0.8.test @ 2010-Sep-30 12:21 - win32 build, sources
[+]Added support for textured automap. Available in the menu at "OptionsSetupAutomapEnabe Textured Display".
[+]"Next Level" key works during normal playing too, not only during playdemo.
[+]Added a "-shotdir" command line switch and "screenshot_dir" config variable. Default folder for screenshots is changed to exe_dir. [*]Added an ability (overrun_missedbackside_emulate 1) to emulate wrong memory access for cases when some linedefs has two-sided flag set, but no second sidedef. There is no more desynch on CLNJ-506.LMP @ CHALLENJ.WAD [*]Broken BLOCKMAP lump will never be recreated automatically. Use "-blockmap" command line switch if prboom-plus reports you about bugged blockmap. [*]"-solo-net" and "-emulate x.y.z" params are saved in demo footer.
[-]The title screen from the Duke Nukem total conversion pwad doesn´t appear in software mode, being replaced by an entirely black screen.
http://prboom-plus.sourceforge.net/
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October 4th, 2010, 01:22 Posted By: wraggster
Almost one year after the introduction of Windows 7 it appears that the hype surrounding it has faded. The overall market share of Windows has turned into a slight decline again. Windows 7 is gaining share, but cannot keep pace with the loss of Windows XP and Vista. Especially Windows XP users seem to be happy with what they have and appear to be rather resistant to Microsoft's pitches that it is time to upgrade to Windows 7.
http://slashdot.org/story/10/10/03/1...Use-Windows-XP
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October 5th, 2010, 20:31 Posted By: wraggster
Cloud-gaming service OnLive has announced it is to scrap its planned monthly $4.95 charge entirely.
OnLive charges users to buy temporary or permanent access to its streaming games for PC and Mac, but has suffered criticism for its high pricing.
The removal of the subscription fee follows an offer to scrap the cost for a year for early adopters and also means new users may sign up without having to enter payment details.
This means the service now operates in a free trial mode, enabling non-paying users to try out demos and watch other users' games.
"We're delighted to be able to offer the OnLive Game Service without a base monthly fee on an ongoing basis," said OnLive CEO Steve Perlman.
"There is no precedent for OnLive, so we had to grow to a large number of active users in order to assess usage patterns and operating costs. We've arrived at that stage, and as we had hoped, we are able to operate OnLive without charging a fee for access."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...scription-fees
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October 5th, 2010, 20:32 Posted By: wraggster
Despite their name, laptops should not be left on top of your lap for too long, doctors have warned.
In a paper published in the Pediatrics journal, Andreas Arnold, MD and Peter Itin MD, of University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, describe seeing ten cases of rashes caused by notebook PCs since 2004. The youngest sufferer was a 12-year-old boy.
The child developed the condition, known scientifically as ‘erythema ab igne’, on his left thigh. It was caused by the heat from his laptop, which, according to BBC News, he had been playing games on for hours.
The doctors describe the rash as being caused by “prolonged exposure to a heat or infrared sourceâ€.
“In laptop-induced erythema ab igne, the localization on the thighs and asymmetry are characteristic. The heat originates from the optical drive, the battery, or the ventilation fan of the computer,†the report said.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/34814...of-laptop-rash
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October 5th, 2010, 20:34 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard announced today that the third expansion to World of Warcraft, dubbed Cataclysm, is set for launch on December 7th. In addition to upping the level cap to 85 and including several new high level zones, the expansion will revamp the parts of Azeroth that have been around since WoW's initial launch, bringing the 1-60 leveling experience more in line with the improvements Blizzard has made in the expansions. Cataclysm will also give players two new races to play, Goblins and Worgen, who have joined the Horde and the Alliance, respectively.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...Launch-Dec-7th
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October 5th, 2010, 20:47 Posted By: wraggster
Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has dominated the Web browser market since blowing by Netscape in the late 1990s, last month fell below the 50% market share level for the first time in years. IE's share of the worldwide market fell to 49.87% in September, down from 51.3% in August and 58.4% a year ago. It is followed by Firefox, which increased its share slightly from 30.09% to 31.5% and Google Chrome, which grabbed 11.54% share, more than triple its September 2009 share, according to market watcher StatCounter.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10...-Dips-Below-50
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October 7th, 2010, 21:17 Posted By: wraggster
The subscriber base for MMORPG World of Warcraft has passed 12 million players, developer Blizzard has announced.
The milestone comes following the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion in mainland China, and ahead of the December 7 release of Cataclysm in the US and Europe.
"The support and enthusiasm that gamers across the world continue to show for World of Warcraft reaffirms our belief that it offers one of the best entertainment values available today," offered Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard
"We are as committed as ever to taking the game to new heights, and we look forward to demonstrating that with Cataclysm in December."
World of Warcraft was first released in November 2004 and is playable in eight languages.
The company’s definition of subscriber includes all those paying a subscription fee or using an active prepaid card, and those that are using the free month of access with a new purchase of the game. It does not include free, expired or cancelled subs and prepaid cards.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ass-12-million
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October 8th, 2010, 23:13 Posted By: wraggster
Speaking at GDC Online yesterday, Blizzard has revealed that the second generation of multiplayer service and social network Battle.Net is one of the developer's biggest projects unto itself.
Nominally a part of StarCraft 2, the service is also paired with World of Warcraft and likely to play a part in future titles such as Diablo III.
"This is easily the most complicated launch I've been a part of at Blizzard," said Battle.Net technical director Matthew Verslyus in the talk attended by Gamasutra.
"Blizzard is a company that back in say 2002, 2003, when we were launching Warcraft III, that's the last time the company shipped a non-MMO boxed product.
"It really was an adjustment for us, thinking beyond the MMO."
Added project director Greg Canessa, "Integrating with a community of 12 million users and not screwing it up is a huge challenge.
"Integrating a game service and an MMO is just challenging from a technical and compatibility standpoint across the board."
Canessa also warned developers of other game networks not to underestimate the scale of such projects. "It's really hard designing and building this stuff... It's really, really expensive to go this route."
While he claimed that designing a network like Battle.Net was as complicated as designing the games it would support, "Launching the service is just the beginning. I can't emphasis this point enough."
With Blizzard yesterday revealing World of Warcraft now exceeds 12 million subscribers and with the knowledge that StarCraft II shifting 3 million units in its first month on sale, the userbase for Battle.Net is likely significantly higher than Canessa and Verslyus intimated.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ed-ever-launch
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October 9th, 2010, 12:34 Posted By: wraggster
Turbine's MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online has seen a surge in success following its move to a free to play model, claimed its executive producer.
Speaking at GDC Online in Austin last night (as attended by Joystiq), Kate Paiz claimed that revenues had doubled since the switch last month, while the game had attracted over a million new registrations and a 400 per cent rise in active players.
20 per cent of lapsed players had apparently returned to the game since the change, while it now boasted three times the prior number of simultaneously online players.
"When you tell people you no longer have to pay for it, they come in droves," she stated.
53 per cent of players had indulged in microtransactions, claimed Paiz, who also headed up Dungeons & Dragons Online's move to free-to-play.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ter-f2p-switch
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October 9th, 2010, 12:35 Posted By: wraggster
Duke Nukem Forever developer Gearbox is looking at ways in which it might fulfill pre-orders made for the long-delayed shooter while it was still in 3D Realms' erstwhile hands.
Unfortunately, the money for these pre-orders does not yet look to have filtered down to the game's publisher or developer.
"There are a lot of people who pre-ordered the game," Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford told VG247 yesterday.
"We've been starting to talk with retailers because we didn't take them directly, and 3D Realms didn't take them, it was all retailers going 'I'm going to take this guy's money.'
"We've started to engage them, saying 'Hey, you've got customers who you made a promise to, and any bad feeling they have will reflect on us, so can we work together to do something for those people?'
"I don't know what we can do yet, but something should be done for the people who pre-ordered."
This may mean an even greater spend on the game than in its 12 years to date - Pitchford also revealed yesterday that former 3D Realms head George Broussard had spent up to $30 million on the game personally.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...kem-pre-orders
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October 9th, 2010, 12:43 Posted By: wraggster
Balance is an important issue in any RTS, and it appears that Blizzard has been paying attention to online game stats for StarCraft 2. Overall, the Protoss faction seems to have an unusually high win percentage against Terrans in certain leagues of play. Furthermore, while Zerg statistics don't indicate any huge disadvantages, Blizzard notes in the Battle.Net blog that "the feedback from the community as well as our own play experience tells us that improvements are necessary to make Zerg matchups feel and play better."
The studio states that it is currently "working on solutions" for the Protoss vs. Terran issues. In the meantime, the next patch will make adjustments that should benefit Zerg players.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/08/bl...n-starcraft-2/
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October 10th, 2010, 17:27 Posted By: wraggster
Gearbox has called on Microsoft and Valve to fix the incompatibility between titles purchased via Games For Windows and Steam.
The studio, which is readying PC gaming favourite Duke Nukem Forever for release on the format next year, claims that Steam and Microsoft are "building silos" which ultimately "hurt the PC industry".
"[We] want people to be able to play together and right now if a guy buys a game on Games for Windows and a guy buys a game on Steam - they can't play together," Gearbox's head of marketing Steve Gibson said at London Games Festival. "If another guy bought it in a retail store, he can't play with the first two guys."
Gibson called on Microsoft and Steam to work out a way where purchasers of their games could play simultaneously.
"Right now we're like 'Please, work together'," he said. "Our big concern right now is that these silos are being built. Everybody's separating out and it's really... as a developer who just wants gamers to be able to play games together, it's frustrating right now. Things like that are hurting the PC industry for gamers. This is frustrating for everybody right now."
Gibson asked gamers to put pressure on Steam and Microsoft to "play nice!".
Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford said this week that Duke Nukem Forever is packed with sex, swearing and violence - and "dances on the line of decency". Groovy.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS
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October 10th, 2010, 17:36 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15687.html
Curse of Monkey Island (Old School Edition) is a 2d-demake of the classic title from 1997. It is still in a very early stage of development but you can already download a demo version.
Quote:
*updates beta 2
new background
added objects and inventory items
added animations and new intro
*updated 5-26-2010
v0.0.0.1 beta 3
added wally and conversations
added new inventory items
added new animations for Guybrush
*updated 5-28-10
v0.0.0.3 beta 2
fixed dialog bug
added more animations
added new inventory item
*updated 6-18-10
v0.0.0.4
more stuff
*updated 8-30-10
v0.0.1
outside the ship added
added murry to the outside
added skeletal arm and sword items
several aesthetic changes
http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=203368
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October 12th, 2010, 16:50 Posted By: wraggster
CyberSports, publisher of MMO Football Superstars, has raised £4.3 million in a round of funding to accelerate the development of the game and push it into new territories around the world.
The game allows players not only to control their character's actions on the pitch, but also to live the associated lifestyle of a well-paid sportsman off it. A boxed, retail version of the free-to-play client was released by CyberSports last year.
"The funds were raised mainly from existing investors and this demonstrates their ongoing confidence in what we're doing," said CyberSports CEO Malcolm Clark .
"They recognise that we have an original and unique product which is proving to have enormous global appeal."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ion-in-funding
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October 12th, 2010, 16:53 Posted By: wraggster
Ubisoft has launched an Assassin's Creed game on social networking site Facebook.
Project Legacy is a training simulator for Templar company Abstergo Industries.
You use action points to complete memories, which in turn earns experience points and money. There's levelling up, skill points, units and all sorts of gubbins designed to hook you in.
You earn Uplay points as you play, which can be redeemed for rewards in Ubisoft games. As you unlock landmarks and items in Legacy, the corresponding items will become available in Brotherhood. Playing the single-player game on your console will in turn unlock 25 exclusive missions in Legacy. This must be the convergence thing everyone's banging on about.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood will be released in the UK on 19th November for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The PC version is due out next year. Will Porter went hands-on in September.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-game-launches
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October 12th, 2010, 16:55 Posted By: wraggster
Now that the massively-multiplayer Final Fantasy XIV has been on the shelves for a couple of weeks, the reviews are starting to arrive; and it appears that the game is the subject of a critical battering unprecedented in the history of the main Final Fantasy series. First it was the Amazon user reviews, then Gamespot weighed in, describing the game as a "step backwards for the genre" and now IGN has described it as "an arduous experience that, in its current state, isn't worth playing". Given the general dissatisfaction that surrounded the release of the (offline) Final Fantasy XIII earlier in the year, many long-time fans of the series must now be wondering whether the magic hasn't departed.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...athing-Reviews
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October 13th, 2010, 00:53 Posted By: wraggster
Crysis 2's delay has perhaps been the most depressing games-related news of the year. Okay, maybe with the exception of that Nintendo promotion.
But FPS fans - keen for a developer to give us a twist on a genre fast becoming as stale as your average maths teacher's breath - have been itching to slip on Crytek's new nanosuit.
Sadly, they're just going to have to wait; until March 2011 to be precise. Which is a huge shame - because the way Crytek boss Cevat Yerli talks about it, it's shaping up to be something very special indeed...
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS
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October 14th, 2010, 00:22 Posted By: wraggster
A disgruntled EA employee about to fall victim to lay-offs has published a vicious diatribe against their employer, claiming, among other things, that forthcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a disaster.
In an anonymous blog post, the art worker at EA's BioWare Mythic studio, wrote, "Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too."
The blogger goes on to claim that BioWare has, "spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $300 million! Can you believe that?
"And you know what they're most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That's the best they have.
"The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas, they're panicking, and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalised to work in Austin on it because they can't keep pushing back launch."
BioWare Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMO also comes under fire. "The project leaders did not know what they were doing. Jeff Hickman was the saddest excuse for a producer I've seen. All he did was drink the Koolaid and suck up to the right people."
The post has clearly got a number of figures in the industry riled up, including Eat Sleep Play's David Jaffe.
The God of War creator posted a response on his own blog: "What the f*ck is it about making games where it brings out the worst, most immature, most obnoxious sides of certain types of people on a team? Everyone thinks they always know better than the people in charge.
"On God of War 1 I still remember a small group of hard core gamers on the team that felt we were making the game 'wrong' because there was not all this deep, deep, Street Fighter 2/Tekken style depth to the combat system. 'Jaffe's out of touch!' 'Jaffe doesn't get it!'... never did it occur to them that we were going for something else... even tho I explained this to them over and over!
"But still, every few weeks I could count on this little contingency being up in the studio head's office pitching 'their' version of the game, with the goal being to have the head step in - which he never did - and shove their ideas into the title. F*ck it annoys me!"
A spokesperson for EA told Eurogamer, "We don't respond to rumors or anonymous blogs."
Star Wars: The Old Republic is due for release on PC in early 2011.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...blic-is-a-joke
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October 14th, 2010, 00:22 Posted By: wraggster
Valve has announced that it's working on a sequel to the hugely popular online RTS title, Defence of the Ancients.
According to Game Informer, the sequel runs on Valve's Source engine and includes voice chat. Visuals have been upgraded but remain faithful to the original's cartoony style.
There will also be a new coaching system which lets veteran players help out newcomers.
Defence of the Ancients, or DotA as it is more commonly known, began life as a custom scenario for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. An anonymous developer known as IceFrog has been custodian of the mod ever since, making regular updates.
Valve has confirmed that IceFrog will be working with them on the sequel.
DotA 2 will launch on Mac and PC in 2011.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-making-dota-2
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October 14th, 2010, 01:00 Posted By: wraggster
Newly released today;
Over 2 million Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines wear the uniform. Of those, approximately 50 thousand fall under the direct control of the Special Operations Command. The Tier 1 Operator functions on a plane of existence above and beyond even the most highly trained Special Operations Forces. Their exact numbers, while classified, hover in the low hundreds. They are living, breathing, precision instruments of war. They are experts in the application of violence. The new Medal of Honor is inspired by and has been developed with Tier 1 Operators from this elite community. You will step into the boots of these warriors and apply their unique skill sets to a new enemy in the most unforgiving and hostile battlefield conditions of present day Afghanistan.
http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-3ze4.html
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October 14th, 2010, 01:32 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15719.html
The Open Source Singstar Simulator UltraStar Deluxe has been released in a new version.
Here the Link of the mainpage, if you never heard of Ultrastar!
Quote:
It’s the final countdown…? Wait… NO it is NOT! This release is just the start of something new.
Even if we can proudly ship the deluxe karaoke solution which has never been so stable before for any operating system today, this is just a brand new start for something even bigger and better.
You guys are still havin’ a bunch of ideas which has not been merged or even implemented yet, so this project will grow.
We hopefully can release next final sooner than this one. No – let’s not say “hopefullyâ€. We DEFINITLY will release next final sooner, sooner than you might expect it.
So what to do for now?
1. Grab your new version
2. Explore our new wiki to get all the information you need (still in work )
Many improvements were made since our previous versions:
Platform independent (Mac, Linux, Windows)
Visualisations with projectM
Mouse and unicode support
Video preview
Background videos and music in the GUI
Microphone configuration assistance
And many more other enhancements…
Ultrastar Deluxe 1.1
-----------------------------
--------------
platform
--------------
upd: platform independent code base
upd: endianness independent code base
add: Linux and FreeBSD support (x86 and x86_64)
add: Mac OS X support (Intel 10.5/10.6)
--------------
audio
--------------
upd: reimplemented audio playback and input
upd: pluggable audio/video modules
- Bass input/playback/decoder (windows only)
- SDL audio playback (all platforms)
- Portaudio playback/input (all platforms)
- FFmpeg decoder (all platforms)
upd: video files enabled for the #MP3 tag (using the first audio stream of a video)
add: Microphone Passthrough (experimental)
fix: a start without a microphone plugged-in does not result in a crash
add: background music
--------------
video
--------------
upd: revised video decoder implementation
upd: windows: updated FFmpeg binary
upd: performance improvements
fix: updated ffmpeg dlls to fix black preview bug after seek
--------------
interface
--------------
upd: video backgrounds for themes
upd: Song Screen: performance improvements with many songs
upd: theme change w/o restarting Ultrastar Deluxe
upd: new score display in Sing Screen (animated)
upd: Score Screen redesigned (animations)
upd: Deluxe theme enhanced (ty mog)
upd: ability to select party modes before the game
upd: default skin and color are read from themes and skins
add: visualisations (due to projectM) as background while singing
upd: Truetype fonts (due to freetype6) instead of the old bitmap fonts
-> support for international character sets
-> smoother type face
upd: new lyrics effect: Shift
upd: more than one additional song path can be set in config.ini (SongDirX)
upd: microphone settings simplified
- vu-meter for incoming signals on the selected input
- display of input volume
- adjust input volume by using ´+´ and ´-´ keys
- threshold display (gray bar)
- adjust threshold with ´T´ key
upd: international keyboard layout (uniform shortcuts on QWERTZ, QWERTY, AZERTY, ...)
rem: removed confusing solmization option
add: text reflections in themes
add: note lines can be switched off in options
add: mouse support (hardware and software)
add: texture type "Colorized": Texture is colorized by adjusting the hue value (see HSB color model)
add: overlay when pause modus is activated in Sing Screen
fix: some "Screens=2" bugs
add: Unicode support: All "printable" characters should work with the input fields (e.g. players´ names)
add: resizable window
add: toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode with ALT+Return (Linux and FreeBSD only)
fix: mapped same function to Return and Enter (numpad)
add: video preview during song selection
add: toggle displayed time with ´T´ key between current position, remaining or total playback time
add: mic configuration assistance: error messages are displayed if multiple or no mics were assigned to a player.
--------------
internal
--------------
upd: synchronization of lyrics, video and audio
(timers were not synchronized until now)
you can be choose via config.ini ("SyncTo" option) between:
- synchronize lyrics and video to audio (default)
- synchronize audio and video to lyrics
- no synchronization
upd: DLL interface replaced by Lua plugin interface
upd: Select Object replaced by Select Slide
upd: improved stability and major code base cleanup
fix: solved some bugs/crashes in Midi/Kar converter
upd: Vista/Win7 conform: configuration files is saved in the user directory. Running USDX from CD/DVD should also be possible from now on.
upd: cover thumbnails are saved in an SQLite database
-> more reliable than the old solution; small performance loss on start
fix: cursor freeze after Alt-Tab fixed through change of SDL.dll
fix: better detection of ending at songs/videos while using FFmpeg
upd: windows: user data will be placed in installation directory if user has write permissions, else it will be stored in APPDATA
--------------
song files
--------------
upd: UTF8 support
upd: #Encoding tag
- CP1250: Central/Eastern european encoding (should not be used for new files)
- CP1252: Western european encoding; was used as default before 1.1 (should not be used for new files)
- Locale: uses system encoding (should not be used for new files!)
- UTF8: text file is encoded in UTF8 (recommended)
upd: select default encoding (if #Encoding tag is missing) via the "Encoding" option in config.ini.
- Possible values:
- "Auto" (Default), "UTF8",
- "CP1252" (USDX<1.1 default), "CP1250" (old US default), "Locale" (System encoding)
- IMPORTANT:
- "CP1252", "CP1250" and "Locale" are for backward compatibility only, new files should always be encoded in UTF-8 with BOM
upd: support for UTF8 BOM (new standard in Ultrastar Deluxe)
upd: #Year tag is read and saved
fix: does not crash any longer if there is no linebreak in lyrics file
fix: blank lyrics lines are ignored
fix: editor does not delete unknown tags any longer from song txt files
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ultrastardx/
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October 14th, 2010, 02:00 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15723.html
Free Heroes2 Engine is a free implementation of Heroes of the Might and Magic II engine using SDL.
Quote:
SVN - up to r1976
Oct, 12, 2010
+ Fixed: spell cost for Summonig Elem. to 30 mp
+ Fixed: artifact "Book of Elements" action
+ Fixed: reflect sprite for Shield spell
+ Fixed: redraw status window after changed themes
+ Added: params "scroll speed", "ai speed" and "heroes speed" (see fheroes2.cfg)
+ Fixed: animations delays
+ Fixed: scroll gamearea code
+ Added: disable mixer for iconify window app.
+ Added: wince: added icon to toolbar, and added check running prog.
+ Added: fast blitting engine
+ Fixed: win32 binary dll
+ Fixed: ThievesGuild info depends from count guilds, added ThievesGuild for QVGA version
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fheroes2/
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October 14th, 2010, 02:02 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15725.html
ZDoom is an enhanced port based on the sources of Doom for Windows. This version was released on august.
Quote:
ZDoom 2.5.0 has been released.
The primary motivation for this release was the new vastly improved polyobject support. To recap, polyobjects in Hexen and previous versions of ZDoom had to obey these restrictions:
They had to be simple, convex objects.
They could not leave the subsector they were spawned in.
You could not have more than one polyobject per subsector.
None of these restrictions apply anymore:
Polyobjects can be any crazy shape you want.
Polyobjects can move anywhere on the map without restriction.
You can have as many polyobjects in a subsector as you want. You can even have polyobjects inside polyobjects if you feel like it!
You can also have a polyobject cover as many subsectors as you want.
There are some other improvements as well, including:
Support for uncompressed extended nodes, also supported by Eternity Engine and PrBoom+, to create a new cross-port standard for node storage.
Support for using Byte Map Fonts.
Ability to use metadata tags in audio formats to define custom loop points.
Added support for the MUSINFO lump (from Risen3D and PrBoom+).
Improved compatibility settings to optionally allow a greater faithfulness to the vanilla Doom and vanilla Heretic.
ZMAPINFO as an alias for MAPINFO to avoid compatibility problems with other ports parsing this lump.
Full rewrite of the SBARINFO system allowing many additional features and options.
Added support for multi-monitor display.
Buddha mode (one undestructable hitpoint)
Default reverb environment setting in MAPINFO
Several generalized codepointers to emulate some very specific Heretic and Hexen action functions
Enhanced poison damage system
Generalized railgun codepointers
New automap options
HOM detection system
...and more
There were some bugs fixed in there, too.
http://zdoom.sourceforge.net/
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October 14th, 2010, 02:04 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15726.html
Commander Genius / CloneKeen Plus is an interpreter for the Commander Keen 1-3 Series for Windows (2000/XP/Vista) and Linux. CloneKeen Plus is based on CloneKeen.
Quote:
Commander Genius Release :
==========================
v0.3.2.3:
---------
- Now Game shouldn´t crash when playing music
- improved Vorticon physics
v0.3.2.2:
---------
- Music is now streamed
- Added tremor support
- Even better Sound support
- Several physic changes
- Keen now can walk in levels in Galaxy
- More mods are supported
v0.3.2.1:
---------
- more AI fixes
- Added support for mods which use the palette patch code
- 48 Khz is back again, after many months, but this time working correctly!
- better push and bump physics
- more of the Galaxy Engine. Keen now can walk on map.
- Added Cannon fire sound
- Added HUD Display, the one Chad had suggested
- Small memory issues fixed
- Improved memory management for foes.
- Keen 4 now works and can be played on map
- even faster and more Badass!
v0.3.2:
---------
- OpenGL improvements especially for iPhone!!
- Faster Game loads!
- Other segfault fixes!!
- Improved Mod support (Especially for Keen X and Yorphius II)
- Now HQ Sprites are supported!
- faster loading maps algorithm and less memory used
- more Galaxy Code!
- Code cleanups!
- Improved Patch-Code
- Improved Garg AI
- Improved Scrub AI
- Teleporter fixes
- Now enemies blink, when they get a hit
- Small improvement of the player physics
- New configuration file parser which makes loading and saving even faster!
v0.3.1.3:
---------
- Savegames are now separated per game
- bit more galaxy code
- fixed filename search problems
- even faster and more colourful menu
v0.3.1.2:
---------
- a bit faster and more colourful menu
v0.3.1.1:
---------
- Volume sliders
- Camera bounds config
- Older savegame compatibility... (to version 0.3.0.4)
http://clonekeenplus.sourceforge.net/
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October 14th, 2010, 02:05 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15727.html
Damnation of the Gods is an open source project that aims to provide a free Dungeon Master clone (released under the GPL).
Quote:
CHANGES:
--------
0.43.1
----------------------
* More fixes to carried weight
* Made GLEW a requirement (I am considering making DotG require OpenGL 2.0)
* Fixes to switching between windowed and fullscreen mode via ALT+Enter
* Added a loading meter
* Fixes to screen clearing
* Speed fixes
* Went to modern OpenGL implementations of stuff
0.43.0
----------------------
* SOUND! Began working on sound functionality, adding requirements on the
OpenAL and Alure libraries
* More work on player carried weight and mousehand item
* Fixes to Dungeon Effect
* Added Dungeon Debug info availible through F10
* Minor fixes to enemy code
* Changed keyboard shortcuts for loading map
* Fixed compatibility with more versions of the Dungeon graphics (Checking
for more filenames, and in more places.)
0.42.2
----------------------
* shared_ptr in character handler instead of ordinary pointers
* Fixes to Enemy handling
* Program icon
* added Dungeon Effect
* added a dungeon effect when resurrecting a character
* Fixed a bug in fileexists which would cause faulty behaviour on Windows XP
* Renamed the Resurrect class
* Fixed a problem in the Resurrect class where bones would disapper when
resurrecting a character just after another had been resurrected
0.42.1
----------------------
* Put Carriedweight into a class of its own
* Made SDL stuff easier to replace
* Fixed a bug in the fadebuttons
* Many fixes on MacOSX
* Fixes to storing clouds
* Fixed a font drawing bug
* Word-wrap and newline functionality in message panel
* New event system, less dependant on SDL
* Fixed reported weight on mouse-item
0.42.0
----------------------
* Fixed lots of stuff and made it compile on MacOSX
* Fixed warnings on MSVC
* Print version on main menu
* Fixed some path checks
* moved System.cpp|h to GraphicsLib
* Many many minor fixes
0.41.5.1
----------------------
* Fixed a problem with function naming (max,min) on MSVC.
0.41.5
----------------------
* Made the program build using MSVC too and fixed lots of warnings/problems
* Made GameStateHandler a Singleton too.
* Print version number in main menu and in infoPanel
* Fixed bug drawing text in Sleep gamestate
* Fixed a bug when a string length of zero caused problems.
0.41.4
----------------------
* Removed some output from stdout
* Fixed items dropped on character death
* Fixed returning event handled in PlayerPanel
* Other minor fixes
0.41.3
----------------------
* made source UTF-8.
* Removed FindLUA, which is included in later versions of CMake and thus not
necessary to distribute in DotG.
* finally fixed SDL.h including.
* Fixed bug related to console cursor flashing
0.41.2
----------------------
* Fixed package file rights
* Fixed paths
* Minor fixes
0.41.1
----------------------
* Fixed a bug where the mouseitem text wouldn´t disappear
* Implemented stairs properly
* Made map loading function through the event system instead of previous
implementation to solve scripting problems
* Made functionality to save items on floor to temporarys when loading
another map, for reloading when reloading map (in short - makes items
on floor not dissapear when loading a new map and reloading the old.)
* Made levers and doors save their "state" when leaving map and entering
again. (There is more to do with this though.)
* Made items drop correctly through stairs
* Made using --loadmap as cli-option function as it should (Just load
requested map on game start)
* Fixed crash when viewing the map via alt-M.
0.41
----------------------
* More door types
* Better source commenting
* Removed the checkmouse(Mouse*) methods and use stuff like
OnMouseLeftButtonPressed instead
* Made it possible to load a dungeon through the console and a load_map command
* Fixed a hard to find bug making the doors graphics non-loadable
* Fixed altars using for Player* instead of int in a faulty place which caused
a crash
* Made door types scriptable through map loading script
* Fixed a bug where mouseclicks wheren´t recognized if clicking on a
doorbutton, and then moving to another door and without moving the mouse
clicking again.
0.40.2
----------------------
* Completely implemented pit graphics
* Floorswitches added
* Small wallgrate added
* Drawing smallmap in two stages, fixing problems with levers and similar
items.
* Fixed ItemHandler shutdown not being called under some conditions
* Initing items in Lua instead of in C++
* Made ressurrection altar
* Fixed boost compile time problems
* renamed init_items.lua to item_helper.lua
0.40.1
----------------------
* Fixed minor log bug, printing current date to log instead of as previously
to std::cout
* Fixed memory leaks in the WallDecoration code
* Major valgrinding (memory leak fixing)
* Implemented CrackSwitch and Levers code
* Made it impossible to get an item from the righthand that just has been used
for an action.
* Began working on floor "decorations" (such as pits)
0.40
----------------------
* Added boost stuff
* Fixed memory leak when removing the map_to_load
* Clouds
* Flying items
* Major fixes / tweaks
0.32.1
----------------------
* Made the console get focus when activated
* Made it possible to step through console input history
* Changed everywhere to #include "SDL.h" instead of variants.
http://dotg.sourceforge.net/
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October 14th, 2010, 14:46 Posted By: wraggster
Microsoft has confirmed that its own corporate network has been hijacked and used to launch distributed denial of service attacks.
According to the Register, two IP addresses belonging to Microsoft were used to redirect traffic to websites belonging to a fraudulent online pharmacist and were detected as the source of a denial of service attack on the security website KrebsOnSecurity.
“We have completed our investigation and found that two misconfigured network hardware devices in a testing lab were compromised due to human error,†read Microsoft’s statement on the matter.
“Those devices have been removed and we can confirm that no customer data was compromised and no production systems were affected. We are taking steps to better ensure that testing lab hardware devices that are internet accessible are configured with proper security controls.â€
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/34913...twork-hijacked
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October 14th, 2010, 14:48 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard has attracted some ire in recent days as it came to light that players cheating in the single-player modes of StarCraft II had been banned alongside multiplayer miscreants in the recent cull.
The company has now clarified that it's taking no action against players using the built-in cheat codes for single-player, but that it has a zero tolerance policy on third-party hacks that can affect multiplayer competition, even if they're only used for solo play.
"It's important to point out first, that many of the third-party hacks and cheats developed for StarCraft II contain both single- and multiplayer functionality," a spokesman told IGN.
"In order to protect the integrity of multiplayer competition, we are actively detecting cheat programs used in multiplayer modes whether there are human opponents or not.
"Players who opt to use any type of third-party hacks do so at their own risk – there are already built-in cheat codes for StarCraft II single-player that can be used safely."
StarCraft II operates on Blizzard's new Battle.net platform, which requires players to be logged in and online for the majority of play options, whether single-player or multiplayer. "In addition to undermining the spirit of fair competition that's essential to play on Battle.net, cheating and hacking can lead to stability and performance issues with the service," Blizzard said in a statement when the bans were first announced.
There is a school of thought that any game with networked Achievements has an element of multiplayer competition even in single-player, and that using cheats or hacks to obtain these is unfair on other players. What do you think?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...bans-explained
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October 14th, 2010, 14:48 Posted By: wraggster
A fan made revision of 1996 PC shooter Duke Nukem 3D will be released after Duke Nukem license holder Gearbox Software gave the project approval.
Duke Nukem: Next-Gen, as it's called, is built upon Gears of War developer Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3.
The game will include a three episode single-player campaign and a full-fledged multiplayer component, and will be released free to all, according to a post on the official Gearbox forum.
"I contacted George Broussard and Scott Miller [of original Duke Nukem creator 3D Realms], to start a conversation about the project," project lead and level designer Frederik "Fresch" Schreiber explained.
"The shots managed to convince Scott Miller to a certain degree, but the project was only doable if Take-Two would approve it.
"Thinking that Gearbox might have a better relationship to Take-Two than 3D Realms, I contacted AdamF, who passed me through to PJ Putnam, vice president and general counsel of Gearbox Software.
"Luckily Gearbox was interested in supporting the project, which resulted in a personal non-commercial license to Duke Nukem." Boom.
DNNG will be released "when it's done", but fans will be able to play the "first official milestone release" – a multiplayer Duke match test - ahead of completion. Screens are below.
Gearbox is of course hard at work finishing up work on Duke Nukem Forever, set for release on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 next year.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...s-the-go-ahead
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October 14th, 2010, 23:59 Posted By: wraggster
Big Blizzard is always watching! Earlier this week, Cheat Happens reported one of its users was banned in StarCraft 2 after utilizing trainers in single player. Blizzard apparently had suspended his account for 14 days over "exploitative activity." The idea is that even though these trainers are being used in single player and against AI opponents, the effects of earning achievements alters the "prestige" of a player's online persona, a supposed Blizzard rep responded via an alleged email.
We contacted Blizzard ourselves for a bit of clarification on the matter and were given a statement, which you can read past the break.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/13/bl...your-own-risk/
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October 17th, 2010, 00:03 Posted By: wraggster
The StarCraft AI Competition announced last year has come to a conclusion. The competition received 28 bot submissions from universities and teams all over the world. The winner of the competition was UC Berkeley's submission, which executed a novel mutalisk micromanagement strategy. During the conference, a man versus machine exhibition match was held between the top ranking bot and a former World Cyber Games competitor. While the expert player was capable of defeating the best bot, less experienced players were not as successful. Complete results, bot releases, and replays are available at the competition website
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...tition-Results
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October 17th, 2010, 00:04 Posted By: wraggster
Just the other day, it was discussed here on Slashdot that Final Fantasy XIV was released into the world as a buggy, incomplete mess. Now, it's been announced that due to 'generous amounts of player feedback' that lots of changes are coming (honest!). And, as a result, anyone who registers their game before October 25th will have their 30-day trial upgraded to a 60-day trial. But will it be enough to keep the game from hemorrhaging players once the free trials end?
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...Damage-Control
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October 17th, 2010, 00:11 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard and SteelSeries' spent two years making the new World of Warcraft: Cataclysm MMO Gaming Mouse.
Apparently the slitted glowing design "evokes" the armour of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm villain Deathwing the Destroyer.
How much does it cost? €90.
But that's because it has 14 buttons, "fine tuned ergonomics", 16-million colour illumination options, four pulsation levels, up to 5040 DPI/CPI and a lift distance of up to 5mm. Incredible.
You can also store a WOW character profile directly to the mouse and a further nine in the software.
What's more, you get 2.5 metres of braided nylon cable with it.
SteelSeries' CEO Bruce Hawver said the new mouse was created using feedback from "thousands" of WOW players - "both Horde and Alliance".
"For two years, our R&D team worked hard with Blizzard Entertainment to incorporate the great feedback and to enhance the mouse technology and game integration," he said. The result is a "more comfortable, intuitive and ultimately better experience".
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-years-to-make
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October 17th, 2010, 00:15 Posted By: wraggster
A new StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty update has gone live, developer Blizzard has announced.
The main focus of the update, as revealed earlier this month, is rebalancing the game's three races, with the unfavoured Zerg in particular getting a little more muscle.
However, Blizzard has announced what else the update brings to its ridiculously successful RTS sequel.
Messaging when loading a saved game or replay from a previous version has been clarified, the amount of points earned and lost by random team participants has been tweaked to more accurately reflect teammates' strength and players will no longer receive achievement toasts while their status is set to 'Busy'.
The following bugs have also been addressed:
Fixed an issue where players could not cast the Feedback spell on Point Defense Drones.
Fixed an issue where the Phoenix would continue to channel Graviton Beam after the target died.
Fixed an issue that would cause Larvae to spawn and be hidden behind Zerg eggs.
Fixed an issue where players were unable to navigate to the Single Player page or watch replays after canceling map downloads from the queue.
Fixed a desync that could occur on user-created maps with custom mod dependencies.
Blizzard recently hinted that the next part of the StarCraft II saga – Heart of the Swarm - could see the light of day in early 2012. More concrete word might come out of Blizzcon, which takes place in Anaheim, California next week.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...date-goes-live
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October 17th, 2010, 01:42 Posted By: nglide
nGlide is a freeware Glide wrapper for Windows and DOS games. It allows you to play 3Dfx games on modern GeForce/Radeon graphics cards. Some of them are Diablo 2, Need for Speed 2-5, Carmageddon 2, Tomb Raider, Turok. Both versions of APIs are supported, Glide2 (glide2x.dll) and Glide3 (glide3x.dll). Glide wrapper also supports high resolution modes.
Changelog 0.94:
Glide2:
-added support for Clusterball
-added support for Dreams to Reality (with DOSBox + Gulikoza patch)
-added support for Independence War: Deluxe Edition
-added support for Interstate '76: Gold Edition
-added support for Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny
-added support for Lands of Lore 3
-added support for Metal Fatigue
-added support for Simon the Sorcerer 3D
-added support for Test Drive 4
-fixed Fleet Command 800x600 crash
-fixed King's Quest: Mask of Eternity 800x600 crash
Glide3:
-added support for Arabian Nights
-added support for Lander
-added TEXUMA extension for Glide64
Miscellaneous:
-added 'Refresh rate' option in nGlide configurator
-added 'Vertical synchronization' option in nGlide configurator
nGlide - Glide wrapper homepage
Thanks.
Zeus
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October 18th, 2010, 15:36 Posted By: wraggster
Facebook has been found to be supplying users personal information to advertisers and internet tracking companies.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the information has also included those users who chose Facebook’s maximum privacy settings, which constitutes a breach of Facebook’s own rules.
The information transmitted included browsing activity and friend lists allowing third party companies to build up a profile of the user for advertising purposes, a practice that is becoming a growing industry.
The practice is not limited to Facebook itself, three of the top ten app developers are also sharing user information, including Farmville developer Zynga, Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/34934...te-information
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October 18th, 2010, 15:40 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard is pursuing court action against a number of players alleged to have authored hacks for strategy title StarCraft II.
The developer has filed suit in the Los Angeles district court against two Canadian and one Peruvian individuals, claiming their cheat programs are in violation of the EULA and infringe copyright.
In the suit (as seen by GameSpot), Blizzard asserted that the multiplayer mode cheat apps were "designed to modify (and in fact destroy) the StarCraft II online game experience," and would in turn put consumers off buying the title.
"The harm to Blizzard from Defendants' conduct is immediate, massive and irreparable," the suit claimed. "By distributing the Hacks to the public, Defendants cause serious harm to the value of StarCraft II."
Like last year's successful injunction against the Glider bot-play program for World of Warcraft, the outcome of this case may come to define what is considered a safe, permissible cheat and what is an illegal hack.
Similarly, Blizzard is again claiming that these programs use and modify its game code: "When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II."
Blizzard is demanding damages and the surrender of any profits the hack creators have made, as well as withdrawing the hacks. The company had previously banned 5000 online players it claimed were using the programs in question.
The cheat creators are named in the suit as 'Permaphrost,' 'Cranix,' and 'Linuxawesome.'
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ckers-to-court
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October 18th, 2010, 15:41 Posted By: wraggster
Square Enix is extending the free to play trial period for its MMO Final Fantasy XIV Online after negative fan feedback highlighted a number of issues with the game's UI, systems and gameplay. The company plans to have fixed nearly all of the problems which fans were displeased about by late November.
FF XIV saw a disappointing reception from critics on release, only managing a 54 per cent metacritic average. Early adopters of the game who bought the advance release collector's edition were given a month of free access to servers - a period which will now be doubled thanks to the "current state of the game".
In a statement on the official website for the game, Square Enix staff were unequivocal in their admission of the improvements which fans deemed necessary.
"Since the official launch of service on September 30, 2010, we have received a wealth of constructive feedback from the Final Fantasy XIV community, and the development and management teams would like to take this opportunity to express their sincerest gratitude," read the post.
"For those who purchased the collector's edition and began to play one week before official service began, the month-long free play period is drawing to a close. Considering the nature of much of the feedback we received, however, and the current state of the game, we have decided to extend the free trial period for all users."
"We would like to assure players that the world of Final Fantasy XIV is constantly growing and evolving, and the voices of the community are essential to that process. The development and management teams are carefully considering all player feedback, and working diligently to implement whatever changes and additions will serve to make Eorzea a better home for adventurers. We humbly ask for your continued support to this end," Square Enix concluded.
Response on the game's forum has been mixed, with some expressing great praise that Square Enix would act so strongly on fan feedback, while others complain that the changes are too little, too late.
"While at first glance it appears they've addressed "pretty much everything" when you start to list off all the of major things that still need to be addressed, the list they're planning on addressing seems quite small," wrote one poster.
"If you have any experience with Square Enix you'd see that this is as close as they'll come to saying, 'Yeah, we screwed up. We're trying as best we can to listen to you guys and make this game enjoyable for everyone. Here's a free month as a token of our sincerity'," replied another.
Final Fantasy XIV Online is currently available for PC, with a PS3 release planned for March 2011. Full details of the changes planned and the extension of the free trial period are available on the official website.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...asy-xiv-online
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October 18th, 2010, 15:45 Posted By: wraggster
EA apparently has Dante's Inferno and Dead Space maker Visceral lined up to tackle the Command & Conquer licence.
The game is "pretty far out", Visceral Games label general manager Nick Earl told Gamasutra.
But the rest of the project remains, for now, under wraps.
Nick Earl is boss of action and strategy games at EA under the new Visceral Games label. This is part of EA's plan to make brands out of its successful studios.
"Regardless of which particular geography, everyone feels like they're part of one group. Think about the DICE brand as becoming a strong FPS brand with games like Battlefield, Bad Company 2, and with BioWare being a strong brand for RPGs - we're trying to do that inside the action space, where EA has not had a strong position for some time," Earl explained.
Will Visceral's Command & Conquer be an action game? There have been some before: you might remember the awful Command & Conquer: Renegade from 2002. More recently, EA had a shooter called Tibierum that was announced in 2007 and thrown in the bin in 2008.
Why? Tiberium wasn't good enough for Riccitiello's table. "It is confirmed that Tiberium has been cancelled, as the game was not on track to meet the high quality standards set by the team and the EA Games Label," the publisher said at the time.
Command & Conquer is renowned, first and foremost, for being a real-time strategy series. The Tiberium saga of whic was brought to a disappointing close earlier this year with Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight on PC.
For now, however, Visceral Games will concentrate on delivering Dead Space 2 on 28th January 2011. Expectations are high, both inside EA and out; Earl believes DS2 will elevate the Visceral "brand" to the "next level".
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...d-conquer-game
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October 18th, 2010, 15:46 Posted By: wraggster
It kills me to say this: The dream of Linux as a major desktop OS is now pretty much dead.Despite phenomenal security and stability--and amazing strides in usability, performance, and compatibility--Linux simply isn't catching on with desktop users. And if there ever was a chance for desktop Linux to succeed, that ship has long since sunk...Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large.
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/1...-Linux-Is-Dead
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October 18th, 2010, 18:50 Posted By: wraggster
Valve has revealed that Steam has now passed 30 million active users for Mac and PC, with the service offering more than 1200 games.
Over the past 12 months the service registered new user growth of 178 per cent, with peak simultaneous player numbers up to over three million, and six million unique gamers accessing Steam on a daily basis.
"Steam is on track to record the biggest year in its six year history," offered Gabe Newell, president of Valve.
"The year has marked major development advances to the platform with the introduction of support for Mac titles, the Steam Wallet and in-game item buying support, and more. We believe the growth in accounts, sales, and player numbers is completely tied to this work and we plan to continue to develop the platform to offer more marketing, sales, and design tools for developers and publishers of games and digital entertainment."
Sales were up over 200 per cent in the past 12 months, said Valve, highlighting six years of growth at over 100 per cent in terms of unit sales.
The Steamworks SDK has shipped in over 200 titles since release two years ago and the Steam Cloud has now surpassed 100 million files saved.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ctive-accounts
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October 18th, 2010, 19:15 Posted By: wraggster
Two Football Manager 2011 demos will be released this week. The first arrives on Steam on Thursday, the second for everyone on Friday.
The Steam "strawberry" demo will be playable in all languages and have 12 leagues: England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina and Chile.
The other "vanilla" demo will have two leagues: England and Scotland.
Both "strawberry" and "vanilla" will be available to download on Friday.
Why Steam? Sports Interactive boss Miles Jacobson anticipated your concern.
"Now that it's a PC and Mac distribution platform, everyone can get it via the system and it provides great download speeds. It will once again be one of the two options for installation for the boxed game (with lots of benefits) and is a system most of us here use without issue," he wrote on the SI forum.
"I've seen some posts on the forums that unfairly castigate Steam, such as blaming it for the activation issues regarding FM2009 - which were nothing to do with Steam but caused by a denial of service attack on Uniloc's servers - or blaming a bug in the game on Steam. A bug in the game is a bug in the game, and nothing to do with Steam at all."
Football Manager 2011 arrives with few headline alterations but plenty of "sizzling nuggets of potential". "If there's one word that best sums up Football Manager 2011's strides this year, it's communication," wrote Martin Korda for Eurogamer in his hands-on preview earlier this month.
"The tweaks and polishes look as though they could add up to an embellished, clearer, deeper and more rewarding experience than FM2010."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...r-11-this-week
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October 18th, 2010, 19:16 Posted By: wraggster
How can you try DJ Hero 2 without a turntable peripheral and a console? By going to the DJ Hero website on your PC and playing a specially crafted mini-game. That's how.
You'll be asked to do three things: press a mouse button when the little circled notes travel past you; press either the left or right arrow keys (or A or D keys) in the direction the coloured line bends; and hold the mouse button down and run the mouse backwards and forwards to scratch.
I played Lady Gaga Ft. Colby O'Donis versus Deadmaus and scored 1245. Can you beat me? Unlikely.
The mini-game isn't quite DJ Hero 2 - due out 29th October - but the demo should give you a good idea of the funky music on offer and the game's controls.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...o-2-online-now
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October 18th, 2010, 21:39 Posted By: wraggster
Anyone purchasing the impending Back to the Future trilogy Blu-ray will receive a code allowing you to download the first episode of Telltale's forthcoming game tie-in for free.
According to Joystiq, an insert in the Blu-ray pack lists a URL where you can redeem the code. The address currently just sends you to the game's homepage.
There's a twist though. The code – 121GIGAWATTS – does not appear to be unique, suggesting anyone can take advantage of the offer, irrespective of whether they purchased the Blu-ray or not.
We've followed up with Telltale for clarification and to find out whether the offer will extend outside of the US.
The Sam & Max developer also recently announced that it has a Jurassic Park game in the offing.
Telltale's Back to the Future game is due for Mac and PC later this year, while the Blu-ray set of the three movies is out on 25th October.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...e-with-blu-ray
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October 18th, 2010, 21:43 Posted By: wraggster
While we're waiting patiently on Forever, there's some real news in the Duke Nukem realm. Ars Technica has a story about a fan-made Duke 3D project on Unreal Engine 3. There's an awesome demo video up on YouTube. Created by hardcore fan Frederick 'fresch' Schreiber, we can hopefully expect to see an upgraded Duke 3D in the near future."
The article also notes, "Gearbox ultimately decided to support the project, and gave Schreiber a personal, non-commercial license to Duke Nukem 3D. He can't sell the work or profit from it directly, but he can use the characters and design of the game without fear of being shut down.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...nreal-Engine-3
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October 20th, 2010, 01:06 Posted By: wraggster
Newly released
Over 2 million Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines wear the uniform. Of those, approximately 50 thousand fall under the direct control of the Special Operations Command. The Tier 1 Operator functions on a plane of existence above and beyond even the most highly trained Special Operations Forces. Their exact numbers, while classified, hover in the low hundreds. They are living, breathing, precision instruments of war. They are experts in the application of violence. The new Medal of Honor is inspired by and has been developed with Tier 1 Operators from this elite community. You will step into the boots of these warriors and apply their unique skill sets to a new enemy in the most unforgiving and hostile battlefield conditions of present day Afghanistan.
http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-3o2r.html
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October 20th, 2010, 01:07 Posted By: wraggster
Newly released
features•4-player co-op action: Team up to battle the giant Akrid in explosive 4 player co-operative play. Teamwork is the player’s key to victory
•Deep level of character customization: Players will have hundreds of different ways to customize their look to truly help them define their character on the battlefield both on- and offline. Certain weapons can also be customized to suit individual player style
•Beautiful massive environments: Capcom’s advanced graphics engine, MT Framework 2.0, will bring the game to life with the next step in 3D fidelity and performance
•Massive scale of enemies: Players skill on the battlefield and work as a team will be tested like never before against the giant Akrid. Players will utilize teamwork tactics, new weapons and a variety of vital suits (VS) to fight these larger-than-life bosses
•Exciting new VS features- Based on fan feedback, the team has implemented an unbelievable variety of Vital Suits and new ways to combat VS overall . The new VS sytem will have a powerful impact on the way the player takes to the war zone in Lost Planet 2
descriptionA decade has passed since the first game, and the face of E.D.N. III has changed dramatically. Terraforming efforts have been successful and the ice has begun to melt, giving way to lush tropical jungles and harsh unforgiving deserts. Players will enter this new environment and follow the exploits of their own customized snow pirate on their quest to seize control of the changing planet.
Players will control their heroes across 6 interconnected episodes, creating a truly unique interactive experience that changes depending upon the actions of the players involved. With this concept, players will have the opportunity to engage in the story in a much more dynamic way as plot threads evolve from different players’ perspectives.
Beyond the deep single player mode, Lost Planet 2 is loaded
with extensive multiplayer modes. The intense and action packed campaign mode comes with the ability to form teams of up to 4 players online to clear mission objectives with friends. The grappling hooks that made the gameplay in Lost Planet a true 3-D experience are back, allowing gamers to gain tactical advantage by quickly scaling buildings.
No action game would be complete without an arsenal of weaponry, and Lost Planet 2 has a huge variety of hardware for players to unleash on unsuspecting enemies. Machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers, lasers, sniper rifles, grenades and a host of other weapons are scattered across the game. However, Lost Planet 2’s biggest weapons come on two legs: the heavily armed and armored robotic Vital Suits return in greater numbers and variety than the first game. There are VS that transform into other vehicles, hold up to three players and some that even take multiple players to operate.
http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-3zxh.html
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October 20th, 2010, 01:35 Posted By: wraggster
The minimum specs required to run Call of Duty: Black Ops on a PC have blown their cover and are out in the open.
According to online retailer Direct2Drive, you'll need:
OS: Windows Vista/XP/7
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X3 8750 or better
Memory: 2GB
HDD: 12GB
Video: Shader 3.0 or better 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT/ATI Radeon X1950Pro or better
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Call of Duty: Black Ops launches on DS, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 on 9th November.
If early pre-order figures are an accurate barometer, it's going to sell by the lorry load.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...specs-released
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October 20th, 2010, 01:41 Posted By: wraggster
The delay of the free-to-play Lord of the Rings Online update is down to "contractual issues", publisher Codemasters has confirmed.
Back in September, Codemasters claimed the update, which launched in the US last month, had been held back for last minute polish. It seems that's not quite the case.
According to Massively, Codemasters' general manager David Solari today posted a statement on the game's EU forums.
"As many of you correctly surmised, the issues have been contractual rather than technical. As they were contractual issues, we are bound by confidentiality and you will understand that I can't give you any further detail.
"Unfortunately a contract was required in order to go free-to-play and this has taken much longer to conclude than expected. The good news is that the contractual issues have been resolved and we are on the home stretch."
Solari added, "I can't give an exact date at this time as there is still some preparatory work to do, but rest assured everyone involved is giving 100 per cent to bring Free-to-Play to Europe, and there will be more definitive information hopefully later this week."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...elay-explained
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October 20th, 2010, 02:00 Posted By: wraggster
Newly released
ArcaniA - A Gothic Tale is set in a rich world that invites the player to explore all of its innumerable attractions and details. Different climate zones, abundant flora and fauna, subterranean vaults, and cities and castles with unique architecture await the adventurous player. Clouds darken the skies, weather effects such as wind and heavy rain influence the game world, keeping it endlessly fascinating with its amazing graphics, day and night cycles, and a stunning display of light and shadow. Wonderfully atmospheric music and top-of-the-line sound effects create a truly immersive playing environment. A multitude of entertaining and challenging quests, challenging combat, mysterious NPC characters and a sophisticated plot guarantee many hours of highly entertaining gameplay. The Southern Islands await!
http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-3nud.html
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October 20th, 2010, 03:00 Posted By: wraggster
Newly released
features•Not even nuclear fallout could slow the hustle of Sin City. Explore the vast expanses of the desert wastelands – from the small towns dotting the Mojave Wasteland to the bright lights of the New Vegas strip. See the Great Southwest as could only be imagined in Fallout
•A war is brewing between rival factions with consequences that will change the lives of all the inhabitants of New Vegas. The choices you make will bring you into contact with countless characters, creatures, allies, and foes, and determine the final explosive outcome of this epic power struggle
•Enjoy new additions to Fallout: New Vegas such as a Companion Wheel that streamlines directing your companions, a Reputation System that tracks the consequences of your actions, and the aptly titled Hardcore Mode to separate the meek from the mighty. Special melee combat moves have been added to bring new meaning to the phrase “up close and personalâ€. Use V.A.T.S. to pause time in combat, target specific enemy body parts and queue up attacks, or get right to the action using the finely-tuned real-time combat mechanics
•With double the amount of weapons found in Fallout 3, you’ll have more than enough new and exciting ways to deal with the threats of the wasteland and the locals. In addition, Vault-Tec engineers have devised a new weapons configuration system that lets you tinker with your toys and see the modifications you make in real time
•In a huge, open world with unlimited options you can see the sights, choose sides, or go it alone. Peacemaker or Hard Case, House Rules, or the Wild Card - it’s all in how you play the game
descriptionExplore the treacherous wastes of the Great Southwest from the safety and comfort of your very own vault: Meet new people, confront terrifying creatures, and arm yourself with the latest high-tech weaponry in a thrilling journey across the Mojave Wasteland. A word of warning, however - while Vault-Tec engineers have prepared for every contingency, in Vegas, fortunes can change in an instant. Enjoy your stay.
http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-3enn.html
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October 20th, 2010, 14:44 Posted By: wraggster
Hard drive manufacturer Western Digital has announced that it has begun shipping the world's largest capacity internal hard drive, the 3TB WD Caviar Green.
The new drive crams 750GB-per-platter onto the drive using WD 'Advanced Format' technology. The WD Caviar Green drives are also an 'eco-friendly storage solution' the company claimed, pointing to reductions in power consumption leading to a reduction in operating temperature, increased reliability and lower noise.
WD said that the new WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB and 3 TB hard drives are “designed for use as secondary external storage and next-generation PC storage in 64-bit-based systems.†The 2.19 TB capacity barrier is being tacked by the company by bundling an AHCI host adaptor which provides large drive support. WD have an information page about large capacity drives.
“WD remains a leader of hard drive capacity and low power innovation. With our WD Caviar Green drives, we enable energy-conscious customers to build systems with the highest capacities that deliver the optimal balance of system performance, ensured reliability and energy conservation,†said WD client systems storage boss Jim Morris.
The WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB hard drives (model number WD25EZRSDTL) and 3 TB hard drives (model number WD30EZRSDTL) are available now in the US, priced at $189 for the 2.5TB unit and $230 for the 3TB model. The drives are covered by a three-year warranty.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/34947...nal-hard-drive
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October 20th, 2010, 15:23 Posted By: wraggster
One of the forthcoming versions of the best PC-with-DOS emulator out there should include a very important architectural novelty, ie the software implementation of the historical Voodoo Graphics chipset created by 3dfx Interactive in the Nineties. "Kekko", the programmer working on the project with the aid of the DOSBox crew and the coding-capable VOGONS users, says that his aim is the complete and faithful emulation of SST-1, the first Voodoo chipset marketed in 1996 inside the first 3D graphics accelerated cards on the PC.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...ming-To-DOSBox
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October 20th, 2010, 23:46 Posted By: wraggster
Google on Tuesday released a new stable version of its internet browser, Chrome 7. The latest update is part of Google's promise in July to release a new stable version of Chrome about every six weeks. Chrome 7 comes with hundreds of bug fixes, an updated HTML5 parser, the File API, and directory upload via input tag. It is available in the stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux. 'The main focus was the hundreds of bug fixes,' Jeff Chang, a Google product manager, wrote in a blog post.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10...s-Out-Chrome-7
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October 21st, 2010, 01:47 Posted By: wraggster
PC users are set to be the lucky recipients of a Medal of Honor patch, developer Danger Close has announced.
The studio made the announcement on its blog, stating, "We have been working on the feedback from the forums that you posted during the PC beta. We are listening to your major concerns and are pleased to show you the change/fix list."
The list, which you can see in full below, includes a number of weapon and control tweaks, as well as various bug fixes.
No announcement has yet been made regarding updates for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 versions of the game.
However, publisher EA did recently reveal that free multiplayer DLC was incoming, off the back of impressive sales of the shooter. The franchise reboot apparently shifted 1.5 million copies in its first week on shelves.
Danger Close's patch hasn't been dated yet, but the multiplayer DLC goes live on 2nd November.
GENERAL
Fixed the scenario when joining a friend on a password protected server caused a hang
Ribbons and medals appear on unranked servers
Jumping and shooting at the same time now affects the ability to be accurate with the weapons
Added aiming spot in binoculars in hardcore mode
Holding your breath and moving forward no longer takes you out of scope
Increased the points needed to win a Domination/TDM game (Increased TDM score from 1200 to 1400 points; increased Sector Control score from 1800 to 2600 points)
Decreased accuracy while shooting from the hip
Cut points from score chain rewards in half
Addressed the sniper rifle damage to bring the sniper rifle more in line with the other kits
Increased the amount of recoil and spread
Changed immortal time to 1.9 from 1.6 seconds after spawn to prevent the scenario of spawning in the open only to be shot on spawn in
WEAPONS
Assault Rifles
Increased recoil
Deviation
Increased deviation when not zooming
Deviation bug fixed (increased while shooting)
Lowered close range damage
Jumping deviation increased
Carbines
Increased recoil
Deviation
Increased deviation when not zooming
Deviation increses faster than assault rifles
Deviation bug fixed (increased while shooting)
Jumping deviation increased
Sniper rifles
Headshot does the most damage
Less damage from bolt action
2 shots to kill on body from long range
1 shot on body from short range
Normal: 8m
Ammo 2: 10m
Range: 9.6m
Increased recoil on semi-automatic
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ets-patched-up
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October 21st, 2010, 14:34 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15753.html
D2X-XL is an OpenGL-port of Descent II. Supported platforms are Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Quote:
v1.15.94
Fixed: Thrusters weren´t rendered when glow was set to standard
Fixed: Rendering damage lighting with glow resulted in a messed up image
v1.15.93
Fixed: The program could crash or hang when loading a level that only contained robot and no geometry triggers
New: Added support for rain and snow particles effects
New: Added new textures and sounds for rain and snow particle effects (find them in d2x-xl-data-1.15.93.7z)
http://www.descent2.de/
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October 21st, 2010, 14:35 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15755.html
Dynamic Designs have updated their English translation of the Japanese turn-based strategy RPG "Feda: The Emblem of Justice".
Quote:
V1.02 includes significant additional character development by Taskforce, as well as some formatting adjustments, and it also adds some input from Red Soul, who we recruited into Stealth/Magic Destiny to assist with the Mystic Ark project. Later, we invited Red Soul to become a core member of our renamed organization, Dynamic Designs. V1.02 also incorporates a few small typo edits based upon feedback from players.
http://www.dynamic-designs.us/
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October 21st, 2010, 16:04 Posted By: wraggster
Facebook users play games on the social network for a massive 927 million collective hours per month, according to estimates from All Facebook.
Detailing some of Facebook's most impressive gaming statistics, the site suggests that 50 per cent of all Facebook log-ins are to play games.
Of the 265 million gamers on Facebook, 69 per cent are women, 19 per cent say that they're addicted, and 20 per cent have paid cash for "in-game benefits".
Those Facebook addicts had better watch their backs though. Yesterday we reported on Facebook's top game developer being hit with a class action lawsuit over allegations that it shared the personal information of millions of Americans with internet tracking companies.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS
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October 21st, 2010, 23:46 Posted By: wraggster
World of Warcraft and StarCraft II creator Blizzard's recent kafuffle with its fans over the use of Real ID in its forums has taught it a valuable lesson: gamers like anonymity because it ties into their desire to suspend reality.
"That's been a very interesting thing for us to wrap our heads around at Blizzard," Battle.net project director Greg Canessa told Gamasutra.
Weeks before StarCraft II was released Blizzard about-turned on its plan to force gamers to use their real names when posting in its forum.
Real ID, as it's called, stores real first names and surnames so that other people can befriend gamers across multiple titles and recognise their real-life friends.
Canessa said Blizzard was "surprised" by the controversy Real ID sparked, and highlighted the disparity between gamers' desire for anonymity and what people are willing to divulge on social networking sites like Facebook.
Being "someone else" is actually part of the gameplay, and just because people are okay with being open about their identities on Facebook, that openness doesn't necessarily translate to games.
"I think it's an interesting sociological phenomenon that you have, in which people are completely comfortable putting their name, face, kids, wife and personal information out there for the world to see in Facebook, yet they're not willing to do, in some cases, similar things in the game space," he said.
"We were a little surprised by the controversy [about requiring real names on forums], mostly because it was kind of wag the dog. It was not where our focus was [for Real ID]."
The focus, rather, is on Blizzard's branding for community features that use real names as a basis for an in-game social suite that includes cross-game chat and Real ID friend discovery.
"That part was really, really positive, and that's where the Battle.net team has been focused," Canessa said.
"The forum stuff was kind of a side thing. The forums aren't that big of a deal relative to Blizzard's overall business. And so we were a little surprised. ... [But] we listen to our community. They didn't like it, and we quickly moved off of it."
StarCraft II was aces. Oli gave it 9/10 in his review.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...spends-reality
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October 21st, 2010, 23:51 Posted By: wraggster
Can you believe it's only been a year since Windows 7 hit the market? So much has happened in the interim, we could swear it's been a decade. Of course, Microsoft is celebrating Windows 7's birthday the best way it knows how: sales numbers. Turns out the little OS has done pretty well for itself, with 240 million licenses sold, giving it a 17 percent global operating system market share, and making it a healthy chunk of the 1.2 billion Windows PCs out there. As for the slow-to-adopt businesses out there, Microsoft still has some work to do, but it says 90 percent of companies have upgraded or "started their move" to 7. So, we've got the cold hard facts out of the way, any precious, personal, heartfelt memories of your time with the OS you'd like to share? We've got dibs on Steve Ballmer dropping by the Engadget Show on launch week.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/21/w...ts-first-year/
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October 22nd, 2010, 01:10 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15767.html
A new version of ReactOS has been released. It is an effort to create a free software replacement for Microsoft Windows (TM) that is compatible with existing hardware and software!
Quote:
ReactOS 0.3.12 Released
The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of ReactOS 0.3.12.
This is a huge release for the team, not just with regards to the number of improvements which this release holds but in terms of the leap forward architecturally, stability wise and in bringing some of the more modern aspects of the NT kernel into ReactOS.
It´s been almost a year since the last release and whilst this is understandably excessive, it was required to stabilize the OS due to the nature of the work which was undertaken. Focus at the start of this release was on a single area, the trap handler mechanism, which resulted in a complete rewrite of this area. This brought with it the need for more changes which escalated into many areas getting an overhaul and many new technologies being developed and brought into the core. What resulted from this was a vastly more modern kernel containing code which had been exercised significantly less than the code it replaced. This triggered a large testing phase to bring the stability and compatibility to levels above that of the previous code.
During the preparation of this release, 259 bugs were fixed, including 61 regressions some of which originated from ReactOS 0.3.7. Ten of those bugs are more than 3 years old, with the oldest fixed bug being #969 (5 years old).
A heavily cut down list of some of the more major changes which have been going on in the past year is as follows:
Memory Manager - The memory manager continued to see much work as the ARM team replaced each component piece by piece whilst also maintaining the functionality of the old manager. Although 0.3.12 does not completely switch over to the new manager, what is obvious are the speed, stability and compatibility improvements of this new model.
NMI support - ReactOS can now handle NMIs with a Red Screen of Death, useful for capturing hardware errors detected by the CPU or Bus. Additionally, support for 3rd party NMI callbacks has been implemented, which is useful for certain server systems. Finally, support for generating a crash dump during an NMI is partly implemented, which can help when a machine is frozen or hung and an external NMI dump switch is used.
Trap Handler Rewrite - Almost all CPU faults, trap, exception, and system call code is now written in C instead of Assembly. Many legacy and/or deprecated code paths have been disabled and performance-heavy debugging paths disabled by default. Additionally, the x64 and ARM ports now share much more of this code. Finally, the code is much cleaner and can take advantage of compiler optimizations to generate the best possible code for the CPU instead of writing hand-crafted assembly that was specific only to certain CPU models. Work is ongoing to remove even more of the last remaining Assembly routines.
EMS - Support for Emergency Management System (or Headless) has been partially implemented. The boot flags documented by Microsoft are supported, and certain debug output is sent to the serial port as expected. Work is ongoing to provide the EMS logging capabilities and to move the existing legacy KDBG debugger over EMS. SAC (Special Administration Console) driver work is also in progress to compliment this.
PnP Compatibility - Various improvements have been done to increase hardware support and support for loading 3rd party drivers.
ACPI Improvements - The ARM team has implemented the basic drivers required for supporting batteries and 3rd party UPS/battery drivers, including support for the ACPI Composite Battery specification. This support is not currently enabled in this release because ACPI is still undergoing work.
New PCI-X driver - The ARM team has been slowly working on the new PCI bus driver. Previously, ReactOS was using a very simple and mostly stubbed PCI bus driver which lacked support for many real-world PCI bus features, PCI-to-PCI bridges etc. With this new driver, compatibility on real hardware, not just virtual machines, should improve significantly, along with performance.
SxS support – Side-by-side code was added, along with loading and finding manifest files. It’s an important step forward to be compatible with modern applications which use this technology.
Pool Corruption Fixes - Perhaps the most serious of these suspected leaks were fixed thanks to combined efforts of key ReactOS developers utilising advanced methods including a customized version of QEMU virtual machine.
Timer and message handling rewrite - Incorrect handling of non-queued messages led to deadlocks in some applications which the message handling rewrite resolved. The timer implementation rewrite is also completed by this release which fixes many timer-related problems, most known is the “need to move mouse in order to download in FireFoxâ€.
x64 build - While the x64 port is still in an early stage regarding the functioning of the kernel, most of the generic compilation issues are resolved and necessary core functionality implemented. These efforts have been merged back into trunk, so that trunk can be compiled for x64 target. With the help of automatic builds, possible breakages can now quickly be detected and resolved. Don´t expect it to boot to GUI though!
The changelog for 0.3.12 is also markedly different from previous releases, with an emphasis on conveying an understandable and concise summary of major changes in the release. Thus instead of duplicating that summary here, we invite you to peruse its contents and see what has been accomplished.
Whilst the ReactOS team has still been attending many public events and conferences in various different countries, we’ve been out of the news due to what may appear as a quiet patch or a lull in activity. We hope this release will go some way to show that we’ve been busier than ever behind the scenes.
http://www.reactos.org/de/index.html
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October 22nd, 2010, 01:44 Posted By: wraggster
Age of Conan executive producer Craig Morrison has written an interesting article on the inclusion of voiced stories and cut-scenes in MMOs. The upshot: "more isn't always better".
It's why people have "reservations" about a game like Star Wars: The Old Republic, he alleged - a game in which story is "so integral". And what a time BioWare's MMO has had of late.
Morrison believes character progression has always been the "bedrock" of what is expected from an MMO. You earn experience, you level up.
Today's upswing in storytelling is great, Morrison wrote, as long as it doesn't "interfere".
"Sometimes a player just wants to progress, and they will be frustrated if you don't help make that experience smooth.
"The best cut-scene in the world won't help if the player really wants to be hitting something with a stick when you decide to show it to them.
"Why," he rhetorically asked, "was a 'skip quest text' the first GUI modification to be written for World of Warcraft, for example?"
Morrison witnessed game makers put this down player personality and "blame the culture of immediacy and short attention spans" that are "prevalent" today. Worse, the designers tried to "forcibly" alter player behaviour.
But, he countered: "This doesn't mean an MMO player can't appreciate a good story element ... [or story] be an important factor in the entertainment provided by a quest or encounter in an MMO.
"Sometimes players want, dare I say need, to be given some more dynamic and interesting experiences as well.
"It just has to be at the right moment," he wrote.
The "key" is to put story elements at non-disruptive junctures in gameplay; at "lulls" in your motivation to progress a character. Typically these are before a quest starts and then when it ends.
"I really like the sequences in Aion, or the World of Warcraft expansions where you get cut-scenes or intros to an area the first time you visit it. Those are good examples of smart use of that kind of sequence," Morrison shared.
"Those lulls are the perfect point at which to energise the experience with better cut-scenes or voice work."
Morrison asked that even if the resources were available to voice a cut-scene for every step of a quest, should you use them? "Is it really any better just because you voiced the NPC?"
"More isn't always better," he declared. "The smart use of resources can often actually create a more compelling game-play experience."
Morrison believes there are "numerous" other "more intuitive ways" of getting a story across, too.
"Text pop-ups, item descriptions, brief cut-scenes or boss quotes - a designer has a lot of options here," Morrison wrote.
"Don't make the player run back and forth between NPCs purely for a stage of the quests to update. Don't be afraid to have the quest unfold before the player and have them propel it forward."
He has always felt running back-and-forth between dawdling NPCs was "counter intuitive" to the idea of being a hero.
Morrison closed with: "The desire of the designer to entertain and lead a player on a journey will always be slightly at odds with some of the motivations that players find in MMO gameplay.
"All too often I hear designers say, 'I want the player to do...,' when what we should be saying is, 'I want the player to want to do...' That's a difference worth bearing in mind."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...re-isnt-better
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October 22nd, 2010, 21:01 Posted By: wraggster
Royalties from the new in-game user-created content store in Valve's multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 have approached $50,000 for some players.
Five modders, who won a competition to have their creations featured, earned five-figure sums from the in-game Mann Co. Store - which opened just a fortnight ago.
Creators keep 25 per cent of all item sales, with the rest going to Valve. The highest-revealed royalty payment to date is $47,000, meaning Valve would have taken approximately $140,000 from the sales of just one modder's content.
"It was completely mind-blowing, the size of the return that we're getting on these things," modder Spencer Kern, one of the top two earners so far, told Gamasutra.
Valve flew Kern and another player, Steven Skidmore, to its office to present them with their money first-hand, as payments had exceed Paypal's permissible limits.
Said Valve boss Gabe Newell, "It benefits us because it grows the community, right? These [content creators] benefit, but we benefit too.
"Once people realise this is about their community, and that the right people are getting the benefits... after a while, they'll say, 'This is really how these kinds of communities need to work.'"
Valve will also sell its own content on the store, but plans to significantly extend the range of amateur contributions. Prices for items currently range from less than a dollar to $17.50.
"What you really want to do is create per-person pricing, or per-person monetisation or per-person ways of creating value," said Newell. "In a sense, asking 'could you support a game entirely with just this as a monetisation model?' - you could."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...modders-USD50k
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October 22nd, 2010, 21:08 Posted By: wraggster
Activision's announced that the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops will include full Steamworks support.
The FPS - which is now available for pre-purchase on Steam - will leverage Steamworks' Auto-Updating, Achievements, and more, says Activision, as well as support for Steamworks Cloud technology.
"We are delighted to be delivering the year's most anticipated title with Black Ops to PC gamers around the world," said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve.
"We've collaborated with the development team to leverage the Steamworks suite of services to deliver the highest level of service to Call of Duty: Black Ops PC customers."
Mark Lamia, president of Treyarch added: "Steam has been a great partner throughout development of Black Ops. We're working closely together to take full advantage of Steamworks to ensure we deliver the most polished and secure PC experience that our community deserves."
Black Ops is out on November 9.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS
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October 22nd, 2010, 21:10 Posted By: wraggster
Microsoft will be selling PC games on demand via the new Games for Windows Marketplace, starting November 15.
As well as a store redesign, the company is also refocusing their content offering to include indie titles. Microsoft already has a dedicated console portal for indie games in the form of Xbox Live Indie Games. Some titles have even made the switch from the indie circuit to Xbox Live Marketplace, as was the case for The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai which began life as a hobbyist XNA project.
The service will primarily carry the latest PC releases. Titles such as Lego Universe and CarneyVale will arrive on GfW Marketplace at the same time and date they hit retail stores.
The store has been updated to be faster and easier to navigate. Microsoft is looking to make digitally distributed PC games more attractive with new purchase incentives, like a Deal of the Week and other seasonal offers that have been successful on Xbox Live.
“With Games for Windows Marketplace, we set out to create a digital store built for PC gamers end-to-end,†said Kevin Unangst, Microsoft’s senior global director, PC and mobile gaming. “And by integrating with our existing Xbox Live and Windows Live services, we’ve made it easier than ever for millions of gamers to see for themselves how easy buying PC games can be.â€
http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/306...ws-Marketplace
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October 22nd, 2010, 21:13 Posted By: wraggster
Minecraft has fallen victim to a distributed denial of service attack according to creator Markus Persson, although the developer is at a loss to explain why.
"Denial of Service means you occupy certain resources for a long period of time, making other people not able to use them. A real world example would be running up to the cashier at a super market and paying in small coins, counting every single one really slowly, then finding out at the end you didn't have enough in the first place," Persson, who goes by the name Notch, wrote on his site.
"As to why minecraft.net is being targeted, I'm not sure."
In a later update Persson said he had signed up for a DDOS protection service and upgraded his server.
According to a post on 4chan (thanks Kotaku), the attack may have been organised by fans of the game angry at a lack of updates. Persson had recently slowed development in order to set up an office and hire staff.
"Coding wise, I'm officially behind schedule now, but I fully intend to deliver," Persson wrote this week. "My schedule is clearing up nicely, and I'm learning to say 'no' to people who want to talk to me. I just blame it on having an important update to do."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...by-ddos-attack
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October 22nd, 2010, 21:13 Posted By: wraggster
Battlefield developer DICE has promised the third instalment in the series will be just as enjoyable on PC as it is on consoles.
Posting on the EA forum, designer Alan Kerz acknowledged, "PC players have a fear that BF3 will be 'consolized'.
"PC players have their own set of requirements... Anything that feels like it might have been "ported" from a console is going to get flamed hard," he wrote. "It's a damn sight harder to please a PC player, they have higher expectations."
But Kerz reckons DICE is up to the job. "Battlefield 3 needs an extra bit of special attention on the PC. I intend to give it that attention, tradition and our community demand it."
So what does that mean in real terms? Well, for starters they have been fiddling with the controls to make sure shooting guns is just as much fun in the PC game as it is in the console versions.
"In response to the feedback on PC, I completely retweaked the accuracy," said Kerz. "The next playtest it was immediately obvious that it was a change for the better, and surprisingly it also made gamepads feel much better as well.
"Fundamentally I think it is an error to have different core gameplay on console vs PCs. PC gives a player more input control and if a gun feels good on PC it feels good on console. I won't "dumb it down" by lowering the recoil or changing the damage model or other such silliness."
There will be other similarities between the versions, pledged Kerz, such as epic, sprawling battlefields, tight infantry fights, balanced weapons, good teamplay and a rewarding progression system.
Little else is known about Battlefield 3 so far - EA hasn't even announced a release date. Here's hoping we find out more soon.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-as-good-on-pc
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October 22nd, 2010, 21:15 Posted By: wraggster
Long-in development MMO Fallout Online will launch in the second half of 2012, Interplay has promised.
In an interview with Edge magazine Interplay president Eric Caen said 2012 will also see a Fallout Online beta.
Caen's comments will no doubt reassure fans troubled by the legal dispute between Interplay and Fallout 3 creator Bethesda over the game.
As the tussle continues, we've still not seen an actual screenshot or video from Fallout Online.
The company has so far refrained from showing much from the game because "anything we show will help Bethesda in their fight", Caen said.
"I can't say too much. What I can say is that everyone who is registered is getting a newsletter every five or six weeks.
"The content is not a typical newsletter with a lot of technical information; it's letters from NPCs about what they're experiencing. We're giving a lot of hints about the future of the game. We have a beta scheduled for 2012, with the commercial launch in the second half of 2012.
"We have 90 people working on it. Even in January 2009, you were already able to move across the world." Caen also commented on Bethesda's Fallout 3.
"What I can say is that of course we're playing what Bethesda is doing. We appreciate some portions of it, and we're not necessarily fans of everything. I think they miss a lot of the humour, and the fans seem to agree with that.
"Fallout 3 was a little bit too serious – that's definitely not where we're going. Our Fallout MMOG will be extremely funny. At the same time, an MMOG must be a lot deeper than a standalone game. It's not a shooting game we're making. You can shoot, but it's a very small portion of the game. The game itself is about reconstructing the world.
"What is unique about our project is how we're trying to get it into many communication systems. This is a big problem for World of Warcraft, because the fantasy universe is not compatible with modern communication systems. It would be odd to receive an SMS from a troll. But in a post-apocalyptic world..."
Interplay plans to have a million subscribers, Caen revealed.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...launch-in-2012
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October 22nd, 2010, 21:17 Posted By: wraggster
Microsoft just announced that its new Games for Windows Marketplace online PC games store will launch on November 15th. Think Steam, but not quite. The store offers online web access from anywhere and features fast purchase and download turnarounds to accelerate the time to game play; discounted games; and game search by title, genre or publisher. Games for Windows Marketplace is integrated with Microsoft's existing Xbox LIVE and Windows Live services and will launch with over 100 titles including "Fable: The Lost Chapters" and "Grand Theft Auto III." Anyone with a Windows Live ID can login.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/22/m...in-your-brows/
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October 22nd, 2010, 23:24 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard kicked off Blizzcon 2010 today with the announcement of Diablo 3’s fifth and final class – the Demon Hunter. The class uses crossbows, bolas, traps, and other gadgets to rid the land of Diablo’s evil minions. Blizzard also unveiled a major new feature for Diablo 3 – PvP Arena Battles. Players can join solo or in groups to take on other players through the Battle.net matchmaking service. Read on for more about Diablo 3
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...-Arena-Battles
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October 22nd, 2010, 23:30 Posted By: wraggster
When the world is being torn asunder, isn't it best to remain inside? During a presentation at the ongoing BlizzCon 2010 in Anaheim, California, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, would be offered in downloadable format right on time and on launch day. When the game's December 7 release date was first announced, it wasn't clear if the digitally distributed version would lag behind retail copies.
It doesn't get clearer than this: You'll be able to purchase and download World of Warcraft: Cataclysm from Blizzard's site (which will accomodate pre-orders soon) at midnight, Pacific Standard Time, on December 7th. That means you can safely start questing, never having left the comforting confines of your home and risked contact with those crude human beings.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/22/wo...d-at-midnight/
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October 22nd, 2010, 23:30 Posted By: wraggster
We thought StarCraft 2 was a little confusing before, but imagine how perplexed we were to look inside the BlizzCon program and see descriptions of upcoming maps for the game that include references to Bejeweled, Defense of the Ancients and ... Iron Chef? Here's the text from Shacknews:
Aiur Chef takes you to a remote area of the planet Aiur, where aspiring zealot chefs skilled in the arts of cooking and killing compete for the title of Executor Chef. Test your wits in the puzzler StarJeweled, which challenges you to match jewels according to color to gain energy, train troops and crush your enemy's base. You'll also be able to team up with a friend to fend off a new strain of zerg infestation in Left 2 Die (a new co-op take on the StarCraft II campaign mission "Outbreak"), as well as wage war with the most powerful heroes in the universe in Blizzard All-Stars, an explosive new multiplayer scenario.
First Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright team up, and now this? Apologies to Powerman 5000, but this is what it is indeed like when worlds collide.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/22/st...led-scenarios/
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October 23rd, 2010, 23:57 Posted By: wraggster
Mike Morhaime has told a BlizzCon 2010 audience that, for the first time, new World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm can be pre-ordered directly from Blizzard.
You'll be able to download all of the content on the game DVD ahead of the game's 7th December launch so that you're ready to go when the servers are turned on.
"For the first time, you will be able to pre-order the expansion directly from Blizzard," Morhaime announced to cheers.
"[Download] all the content on the game DVD in advance and start playing the moment we turn the servers on, which will be at midnight Pacific Standard Time on December 7th."
The BlizzCon 2010 opening ceremony is coming to an end and the festivities have begun. Oli Welsh is there for Eurogamer and we'll be reporting from the event all weekend.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ect-from-blizz
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October 23rd, 2010, 23:58 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard has revealed that it's to revamp every "classic" dungeon in World of Warcraft, with most updating in the first patch for third expansion Cataclysm.
The aim is to make World of Warcraft's older dungeons less confusing, shorter and more fun, designer Corey Stockton told the audience for the Dungeons and Raids panel at BlizzCon today.
Infamously overlong and convoluted dungeons like Uldaman and Maraudon are being broken up into two or more bite-sized wings to make them easier to deal with.
Others, including Wailing Caverns and Sunken Temple, are the subject of drastic cuts. Sunken Temple has lost its entire lower floor.
We already know that two classic low-level dungeons, Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines, are being completely overhauled for new max-level Heroic versions. They will be revamped in their normal modes as well.
Graveyard runs will be much shorter for every dungeon in the game, reduced to no more than 30 seconds, with many graveyards right in front of the dungeon entrance. Some dungeons will also be given teleporters to make it faster to move through them.
"Lots of" these changes will appear in the first patch for Cataclysm, 4.1.0. The new Sunken Temple will appear by Cataclysm's launch on December 7th.
Also appearing in 4.1.0 will be a new max-level raid called Firelands and a new five-man dungeon, Abyssal Maw.
Firelands is an outdoor raid on the elemental plane of fire, accessed from Mount Hyjal. It will climax with an indoor encounter with classic boss Ragnaros in a different and much more powerful form than he took in vintage WOW raid Molten Core. In keeping with a plan to make shorter raids that can be completed in one evening, it will have seven bosses.
Abyssal Maw will be an underwater dungeon in the elemental plane of water accessed from the Vashj'ir zone. It will have four bosses, with players hopping between raised areas divided by deep chasms.
Finally, Stockton talked about enahnced dungeon maps. In a future patch, every dungeon in WOW will be given a 2D map, like those in Wrath of the Lich King. These will also feature detailed boss information (loot, lore, abilities, 3D portraits) so players won't have to tab out of WOW to fansite databases so often while playing.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...d-in-patch-4-1
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October 23rd, 2010, 23:59 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard has announced that it's adding two new high-level leagues to the StarCraft II multiplayer ladder system, introducing seasons, and adding an option to view featured replays of top matches.
Battle.net project director Greg Canessa revealed the new features at BlizzCon in Anaheim, near Los Angeles, today.
Master league will be comprised of the top five per cent of players in the current top league, Diamond - the top 1 to 2 per cent of all StarCraft II players.
If that's not exclusive enough, a Grand Master league will be open to the top 200 players in each region. As well as having a prestigious icon to display, Grand Master league players will be featured on a special ladder page that the entire StarCraft community can access and browse.
Grand Master league will be introduced with StarCraft's first season rollover to season two. A new season means that players' division ranks and win/loss records will be wiped and they start from scratch (although previous stats will still be available to view). Your matchmaking rating will be preserved, however, and it will take just one match for you to be re-qualified and allocated to an appropriate division.
The all-important league icons will be changed to look "cooler" the higher-placed you are in your division, giving players a visible incentive to climb the divisional ranks.
Featured replays will be introduced on the news and community interface. These will be replays of matches between top players selected by the Blizzard community team, which play out in the StarCraft II engine and give spectators full control over the replay and stats.
Finally, Canessa noted that the much-desired chat channels had completed development, were in testing and would be rolled out "in the next couple of months".
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...seasons-coming
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October 24th, 2010, 00:00 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard has shown four internally-developed mods for StarCraft II at BlizzCon, all of which it will be releasing for free download: Blizzard DOTA, StarJeweled, Left 2 Die and Aiur Chef.
The biggest project of the four, Blizzard DOTA, is "further out" from release according to StarCraft II producer Chris Sigaty. A variation on the ever-popular Defence of the Ancients, which began life as a Warcraft III mod, it's a competitive map for single hero units - in this case, drawn from across Blizzard's franchises ("a bit like Super Smash Bros").
In the BlizzCon demo, Raynor, Kerrigan and Zeratul from StarCraft fight alongside Sylvanas and Muradin from Warcraft and comedy hybrid characters like Grunty (a baby Murloc in a space marine suit) and Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan, the mascot of Blizzard's house band.
StarJeweled blends a riff on PopCap's puzzle classic Bejeweled (Blizzard's friends at PopCap preferred the title BeZerged, apparently) with a tower defence (or rather, tower attack) game. Completing rows of gems on the right of the screen sends out units on the left to attack an enemy base, also building energy to spend on additional summons.
Aiur Chef is a game of exploration, collection and cooking. Your Protoss chef, brandishing a cleaver and wearing a pot on his head, explores a map collecting ingredients to use in set recipes (themed around a certain ingredient, as in the Iron Chef TV show). The more you can complete before a time limit expires, the higher you score.
Left 2 Die tips its hat to Valve's Left 4 Dead in its spin on the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty campaign mission The Outbreak. It's a co-op map for two players in which you need to defend against waves of undead at night while burning their nests by day, with special undead units inspired by Valve's infected.
The latter three mods will be available "within the next few months", Sigaty said.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...wn-at-blizzcon
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October 24th, 2010, 00:02 Posted By: wraggster
InfoWorld's Peter Wayner looks beyond Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and IE to uncover 10 alternative browsers that offer specialized advantages for 3-D searching, social networking, easy scriptability, powerful page manipulation, and the like. Each provides a targeted browsing environment, enabling users to browse Web tables into spreadsheets, browse leaner, browser in text, browse socially, browse musically, or browse smarter on the Mac. 'A purist might object that these hybrids are not much different from a standard browser with extra plug-ins. There's some truth to this, but not always — some of the unique capabilities can only be done deep inside the software. In any case, the job of parsing the terms and creating an exact definition of the Web browser isn't as much fun as embracing the idea that there are dozens of alternatives.
http://search.slashdot.org/story/10/...y-Web-Browsers
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October 24th, 2010, 00:07 Posted By: wraggster
Windows 7 might be a massive commercial success and an undeniably rock solid piece of software, but Microsoft is apparently unwilling to rest on those soft and cozy laurels. Asked about the riskiest product bet the Redmond crew is currently developing, its fearless leader Steve Ballmer took no time in answering "the next release of Windows." His interviewers sadly failed to probe any deeper on the subject, but it might be notable that Steve calls it the next release rather than simply Windows 8, while the idea of it being risky also ties in with previous indications that Microsoft is aiming for a revolutionary leap between iterations. We'll have to just be patient and wait for more on that, though if you'd like a peek at Steve dodging question on tablets and the potential for Windows Phone 7 appearing on them, you need only jump past the break for the video.
Update: It's also worth noting that Ballmer may not have been talking about revolutionary leaps as much as he's referencing the past issues the company has had when it's issued a major OS update (hello, Vista). The idea that making any big change to the operating system most of the world runs would invite a certain amount of high risk makes sense to us.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/23/b...ts-riskiest-p/
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October 24th, 2010, 00:10 Posted By: wraggster
When you have one of the year's most anticipated games, you'll also have people who want to get their hands on it as soon as possible -- at any price or, in some cases, any risk. Such was the case with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 last year, and it's happening this year with Call of Duty: Black Ops, which is already making the rounds in bootlegged form.
Contrary to its approach to Modern Warfare 2's piracy, which was to seek arrests for anyone found selling illegal copies of the game, Activision is simply asking Black Ops pirates to cut it out, and quite politely it seems. VentureBeat has posted the story of one bootleg buyer who has uploaded a series of videos detailing being tracked down by the publisher's private investigators, IP Cybercrime, on YouTube. According to the article, rather than report individuals such as him to the police, IP the firm is requesting that they "stop selling and to tell them where they got their wares," adding that "Most of the pirates were scared, surrendered their game copies and cooperated."
That's not to say the investigators aren't willing to employ more serious methods in dealing with people who don't give in to the "good cop" approach. "One young pirate was being a 'wise ass' and adamantly refused to cooperate," VentureBeat reported. "So the investigators called his mother."
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/22/ac...ack-ops-pirat/
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October 24th, 2010, 00:11 Posted By: wraggster
2K Games' Melissa Miller has been working in the games industry for nearly 10 years. In that time, she's helped ship both BioShock titles and a handful of licensed fare (Family Guy: The Game, among others). She even briefly worked on Borderlands.
Currently, she's a senior producer on Duke Nukem Forever -- a game laden with puerile boy jokes. At a recent press event, we asked Miller what it's like to be a woman working on a title that so blatantly relies on juvenile, sexist humor to engage players. She was quick to answer:
"I think it's interesting, because I've definitely watched through the years: There's this attention to women in games, and I always got the sense that people felt like there should be something tangible that says, 'This is what we get (in a good way) when women are involved in games and part of making them.' And it almost seems like they were waiting for us to say, 'There are more unicorns and rainbows in games!'
"And I really feel very strongly that, despite gender, all you're bringing to the game is you; you're bringing your personality and your experience, and the things that are important to you -- that you would push for and so forth. I definitely, with Duke especially -- guess what? I'm not always gonna find the same things funny as other people, and I appreciate that. For me, I just wanna help these guys make the best game possible and do what I can."
Three-breasted aliens and first-person-fellating be damned, Miller clearly wants Duke fans to love the game as much as she does -- and even to laugh. Miller's own take on the humor? "I think it's funny!"
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/22/du...perverted-hum/
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October 24th, 2010, 00:12 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard game design boss Rob Pardo thinks that Valve's attempt to trademark DOTA "doesn't seem the right thing to do".
Pardo told Eurogamer that Blizzard was confused by Valve's move and believes it has the right to use the term in the name of its free StarCraft II mod, Blizzard DOTA, announced at BlizzCon today.
DOTA refers to the hugely popular online gametype born of the famous Warcraft III mod, Defence of the Ancients. Valve is currently developing DOTA 2 for its Source engine after employing some of the DOTA mod development community. Superannuation discovered that Valve had filed a trademark registration for DOTA earlier this year.
"To us, that means that you're really taking it away from the Blizzard and Warcraft III community and that just doesn't seem the right thing to do," said Pardo, Blizzard's executive vice president of game design.
Pardo described his reaction to the move as "a little bit of confusion, to be honest. Certainly, DOTA came out of the Blizzard community... It just seems a really strange move to us that Valve would go off and try to exclusively trademark the term considering it's something that's been freely available to us and everyone in the Warcraft III community up to this point.
"Valve is usually so pro mod community. It's such a community company that it just seems like a really strange move to us... I really don't understand why [they would do it], to be honest."
Valve's DOTA development is led by Abdul Ismail, known as IceFrog. Ismail was recently the target of an anonymous rant by a supposed Valve employee who called him a "compulsive liar", "unpleasantly domineering" and "poisonous to the company".
"He's one of the guys that most recently had been working on the DOTA Allstars map," said Pardo. "So I'm assuming, since he wants to continue making that map, that [Valve] felt like they should be able to trademark it."
Blizzard is showing internally-developed free mods for StarCraft II at BlizzCon this weekend. The biggest project of these is Blizzard DOTA, a Defence of the Ancients variant starring Blizzard characters from across its franchises, including Warcraft and Diablo ("a bit like Super Smash Brothers," according to the panel that unveiled it).
What if Valve were to object to Blizzard's use of the term for Blizzard DOTA, we aksed? "Our response is that they don't own the term DOTA at this point. It's something that they're filing for," Pardo said.
"Our contention is that it should continue to be available to Blizzard and to our community."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-dota-blizzard
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October 24th, 2010, 00:13 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard will not release the second game in the StarCraft II trilogy, Heat of the Swarm, until after 2011 – probably.
That's according to lead producer Chris Sigaty, who offered the titbit during a story question and answer panel at BlizzCon, reported by IGN,
Sigaty's comments tally with those of Battle.net project director Greg Canessa, who hinted earlier this month that Heart of the Swarm was scheduled for release in early 2012.
The release window is roughly consistent with the two-year gaps between World of Warcraft expansions, so it seems credible.
Heart of the Swarm delivers the zerg campaign – the second of three campaigns that make up the entire SCII experience. The first, Wings of Liberty, released in July to critical and commercial acclaim.
Yesterday Blizzard announced the addition of two new high-level leagues to the StarCraft II multiplayer ladder system, introducing seasons, and adding an option to view featured replays of top matches.
The PC game creator also showed four internally-developed mods for StarCraft II, all of which it will be releasing for free download: Blizzard DOTA, StarJeweled, Left 2 Die and Aiur Chef.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...due-after-2011
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October 25th, 2010, 00:12 Posted By: wraggster
Microsoft's aging Windows XP operating system now may no longer be installed by OEMs, nine years after the OS was first launched.
Shipments to most manufacturers have already ceased but system builders in "emerging markets" were using hardware which failed to meet the hefty minimum requirements of Windows Vista.
Since then extensions have been granted for low cost PCs but on the first birthday the firm's latest Windows 7, Windows XP will no long be shipping to any manufacturer to be installed on new PCs.
Curiously it's still possible to opt to 'downgrade' by using a key for an existing Windows Vista or Windows 7 to activate an old copy of Windows XP. This requires a call to Microsoft support.
The latest version of Windows XP with service pack 3 is still a perfectly viable operating system and is still under Microsoft support meaning that essential security updates will continue to be delivered via Windows Update.
Microsoft will only withdraw support for XP SP3 in April 2014, meaning any XP systems are good for another 3 years and 6 months, give or take.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/34977...-ships-no-more
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October 25th, 2010, 00:14 Posted By: wraggster
Firefox 4's JavaScript engine is now faster than V8 (used in Chrome) and Nitro (used in Safari) in the SunSpider benchmark on x86. On Mozilla's test system Nitro completes the benchmark in 369.7 milliseconds, V8 in 356.5 milliseconds, and Firefox 4's TraceMonkey and JaegerMonkey combination in 350.3 milliseconds. Conceivably Tech has a brief rundown of some benchmark figures from their test system obtained with the latest JS preview build of Firefox 4: 'Our AMD Phenom X6-based Dell XPS 7100 PC completed the Sunspider test with the latest Firefox JS (4.0 b8-pre) build in 478.6 ms this morning, while Chrome 8.0.560.0 clocked in at 589.8 ms.' On x86-64 Nitro still has the lead over V8 and TraceMonkey+JaegerMonkey in the SunSpider benchmark.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/10...r-Than-Chromes
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October 25th, 2010, 20:27 Posted By: wraggster
Cataclysm isn't out till December, but gaming behemoth Blizzard is already excited about the idea it has for World of Warcraft's next expansion.
"It's pretty freakin' awesome," World of Warcraft senior producer John Lagrave told Game Informer at BlizzCon over the weekend.
"We've now got a central idea [for the next expansion] that makes me happy and gets me excited, and it makes everyone else happy and excited.
"When everybody gets happy and excited, we know we're on to something. We don't know if it's going to be the final thing, but we know something good is coming. Will it top Cataclysm? I think it's pretty freakin' awesome. I'm really hopeful."
Blizzard's produced a WOW expansion roughly every two years, so don't go holding your breath on this one.
Meanwhile, it looks like we're also in for a long wait before we see Blizzard's next-gen MMO.
Blizzard executive Rob Pardo told Gametrailers' Geoff Keighley that fans shouldn't expect to hear anything on the game – at all – until at least 2012.
We do know, however, that around 50 people are actively working on the MMO project.
Back in 2008 Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime confirmed, "It's not going to be a World of Warcraft sequel."
"We're not trying to replace World of Warcraft with this new MMO," he said. "We're trying to create a different massively multiplayer experience, and hopefully World of Warcraft will still be going strong when that one is released."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-wow-expansion
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October 25th, 2010, 20:30 Posted By: wraggster
Microsoft has been very secretive about the next version of its Windows operating system. After the success of Windows 7, everyone is very interested in the next iteration – Windows 8. A few leaks have been the only source of news about Windows 8 till now. However, a slip up from Microsoft Netherlands has put the release date in October 2012."
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10...n-October-2012
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October 25th, 2010, 21:55 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard may not have an "official" release window for Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, but don't expect it to occur in 2011.SC2 Lead Producer Chris Sigaty told IGN the company would be "very hard pressed to bring [Heart of the Swarm] out next year." He noted that there is no release date, but because the sequel-spansion is more ambitious than Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne was to its core game, he doesn't "anticipate it being done in that one year time frame."
Sigaty's words are in the same vein as those of Battle.net project director, Greg Canessa, who implied the game would have an early 2012 launch. So, for those still holding out hope for a 2011 release for Heart of the Swarm, just keep on weaning that dream
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/25/bl...t-starcraft-2/
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October 25th, 2010, 22:00 Posted By: wraggster
The future of APB may soon be secure: a buyer has been found.
Commentary from the game's patch notes (via Massively) - retweeted by former APB community manager Ben Batemen - claimed "there might be a light at the end of the tunnel for APB".
"The end of the administration process is apparently close and there appears to be a buyer for the game," the patch notes read.
Realtime Worlds' administrator and temporary guardian of APB, Begbies Traynor, said "there is nothing I can tell you at this stage" when approached by Eurogamer with the news today.
Rumour had it in September that none other than Epic Games of Unreal Engine and Gears of War fame was sniffing around APB. A statement issued by Epic Games didn't deny it.
Realtime Worlds' fell apart in August, a month after the launch of ambitious persistent online shooter APB. Hefty investment and Crackdown-confidence gave way to complacency, former members of the Scottish developer later revealed.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...es-reveal-hope
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October 27th, 2010, 00:46 Posted By: wraggster
Atari and Cryptic Studio's superhero MMO Champions Online will be free-to-download and play from Q1 2011, with the game adopting a freemium approach to content and item unlocking.
The MMO is the latest in a string of properties to take the move, joining Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online as free to play. Just last month it was announced that nautical MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea would also adopt the payment model.
It's commonly seen as a way of lessening the burden of commitment on players, enticing new users into investing time in a game and encouraging them to make smaller payments for in-game items, areas and special abilities.
It's also proven to be very successful, with revenues from Dungeon and Dragons Online skyrocketing by 500 per cent after the switch.
"Transitioning Champions Online to the free-to-play model is a great opportunity to reach a whole new audience of PC gamers that view subscription fees as a barrier to entry," said Cryptic CEO John Needham.
"By taking care of our current subscription-based community and welcoming the addition of new players through free-to-play, Champions Online is poised to build upon its success and to establish a new leadership position as the first free-to-play superhero MMO."
The Champions Online model will offer unlimited play with no time limits or level caps - with the beta for the new model beginning on November 9, 2010.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...s-free-to-play
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October 27th, 2010, 00:46 Posted By: wraggster
Adobe has announced plans to add hardware 3D acceleration to its Flash software.
The upcoming Molehill API offers GPU-based shader support, with Adobe promising hundreds of thousands of triangles rendered in HD - claiming the current Flash 10.1 offers mere thousands.
This will mean a leap in visual quality for Flash-based browser applications and games, putting Adobe's tools in more direct competition with the likes of Unity.
"3D has been one of the most popular requests from our customers," said Adobe. "Enabling true 3D experiences in Flash Player aligns with Adobe's commitment to innovation and delivering a more complete Flash Platform."
"Adobe evolved the web with video and now we are going to evolve the web again with 3D. From interactive websites, e-commerce, and marketing to gaming, 3D will be available to everyone, everywhere.
The new version of Flash, due for a beta release early next year, will also support hardware acceleration on mobile devices, via OpenGL ES 2.0.
Adobe also announced plans to upgrade its AIR platform, adding the new 3D support and bringing it to a broader array of smartphones and tablets, as well as creating Adobe InMarket - a porting framework to deploy AIR games to multiple platforms and App Stores.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...or-adobe-flash
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October 27th, 2010, 01:23 Posted By: wraggster
Newly released
features•Not even nuclear fallout could slow the hustle of Sin City. Explore the vast expanses of the desert wastelands – from the small towns dotting the Mojave Wasteland to the bright lights of the New Vegas strip. See the Great Southwest as could only be imagined in Fallout
•A war is brewing between rival factions with consequences that will change the lives of all the inhabitants of New Vegas. The choices you make will bring you into contact with countless characters, creatures, allies, and foes, and determine the final explosive outcome of this epic power struggle
•Enjoy new additions to Fallout: New Vegas such as a Companion Wheel that streamlines directing your companions, a Reputation System that tracks the consequences of your actions, and the aptly titled Hardcore Mode to separate the meek from the mighty. Special melee combat moves have been added to bring new meaning to the phrase “up close and personalâ€. Use V.A.T.S. to pause time in combat, target specific enemy body parts and queue up attacks, or get right to the action using the finely-tuned real-time combat mechanics
•With double the amount of weapons found in Fallout 3, you’ll have more than enough new and exciting ways to deal with the threats of the wasteland and the locals. In addition, Vault-Tec engineers have devised a new weapons configuration system that lets you tinker with your toys and see the modifications you make in real time
•In a huge, open world with unlimited options you can see the sights, choose sides, or go it alone. Peacemaker or Hard Case, House Rules, or the Wild Card - it’s all in how you play the game
descriptionExplore the treacherous wastes of the Great Southwest from the safety and comfort of your very own vault: Meet new people, confront terrifying creatures, and arm yourself with the latest high-tech weaponry in a thrilling journey across the Mojave Wasteland. A word of warning, however - while Vault-Tec engineers have prepared for every contingency, in Vegas, fortunes can change in an instant. Enjoy your stay.
http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-3enn.html
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October 27th, 2010, 01:38 Posted By: wraggster
We knew good and well it was coming, and here it is. Microsoft has today introduced the Release Candidate (RC) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to the public, and for those unaware of how these software rollouts "work," the RC release generally signals that a final build is just about ready. As previously announced, the only new features added to the SP1 are the Windows Server 2008 R2-related virtualization technologies, Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, and while Windows 7 SP1 will enable PCs to take advantage of these server-based features to provide a more scalable and richer VDI experience for end users, there are no additional new features specific to Windows 7. If that's cool with you, there's a source link (and a download) waiting for you just below.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/26/w...blic-beta-rel/
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October 27th, 2010, 15:13 Posted By: wraggster
Newly released
You will be called upon to rally and fight alongside your people, ascend to the seat of power, and experience the realities of defending your throne. Along your journey, the choices you make will change the world around you, for the greater good or your own personal gain. Who will you become? A rebel without a cause, the tyrant you rebelled against, or the greatest ruler to ever live?
http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-3uws.html
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October 28th, 2010, 02:13 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard believes World of Warcraft can happily co-exist with the unannounced "next-generation MMO" that it is currently developing.
Speaking at Blizzcon last weekend, president Mike Morhaime told GameTrailers, "We are working on a second MMO. We're thinking of it as sort of a next-generation MMO. It's not a sequel to World of Warcraft - we want to do something a bit different.
"We're not trying to replace World of Warcraft. We think that World of Warcraft can continue co-existing with our new MMO and some people might prefer the new one, some people might still prefer to play World of Warcraft."
"But I think after building World of Warcraft the first time, we're so much smarter now," he added. "We have a lot of expertise that we didn't have before. And I think we also want to sort of... every massively multiplayer game doesn't have to be similar to the ones that exist today.
"We think you can go in different directions and still have a great massively multiplayer experience and we want to sort of experiment with what that might look like."
Don't expect to hear any more about Blizzard's next behemoth for some time. According to VG247, the earliest we'll see a reveal is 2012.
Other news coming out of Blizzard's annual clambake included a new character class for Diablo III, custom mods for StarCraft 2 and fighting talk regarding Valve's DOTA sequel.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...nt-replace-wow
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October 29th, 2010, 00:11 Posted By: wraggster
Contact Sales expects its business to grow by 25 per cent this year, courtesy of the PC software market.
The UK company owns the Excalibur Publishing and First Class Simulations labels and has released a wide range of PC titles over the course of the year.
Contact Sales MD Robert Stallibrass claims a string of popular simulation games has been the key to the company’s growth.
“Excalibur’s success is built upon a range of strong sellers rather than individual blockbusters,†he told MCV.
“Our business will grow 25 per cent this year – all based on PC titles.â€
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/41550/PC-s...-for-Excalibur
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October 29th, 2010, 00:15 Posted By: wraggster
Non-playable characters (aka bots) have never featured in a Team Fortress game, until now. A free Halloween-themed update for TF2 has gone live today, adding an NPC boss character.
It's called the Headless Horsemann, and he haunts the rooms and halls of a new Attack/Defend map called Mann Manor. It's also littered with exploding pumpkins, so watch out for those too.
The update also opens up the Halloween section of the Mann Co Store, adds new community items from 10 new contributors, new achievements "and more".
And we mentioned it's free, right? Get on it.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS
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October 29th, 2010, 00:21 Posted By: wraggster
On the same day that it plans to release a patch for a critical flaw in Shockwave, Adobe confirmed on Thursday morning that there is a newly discovered bug in Flash that is being actively exploited already in attacks against Reader. The vulnerability affects Flash on all of the relevant platforms, including Android, as well as Reader on Windows and Mac, and won't be patched for nearly two weeks. The new Flash bug came to light early Thursday when a researcher posted information about the problem, as well as a Trojan that is exploiting it and dropping a pair of malicious files on vulnerable PCs. Researcher Mila Parkour tested the bug and posted a screenshot of the malicious files that a Trojan exploiting the vulnerability drops during its infection routine. Adobe has since confirmed the vulnerability and said that it is aware of the attacks against Reader.
http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/10/2...eing-Exploited
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October 29th, 2010, 00:22 Posted By: wraggster
Mozilla said that it will not be releasing Firefox 4 RC, or the final version, before early 2011. Apparently, the bugfixes in the current beta take up much more time than anticipated. Mozilla is working on the feature freeze release Beta 7, which has 14 bugs left. The beta 7 is about six weeks behind schedule and will be released "when it is ready", according to Mozilla. It seems as if the original schedule, which estimated that Firefox 4 RC would be released in the second half of October was a bit too optimistic. Microsoft, by the way, released a new IE9 platform preview (PP6) at PDC 20910 today.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/10...ait-Until-2011
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October 29th, 2010, 00:37 Posted By: wraggster
Cryptic Studios is trying new things to bolster the popularity of MMOs Star Trek Online and Champions Online. Its newest invention? Player-made missions. And Star Trek Online will integrate them first.
Dubbed The Foundry, the toolset allows anyone to make a story, fill it with encounters and play around with the scenery. You can either start a world from scratch or tinker with pre-made templates - Cryptic even allows existing STO areas to be used.
But The Foundry is not a modding tool.
"No. The goal of this toolset is to allow players to put their stories in the Star Trek universe using the same look, feel, and capabilities that Cryptic's own design team utilises," The Foundry FAQ states. "So while there are a lot of features for creating content, players cannot import their own images, 3D models, or audio into the game."
A five-star rating system will be implemented for the Community Authored Episodes. Judging them will be reviewers picked from the game's community, and nothing will be offered to the masses without passing their eyes first.
To begin with, custom rewards for Community Authored Episodes can't be made using The Foundry. But judging by the wording of the FAQ, they may be added at a later stage. What's more, "expanded functionality" such as missions aboard ships, is being "considered".
The Foundry toolset currently needs beta testing. If you have an existing Star Trek Online account you qualify.
City of Heroes - the Cryptic-created MMO that NCsoft ran away with in 2007 - introduced a very similar toolset in 2009 called the Mission Architect. The results "astounded" NCsoft and Paragon Studios.
In an effort to compete with its own genre-leading creation, Cryptic announced yesterday that Champions Online would soon turn free-to-play. Therefore, the chances of Star Trek Online adopting the same business model down the line must be high.
Star Trek Online was released at the beginning of the year but wasn't the genre-shattering launch the licence perhaps deserved. Eurogamer awarded a deflated 6/10. Cryptic Studios admitted it could do better and has promised to support the enterprising MMO even as "several other projects" - including online RPG Neverwinter - are revealed to be in development there.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...nline-missions
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October 30th, 2010, 00:08 Posted By: wraggster
A raft of class action lawsuits filed in Federal court charge the globe's biggest social networking firms with violating federal communications privacy laws, allowing advertisers to profit from personal information harvested from users. Weeks after the Wall Street Journal blew the whistle on lax data privacy standards on Facebook, a string of class action suits attempt to hold the social networking giant, as well as game company Zynga and Google liable for what the suits contend are lax practices that allow advertisers to harvest personal information on Web users. The suits are seeking monetary damages on behalf of potentially millions of users of the three companies. The suits allege that the users' personal information has been leaked to advertisers and other unauthorized individuals, in violation of the companies' privacy policies and a number of state and federal statues protecting the confidentiality of electronic communications.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10...a-Over-Privacy
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October 30th, 2010, 00:10 Posted By: wraggster
As anyone in the industry will tell you, a lot of money went into developing web applications specific to IE6. And corporations can't leave Windows XP for Windows 7 until IE6 runs (in some way) on Windows 7. Microsoft wants to leave that non-standard browser mess behind them, but as the article notes, 'Organizations running IE6 have told Gartner that 40% of their custom-built browser-dependent applications won't run on IE8, the version packaged with Windows 7. Thus, many companies face a tough decision: Either spend time and money to upgrade those applications so that they work in newer browsers, or stick with Windows XP.' Support for XP is going to end in April 2014. In order to deal with this, companies are looking at virtualizing IE6 only (instead of a full operating system) so that it can run on Windows 7 — even though Microsoft says this violates licensing agreements. IE6 is estimated to have roughly 16% of browser market share, and due to mistakes in the past it may never truly die."
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10...s-7-Migrations
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October 31st, 2010, 00:00 Posted By: wraggster
BioShock boss Ken Levine has claimed that the PC remains at the forefront of games development.
In a Kotaku editorial, the Irrational Games head claimed that "The PC is the place where great game developers are born, even-and maybe especially-where great console game developers are born.
"Halo, Mass Effect, Call of Duty...PC developers first. And it's on the PC where the leading-edge ideas form... The PC will always be the place that drives innovation."
He pointed to the lack of an approval body and the gamut of development entry points as key to the platform's ongoing importance. "Magic can happen when there are no middle men, no marketers, and no naysayers."
While undecided if social games and free to play would prove to be the platform's destiny, Levine was confident that "If you want to know the future of gaming, buy a PC."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ves-innovation
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October 31st, 2010, 00:05 Posted By: wraggster
The European free-to-play relaunch of The Lord of the Rings Online will happen on Tuesday, 2nd November, Eurogamer can exclusively reveal.
Mandatory monthly subscriptions will be dropped and replaced by three tiers of membership - VIP (has a monthly fee), Premium and Free - and a LOTRO Store. There you can buy expansion packs, premium add-ons, thousands of convenience items, additional character slots, potions and character customisation options. The LOTRO Store works within the game.
The free-to-play overhaul introduces other new features, too: a new Wardrobe storage system for cosmetic items, an updated character creation system, a revamped new player experience and redesign for the vintage dungeons of the world, which will become not only repeatable, but feature scalable content to keep the challenge fresh.
Eurogamer logged in to explore a free-to-play Lord of the Rings Online in August.
Coinciding with all this will be the arrival of meaty update Volume III, Book 2: Ride of the Grey Company. Join the elves of Rivendell as they form the Grey Company and venture into new region Enedwaith. And join alone, as Book 2 contains 15 solo chapters to work through.
On top of all that, The Harvest Festival is back in town. Gather near Bree where those fat hobbitses reside and bob for apples, pick pumpkins and explore a haunted hobbit house.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...relaunch-dated
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October 31st, 2010, 04:36 Posted By: 10shu
Terrordrome V2.6 is here.
The free 2d brawler staring all the classic slasher killer from the 80's is back!
Trailer here:
New roaster include:
Freddy Kruegger from nightmare on elmstreet
Jason voorhese from friday the 13th
Tallman from phantasm ?
Chucky from child play
Ghostface from scream
Leatherface from texas chainsaw massacre
Michael myer from halloween
Maniac Cop from maniac cop
Candy man from candy man
Note:Ashley Williams from evil dead.
Was removed from the game.
Apparently the dev receive a cease and desist letter from Orion and Warner lawyers...
damm lawyers!!! the freaking game is free! why do they care...
Version 2.6 can be downloaded here:
http://terrordrome-thegame.com/Terrordrome_Demo_V2_6.exe
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October 31st, 2010, 13:00 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15824.html
Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead is a retro de-make of Valve´s hit zombie killing masterpiece.
Quote:
Lovingly recreated in a fashion that would have been acceptable in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, this de-make stands as the flagship title of the upcoming Pixel Force series from Eric Ruth Games. Go alone, or invite a friend for 2 player co-op against the zombie apocalypse in all 4 of the original game campaigns. 2 difficulties and all 4 of the survivors make a glorious 8-bit appearence, complete with first and second tier weapons scattered along your path to escape. So, grab your controller of choice and kick back with an award-winning retro take on the end of the world with Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead.
http://www.ericruthgames.com/
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October 31st, 2010, 13:01 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15823.html
A new development version of Wine, an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix, has been released.
Quote:
The Wine development release 1.3.6 is now available.
What´s new in this release (see below for details):
Support for GStreamer filters.
Mapping of standard cursors to native desktop cursors.
Improved support for installers with services.
Many MSXML improvements.
Decoder for TGA-format images.
Translation updates.
Various bug fixes.
The source is available from the following locations:
http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/...-1.3.6.tar.bz2
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/w...-1.3.6.tar.bz2
Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:
http://www.winehq.org/download
You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/documentation
You can also get the current source directly from the git repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/git for details.
Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.
Bugs fixed in 1.3.6:
6437 CUPS Printer-Names are UTF-8, but we handle them as ANSI
7195 ratDVD fails to start
11744 Age of Empires III crashes at startup
12291 Restarting Dark Crusade 1.20 kills sound
12925 D3D8: Visual test fails
12934 Fugawi - OLE error 80004002
13095 MS Visio 2003 - Crashing after opening or creating a file.
13595 Sprite borders are 1 pixel lower in Double Dragon Forever
13670 Star Blaze: Page faults on startup
13939 Paint Shop Pro 7 hangs when inserting text
15212 ctSchedule.ocx: OleCreate returns E_INVALIDARG
15502 Crysis Warhead Installer fails with msi errors
15942 Printers can´t print format largers than A4
16239 Cake Poker installer requires native msxml3
17090 Elite Force fails to set brightness at all,renders game dark and hard to play
17436 mRemote does not work
17713 EVE Online Apocrypha - Audio not supported on FreeBSD
17875 GetTempFileName with unique != 0 broken
17965 Graphical glitches in Orphelins of Baudelaire demo
18339 Microsoft Visio 2007 crashes when Drag&Dropping some elements
19590 Symantec LiveUpdate 1.5.2 uninstaller exits silently
20103 Beyond the Sword patch 3.19 fails to install
20195 PLSQLDeveloper shows OLE error 80004001 when trying to export object metadata to XML
20887 Dragon Age: Origins: Fails to find the DVD
21485 Kindle for PC Beta works, but 1.0 doesn´t
21522 DnaSP 5 crashes under wine if a "Tajima´s test" is performed.
21765 Age of Mythology fails to create the fonts with builtin msxml4
21798 SEHException / GdipGetRegionScansCount opening AutoWikiBrowser
21836 jscript: run tests fail on Ubuntu
21913 Visio 2007 Professional Crashes Immediately
22054 Assassin´s Creed crashed after first level
22055 Assassin´s creed crashes on launch occasionally
22394 Starcraft 2: Can´t restart itself
22860 Enterprise Architect fails to create a new project or loads an existing one
23096 White box around cursor in Google SketchUp Pro 7
23173 Several game have upside down picture
23217 Runes of Magic client.exe needs unimplemented function msvcr80.dll._strlwr_s
23355 Ring-Protech CD/DVD Protection fails
23411 YoWindow: Fails to start
23790 Cursors in City of Heroes draw incorrectly with ATI graphics
23901 Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword 3.19 no longer starts
23985 Wine doesn´t use standard mouse cursor
24096 08/19/2010 Steam client update wininet issue
24105 VB6 crashes while trying to start simple sample program
24117 Osmos main menu cursor is corrupt
24154 GetFirefox image is not viewable in wine iexplore with Gecko 1.1.0
24334 EarMaster 5.0 : black area instead of the sheet music in some exercises
24381 Children of the nile 3 demo hangs because of built-in d3dx9
24396 [ALSA driver bug] Windows applications crash on start up
24470 winegcc: 32-bit libs are not found with -m32 on 64-bit host
24619 Kitsu Saga Crashes
24646 Utorrent menu´s can be open but not working
24668 Introduction screen in Melty Blood is drawn upside-down
24759 SAFEARRAY bounds data is marshalled in reversed order
24773 It is possible to click behind certain modal dialogs in Worms Armageddon, leading to loss of focus and crashes
24831 Fallout:New Vegas Fails to launch gamebryo renderer
24864 Windows Double Explorer complains "unable to find an entry point named ´IUnknown_SetSite´ in DLL ´SHLWAPI.DLL´"
24871 Floppy diskette label and serial number not reported
24895 msxml4 installer crashes in 2nd dialog in msi_dialog_create_radiobutton
24929 FreeBSD build broken
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October 31st, 2010, 13:04 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-15820.html
D2X-XL is an OpenGL-port of Descent II. Supported platforms are Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Quote:
v1.15.98
Fixed: Thruster flames often were rendered at a wrong angle or not at all
Improved: Displaying a lot of different particle effects will not slow down the game as much as it did before
v1.15.97
Fixed: When changing the ship type in-game, the ship subsequently exploded again and again until the game was over
v1.15.96
Fixed: The renderer was messed and the program could crash when hires textures were disabled
Changed: Particles emitted in a skybox segment will now disappear when leaving the segment their originating from (this allows better control of where effects and snow are visible)
v1.15.95
Fixed: Debris sometimes blocked the player´s sight
Improved: Debris is handled better
http://www.descent2.de/
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