The PC editions of the promised (
story)
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
"fan pack" is now available, offering three new maps, described like so:
"There are three maps included in the free map pack: Murdertown – Dark, CQB
Training – Dark and best of all the much-requested fan favourite Calypso Casino!
The three map layouts have not been changed. The re-lit “Dark maps” have a very
eerie atmosphere, and may require players to use night vision to spot enemies.
Calypso Casino returns with updated lighting and textures. The three maps are
playable in all Versus modes and Terrorist Hunt." The download is available from
the
Ubisoft
Website, and mirrored on
ActionTrip and
Gamer's
Hell.
As noted on
Gearboxity,
an update is now available to close off an exploit in the PC edition of Halo,
Bungie's science fiction shooter. The update is an unofficial patch, available
on this
Bungie.net Community Forum (thanks
Gamer's Hell), and the accompanying blurb with
the patch combine with the note on Gearboxity would indicate that no one should
take this as a sign that the PC edition of Halo is actually being supported,
though it's probably the opposite of the sentiment they are attempting to
express: "We've received several reports of a server exploit in Halo PC
recently, and teamed up with Roger Wolfson from Bungie to try to help the
community address this problem. The fix is an unofficial fix and is not an
indicator of the state of support for Halo PC, rather a few individuals' attempt
to help solve the problem for the community."
A trial version for
International Cricket Captain 2008 is now available,
offering the chance to sample what Empire Interactive describes as "the most
realistic and in-depth cricket management game to date" (thanks
Gamer's Hell). We'd like
to joke here about our ignorance of the sport, but that just wouldn't be
cricket, so we'll just point out that the demo is mirrored on
Gamer's Hell.
MADSHRIMPS
has an article about "Cuban Ultima Doom Sword's CustomCrysisConfig," a
modification that provides the seemingly contradiction of improved performance
and improved visuals in
Crysis. They offer benchmark results that indeed
show impressive frame rate gains and they point the way to
FileFront as where to download the mod. There's a thread with further
discussion of all this on the
inCrysis Crysis
Forums.
The first release of the Science & Industry 2 modification for Half-Life 2 is
now available (thanks
Ant and
Planet
Half-Life). The download is available on the
Science and Industry 2 Website,
where they are quick to point out that this is a preliminary version of the mod,
even though it carries a 1.0 version number.
A post to the
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Website by EALA's Mike Verdu addresses
the upcoming patch for the PC edition of the
Kane's Wrath expansion for
Command & Conquer 3 (thanks
Voodoo Extreme), calling the update to fix desync issues
(
story) "long overdue." He says this and other post-release
support issues have inspired the formation of a "live team" dedicated to RTS
issues, and while it may take time for this to take effect, the intent is to
serve their customers better going forward:
We are finally on the cusp of
releasing a long overdue patch for the PC version of Kane's Wrath, the expansion
pack for C&C3. This patch addresses desync and balance issues that should have
been fixed months ago, and I apologize again to our customers for the long
delay. The wait for the Kane’s Wrath patch has been a low point in our product
support for the last few years, and I take full responsibility.
As General Manager of the studio that makes Command & Conquer games (as well as
the Battle for Middle series), I care a great deal about our product quality and
support.
I am very proud of our games and the teams that made them. From C&C Generals to
the two Battle for Middle-earth games to C&C3, I feel like we have brought great
RTS experiences to millions of people who have spent tens of millions of hours
playing the games and having fun. That's what I live for… it's why I'm in this
business. I can’t think of a better reward than to know that we have built games
that people are spending time with and enjoying. I know that some in our
community may dislike certain products or aspects or features of the games
overall – and I'm humble enough to realize that we can always improve and do
better – but in my heart I believe that we’ve made some good games that have
delivered value to our customers.
I am not as proud of our record in supporting our games after launch. In fact,
I'm downright unhappy with that aspect of our business. There have been some
bright spots: For example, our community manager's passionate advocacy on behalf
of our customers, the huge patch 1.05 for Battle for Middle-earth II that was a
labor of love between our team and the community, and our fast response to some
initial problems on C&C3. But overall, the level of support has been lacking. We
tend to put out a limited number of patches for our products and in many cases
those patches take longer than they should to finish, test, and release. It’s
been a chronic issue for more than four years, and we need to fix it.
Our support woes are not the fault of the line developers who work here. We have
some of the most talented people in the world on our RTS teams here at EA Los
Angeles. The basic issue is the tension between developing new products and
supporting our older products. Creating a patch requires hundreds – and in some
cases thousands - of man-hours invested by an interdisciplinary team… as well as
close coordination with our quality assurance department and other parts of our
company. Our teams and leaders have the best of intentions and desperately want
to continue supporting our games… but we find ourselves constantly trading off
between new development and support. It’s very hard to juggle this work and
there are often dependencies and complexities involved that wind up hurting both
the new project and the patch efforts. Our issues with support are not a matter
of being greedy; believe it or not we have actually spent seven figure sums
supporting each of our products for the last few years (if you added up the
effort invested and money spent on patches and support for Generals, the BFME
games, C&C3, and their expansion packs, we could have built an entire new
product). It actually boils down to a matter of logistics and management.
We've been wrestling with the logistics of support for a long time and we need a
new approach. After all, some of our competitors have been providing a high
level of post-launch support for years, so we know it can be done...and done
well.
I’m happy to announce that we have established a live team for our RTS products.
Its mission is simple: To protect and serve Command & Conquer – the C&C
community, the individual C&C games, and the C&C universe. The live team is
starting small, but over a period of many months it will be staffed with a
number of developers who will be dedicated to support. Over the next year, more
and more support activities will be carried out by the live team instead of by
the teams that actually build the games. Red Alert 3 will start out supported by
its development team and will transition to live team support a few months after
release. The live team’s laser-sharp focus on support eliminates the inherent
conflict between new development and patching/maintaining our legacy products.
I am not going to say that this initiative is going to instantly solve all of
our support issues – and I don't think we have the credibility with our
customers to make that claim anyway. In fact, it will take considerable time to
get this effort spun up and working well. But over a period of months and years,
I believe the benefits of this new approach will be evident. My hope is that the
community will be able to look back on this period and say, "this was the low
point – and then things started getting better".
Well we survived the fourth pretty nicely… I have to admit to optimism that
with Independence Day having fallen on a Friday, the fifth won't be as bad as
many Saturdays after the fourth. Either way, the D-Day invasion would have to
break out at this point for this year to not qualify as the quietest fourth of
July I can recall since my youth, when I usually spent the occasion in the
seclusion of summer camp.
RIP:
Ex-Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86.
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