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Archived News:
Totem Games has a preliminary
announcement of Ironclads: High Sea, a 19th century naval combat
simulation in the vein of their previous Ironclads: American Civil War
(thanks Gamer's Hell). The site offers some screenshots and wallpaper, and here's word
on the game: A steam-ship period tactical naval simulator focusing on
fleet-scale battles in real time. Manage financial and strategic aspects while
planning your squadron's structure. Scramble your fleet to gain sea supremacy.
The game allows you to set up battles squadron groups, their formations and
management, with realistic ship models and characteristics, as well as advanced
ballistisc and weapon models.
Choose your ships, increase the experience of your crews and send your squadron
into the open seas. Order a battle "Line Astern" or "Crossing the T" formation,
and experience power of iron and a steam!
An update to the Left 4 Dead
Blog outlines plans to revise the matchmaking system in Left 4 Dead in the
future. The update is written by Dave "Zoid" Kirsch, an old friend from the
community who is now apparently at Valve, and he outlines how more matchmaking
flexibility is in the works: In a recent update for L4D on the PC, we
provided the option for players to choose between starting a game on an Official
server or the Best Available. This is just the first step in giving players
control over what servers they play on and the type of experience they have.
This is part of the L4D SDK rollout, which is currently in a closed beta and
will be released shortly after the launch of the L4D Survival Pack.
To support the SDK, we are extending the matchmaking system to allow for third
party campaigns. We will be adding extra features so players will be able to
find dedicated servers running the campaigns they have installed. They will also
be able to see friends playing third party campaigns, and be directed to
download them as necessary. Another major feature we are planning to add to the
matchmaking system at a future date is team-based Versus matching. This will
allow two teams of four to locate each other and compete in a Versus match.
We are also revamping our player matching based on skill level. Currently the
system tries to match people with the same skill level and best pings together.
We will be revisiting this system to tweak it based on data we have collected.
For next week's blog post, we are going to look at the process of creating the
box art.
FileFront, which recently
reported is was closing as of March 30, is still online, and has removed the
introductory message about the planned closure. The
FileFront Forums have a message from an administrator expressing a bit of
mystification, but offering repeated assurances that this is not a joke, in
spite of the timing, and that more information should be coming on what's going
on sometime tomorrow. Thanks nucas.
Thanks Mike Martinez and Ant.
The Kivi's
Underworld patches page now offers new patches for Kivi's Underworld
to update the PC and Mac editions of this action/RPG from Soldak Entertainment
to version 1.002.
This
change log describes what's different in the new version, mostly consisting
of bug-fixes.
Thanks Mike Martinez and Ant.
Develop
reports "a huge amount of layoffs have hit THQ's Big Huge Games studio." THQ
recently indicated they would be closing the studio if they could
not find a buyer, so it seems the news could be worse, but that is probably not
a perspective shared by those who have lost their jobs as a result of this.
Also,
GamesIndustry.biz reports that Crush
Digital Media has entered administration, and that all 16 employees of this
developer co-founded by former Core Design boss Adrian Smith have been "made
redundant."
Legends of Zork is now live, offering
the latest game based on the classic Infocom text adventure. Word
is: “We’ve designed LoZ to be as accessible as possible, hoping to appeal
to both original Zork fans (and there’s enough of them working on this that we
should know what we’re talking about), while also trying to bring in a whole new
generation of players”, said Dylan Collins, CEO of Jolt Online Gaming, “We
appreciate that Zork™ is a hallowed franchise, and we have tried our very best
to keep within the spirit of the game and pay it the reverence it deserves,
while also making some obvious changes to open it up to a wider audience”. He
continued, “We don’t know if this approach will make us the most celebrated
company in the world, or if we’ve just earned ourselves a whole lot of hate
mail, but whatever the result, that’s the balance we’ve tried to strike. We’ve
also made it as accessible as possible in a very literal sense, in that we’ve
designed it to be played in your Internet browser, at home, in school, in the
office. Personally I can’t imagine a better use of a smartphone than to thrash a
giant Kobold while on my exercise bike at the gym”.
Grey Dog Software now
offers a playable demo for Mixed Martial Arts 2, their extreme fighting
sequel that's due for release next week. Word is: "Grey Dog Software, a
developer of sports management simulation software for the PC, today releases a
limited time demo of World of Mixed Martial Arts 2. Grey Dog’s demo release of
WMMA2 is considered both a trial version for fans as well as an opportunity for
public beta. Starting today, players will be able to download and try out the
entire game and be permitted to continuously repeat one month of game time."
Ghostbusters: PC version beats console variant in graphics on PC Games Hardware
is a brief chat with Mark Randel and Joe Kreiner of Terminal Reality about the
graphical power of the Infernal engine behind the upcoming Ghostbusters
video game, discussing the high-end features the PC edition will support that
can't be found on the console versions: "The PC will most definitely be an
optimized version. For example, if you have a fast SLI/Crossfire rig, you can
turn on per pixel screen space ambient occlusion. The game will perform up to 64
raytraces per pixel on the screen to increase the detail level. That is
something you cannot do on the current consoles. Plus you can increase shadow
map resolution and use super high resolution textures if you have the memory!"
The Wolfenstein GDC 09
Interview on Gametrailers.com talks with id Software community manager Peter
Sokal, who discusses the storyline of Wolfenstein, the upcoming World War
II shooter in the works at Raven Software. The clip also includes what looks
like some new gameplay footage.
AusGamers.com -
OnLive: The Future of Gaming?
"The practical upshot is that this could have a real and pronounced
effect on cheating in online games - probably not all forms, but definitely
some of the more pervasive, common and annoying things like wallhacks could
possibly be made extinct. This alone is almost a good enough reason to keep
an eye on the OnLive technology."
Gameplanet - OnLive Preview.
"You can pick up a midrange video card for around NZ$250, and coupled with a
modern dual-core CPU and a couple of gigs of RAM there aren't too many
titles you can't enjoy in 1280x720 with maximum quality settings enabled.
OnLive, by removing the gaming hardware from your lounge, will need to
reproduce something akin to this PC setup for every single user of their
service. It's hard to imagine a dedicated server farm capable of supporting
the launch of a major title, not only from a bandwidth perspective, but in
terms of hardware and even sheer power consumption."
Happy April Fools' Day! Of course we are above such shenanigans here, so as
always, we will try to separate the goof stories from the real ones. I promise
to do my best to avoid passing along hoaxes as real news, or my name isn't Pink.
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