The
TAGAP Website celebrates the fourth anniversary of the release of
The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins with the release of
The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins 2, a freeware sequel to the freeware original. The game can be downloaded from
AtomicGamer and thanks
Gamer's Hell. Word is: "The super-small indie game developer duo Penguin DT is proud to announce that TAGAP 2, the sequel to the cult-hit TAGAP: The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins released back in 2007, goes live on July 31st 2011. Like the first game, TAGAP 2 will also be honest-to-Tux freeware; No ads, microtransactions or subscriptions – just download, play and share! The game is for the designed for Windows XP, Vista and 7, while it's proven to run
smoothly on Mac with Wineskin." Here's
the launch trailer, and here's a description of the game:
Following the events of the first game our newly befriended heroes Pablo and Pedro stumble on a secret combat penguin experiment in a forgotten warehouse, unleashing General Primo, the most epic cyber-penguin ever! What results is an awesome 2D-platformer-shoot-em-up adventure where Pablo and Pedro fight their way through endless armies of zombie penguins, trying to stop the what-ever-insane-plan General Primo has cooked up during his artificial sleep. If they fail, it's the Penguin Apocalypse!
A post to the
Steam Users' Forums by Valve software engineer John McCaskey answers a question about why
Steam installs DirectX/.Net/Direct3D updates with so many games, even when a user's Direct3D is already up-to-date (thanks
reddit). It turns out these updates are not updating DirectX or Direct3D itself, but are necessary to keep multiple flavors of D3DX libraries straight: "Each game that uses the D3DX helper library is linked to a specific version. As such the game must run the correct D3D installer version that it was specifically compiled with to ensure the binaries exist. Even if a later version of the binary is already installed, that version cannot be used, and even if your DirectX install is up-to-date because you've run a more recent version of the installer that is not guaranteed to have installed all previous versions. Even worse, if a version is installed for x86 it doesn't guarantee the same version is installed for x64, so 64 bit and 32 bit games may need to run the same exact installer version but targeting different platforms when run. Furthermore, Microsoft's licensing terms prevent anyone from distributing the files directly, the only way to distribute them is to run the installer, that's also the only supported method from Microsoft to check that the correct version installed." He goes on to explain the few options available to Valve to program more efficiency into this system:
The one thing that could be made better on our side is that Steam could be smart enough to know if an exactly matching version of the dx installer is already downloaded and share that content so you don't download it with each game. Since the installer is relatively small compared to most game installs that wouldn't be a huge win though and requires a good deal of new complexity for partners in how they package up their games and manage installation dependencies. You'd also still end up with lots of different versions of the installer, since as discussed above they are often targeting different D3DX versions and as such are all required. As such any improvement to avoid duplicates isn't an immediate priority, but we may be able to improve it slightly in the future.
A recent post to the
Gaslamp Games Website offers a status report on the next patch for
Dungeons of Dredmor. This explains the real-life™ considerations that are impacting when this update will go live in the indie RPG, and puts out the call for players willing to help with patch testing. The post also outlines more fixes and changes that will be part of the next version.
The new Black Ops DLC tops this week's list of bestselling games on
Steam:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation Content Pack
- E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy
- Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
- Sid Meier's Civilization V
- From Dust
- Terraria
- Dead Island
- Stronghold 3
- Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues
I'm reflecting about my dad a bit more than usual lately, as it was one year ago today he died after a battle with lung cancer. As it often the case with such anniversaries, it seems both more recent and more long ago than that, depending on how I look at it. Anyway, I don't want to be a downer for you, since I am holding up fine on my end, but I will just throw out the idea that this may serve as a nudge to give a call to one's parents for a quick "I love you," and I admit to harboring the even more ambitious thought that someone out there will take this as an omen to quit smoking cigarettes.
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