Archived News:

Sunday, Oct 16, 2011

Project Zomboid Code Theft

DIYgamer has word from a couple of Twitter posts that two laptops with the current builds of Project Zomboid were stolen from the home of the lead developer of The Indie Stone's zombie game (thanks reddit). These statements were apparently followed by some drunken twitter ranting, which provoked an apology on Lemmy's Blog and the apparent deletion of Lemmy's Twitter account. There's an official statement on the Project Zomboid website, and here's a bit:
I won’t beat around the bush. The Indie Stone have just suffered a major set-back. The Newcastle flat where Lemmy and Binky live and work was burgled this evening, and so far the clearest things taken are two computers and Lemmy’s credit card.

Project Zomboid was regularly backed up from machine to machine, but rarely – sadly and infuriatingly – externally. We have lost an awful lot of work. Mash and Binky don’t even know this has happened yet.

Chris (Lemmy) is quite distressed to be honest – we’re still dealing with something that was discovered little over an hour ago. After his tweets on the subject we both agreed it’d be best if I wrote a blog here to calm fears. He clearly isn’t able to currently. (It’s also probably worth saying that there were no PZ player personal details etc. on the machines).

This will clearly severely delay the next update, which was very near completion. I personally only just finished my work on it today (one of the final things on the ‘to-do’ list) and had it ready for input tomorrow.

Project Zomboid, however, will come back stronger.

Nadeo Showing ShootMania This Week, TrackMania 2 Patch Nears

A new post on the ManiaPlanet Blog by Nadeo CEO Florent 'Hylis' Castelnerac gives a state of the ManiaPlanet address (thanks Frans). Topics include plans to soon launch Maniaplanet 2.0, current beta testing of ManiaLive 2, and their plans to show off the map editor of ShootMania Storm on Saturday at Paris Games Week. He also mentions a new patch they will soon be pushing out for TrackMania 2: Canyon:
At the studio, we have just released the second update that players can activate in their player page if they want. Combined, you have an improved support for custom car model, no waiting time for official attempt at launch if you have previously launched the game since more than five minute off course, a restart after updates and various optimisations, stability issues and compatibility questions. The update will be pushed soon to all players. (…)

And if you have this update, you can discover a plug in of map generator that we just released in the forum (…)

We are also working on some new blocs for Canyon. We could have improved the current collection here or there, but we have chosed to focus on one set of blocs in an already existing theme. So, it will be less interesting for combinations but should bring something to the feelings divertity of the environment.

One of our big topic at the moment is the economical system. Within two weeks, we should have switched on the economical ladder as well as the economical balancing system that transform some planets into economical points in order to stabilize the economy and the inflation. Starting from there, we will be able to reward with planets audiences for manialink and servers.

EA TMs Prison Kings

Joystiq has word that EA has filed a pair of trademark registrations, offering some fuel for speculation. One of the TMs is for online computer game and downloadable computer-game software.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Patch

A new unofficial patch is now available for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines to update the Source-engine action/RPG to version 7.8. This continues the remarkable community support for this game that has no official such resources since the demise of its developer Troika right around its release. The new version is on its exclusive home at The Patches Scrolls, and here's the change list: Continue here to read the full story.

Steam Top 10

Here's the list of the ten bestselling games on Steam for the past week according to Valve:

  1. RAGE
  2. THQ Hit Collection
  3. Might & Magic Heroes VI
  4. Metro 2033
  5. Dungeon Defenders
  6. Red Faction: Armageddon
  7. Fable III
  8. Duke Nukem Forever
  9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
  10. Orcs Must Die!

Mojang Turns One

The Word of Notch has a new post celebrating the first anniversary of the formation of Mojang. Included is a little history lesson on how Minecraft came to be the game familiar to almost four million paying customers:
I started working on Minecraft in the summer of 2009, starting with a top-down isometric mining game. The elevator pitch for the game was “Dwarf Fortress meets Rollercoaster Tycoon meets Dungeon Keeper”. It was an interesting game for sure that I’d still like to see someone make, but then I played a game called Infiniminer and realized the first person perspective with blocky graphics worked really well and started prototyping it. The game went from being about controlling a team of characters to being a single player first person experience, with a focus on resource gathering and a somewhat coherent fantasy setting that would provide hopefully constant challenges and things to do.

Game Reviews

Hardware Reviews

Out of the Blue

We had a tremendous time at the Ian Hunter concert last night. He was awesome, he played a great setlist, and the band was unbelievably tight. We weren't even the youngest ones there, which is cool, as it shows there are still people being introduced to Ian's music. There was actually a girl in her 20s directly behind us who was having too good a time, and was eventually escorted out by security for causing too much of a commotion, which was actually kind of welcome (she was kicking the backs of our seats pretty regularly), though it didn't seem very rock-and-roll to toss her for simple rowdiness. Any way, Ian Hunter rocks, and of course, so does Cleveland (three, four!).

Links: Thanks Ant and Mike Martinez and Acleacius.
Play: Cut and Kill: Halloween.
Explodabot Games.
Links: Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books Flowchart.
Where Are They Now? Diseases That Killed You in Oregon Trail. Thanks Neatorama.
Stories: Very Large Array telescope in public call for new name.
Science: DNA sequenced of woman who lived to 115.
Moving a Robotic Arm With Just a Thought. Thanks HARDOCP.
Media: Inverted.
Nerd Tron - Robot Chicken.
Seinfeld Reunion edited Chronological.
The Funnies: FoxTrot.
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