A
Kickstarter update for Shadowrun Returns has a follow-up from Harebrained
Schemes to the news that they are launching another fundraiser
next month for another
installment in the
Shadowrun series of tactical RPGs. The new update has
the promised reveal of the game's location, showing this to be Hong Kong. They
offer two variations on their
Shadowrun Hong Kong concept art wallpaper.
Battle.net has word that
the first
Diablo III season competition is soon drawing to a close,
offering an explanation of how the process of wrapping things up and rolling
over items into players' regular inventories will play out. They do not offer a
definitive end date for the season, saying it could conclude as early as
February 3rd, and though this could shift, they will do their "utmost" to adhere
to that date. They do not specify when season two for the action/RPG sequel will
commence, but they do say there will be "a short period of time" between seasons
to get your gear in order. This sums things up:
Note that all heroes,
rewards, and progress will convert to the appropriate non-Seasonal game mode.
Any items, gold, Paragon experience, Achievements, Artisan levels or recipes,
Stash space, and Blood Shards earned on Normal Seasonal heroes with transfer to
your Normal non-Seasonal heroes when the season is over. Similarly, anything
you’ve earned on Hardcore Seasonal heroes will transfer to your Hardcore
non-Season heroes instead.
The
Steam Greenlight page for
Hatred announces that Destructive
Creations' isometric shooter has been approved by the community for sale on
Steam (thanks
One Angry Gamer). The game attracted a lot of hatred following
its announcement as it puts the player in the
role of a mass killer, which led to the game's
first Greenlight campaign being
suspended before Valve apologetically
reinstated
it. The game is currently slated for release for Windows in Q2 2015, and the
description gives a sense of what it is about as well as why some find it
objectionable:
Hatred fills your whole body. You’re sick and tired of
humanity’s worthless existence. The only thing that matters is your gun and pure
Armageddon that you want to unleash.
You will go out for a hunt, you will clear the New York outskirts of the humans
with a cold blood. You will shoot, you will hurt, you will kill, you will die.
There are no rules, no compassion, no mercy, no point of going back. You are the
lord of life and death now and you have the full control over lives of worthless
human scum.
You will also run, you will need to think, you will need to hide and fight back
when armored forces will come to take you down. You will have no mercy for them,
because they dare to come in your way.
Only brutality and destruction can clear this land. Only the killing spree will
make you die spectacularly and go to hell.
A
Steam Community post outlines how to unlock the framerate in
Metal Gear
Solid: Ground Zeroes, allowing enterprising gamers to surpass the 30/60
frames per second cap in the PC edition of the action/adventure sequel (thanks
DSOGaming). This is accomplished through the deletion of a single line of
code in a configuration file, though obviously you have no one but yourself to
blame if doing so triggers a nuclear launch or chronic acne, as this is
unsupported. There are also instructions in that thread on how to unlock the
game's field of view, and more on messing with the PC edition can be found
on NeoGAF.
A
thread on GOG.com discusses a recent change to the installers the online
marketplace provides for the games it sells that's causing problems for some
users (thanks
DSOGaming). At issue is the use of password-protected compressed RAR files
that cannot be opened by the
innoextract utility
favored by many Linux users. The thread covers attempts to workaround this
situation with and without using WINE, and some unhappy users have called this a
form of DRM from a company that has made a reputation by being anti-DRM. There's
a post from GOG.com explaining their reasoning:
Malware pushers tend
to be better, and any protection can be broken (as this thread shows), but AFAIK
innounp doesn't unpack the compiled code, just the resources, so it's not the
same thing. Plus, a repacked installer won't have the digital signature, so it
can be easily distinguished (Windows shows a notification if you run unsigned
downloaded exe).
The browser actually identifies the archive very well (it is a rar file after
all). The problem is when the only downloaded things are the rar files, without
the installer exe, or even only the first part of the multi-part archive. And if
I try to add any more protection from extracting such a download, then you'll
have even more work to break that :-P Current solution works well enough for
that purpose.
Thanks for the input though. I listen to your feedback and try to add requested
features to the Installer, so if there are any ideas than can be integrated with
the current design and requirements, I'm open to try :-)
As for Wine... Well, it's not really officially supported. I added a /nogui
switch some time ago for that purpose, because it was a feature requested by
some users. For now it's not working due to other updates which had higher
priority. I'll look into getting it working again.
Time is running out to wear those groovy 2014 glasses you bought to close out
last year. And bad news if you have the prescription version, because I'm pretty
sure the lenses won't fit right in 2015 frames.