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Tuesday, Dec 30, 2014

  

Shadowrun Hong Kong Revealed

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.

Diablo III Season One End Nears

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.

On Sale

Evening Consolidation

Evening Mobilization

Evening Metaverse

Evening Tech Bits

Evening Safety Dance

etc., etc.

Into the Black

Link of the Day: The Midnight Falconhawk Express. Thanks nin.

Hatred Earns Steam Greenlight

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.

Unlock Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes Framerate and FOV

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.

GOG.com on RAR vs DRM

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.

Morning Consolidation

Morning Mobilization

Morning Metaverse

Morning Tech Bits

Game Reviews

Hardware Reviews

Out of the Blue

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.

Focused Links: Thanks Ant and Acleacius.
Play: Road of Fury 2: Nuclear Blizzard.
Starry Knight.
Link: Everything ‘Back to the Future Part II’ Got Right and Wrong About 2015, According to Futurists.
Science: Researchers: We can detect life on other worlds through its vibrations.
Tesla Roadster gets a range increase to a truly crazy 400 miles maximum.
The Benefits of Being Cold. Thanks Slashdot.
Media: The Pacman Theme in a 10 Different Music Styles Makes Us Nostalgic.
Dogs apparently have tunnel vision.



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