Play Left 4 Dead free for one day.

This is really one of the things that makes steam great. I dont see any other way this kind of thing could be offered.

Via Bigdownloads:

On the first day of May, Valve is opening up the full version of Left 4 Dead for free for a 24 hour period beginning at 12.01 am on Friday GMT (that's 5:01 am ET and 2:10 am PT). This version will include everything in the retail version including the just released content update that includes the new Survival Mode as well as the new campaign level No Mercy. You can go ahead and pre-load the free version now via Steam so you can be ready when it unlocks.

Its a little overdue, but here is an overview of the new survival mode for L4D. I found it interesting:

Surviving the L4D Survival Pack
April 16, 2009 - Kerry Davis and Scott Dalton


Survival Mode pits your team against never ending waves of infected. Sounds simple. Just trap the survivors in a small part of a map, unleash the hordes, and record the longest time. Survival Mode, which will be released next week, is actually a bit more than that.

Our goals for Survival Mode are to deliver a mode of play distinct from Campaign or Versus, have games that regularly last under ten minutes, and emphasize competition with team play through leaderboards.

Survival Mode draws on the planning and communication aspects of a successful Finale or Crescendo event, while taking it to another level. It rapidly hits a fever pitch that only a well coordinated team will be able to successfully survive. Everything from simply covering a reviving teammate, to making every shot count to minimize reloads becomes crucial in Survival Mode.

Given the importance of pacing in Survival Mode, we need to define as precisely as possible how the difficulty ramps up during the course of a round. We have numerous variables to work with: mob spawn frequency, special infected spawn frequency, number of each type of special infected, total number of special infected, tank spawn frequency, total number of tanks, and so on. We need all of these variables to work together to create a fairly smooth difficulty curve.

If the curve ramps up too sharply, we find that teams of all skill levels tend to hit a wall at the same time. There isn't enough variation in the times to separate great teams from average ones. If the curve is too flat, then average teams will have a good experience, but really good teams can grind on long enough to cross the line from having fun to just getting worn out.

It might seem that just gradually increasing spawn rates and numbers of infected will create a nice smooth curve, but it turns out to be much trickier than that. Each type of infected has its own spawn schedule, so even though the individual spawn curves may be designed to be fairly easy at a particular point in time, sometimes they overlap in just such a way that the players find themselves in a really bad situation far earlier than we intend.

For example, a tank will be much harder to fight if a mob of common infected spawns at the same time - and nearly impossible if three hunters also show up right at that moment. A similar situation can happen due to variables outside our control - a team may not dispatch a tank or mob quickly enough, causing subsequent waves to start arriving and piling on to an already difficult battle. It's also hard to anticipate when teams will need to make an ammo run or heal up, both of which can be extremely difficult only a few minutes into the round. In order to help visualize these overlap points and the collapse of each spawn curve, we graphed out the wave behavior of infected over the course of a survival round.




The last variable we added was the "lull" - a short interval of time during which nothing new will spawn. Each lull gets slightly longer as the round progresses, but that's no guarantee the team will actually see the lull - it just prevents new infected from spawning. It doesn't help with infected that are already in the arena. Killing mobs and tanks as quickly as possible is the best way to ensure that a team can take advantage of a lull to heal, resupply ammo, or just move to a better location with more supplies.

Given the extreme pace of Survival Mode, the number of zombies killed in a single round often outnumbers an entire campaign. Even optimizing towards using pistols to eliminate common hordes, ammunition usually becomes an issue at some point. As ammo piles provide a unique infinite resupply for players, they tend to be in relatively less defensible positions in the Survival arenas. This means making an all important ammo run is rarely a safe proposition and requires good teamwork and planning. Timing your resources correctly to be able to make a run when necessary can make or break a team. The perfect pipebomb or well placed molotov can mean the difference between a cakewalk and catastrophe.

The Hospital Elevator, for example, might seem like an easy Crescendo Event to conquer. Hit the elevator button and holdout until the doors open for a quick escape. In Survival Mode, however, the area begins locked down. Areas open as the hordes come in, breaking down the doors to reach the survivors. In each room there are additional caches of vital pills, pipes, and Molotovs. By moving from location to location, using up the plentiful supplies as needed, a team can maximize their time in a game where the elevator never arrives to offer escape. In other maps, items may be less plentiful and require careful planning on their usage. Managing one's inventory and resources works hand-in-hand with teamwork in Survival Mode.

Next week you will be able to see our design in action when the DLC is released for the PC and 360.

Woot!!! LD4 survival pack

Via Ign

April 20, 2009 - Blasting your way through endless hordes of zombies really never gets old, of course. But if you want to freshen up your Left 4 Dead experience look to Xbox Live around 2am Pacific time tomorrow, April 21. That's when Valve is releasing the free Survival Pack, which introduces a new mode called…Survival. The pack also includes two newfangled versus campaigns.

PC gamers will have to wait just a bit longer – the Survival Pack is scheduled to arrive on Steam later in the day.

Yeah baby, get ready to get slaughtered in under 10 minutes.

More Demigod drama

As much as I am a fanboy of Stardock, it appears that a few major flaws went unnoticed in beta testing. For many people with XP, there is apparently an issue where people will click on the icon to launch the game, an hourglass will appear for about 1 second and nothing will happen. From the e-mails I have received and some forum posts Ive read, here is a good plan to get this game up and running:

IF you have logitech drivers or comodo firewall, uninstall them or tell them not to load at startup(apparently there is a conflict)

If that doesnt work:

Delete following file:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Stardock\Demigod\sig.bin

if that doesnt work uninstall google desktop and google toolbar, then try deleting above file again.

if that doesnt work, Ill try the above step and re-install demigod and impulse(making sure windows firewall is off)

For more information please visit http://esupport.stardock.com/index.php

For those of you that dont think its worth the trouble, Stardock does have an excellent return policy. I will say their tech support is on top of finding this problem and patching it.

Demigod Update - Go Stardock!

It's been an interesting week for the launch of Demigod. The Gas Powered Games-Stardock strategy game has suffered through an early release from GameStop that allowed a ton of warez users to gain access early and overwhelm the game's multiplayer servers. As a result some (but not all) of the game's early reviews have taken the game to task for the connection problems even as they also say the gameplay is excellent.

In his latest update post on the Demigod message boards, Stardock's Brad Wardell states that the launch issues of the past few days things have been dealt with: "As those of you who have the game can already see, the server issues are gone. We've recreated a duplicate of the server infrastructure we had but dedicated to users who have the most recent version of the game and a valid CD key (serial #)."

Wardell also wants to make sure people know that even with all of the pirate copies of Demigod out there, those players could not actually play the game online without a CD key: "What brought down servers was a lot more benign than that. It was the HTTPS requests to inform users if there was a new version along with checking the community features for info (friends lists, chat channels, etc.) and things like that. Things like that are pretty piddly. It's only when you get a ton of users doing that at the same time that it becomes a problem as we saw."

A new update for Demigod will be released via Impulse next week that will deal with various minor issues. Wardell states, "After that, we can look at the typical balance requests, cheese stuff, and whatever else crops up." He added, "Now, while the reviews are likely to have a pretty serious impact on sales, it does not affect our plans to continue to release updates and enhancements to the game nor does it affect our plans to release additional free Demigods.."

The true effect of piracy

For those of you that say piracy isnt a problem for pc games....

Via bigdownloads:

A few days ago, when it was revealed that Gamestop had broken the sales embargo for Demigod, Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell said this would be a interesting way to see the true effects of PC piracy. In his latest update on the status of their just released strategy game, Wardell states that users with warez copies of Demigod are overloading the game's multiplayer servers.

He states, "Sadly, most of the ~120,000 connections are not customers but via warez. About 18,000 are legitimate." Those warez users are being pushed off so that they are not " . . . slamming the same servers that legitimate customers are using." Server capacity has also been expanded and a new connection system for multiplayer matches (shown above) has been created that will be released later via a patch.

Wardell also took time to go after GameSpot's 6.5 (out of 10) review of Demigod. The review was critical of the game's current connection issues and while Wardell certainly has to agree he adds, " . . . I think that should be weighted with what the average user who gets Demigod will experience and in reality, as annoying as this issue is, it's not something that's going to be an ongoing issue, it's something that is likely to be taken care of in the next day or two." Wardell hopes other reviews of the game will take that into consideration before posting up their opinions.

Update: A new patch that is designed to fix some of the connection issues has been released for the game via Impulse. Another patch is expected in a few more days.

Time Warner backs down (thank god)

Via Cnet:

Time Warner Cable has put the brakes on a trial that was testing its new "consumption-based billing" system for its broadband service, the company said Thursday.

The company's CEO Glenn Britt said in a statement that there has been "a great deal of misunderstanding" by consumers and lawmakers who have criticized the plan.

Britt said that the company still believes that consumption-based billing may be the best way to handle rising network costs among its heaviest bandwidth users. But he conceded the company will not proceed with tests until it consults further with customers and interested parties.

Senator Chuck Schumer (NY-D) and Congressman Eric Massa (D) announced Time Warner's change of heart during a rally in Rochester, NY, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported earlier on Thursday.

Massa, who represents Rochester, was an early opponent of the plan and has promised to introduce legislation that he has said would protect consumers against companies introducing tiered services, such a Time Warner's proposed billing plan.

Massa is still not giving up on his legislation that would ban metered billing.

Time Warner had quietly been testing its metered billing service in Beaumont, Texas since last year. But last week, the nation's second largest cable provider said that it was planning to expand the test of the bandwidth caps to other cities, including Austin, San Antonio, Rochester, NY and Greensboro, NC.

The way the plan worked is that Time Warner would cap data downloads and uploads at between 10 Gigabtye to 60 Gigabyte a month with prices ranging from $25 to $65 per month, depending on the region. The company also planned to introduce a new plan that would have offered 100 GB of downloads for $75 a month. Additional downloads would be charged $1 a GB with a cap of $75 on the extra fee, essentially making an unlimited plan cost $150 per month.

Time Warner said that it was testing metered billing because some of its subscribers were using an inordinate amount of bandwidth. And as more video and peer-to-peer services come online, the company said that it needed a new business model to handle the rising cost of maintaining and managing its network.

But consumer advocates have argued that Time Warner is simply trying to protect is cable TV business by making it very expensive for users to watch competing video services online. Public Knowledge, one of the more vocal opponents to Time Warner's metering plans, was pleased with the company's decision to table the tests.

"The company properly listened to its subscribers, the public and policymakers, all of whom were highly critical of the proposition in the first place," Gigi Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, said in a statement."It quickly became clear the plan had nothing to do with managing Time Warner's network, and everything to do with increasing profits at the expense of captive customers in an uncompetitive broadband market."

I can certainly understand the rationale that a few users taking up an obscene amount of bandwith with services such as peer to peer should be charged more, put this whole idea was literally nothing more than an elaborate price gouging scheme. Though the claims most users would get a slight break may be true (though I question those numbers, as they came from Time Warner themselves), it would in effect be nearly doubling the cost for many customers out there. And as I consider cancelling my cable service and simply using hulu, it does occur to me that this would "discourage" that practice. Not to mention those of us who use steam, impulse, or play games online would probably get screwed.

Dawn of War 2 and Duke Nukem

THQ went ahead and finally released the long promised single player demo for Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II.

Steam is still being used to update the main commercial version of the game with a new patch released last Monday that fixes some issues and added a free multiplayer map. Now Steam owners who haven't bought Dawn of War II yet can get a 25 percent discount. The price cut ends on Monday.

Presidentof 3D Realms George Broussard (developer of the alleged Duke Nukem Whenever game), in a recent message on his own Twitter site he posted up this message (complete and unedited):

Closing out a milestone this week. 71 more tasks to do and we started with probably 800-900. Been a good push. Next one starts Monday.

That tweet has apparently caught several web sites attention as they posted up several totally speculative articles about what he meant. According to The Escapist (qouted via bigdownloads), it means that 3D Realms' long-in-development shooter Duke Nukem Forever is "about 85% complete". What? Broussard only says they are closing out a milestone. We have no idea what milestone they have reached and what it might mean to the development of the entire game.

I consider this games release date to be roughly as elusive as the giant squid.

New stuff for Mirrors edge, and a WoW patch

Via Bigdownloads:

Mirror's Edge was an interesting design for a game that didn't really fullfill its expectation. However one of the cool things about the first person action game was its more surreal time trial levels that were released as downloadable content after the main game shipped to stores. Now a few enterprising folks at the Beyond Unreal forums have figured out a way to create a Mirror's Edge level editor.

Basically the procedure is coping a few Unreal Tournament 3 editor files into Mirror's Edge which is obviously not approved by either Epic Games nor the game's developer Digital Illusions. The move does seem to work well enough that a few new Mirror's Edge levels had been made. However messing with game files is always a risk so don't blame us if your game is broken afterwards.

They should actually support this. There were some stupid puzzles in that game that really turned players off. Letting them make their own maps in order to avoid this game shortcomings would be smart.

In addition, it looks like World of Warcraft once again reinvented the games talent trees in their most recent huge update. There are too many changes to list, go here for patch notes

Huh, well theres a risky choice

Via Bigdownloads:

Few games in recent memory have generated as much critical comment as Six Days in Fallujah. The upcoming third person military shooter from Atomic Games and Konami is based on the real 2004 battle in the Iraq city where a number of US soldiers lost their lives. Konami recently held a press event for a number of their upcoming games and our sister site Joystiq got a chance to see a very brief gameplay video of Six Days in Fallujah.

However it's their interview with Atomic Games president Peter Tamte, creative director Juan Benito and one of the game military consultants, US Marine Corps Corporal Michael Ergo, that's very enlightening. Tamte claims that in addition to US military and Iraq civilians, they have also gotten input on the game from the insurgents that were involved in the battle. Tamte didn't reveal any more info on exactly how the insurgents were "contributing" to Six Days in Fallujah, saying, " I need to be careful about the specifics that I give." Tamte added that the game doesn't take sides on whether or not the US should have started the Iraq war, saying, "We're focused now on what actually happened on the ground."

Getting feedback from insurgents is a really risky move, but not for the reasons people think. The "Uproar" caused by this will fade when people find something else to get angry about. However, this will raise the expectations for making a successful game. If it turns out to be fantastic, people will defend it saying that they got input from all sides to make a truly realistic experience and a great game. However, should the end result be crappy, the developer will be accused of using the idea of collaborating with enemy combatants to gain press attention for a crappy product.

I wouldn't do it, but more power to them. Would anyone care if the creators of Silent Hunter spoke with German U boat captains? Doubt it

OOOH An MMO worth looking at?

Funny, just yesterday I was running my big mouth about fantasy MMO's being played out. As I finally got my computer working this morning, Im looking through games on steam when I come across a future-Spy based Online game called Global Agenda. Here is the description via steam:

GLOBAL AGENDA is a fast-paced action MMO using Unreal® Engine 3 set in Earth's near future, a spy-fi world of advanced technology and player-driven conflict.

In the wake of severe global disaster, the political face of 22nd century earth has changed and player-created factions scheme against each other for power. Traditional full-scale wars a thing of the past, factions must rely on covert agencies, teams of elite special operatives able to seize and defend key facilities. The future of humanity is their battleground, where knowledge is power, technology is a race, and everyone has an agenda.

The players control the world of Global Agenda, forging alliances with their peers and executing lightning strikes against their enemies. They determine which factions to aid and which to oppose, while the only thing that stands in their way is other agencies.

Develop your agent — Create, extensively customize, and improve your agent character over the course of your career, complimenting your FPS skills with RPG-style progression and high-tech gear.
Join with other agents — Engage in cooperative Pve missions to develop and refine your individual and team tactics
Advance your agency — Join a player-created agency, compete in technology races for advanced equipment, and capture critical locations to increase your influence in the world.
Compete in fast-paced PvP combat — Work with your allies to gather reconnaissance data, then raid or capture enemy-controlled facilities during objective-based missions. Equip yourself from a powerful array of weapons, armor, and strategic devices like triggered explosives, deployable turrets, stealth suits, holographic decoys, and remote control robots.
Experience a dynamic, player-driven world — Agency leaders navigate through a global conflict of other player-run groups, striving to reach their goals first. Territory, resources, technology, and influence are all valuable commodities, with agencies engaging in politics, intrigue, and outright deception to control them.

System Requirements
OS: Windows XP SP2+, Windows Vista SP1+
Processor: 2.4+ Ghz Single-Core Processor
Memory: 3GB RAM DAAAAAMMMMNNN
Graphics: NVIDIA 7800GT+, or ATI Radeon 9800+
DirectX®: Directx 9+
Hard Drive: 15 GB Free Space
Broadband internet connection required

Perhaps signing up for this beta was not wise

Ninjas bring us good tidings

On a more uplifting note, I was checking out IGN PC when I encountered Mini Ninjas, an upcoming game for the PC. Kinda of cartoonish in nature, its supposed to feature some cartoonish ninja action. Some of the features include:

Leveling to gain new abilities
Magical attacks
Ability to freeze time
Ability to use stealth
Ability to traverse into the spirit plane, where you can take control of animals.

And there is a possibility your enemies turn into fuzzy bunnies when you slay them, though this is unconfirmed.

Just missed the mark on MMO's. EA, you suck.

"Taking place on our earth, in our times, The Secret World (TSW) is inspired by history and mythology, modern conspiracy theories and ancient mysteries. For there really is a world within ours, a secret world, where magic exists, monsters roam and ancient forces are fighting for the dominance of earth. It is a world of legendary stories, ageless conflicts and powerful cabals. In this world, even modern cities hide secrets. In this world, players can take part in the greatest conspiracies of our age, and battle the forces of darkness across the world and throughout time."

The beginning of this sounded OK, then they ruined it by adding monsters and magic. It makes me wonder why companies keep trying to release medieval MMO's, at some point you would think they would realize the market is dominated my World of Warcraft and Everquest, which is why every attempt ends in failure. How about an MMO based on current day spies? There are plenty of conspiracy theories to create quests around, and plenty of factions to play for. Where as WOW has Azeroth, Outland and Northrend regions, why not Have New York, Moscow, Beijing, Prague and New Jersey as locations? (Yes, I said new Jersey, glad you were paying attention). Making it in present day would help keep it out of Blizzard's Crushing Dominance over that genre.

Now to mention the next topic. I was just made aware of this news, via Fidgit.com:

The henchman for sale is unique for starting out with four skills (it seems that none of the henchmen already in the game start out with more than two skills). If you buy "Jimmy Lira", as he's called, you could promote him to underboss to get a henchman with six skills. Right now, you'll never have a henchman with more than four skills. But since these henchman are the characters you play when you're online, this still stinks as a way for players to buy an online advantage.

The level 4 weapons for sale aren't in the game unless you buy them. As it is, you start out with access to all types of weapons at level 1. A pistol, shotgun, machine gun, magnum, and sniper rifle. As you play, you can find level 2 and level 3 versions of each weapon. You can then spend money giving your henchmen these upgraded weapons. However, there are no level 4 weapons in the game until you buy them from EA.
If this is true, it would mean that players who made "Micropayments" would have an advantage over players who just bought the game by itself. Once again, EA demonstrates its ability to squeeze their customer base. I hope there is a backlash, and your sales flop.

And if my information is false, oops, my bad

Robot scientist makes discovery, without human assistance

So odd and interesting I just had to post it:

A robot scientist that can generate its own hypotheses and run experiments to test them has made its first real scientific discoveries.

Dubbed Adam, the robot is the handiwork of researchers at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge in the UK. All by itself it discovered new functions for a number of genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, aka brewer's yeast.

Ross King, a computational biologist at Aberystwyth, who leads the project, said that Adam's results were modest, but real. "It's certainly a contribution to knowledge. It would be publishable," he says.

Adam, which actually consists of a small roomful of lab equipment, has four personal computers that act as a brain, and possesses robot arms, cameras, liquid handlers, incubators and other equipment. The team gave the robot a freezer containing a library of thousands of mutant strains of yeast with individual genes deleted. It was also equipped with a database containing information about yeast genes, enzymes, and metabolism, and a supply of hundreds of metabolites.

To discover which genes coded for which enzymes, Adam cultured a mutant yeast with a certain gene knocked out, and monitored how well the mutant grew without a particular metabolite. If the strain grew poorly without the metabolite, Adam learned something about the function of the knocked out gene. The robot could carry out more than 1000 of these experiments a day.

In all, Adam formulated and tested 20 hypotheses about genes coding for 13 enzymes. Twelve hypotheses were confirmed. For instance, Adam correctly hypothesised that three genes it identified encode an enzyme important in producing the amino acid lysine. The researchers confirmed Adam's work with their own experiments.

The team is now working on a new robot, called Eve, which will search for new drugs.

Adam, Eve and their ilk could soon automate routine and time-consuming scientific chores, leaving human scientists free to make higher level, creative leaps, says King. But ultimately the robots may even be capable of conducting truly independent research, he says.

Left 4 Dead...more updates about updates

Valve plans to release the long awaited mod SDK for the game sometime after the Survival Pack content update on April 21. This will allow people to create their own maps and campaigns for the game. According to Valve's Zoid Kirsch, "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." Valve also plans to allow two teams of four to find each other and then compete in a Versus mod match.

Awesome. I was just talking to a friend when I mentioned that this would be a good idea