Dreamball is a fun relaxing physics-driven game made up of puzzle compilations. Roll through the various uniquely themed 'Worlds' completing different puzzles you traverse across using the dynamic environment to beat obstacles encountered, while also shifting into other Marbles and powerups at your dispense.


Features

• Dynamically driven puzzles fully enhance Source physics into gameplay using objects that keep puzzles fun and inventive


• Beautiful graphics bring the 3D worlds to life in differently themed environments such as the Night, Sky and Ice Worlds


• Different game modes such as Orb Hunt and Tic-Toc Race keep gameplay fun and fresh in many ways


• (coming soon-) Compete or cooperatively play with your friends in different multi-player modes

A handful of stats students at the University of Ottawa decided to create a working mathematical model for zombie outbreaks, and possible ways of thwarting the attack. What did they learn? We're screwed. Kind of.

First, some background. They based their methodology around three groups: zombies, those susceptible to zombie attacks, and those who are unaffected (dead zombies). They based their model around zombies who infect humans with saliva via bites, and walk in slow, irregular strides. They also allowed a 24 hour incubation period from the moment of infection to complete zombification.

What did they learn? Well if left unaddressed, a zombie attack on a sizable city would wipe out the population in a matter of 4-8 hours. If you tried to quarantine the zombies, it would essentially have no effect on the outcome because the zombies would inevitably escape, or infect the humans attempting to quarantine zombies. And if you tried to generate a zombie antidote, you'd still lose a lot of people in the process of creating the antidote, and it wouldn't revert the zombies back to a dead state, which means they could possibly infect people in other areas.

The best solution? The only hope of wiping out a possible zombie invasion is to attack the undead in focused, strategic attacks that progressively increase in intensity. This will help address the growing number of undead in the process. But even then it would prove difficult to emerge victorious, as it would take 10 days worth of heavy fighting to quell the outbreak.

But luckily, you don't have to worry about any of this because some sap mathematically proved it would be impossible for zombies to exist (along with vampires). Something about how they would feast themselves into oblivion

As Team Fortress and Day of Defeat server operators have noticed, Valve released an update tonight that broke SourceMod.

Usually we are able to handle updates very quickly. This one was different. There was no public beta, so we had no way of testing or preparing. To make things worse, Valve actually forked their Orange Box engine, broke compatibility, and didn't release new headers or any information about the changes.

With absolutely no warning, we had to reverse engineer these changes and update our source/build infrastructure for a new engine configuration. It's a testament to how seriously we take update parity that we were able to do this in one night on such short notice. But more on that further down. What you've all been waiting for:

There are now 1.2.2-dev snapshots available that will load on the new TF/DoD engines. We will get the 1.3 branch at parity tomorrow.

For users who have custom gamedata files, please note that we have separated TF/DoD into a new "orangebox_valve" engine property. The Orange Box engine that non-Valve games use is still "orangebox".

We are going to wait a few days to do an official 1.2.2 release. Sometime in the next two weeks there will be a Metamod:Source release as well - it's not needed, but we want to prepare for the worst. After this release we're going to redo our build infrastructure so adding new engine updates is very fast, both to wait for new builds and to support new games across the entire source tree.

This kind of update is extremely stressful on all of us - that includes you! We want to get things right in these situations, rather than damage the product integrity. The community was great in being both supportive and patient while we rushed to get something working. It means a lot both to moral and productivity that we didn't have to put out any fires on the forums or mailing lists.

In particular, it was amazing to see everyone on the SourceMod team work in unison tonight. We were all available for disparate chunks of time across random timezones, and we all have Real Lives to maintain. Despite this everyone pitched in (sometimes chaotically) and everything stitched together. So I would like to give a huge thanks to team members Fyren, pRED, DS, and bl4nk - and #smdevs participants Nephyrin, Drunken_F00l, and voogru.

Get the inside scoop on Left 4 Dead 2, new Left 4 Dead DLC and much, much more tonight on GTTV!

Tonight's revealing episode of GameTrailers TV takes viewers inside Valve as we showcase brand new Left 4 Dead 2 footage, including a never-before-seen campaign that's quite literally a carnival of zombie action! We also deliver detailed information and new gameplay footage from Left 4 Dead's upcoming DLC - Crash Course, find out about the future of the Team Fortress 2 short films and the possibility of a TF 2 comic book, and host Geoff Keighley unleashes a flurry of Twitter user-questions on Gabe Newell. Find out about Valve's distance from the PS3, the progress of Half Life 2: Episode 3, Counter-Strike 2, and a whole lot more!

All of that and more is going down tonight at 12:30am ET/PT on Spike and you can catch the show after it airs on GameTrailers.com in glorious HD.

Check out this week's promo:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/episode-220-gametrailers-tv/54082

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

New Content

• Added King Of The Hill game mode
  
• Added custom animations played by the losing team during the post-win state. They are moved into third person camera to enjoy them
  
• Added lots of new hats

Additions / Changes

• Added "Auto Reload" option to the multiplayer advanced options
  
  • Clip-based weapons that reload a full clip at a time can now have their reloads aborted by firing
  
  
• Pistol now fires at a fixed rate, not based on the speed at which you press the firing button
  
• Added a color blind option to add a Jarate icon above enemies who are busy accepting a terrifying existence where they have no dignity
  
• Significantly reduced the amount of network traffic being sent
  
• Capturing the flag in a CTF game mode gives the entire capturing team 10 seconds of critboost
  
• Sappers attached to a teleporter automatically place another Sapper on the other end of the teleporter, if it exists
  
  • Engineers wrenching a teleporter will repair the other end as well, and remove Sappers from both if they exist
  
  
• Disguised Spies no longer trigger On-Hit effects (like the Blutsauger's heal)
  
• Removed self-inflicted minicrits. Fixes Jarate'd Soldiers/Demomen having ineffective rocket/grenade jumps
  
• Added an item panel to the spectator cam that shows non-standard items being carried by the player you're spectating
  
• Added an "Inspect" key that allows you to look at items being carried by your team mates
  
• Backpack improvements:
  
  • Added drag & drop to move items around. Item positions are maintained on the backend
    
  • Added multi-select, allowing you to delete multiple items at once
    
  • Added a new key to the key binding page that opens your inventory directly to your backpack
    
  • Fixed mouseover panel being incorrectly position when the backpack first appears
    
• Cloaked Spies standing in valid backstab positions no longer raise their knife
  
• Added current map name and gametype to the bottom right of scoreboard
  
• Added class icons to tips on the loadout and loading screens
  
• Improved visuals around flags when they're being carried by a player
  
• Improved critboosted visuals, making it much clearer when an enemy has critboost
  
• Updated the loading panel to show the game type under the map name during level transition
  
• In-game chat dialog now supports full Unicode characters
  
• Added BLU main menu background
  
• Added response caching for some server queries to help reduce the CPU load from DOS attacks
  
• Teammates no longer block friendly radius damage. Prevents nearby teammates causing rocket/grenade jumps to fail
  

Map Changes

• Update PLR_Pipeline
  
  • Increased the starting advantage in the third round if a team has won the first two rounds
    
  • Fixed carts not continuing to the second round if they're capped at the same time in the first round
    
  • Fixed being able to shoot pipebombs over the starting gates in the first round
    
  • Fixed being able to open the doors in the first round before the setup time was finished
    
  • Fixed players getting stuck in some doors
    
  • Fixed players being able to get onto rooftops and out of the map boundaries
    
  • Fixed other minor bugs and exploits
    
• Added community map Arena_Offblast
  
• Added community map Cp_Yukon
  
• Update Arena_Sawmill
  
  • Fixed DirectX8 bug where some models would not be visible
    
  • Fixed exploit with building teleporters outside of the map
    
• Updated CP_Granary
  
  • Made a few changes to improve balance based on competitive community feedback
    

Item Reworks

• The Force of Nature
  
  • The enemy knockback now only works in close range and behaves more like the Pyro's air blast
    
  • Enemies cannot be juggled by the FaN's effect
    
  • The self-knockback has also changed to respect the firer's view angle. Looking up while shooting will no longer propel the enemy upwards
    
  • Knockback is now scaled by damage done
    
• The Sandman
  
  • A Scout will receive 1 point for stunning an enemy and 2 points for a long range stun
    
  • Stunned players now take 75% of all incoming damage instead of 50%
    
  • Ubercharged players can no longer be stunned
    
  • Heavies spinning their mini-guns will continue to spin when stunned (whether the left or right mouse button is pressed)
    
  • The minimum distance to stun a target has been reduced
    
  • The negative attribute has changed from "no double jump" to "-25 max health"
    

Fixes

• Fixed various issues around layout & presentation of items inside the Backpack and "X is carrying" item dialogs
  
• Fixed an exploit that allowed players to work around sv_pure
  
• Particle files are now protected by sv_pure
  
• Fixed critboost effect getting stuck on when you die while critboosted
  
• Fixed Timer HUD element backgrounds not being the correct color if you change teams during waiting for players
  
• Fixed a couple of issues with the way critboosts affected The Huntsman and the Spy's knife
  
• Fixed an exploit where you could reload The Huntsman faster than intended
  
• Fixed Heavy "civilian" exploit
  
• Fixed a set of exploits using the DXSupport config files
  
• Fixed r_screenfademinsize and r_screenfademaxsize exploits
  
• Fixed sentries firing at a fully cloaked Spy if they're still the closest target
  

Community requests

• Added a HUD element for hybrid CTF & CP maps
  
  • Supports 1 or 2 flags, and any number of CPs
    
  • Mapmakers need to place a "tf_logic_hybrid_ctf_cp" entity in their map to enable it
    
• Added custom kill server log text "train" and "saw" for deaths caused by these environmental hazards
  
  • Format: "%s<%i><%s><%s>" committed suicide with "world" (customkill "%s") (attacker_position "%d %d %d")
    
• Added new "medic_death" event for server logs
  
  • Format: "%s<%i><%s><%s>" triggered "medic_death" against "%s<%i><%s><%s>" (healing "%d") (ubercharge "%s")
    
    • healing is the amount the Medic healed in that life
      
    • ubercharge (1/0) is whether they died with a full charge
      
• Added "func_respawnflag" trigger entity. It will remove & return the flag if a flag carrier touches it, or if the flag falls into it
  

I would like to thank you for emailing us to point out that Viaduct is not the first TF2 map to feature snow. More importantly, I would like to thank you for stopping.

Immediately.

In accordance with our corporate policies on plagiarism, Corey Peters—the person responsible for Viaduct—has been forced to uninstall Hammer under the supervision of our crack security team. He was then asked to remove his hard drive and bludgeon it to pieces with a stapler, also under the supervision of our crack security team. Lastly, he was bludgeoned to pieces by our crack security team. He is currently in surgery having important organs replaced. I have seen to it that any map-making appendages he possesses (all of them, to be safe) are removed, so that an oversight of this grievous magnitude will not occur again.

Dhabih Eng—the artist behind the Innovative Snow Effect Never Seen Before in an FPS (his words)—has been suitably reprimanded, and by this we mean he has been launched into space, where I'm told there will be plenty of snow for him to steal. The writers behind the "first Team Fortress map to take place during a snowfall" line on our website have been replaced with new, better writers. (They're surprisingly easy to come by.)

I hope this is the last I'll hear of the matter. Any further emails regarding this will be forwarded to our crack security team.

You have found this post informative,

The Administrator

Welcome, today marks a red letter day! We have worked tirelessly these past several months putting together a once seemingly unobtainable goal. We present to you, for your viewing pleasure, in game screenshots! All of these images were taken in the map "nmrih_citylife" which was created by 2d_Chris.

First up debuting our to completed characters Wally (on the left) and Molotov (on the right) As well as a little flesh eating pet. Taken with the firstperson view of our machete weapon

In this second shot you get a better view of how our flashlight mechanic works. As other players will able to see each others beam of light, shadows and all.

Next up you can see our in game screenshot of the fireaxe weapon. You may also notice a few unoriginal props but keep in mind all these images are of our work in progress game!

Finally we present you with our flashlight! Remember these are in game shots all the shadows are a result of the players shining lights on each other.

Stay tuned for more in game shots to come as well as some videos. We are currently working on our zombie animations so hold tight.

Feel free to meet with the community or chat with the developers on our IRC or Ventrillo channels.
IRC #nmrih on irc.gamesurge.net
Ventrillo Server: Chicago7.NationVoice.com Port: 3935

As the second part in our alien "reveals", we give to you the Skulk!

He's everyone's favorite wall-hugging murderer and he's looking more handsome than ever. As most of you know, the Skulk is the default character class and main element of the alien fighting force. He is fast, able to hide and ambush and has a powerful melee attack. But with no ranged attacks and without a lot of health (although he's a bit tougher than in NS1), being effective as a Skulk is all about knowing when and how to attack and being skilled enough to get close to the target. Pervasive vent and ducts systems help him choose when and where to fight and also provide a quick escape.

Here's some concept art showing how he started his new life:

...and here are some renders showing his finished model and texture:

Here's a video showing him in action:

The Skulk's abilities are pretty similar to those in NS1. He's such an important class that we're a little timid about giving him crazy new abilities (although new ones are always under consideration).

Wall-running Skulks can drive their sharp leg spikes into crevices to walk on walls or ceilings as if they were the ground. It doesn't cost energy nor does it slow you down, so it can be used to dodge gunfire, confuse enemies or hide. You can get a glimpse of wall-running in action with the Skulk running up the wall behind the Onos at 0:41 in our teaser video.

Bite With his powerful multi-hinged jaws, he can deliver a lot of damage very quickly. As in NS1, the Skulk player's view is from inside his mouth (is this really that controversial or weird?).

We're still not sure what his alt-fire for Bite is going to be. We've talked a lot about a grapple type of attack where he could clench down on a marine and do damage to him over time, but that seemed too annoying from the marine's perspective (and how would he shoot the skulk off of him?). Please give us some suggestions.

Leap The Skulk can leap short distances quickly, landing in a pounce and doing damage to its target. In NS1, leap appeared later in the game – now he always has it. Coupled with wall-running, leap allows good players to traverse the map without ever touching the ground.

What about 'site?! You'll notice that he no longer has Parasite. The reason we currently don't have it as one of his abilities is because we think it's better for the Alien Commander to be scouting (which is the main purpose of Parasite). I really like the secondary purpose of it though, which is to do a small amount of ranged damage to kind of goad a marine into (hopefully, very stupid) action. I would love a kind of provoking ability for him here and will probably put one in later if we come up with an appropriate one.

Finally, we wanted to show you a bit of the environments the Skulk will be spending his time in - vents. We have a shiny new engine now and also because players spend so much time as a skulk in vents, we wanted to make them look a lot cooler. Here's a concept piece Cory painted showing yours truly in a modeled vent (click the magnifying glass in the lower right to get an even higher-res version for your desktop).


The in-game vents look almost this good and we can't wait to show them to you! We hope you enjoyed this look at the Skulk and can't wait to show you the rest!

Just to switch things up a bit from the alien reveals, we wanted to show off some more of the revamped marine structures in the game. First up is the new look and design for the Armory.


In NS2 this structure will allow the marines to purchase weapons and equipment. Like the NS1 model, we wanted to make sure that it was approachable from all sides, to allow as many players as possible to access it at the same time. It's an important structure, so we also wanted to insure that it's easily noticeable by first time players. Hence it's increased size, and the addition of a rotating holographic gun projecting from the top.

We also went with a more interactive design, so, as a marine approaches the structure, the side closest to them unfolds and opens up, welcoming them in. The arms scan the marine, running diagnostics, assessing and repairing armor damage and injuries, while the marine links in via their helmet HUD. When no one is near the structure, it remains nicely folded up, protecting it's delicate machinery and electronics, and taking up less of a footprint in the environment.

When an item is purchased the arms essentially become 3d printers. The requested item has been scanned offsite, and downloaded into the structure, and then it is printed instantly into the marine's waiting hands as soon as it is purchased.

Here are some in engine renders:


Here's short video showing the armory deploying, opening up to be accessed, and then playing a scan/printing animation.



Hope you enjoyed this first look at the new marine armory structure!

The HLX Community edition team has just released version 1.6 which includes support for NeoTokyo, adds Ventrilo support and has a lot more images included for maps and everything else. If you are interested in reading the full changelog then have some fun:

Changelog:
HLstatsX Community Edition 1.6.0
August 12, 2009

• added support for NeoTokyo, including headshot support and images (R3M, gH0sTy, ViolentCrimes)


• added first version of new proxy daemon to distribute load between multiple daemon instances (BoNzO)


• added key for proxy and daemon. When used, allows daemon to accept control commands from ip addresses other than 127.0.0.1 (BoNzO)


• added hlxce_version (not to be confused with hlxce_plugin_version) cvar to ingame plugins (psychonic)


• added server query methods to get server map when rcon is unavailable and to identify new servers when allowing all servers to track (BoNzO)


• added new logic to determine whether or not a player should could toward the minimum amount of players set (to leave out bots if IgnoreBots is set or leave out team "" and spectators) without affecting visible player count (psychonic)


• added option to specify config file for daemon on command line (BoNzO)


• added ability to change player hint command via server configuration page in admin area (psychonic)


• added heartbeat daemon control command to check status (BoNzO)


• admin event logging now also tracks amxx admin actions that are in game log (psychonic)


• added run_ script for importbans utility (Packhead)


• added GlobalBan support to importbans utility (R3M)


• added heatmap generation support and many heatmap background images (msleeper, BoNzO, Zuko)


• added more hl2dm and l4d award images (MrXorMrY)


• added new CSS connection time award & ribbon images (HSFighter)


• killlocation world actions from SuperLogs plugins are now supported to catch kill/death coordinates for use with next logged kill (psychonic)


• full headshot tracking for more mods (INS, NTS, GES) is now available in combination with new SuperLogs plugins (psychonic)


• colored ingame messages are now supported in Age of Chivalry (psychonic)


• hlxce_version and hlxce_webpage are now automatically set on the game server by the daemon if rcon is available (psychonic)


• hlstats.pl and hlstats-awards.pl now support a --configfile directive (BoNzO)


• TF2's logged player_extinguished event is now supported as four different player actions, one per class (psychonic)


• ventrilo servers are now supported in the voice server list and viewer (compuwis, psychonic)


• added many new ribbons for cs1.6 (Unity)


• added beta autocomplete on search box on Players page (KingJ, BoNzO)


• added new historical cache feature to add ability cache every page on first load to ease load on static stats archives (octodhd)


• added l4d map thumbnails (Honk)


• added many missing TF2 weapon, award, and ribbon images (Semikolon)


• added two new web styles, "classic" and "nom nom nom" (psychonic)


• added options version stub VSP plugins for people who wish to report their HLX:CE installs but aren't running the sourcemod or amxx (psychonic)


• fixed many perl warnings in daemon (psychonic)


• fixed and optimized more regular expressions in daemon (psychonic)


• fixed issue with banned players not being hidden from ranking even with global banning enabled (psychonic)


• fixed bug where rcon connection would be lost on map change on some configurations (raydan aka Ben6006)


• fixed some rank lookups in daemon returning incorrect rank when ranking by kills (psychonic)


• fixed connect announce messages saying player had 0 kills when ranking by kills (octodhd)


• fixed some cases where ingame messages would have incorrect or inconsistent coloring (psychonic)


• fixed nonexistant pages not returning 404 header (KingJ)


• added missing ribbon entries for Galil in CSS (BoNzO)


• fixed bans not being able to be sorted by date (R3M)


• fixed daemon crash when set to track any servers and a logged server has a single quote in its hostname (psychonic)


• fixed a ping of 0 sometimes getting recorded for players (psychonic)


• fixed compiler warning in HLX:CE Ingame Plugin on Sourcemod 1.3
• (psychonic)


• replaced remaining, deprecated ereg_ functions from pages that still had them (psychonic)


• servers are now properly added to db with default config for server's game when "Allow only servers set up in admin panel to be tracked" set to "no" (BoNzO)


• removed legacy support for specifying game servers in hlstats.conf (psychonic)


• removed the need for redundant AddressPort option in server configuration (psychonic)


• removed "Type help..." server advertisement as it is better left up to other server plugins for ease of enabling or disabling the message or changing the text/frequency of it (psychonic)


• removed mp_logdetail 3 requirement for tracking headshots in DOD:S (SuperLogs:DODS or equivalent plugin is now needed to track DODS headshots) (psychonic)


• removed all auxilary logging from HLstatsX:CE Ingame Plugin in favor of using new specialized SuperLogs plugin set (psychonic)


• png's are now supported for game icon images (psychonic)


• gif's and jpg's are now supported for award images (psychonic)


• normalized the names of like column headings on web interface (psychonic)


• web portion, aside from the admin area, is now XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant. stylesheets have also been reworked. table layout has been converted to divs (psychonic, octodhd)


• many optimizations added to the daemon, large and small (octo-dhd, psychonic)


• many small optimizations added to sourcemod ingame plugin (psychonic)


• some small db changes were made to speed up loading of some pages and some daemon interactions (psychonic)


• hlx_webpage cvar in ingame plugins renamed to hlxce_webpage (psychonic)


• weapon and action info (codes/point values/modifiers) is now cached in the daemon (psychonic)


• activity is now calculated with hlstats-awards.pl instead of on-the-fly with every rank query (loses up to 3.5% accuracy for active players based on minactivity of last 28 days, but much faster) (psychonic)


• more coordinates are now stored, including victim coords on death, player and victim coords on plyrplyr actions, and victim position on teamkills (psychonic)


• log filename format is now ymd instead of dmy (Packhead)


• optimized filesize of many more of the included images (many already done in 1.5.x) (psychonic)


• edit Player/Clan Details links are now only visible when logged in as an admin (U#0)


• custom banner now supports external URLs (MadMakz)


• severely sped up Maps page by adding caching of counts of kills and headshots per map (psychonic)


• renamed remaining places that said "cheaters" to "bans" or "banned users and cheaters", including ingame command to display them (psychonic)


• hlx_sm_psay no longer colors ingame messages on insurgency. change command to hlx_sm_psay2 for this (psychonic)


• rcon broadcasts to all (with sourcemod plugin) are now sent to all users at once instead of in groups of eight (psychonic)


• nojs check on page load no longer uses redirectly upon js not being available and now does an actual check instead of relying on useragent (KingJ, psychonic)


• claninfo -> General now used shared google_maps.php include (psychonic)


• ie8 compatibility mode button is now hidden (psychonic)


• rank # no longer shows on livestats for players not on a team (psychonic)

Server administrators interested in this global statistics package can grab the latest version over here.