Source: TF2 Blog

New Game Mode!
King of the Hill

King of the Hill (KotH) is an intense new game mode focused around a single central capture point that must be defended for three minutes. Gameplay begins with the point initially locked—after a short time, it will open for capture by either team. Once the point is captured by a team, their team clock will start a three minute countdown. If the enemy team manages to capture the point back, their clock will start counting down while the other team’s clock freezes at the time the point was recaptured.

And Introducting kothVIADUCT
Viaduct is an all-new map especially built for KotH, set outside of the entrance to a secret underground base. Viaduct is also the first Team Fortress map to take place during a snowfall (not counting Acegikmo’s awesome cp_glacier map, or for that matter all the other community mappers who manage to think up and execute on all the cool stuff before we even think of it). Both teams start at the base of a low hill, and will have to climb to get to the capture point at the hill’s peak. The various elevations of the map and multiple routes to the central point guarantee some frenzied battles as the point changes hands during gameplay.

Source: Sven Co-op

Help Wanted: We are currently looking for an additional coder. Must have Goldsrc experience. If interested, please send an e-mail to sven@svencoop.com with details of your coding knowledge and past experience.

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A small reminder to those mapping for the SC mapping contest: At the time of posting, there is just under one month left before the deadline. Be sure to have your files in by the 9th of September, 2009. See this thread for information on how to submit your files.

Also remember to test your maps with multiple players before submitting them, if possible. There may be issues you won't notice when testing in single-player, and it's useful for balancing either way. Use the Mapping Contest Forum to find other players to help test, or generally request help with anything.

On the same topic, some people have been posting work-in-progress shots of their entries on the mapping contest forum (random examples above). Be sure to check them out!

Source: Steam Powered

A Steam client update is now available. To apply the update, click the File menu inside of Steam and then select "Check for Steam Client Updates...". The specific changes include:

Steam Client

• Made connections to misbehaving content servers timeout and retry a new server correctly


• Fixed the client sometimes forgetting a game exists after a content update on Steam


• Fixed several rare crashes and memory corruption bugs


• Workaround for a Firefox 3.5 bug where they activate random windows after minimizing which would confuse the state of some Steam windows


• Fixed internet tab in the in-Steam ServerBrowser not updating sorting as more servers are refreshed


• Fixed the first time launch "Installing ..." dialog which is shown while installing things like DirectX for a game taking too much CPU and making the install take a long time


• Fixed the sorting of the games list to be case insensitive and fix the mini-games list to use the same sorting method as the full games list


• Fixed Change User menu option not logging you out correctly


• Fixed one case of downloads getting stuck


• Fixed a potential crash in D3D8 games switching between windowed and full screen caused by the in-game overlay


• Fixed unnecessary minidump when in offline mode


• Fixed overlay bug where opening the overlay from an in-game menu (ie, Invite Friends in a L4D lobby) could result in the overlay opening and closing immediately if you had previously used the "Close" button in the overlay itself

Source: TF2 Blog

Throughout history, men have worn hats as a way of showing how much better they are than other men. “I buy hats,” a behatted man seems to say. “I am better than you.”

In wartime, hats were a useful way of conferring rank, and ensuring that casualties were confined to the lower classes (hence the famous command of “Don't fire till you see the tops of their heads” at the Battle of Bunker Hill by William Prescott, a general renowned for only shooting enemy combatants who were poor). During peacetime, hats have been instrumental for men to let the non-hatted know just who is wearing the hat around here.

And that’s the entire history of hats. The history you were spoon fed at school, that is, in your government-run hat class. But here’s a little truth bomb your teachers, pastors and ombudsmen of your regional newspapers DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Team Fortress now has MORE hats. We hope this didn’t blow your mind out of the top of your head, since you’ll need a place to put all these cool new hats.



Arena Offblast is a fast-paced, high-altitude community map set in a top secret missile silo wedged into the top of a hollowed-out mountain. Open-air paths and narrow hallways converge on a central control point located just under the silo’s blast doors.

This mountaintop arena also boasts a sheer cliff face encircling the battleground, giving you the chance to help your opponents improve their tactics. Specifically, anyone you blast over the side will get some time to think about the various flaws in their “standing next to the edge of a cliff” strategy as they plummet to an excruciating, non-respawnable death.

Source: Dystopia

I think I speak for everyone on the team, when I say we would absolutely love to show you what we have all been working on, but alas, it comes in time. There is never any harm in a quick update for you guys in the meantime, right?

This month we made some minor changes to our public pages. You will notice that we now have a Facebook social box on the lower right side of our news page. Now all the fans of Dystopia who are Facebook users can join this group and receive the most critical updates and announcements when they happen, as well as get clued in to when Dystopia events occur. The first event we will be trying out is the return of the "Screenshot of the Week" contest! Submit a screenshot now at our Facebook page, and get featured in our notes and media gallery! Hurry up and get your screenshots in, it won't be happening long!

Keep your eye out for some other great stuff including upcoming Dystopia Global League events to listen or partake in.

Speaking of the DGL, some of you may of listened in on their recent Season 2 finals match. Both Kaya and WhyHeavies played an intense match that is worth any Dystopia fan's time! Special thanks goes out to all of the folks over at the DGL and commentators, Whiteknight, Deathy and Unaco! Check out the videos separated and a short writeup here, or check it out below!

[url=http://dystopia-league.net/articles/show/29][VIDEO AVAILABLE ON DYSTOPIA WEBSITE][/url]

We would like to show everyone a recent update made to the Dystopia Stats system. Changes to the level heat maps were made to offer a better interface and allow for higher resolution pictures . These changes can be viewed now by Supporters by going here and clicking the 'Heatmap' tab at the top. Using the popular Google Maps API you can now zoom in to the much larger pictures of maps, view high density death areas, ammo dispensers, spawn pads, pictures of the map itself using the viewer and more!



Also, since the last update, our friends over at NeoTokyo made an exciting release! We're very pleased to have another cyberpunk counterpart in the world of Source modding, and we welcome anyone who embraces the genre with open arms. Check out NeoTokyo for lots of great action and some thrilling gameplay over at NeoTokyoHQ.com.

On a final note, we would like people to welcome a recent addition to the team -- a new programming tryout, Hardigan. We're all very excited to see the talent that Hardigan brings to the team!

Until next time folks!

Source: Jailbreak Source

King of the Hill Jailbreak is the second game mode to be added to the next release of Jailbreak: Source, and its mega-fun! The game play is simple: Take the hill to lock the enemy jail.

You can also see images of the new Rocket Launcher, and the updated Medigun which now locks-on to the nearest target. We've also implemented soft-body collisions like in TF2, so escapees no longer get stuck on each in ventilation shafts!



The game mode itself has been around for years, and appeared in many different games and mods, but it was one of our community members, Guessmyname who integrated into his map, koth_thrones who brought it to Jailbreak!

Source: Smashball

Hey everyone! We've gone dark the last couple of weeks, so I thought I'd give you all a taste of some of the stuff coming in the next release.

• New hooking animations! No, not the one where the head is bobbing up and down: a new animation that shows the character swinging from the hook on his left arm. No longer is it attached to his back! It looks really cool, seriously. When we first got this in I spent like half an hour in 'thirdperson' mode just swinging around.


• We've made some major adjustments to the lightning gun -- it now fires a constant beam, like the plasma lasso, instead of single shots. It doesn't track like the plasma rifle, however. The Fullback now has a vaguely useful second weapon.


• We've modified the locker room to make it more obvious to new players what they have to do. We'd found that some new players would immediately 'CLICK TO PLAY' and never join the game, because they hadn't selected a team or position.


• Also included are a number of other bugfixes, including fixes to the tutorial.

We'll be releasing a major rewrite of the web site, that includes a lot of major fixes and features:

• Page load times are significantly increased, usually between 100-1000x faster. Hooray for caching and better table indexing!


• Team roster management is fully working. You can now create a team, invite players to join, and promote and demote them amongst the different ranks. A team has seven different levels of access: applicant, invitee, reserve, member, captain, coach, and manager.


• We've added levels all the way up to 30, and we've fixed the problems different accounts had with updating their level.


• Player and team lists are now paginated and sortable, and can be filtered by a few different fields.


• A new 'wall' system lets registered users comment on teams, matches, and seasons.

The new updates should be rolling out soon, keep your eyes peeled!

Source: HalfLife2.net
Related: YouTube - Part One
Related: YouTube - Part Two
Related: YouTube - Part Three
This has to be one of the best things I have seen from any game company for the hearing impaired and actually opens my eyes to a population that loves video games but only get a limited experience. Something that I have been seeing more and more of for PC games is tactile feedback to augment sound effects. This is brought up at the end of video 1. Check out the videos for yourself.

A young gamer who is deaf went to Valve for a tour. Gabe took the time to sit down with them. Watch the videos and be amazed. At one point they tell Gabe that he should add a feature into gaming so that deaf users could tell others as they are playing. The main thing you get from these videos is Valve cares about the gamer and the community.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Source: Gizmodo
Related: Waterloo Labs

Here's the second episode from Waterloo Labs. This time we are playing Half-Life (well, the flash version at least), with a real gun. Using accelerometers and LabVIEW, we can triangulate the position of where a bullet hits a piece of drywall and use that location to generate a mouse click in the game, which has been projected onto the wall.



Update: Here is the code to complete the demo yourself.

Source: Age of Chivalry
Related: Game Developer Magazine

A small blurb on Age of Chivalry and other noteworthy mods reaches the pages of Game Developer Magazine for the August 2009 edition, See the preview article here:

http://gamedeveloper.texterity.com/gamedeveloper/200908/?pg=6

Game developer is a magazine that covers a variety of topics, ranging from programmer specific tips to overall game design dos and donts that caters to an audience of 35-40 thousand so this is some great exposure for our game that should even reach top industry professionals!