Yet another update for Zombie Panic! Source has now gone live on Steam!
It features various changes to the hardcore mode and deals with certain exploits.

• Increased hardcore damage ratio to 50% for bullets.


• Increased hardcore damage ratio to 65% for explosions.


• Increased hardcore damage ratio to normal for melee attacks.


• Changed infectionrate to 75% in Hardcore mode.


• Satchels have a 10% radius decrease (very minor).


• Fix for suicide spamming.


• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused crashes when turning hardcore on in ZPS maps.

Left 4 Dead has been updated to include a lobby browser. The lobby browser (under Play Online) will show you a list of optimal games available for you to join. The browser pares down the thousands of lobbies and games currently being played to show you the best list of games available to you. This list includes official and add-on campaigns, including add-on campaigns you have not yet installed, making it a great way to discover them. You can filter by difficulty, official and/or add-on campaigns and by lobbies and/or games in progress. The specific changes include:

Left 4 Dead

• The Play on Steam Group Server screen now displays which Steam group it's searching while updating the list


• After calling a vote to change difficulty in game it is now correctly updated in matchmaking

Add-on Campaigns

• When downloading a new version of an add-on and installing it (by double clicking the .VPK file), it will now correctly overwrite the previous version, even while Left 4 Dead is currently running


• Addressed a crash when two mission files with the same name are installed


• Steam Group Servers now will now correctly offer download links when running add-on campaigns

Server

• The server will now warn if the public or private tags exceed their limits. Public tags are limited to 63 characters. Private tags used for matchmaking are now limited to 1024 characters. Note that the private tags include the name of each add-on campaign installed on the server, so an excessive number of add-on campaigns can hit this limit

SDK

• The VPK tool should be able to handle campaigns larger than 500MB now


• You can now drag and drop or pass a VPK file to the vpk.exe tool to have it extract the contents of the add-on to a folder. This mirrors the functionality of passing a folder and having it create a VPK file


• Detail.vbsp and lights.rad have been added to the distribution

Greetings! I come bearing news from the frontlines of the zombie war! Many things to share with you my friends.

First off, I'd like to let everyone know that the legendary Chris '2d-chris' Kay of CryTek GmbH has rejoined our effort to complete NMRIH! He brings his amazing level design skills complete with custom textures to further lather our destroyed beauty that is the chaos of the zombie apocalypse. On that note of returning heroes, I'd like to also let you all know that our previously injured animator SharkDog has returned from his broken collarbone incapacitation! Not only has he returned triumphant, he also came bearing the gift of a new completed hand rig for better weapon animations so he and Chad are hard at work to make your zombie killing that much more satisfying.

On the front of programming, our skilled and cunning warrior-coder ssba has completed our brand new zombie spawning code and point-based entity system and I will tell you first hand that it works like a charm in the most horrifying way possible. It will create zombies based on spawners that a player is closest to, and the ones that no players are near are destructed to save memory and increase performance to reduce latency.

Our audio gladiators Richard 'Beckett' Douglas and Luke Hatton have officially completed all of our weapon sound effects with incredible results. I would be astounded if you guys were not pleased with the results when you finally get your hands on them

We have also hired the wonderful talents of Surfa and JayL to assist in our goal of as much custom art content as possible. Surfa is a quick and reliable artist who will be cranking out detail props like a beast to fill up every area possible to make our levels look real and believable. JayL is also a reliable and high quality artist who I personally worked with at Rockstar before he moved on to greener pastures. Be on the lookout for some of their beautiful works soon!

Also, we completed our first full-on multiplayer playtest last Wednesday. The results were great and we established a lot of things that we liked, and things to improve. We have identified and resolved numerous bugs and we all had a blast being repeatedly massacred by the zombie hordes. Whoever thinks that slow shamblers are easily dispatched and a negligible threat will be in for quite the unpleasant surprise.

Our first post-release *NT ServerPatch version 07102009* (JULY 7, 2009) is now available for server admins to download.

Changelog:

• Fixed numerous server crash exploits


• Fixed numerous game play exploits


• Added global bans for numerous cheaters, exploiters, and griefers (yay!)

Hello Everyone!

We're happy to report that another update is currently under final testing and will be available shortly. This small update addresses some issues reported by the community for the new map INS_Karam.

Changelog:

• Fixed stuck spawn issue


• Made changes for smoother movements on ladders and the boxes over the fence.


• Fixed players getting stuck in the bridge at the crater.


• Added an extra route for USMC towards the Objective A.


• Moved the ammo crate at Obj. A back towards the bridge and enlarged the bigger capture zone.


• Made a larger capture zone for for Obj. B including the bunkers. Increased capture time.


• Tweaked Insurgent spawns for Objective B.


• Moved Obj. C to the docking area including the bunkers at the back.


• Decreased capture time for C.


• Changed spawn rates for both teams.

This update will be automatically applied through Steam, like the previous major patch. Additionally, we plan to roll out yet another update to fix the long-standing RPG-7 bug that prevented the rocket from disappearing from your first-person weapon view after firing. This update is now being tested after already passing the first round of checks and will also be deployed as soon as possible. Currently, the first-person view is already corrected!



In other news, the Electronic Sports League has created a new Insurgency section at ESL America. In their creators' words:

After sections in Europe, Germany and Spain, ESL America has realized the potential of this outstanding game and starts an own section for Insurgency for American players.

We are happy to finally get the chance of bringing Insurgency to ESL America, that is supporting this awesome mod with an own game section. After opening up different national sections in Europe, ESL America has realized the huge potential of Insurgency and starts a section.

This is fantastic news for the Insurgency community across the pond. Finally they will be able to organize and participate in their own INS official competitions without experiencing the high latencies that were an obstacle for their enjoyment of the already very popular (and fully booked) ESL European tournaments.

A long overdue piece of news that previously slipped through the cracks is the INS ESL Spanish section! Alive and well, the Spanish community has been quick to organize itself and set up their local tournaments. We are happy to see such an active community, congratulations for a well-deserved success!

We sincerely wish ESL America the best of successes and would like to thank them for their continuous support of this mod. We would like to call all INS clans to join the Electronic Sports League -one of the most well-known and successful gaming organizations in the world- in order for them to experience a totally different level of competition with Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat.

You will be able to find information about upcoming events and competitions at the official section of Insurgency at ESL America.

We have started creating several decals that will not only give some extra atmosphere to some areas and increase the variety of the wall decorations, but also help navigating the maps. You can see one of them below as an example.



As part of a long ago planned network infrastructure update, we are currently in the process of moving Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat to http://www.insmod.org. Please note that http://www.insmod.net will continue to function as a redirect to our new address for some time.

Additionally the Official Insurgency Steam Group has been created, and currently has almost 300 members registered. If you're an INS supporter, you will probably appreciate receiving the latest INS news directly through Steam announcements, being able to stay in touch with the community, take part in official events, etc. If you haven't registered yet, you can do so through your Steam Community tab.

Enjoy the summer and see you on the servers!

Dead Before Dawn, the replica of the Crossroads Mall from the movie Dawn of the Dead (2004) is coming to Left 4 Dead. The DBD team has been working tirelessly on the campaign and has vowed not to stop until the campaign is ready for release. Previously, we stated that the estimated release date will be the 1th of July (lol). At the time of this announcement, Valve was said to release the full SDK in a week's time. That didn't happen and we were forced to postpone the release date, BUT, Valve has now confirmed that next week we will have our dirty paws on the full version of the SDK and we're ready for it. I would like to use this opportunity to give you guys a rundown of what's been happening the past few months. So let's get crackin'!

TFPortal.de: In an E-Mail you mentioned a new demo type / format which you are developing. Many players have broken demo files after downloading new updates. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Robin Walker: It's getting close to being releasable in a beta form. The idea is that after you die or finish a round, and it was a round you were particularly happy with (maybe you scored an awesome kill, or saved the entire team with an ubercharge), you can ask the server to send you a demo of it. The server then sends you a demo that it recorded, which has the complete game state instead of just what your client saw, and it's in a format that's robust and won't break as easily when we update the game. In addition, the format has a some side benefits, like supporting full backwards & forwards time scrubbing.

I was in an Eternal Silence mood this week, so I put together a small balance patch for you guys. This should fix a lot of gameplay issues we've been hearing about for months. Don't ask why it took so long... I've been busy . The patch is live on Steam right now, you should automatically receive it when you go to run the game.

Change list:

• All weapon reload and draw times were tweaked (yay!)


• Bombers now locked similar to gunships


• Increased carbine melee damage by 10 points


• Decreased tank buster damage slightly


• Increase time to hack subsystem (add ghost) by 1 second.


• Reduce capship damage from bombs by half.


• Added hard cap to tactical ship speed to prevent exploit.


• Added auto-recapture on Hardcore maps (neutral subsystems will slowly creep back to original owner).


• CP_Warpath tweaked to prevent intense spamming


• Small changes to cp_valhalla and others

That's it! It should make a big difference for the game though. Give us your comments, we'd like to know if we did it right.

Here are some beautiful shots Meat_Popsicle put together for us. You can view the full gallery here.

NEOTOKYO° releases after 5 years of development on the Source engine, with launch weekend downloads reaching an estimated 60,000. Studio Radi-8 announces plans for future support and updates.

Raleigh, NC (STUDIO RADI-8) July 6, 2009 -- NEOTOKYO° releases to the public and achieves a massive and unprecedented following in its initial release. Download estimates for the launch weekend tally over 60,000 in two days. The developer, Studio Radi-8, announces plans to support the community and issue further content updates.

NEOTOKYO° is a Source engine modification available for free to anyone that owns a game with access to the Source SDK base. NEOTOKYO° is a first person shooter set in a rich futuristic setting inspired by works such as “The Ghost in the Shell” and “AKIRA”. It combines a unique twist on a capture the flag gametype with tactical elements to create a whole new gameplay experience.

NEOTOKYO°’s initial release contains a wealth of content. It includes 10 environments, 26 new weapons among 3 different class types, and a custom soundtrack with 15 songs.

Following its highly successful and prolific first release, Studio Radi-8 is now revealing plans for the future of NEOTOKYO°. Up to 11 new maps are already well into development and will be released in map pack updates. These maps will attain the same visual quality of those released so far.

“Studio Radi-8 has been quite literally knocked off our feet by the overwhelmingly positive response to NEOTOKYO°,” said Justin Harvey, lead programmer of the mod. “We never imagined how much support would pour out from the online gaming communities for our "little" project. Cheers, and expect more exciting things coming online for NEOTOKYO°.”

We want to thank everyone that has downloaded and tried the mod, as well as thanking all the people that have put up servers. We'll be getting a game-info/manual thing up in the next couple of days hopefully. We realize it seems weird to release a game with no explanation of how to play it, but I guess that's how we roll!?! Anyways we'll correct that as soon as we can. *NEW There's an existing .pdf manual but its pretty ghetto looking atm, so hopefully soonish we can tidy it up and get it online. :)

In the meantime you can check our NOOB HINTS to hopefully help you decipher some of the complexity of the current gameplay. They've been up for a while, but the site was so hammered from release stuff that many of you probably never got a chance to see them. And of course we'll be trying to get the forums back up.

-also-

The NEOTOKYO download mirrors, and server files have been put on the download page.