Sunday, 04 October 2009
Source: L4D Blog
We just had a great showing at the Tokyo Game Show. One of Left 4 Dead 2's level designers, Kim Swift made the trip. You can check out her multi-language interview here.Next public showing will be at the London Game Show where we will be showing the as of yet unannounced new game mode. We really should announce that soon... We can give you one hint, the game is 4 v 4. So get your team together and join us in London on October 29th or 30th.Of course if you want to be the first to play the demo, pre-order from select retailers and get early access to the demo. Just in time for some zombie killing on Halloween.
Source: Firearms: Source
Hello Firearms: Source Followers! It has been a little over a month since our last update, however, it is a result of our immensely busy developing schedule. For the past month, we have been busy ironing out bugs in code and maps. Today we don't have any new eye candy to showcase, but we do have a quick 2 and a half minute video of last Sunday's test. Now you may be wondering, what is so special about last Sunday's test? Well we added 32 Freshmeat Alpha Testers to give them their first taste of FA:S. We have added these testers to help us get a better idea of how FA:S holds up under a full server, and so we can see how the weapon roles change. I was quite pleased to see that the game held up very well, and there was much fragging. We received a lot of positive responses from our testers, as well as quite a few bug reports (most minor). We are still working very hard on removing the most critical bugs in order to get the first RC version to you within a reasonable time line (can I be more vague). I would like to give a more solid deadline, however with modding, it is hard to gauge how much time left still needs to be put into the mod.In the video above, taken by Hitman, you will see a recently redone tc_iwojima that is still in very raw stages (you will notice some bland areas and bugs). TC_Iwojima was redone because of performance and gameplay issues. DysPatch opened up a lot of the map and made it larger for a more diverse gameplay, allowing sniping and close quarter combat to work together. This is by no means an FA:S trailer, we feel we owe it to you. This video was taken on the first scheduled test for the new Freshmeat testers, so there was plenty of fragging. You will see how the larger tunnels on tc_iwojima promote more strategy and teamwork. This is raw, unedited, footage of FAS at its current state. There is also a short 22 second video using the M4A1 on tc_rubble. I hope you enjoyed the videos, and we will try to make sure we get a properly edited video sometime in the not too distant future. Also in community news, Firearm's "The Capture Point," a Firearms resource site for custom content, is reopening for Firearms: Source. The founder of TCP, mp!1HP, is looking for a web developer to help him code the resource website. So if you have any spare time and want to help him out, you can contact him at pawlus.marty@gmail.com. Below is a preview of "The Capture Point" for FA:S. We will try to get the next news post to you all a bit sooner.
Source: Age of Chivalry
Interested in hearing what the team plans on doing next? Well then you will really want to read this devblog made by Wraiyth, he touches on several aspects of how were planning for CR3 and a couple of the improvements that release will bring to the game. You can find the blog here:http://www.age-of-chivalry.com/smf/index.php?topic=7552.0
Source: Enterprise: TCW
Yes, it is over. After my resignation as Mod Leader, the interest for the mod dropped to an all time low. I felt that after the hard work and effort that had been contributed to the mod, that all of the assets produced and a working version of what we had should at least be released.We have also added ALL of the model assets, textures and source coding files for those to use as they would like. Please give credit to those who produced them. Other than that, it would be great to see them used in a new mod, or in a Machinima project. I know there are a couple of German indie game and film developers are keen to get their hands on all of the assets and we bid them well with their projects.I do not see this news as a failure, but as an amazing learning experience that lasted 3 years. In that time, I have learnt an amazing amount about how much work goes into producing a mod/game and have made many friends along the way. The talents of the Design Crew for the mod cannot go unsaid, as you will see in the working proof of concept release. I would to have enjoyed seeing a completed mod, but due to medical issues I personally was unable to continue with the mod, thus my resignation as Captain. I would like to personally thank all of those who contributed to the mod in the Design Crew and those who supported the mod over the past 3 years. Thanks again for the memories. The main website for the mod will slowly transformed into a Star Trek Enterprise portal for news on movies, games etc so all of the hard work and effort will not be wasted. Unfortunately, I had a hard drive failure and lost all of the .smd files and .qc files for the mod (I would have loved to have give those away as well), which did contribute to the fast track of closing the mod down, since it meant starting from scratch in re-creating the major character versions and new asset compiles.All downloads are ready to go on ModDB. Checkout our downloads section for the mod there for all of the files. http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-enterprise-tcw/downloads
Source: Fortress Forever
2.4 is finally here. Downloads are below [Available on their site]. Changelog is here. And here is a wonderful video showcasing Fortress Forever:
Natural Selection 2: Anatomy of a SceneSource: Natural Seleciton 2 Blog
Two weeks ago we we posted some screen shots of the new marines in Natural Selection 2. We were really happy to hear the overwhelmingly positive response to the new marine design.There were a lot of comments and questions about the renders we posted, so this week I put together a video to show all of the components that make up the rendering system in our engine.Here's what you're seeing in the video:Wireframe – This shows the geometry that make up the objects visible in the scene. Here you see about 100,000 triangles. Each marine has over 13,000 triangles!Normal Map – In addition to all of the geometric detail in the models, we get even more detail by using a normal map. The normal map causes flat triangles to be lit as if they were actually more complicated surfaces. For our models, we generate the normal maps from incredibly high polygon meshes.Texture Map – The texture map is a hand painted image that specifies the color of the models.Specular Map – The specular map is also hand painted and tells the rendering engine how shiny the surface is and what color the reflected light should be. For metals this is typically similar to the surface color. For the skin, we use a blue tint to counteract the warm tones of the texture and give the result cool white highlights. The cloth parts are completely black so that they won't be shiny in the final image.Gloss Map – The gloss map also helps define the shininess of the surface, but in this case it's how smooth the material is. For a really smooth surface – like a pool ball – the highlights will be very tight, but for rough materials it will be broad. There isn't too much detail in the gloss map because this effect tends to be fairly subtle.Lighting – To determine how bright each pixel in the final image will be, the rendering engine computes a number of lighting passes. Each pass uses the normal, texture, specular and gloss maps to figure out how much light is reflecting off the surface and entering the camera's lens. Here we're just showing the lighting passes without the influence of the texture map for clarity. Shadow maps are also used to determine which parts of the scene should be in shadow, although not every light casts a shadow for efficiency.Ambient Occlusion – The rendering engine applies a screen space ambient occlusion technique to add even more shadowing detail. Ambient occlusion is a measure of how much light from the environment is blocked by nearby surfaces. We use a simple approximation to darken the crevasses that aren't handled well by the shadow mapping system. The ambient occlusion is applied as a darkening effect over the final lighting; this isn't physically based, but gives us the results we're after.Combined – Here the lighting and texture mapping are shown combined. In practice this is actually done during the lighting passes.Atmosphere – The atmosphere pass simulates the effect of light hitting tiny particles in the air (here's another example). This has become one of the "signature" effects of our rendering and you can see it put to extensive use in our other videos.Color Grading – Also called color correction, color grading is the process of adjusting the brightness, contrast, color levels, etc. of the final image. This gives a lot of control over the scene that can be difficult or impossible to achieve by tweaking the lighting and texture maps.We hope you've enjoyed this "under-the-covers" look at our engine. You can also see our rendering engine at work (with motion blur!) in the teaser video we released on the main site
Source: No More Room in Hell
Greetings to you all I bring tidings of that which has come of our teams fruitful work. Images by Nay0r that tell a tale of a dark foreboding landscape in the heart of a cold urban metropolis. As well as a gruesome exhibition of a lifeless vagrant sans the legs to propel himself, brought to life by Sickjoe.nmrih_broadwayYou may or may not remember but back in our September 7th update we had some images of a work in progress map nmrih_broadway by Nay0r. Well nmrih_broadway is nearly finished now with some very dark and foreboding lighting. We have five images here today to showcase the atmosphere and setting of this map. Having gone though some walkthroughs my self I can say it has a great horror style atmosphere. Next on the list is gameplay tweaking through testing.The CrawlerWe have planned from the start that we want there to be crawler zombies in game. So SickJoe has jump started the process by coming up with the concept we will base it off of. Very gruesome and gory down to the last detail, quality you can always expect from SJ Forthwith another week has come to an end, in valediction I must always implore you to be forthcoming in our humble community.Be sure to check out our Ventrilo here:NMRIH Ventrilo InformationJoin our IRC channel here:NMRIH IRC InformationBecome a member of our Steam community:NMRIH Steam Community Information
Source: The Battle Grounds
Well the time has come for the big release: Battlegrounds 2 1.5a. This game adds a variety of features. Shots and description can be in the last news post. This release has been a long time in coming, but we have some big changes to add. The new features add a whole new dimension to the game, especially ironsights and capture the flag. Over the past few days we’ve continued to test and fix little issues with the game. Special thanks to HairyPotter for working hard right up until release to fix bugs, and thank you to our beta testers and beta test servers who have helped iron things out: 3D clan, AP clan and SS clan.
Hosted Site: Science and IndustryStarted back in February 1999, Science and Industry is one of the longest running and still active modifications for Half-Life. I am pleased to welcome this lovely mod to the sphere of influence of hlgaming.com.At the very heart of Science and Industry is team play (and not the watered down shit you see in many games today). You truly need to work as a team to accomplish your goal of stealing the enemy scientists and/or destroying their equipment.S & I's website says it best:
Science and Industry can be summed up as "CTF with a twist". The game plays like Capture The Flag in that two teams (companies) confront each other and both have to defend their base and attack the enemy's, but instead of capturing a flag, you capture scientists. These scientists earn money for your company. The company with the most cash at the end wins the game. Each corporation starts with 3 scientists, the objective is to capture at least one more and hold on to them as long as possible. On some maps, there are alternative ways to earn money or make the other company lose some: there can be computers that may be broken or resources such as discs or research specimens that may be stolen. However, the main source of income for your company remains the scientists. Moreover, the scientists research new technologies for your company, and each time a new technology is completed, you are asked to vote for the next one to be researched. This means that each game starts with basic weapons: a Colt and a Briefcase that is used to knock scientists out. And as the game moves on, you obtain new better weapons, special devices, more armor and implants that increase your speed and strength. So while the theme of Science & Industry is set in a semi-realistic world, the gameplay itself doesn't aim for realism: as the game advances the new technologies enable you to move faster, resist longer, perform huge jumps, and some weapons can even make you fly!I am also including a demo video from their site.