Games

R.I.P. CS Source

On Aug 24, 2006 11:18 pm, by NeutralX2

Well, Valve has pretty much ruined the game for me. They decided to “fix” the radar system. Apparently they don’t believe in the saying “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. The new radar system is absolutely awful. First, it looks extremely bad and too complex. I have never seen such an awful looking radar system in any game.

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But what is worse is that they changed the way the radar works. They added what they call “enemy detection”. Basically, if you see an enemy, even for a split second, it gets added to your and your teammate’s radar. After a few seconds it disappears, but this is absolutely unacceptable. It completely breaks a core mechanic of the game (stealth) and completely negates the need for communication in a lot of situations.

Say you are hiding behind a door with a silenced weapon guarding the bombsite. Some dumb player comes in and you kill him in under a second. The problem is, all of his teammates now have you on their radar for a few seconds. Assuming those are skilled players, you now have zero chance to take them out. They will probably just unload on you through the door, since they can see you on the radar. Valve has pretty much built in a wall hack. Check out this screen shot that was posted on the Steam forums:

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The guy who got killed was shot by someone who was all the way over in the paper room. Something like that used to only be possible if someone was cheating. But now, because of the radar, expect to see bullshit like that happen all the time.

This makes me want to go back and start playing CS 1.6 again. This looks like a good time to take a break from Source. Hopefully this awful radar system will be fixed. If not, I might not play that game any more.

Well probably not. Chances are I will learn to deal with it and continue to play. But I seriously think this new radar was a big mistake.

Software

Sage

On Aug 21, 2006 10:55 pm, by NeutralX2

Well, I have not posted anything recently so I figured I might as well post about Sage. I know a lot of you out there use Firefox (and if you don’t, you really should). But I also know a lot of you don’t use RSS feeds. Or if you do, you are only using them as live bookmarks. There are a lot of feed readers out there, but I personally like the Firefox extension Sage. It’s extremely easy to use and works pretty well:

All you have to do is add the feeds for each website you like to follow into the Sage Feeds folder in your bookmarks. Pressing Alt + S will open Sage. Then with one click, it will check the feeds for each site and automatically highlight those with updates that you have not read yet. Clicking on a website will show you the most recent posts on the site. It’s a pretty helpful tool if you want to stay updated on multiple sites. You can grab the extension here.

Games

Xbox Live Arcade Release Schedule 2

On Aug 16, 2006 5:18 am, by NeutralX2

Now that the last release schedule has come to an end, Microsoft has announced the new titles to hit marketplace. There will be a break in the action though. This weeks release is new picture packs for Cloning Clyde. After that the games pick back up. Check them out:

August 23 – Texas Hold ‘Em
August 30 – Time Pilot
September 6 – Scramble

And what is even more interesting is that Texas Hold ‘Em will normally be available for 800 points ($10), but Microsoft has announced that it will actually be free for download for the first 48 hours. So be sure to download it quickly.

Games Video

GarageGames Update 2

On Aug 15, 2006 6:19 pm, by NeutralX2

Microsoft announced plans to make entry-level development with XNA available on the PC for free, and on the Xbox 360 for a yearly fee of $99. As many of you probably know, GarageGames is involved with Microsofts new XNA Game Studio Express. They announced that they will be releasing an XNA-compliant version of its Torque game development environment, which consists of the Torque Shader Engine for 3D development and the Torque Game Builder for 2D development. The Microsoft hosted Gamefest 2006 kicked off yesterday, and with that, a few new videos from Garage Games. They both look pretty cool (but are boring due to lack of sound). One video featured two character models doing some familiar animations. The second video shows off more of the Atlas terrain engine, skiing and a new weapon model we have not seen before.

Shacknews also got an interview with GarageGames’ CEO/CTO Joshua Williams and President Mark Frohnmayer:

Shack: On that end user side of things, does GarageGames have any new games in the works, or are you guys pretty full up with work on your development tools right now?

Mark Frohnmayer: For games? We do have a couple things that we can’t talk about just yet. [laughs]

Joshua Williams: We got a couple things brewing.

Mark Frohnmayer: We’re about to release our first actual legimitate casual game that we developed in house. It just went into beta last week. We’re about to release a new set of levels for Marble Blast Ultra on Xbox 360. We did a whole new set of multiplayer maps that are actually a lot of fun. Then we have another game that’s in the early stages of development that’s going to totally rock. We will give you much more information on that as we get closer.

Shack: Anything related to Tribes? I’m sure you guys get asked that every day.

Mark Frohnmayer: It actually is in a lot of ways a gameplay homage to Tribes, but it’s a very different genre.

Joshua Williams: It’s going to be cool.

Mark Frohnmayer: It will be cool.

The full interview can be read here.