SPOTLIGHT
- NEW SITE!Welcome to our newly designed
website created by our very own Yorick.
There's been a big reshuffle and lots of
new content added so check it all out!
Loads of changes / fixes for this update. Some good, some I'm not sure about. But we will see how they play out. You can see the full list here, but the most important ones are below
Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
Fixed Tank punch being able to hit targets behind walls
Fixes to 'Tank parking'. The Tank will now run back and attack the Survivors if he becomes AI due to two players expiring the frustration meter
Fixed a case where the Tank was moving too slowly while crouching and being shot
The order that the teams play as Survivors is now determined by which team has the higher overall score. The winning team will play as Survivors first
The Smoker tongue can now target and grab victims through common infected
Increased the cone in which a Smoker can grab a target
Boomers that explode in mid-air will now hit Survivors directly below them with Bile
Reduced the damage that burning Hunters do to pounced victims
Adjusted the time at which players take over from bots to avoid 5 seconds of the bot standing idle while the player finishes connecting.
The scoreboard now shows the numeric value of a player's ping
Games in a finale are now joinable via the Friends and Steam Group games list
Interesting changes to the tank and smoker, let us know your thoughts. Steam News.
The time is nearing closer for the release of Decadence mod, 28th March to be precise before we can enjoy this highly anticipated mod. The Decadence team have put together an introductory video introducing the main objectives involved and how rounds are won and an overview to the classes available.
As usual, its a well produced video by the team even if our resident Majestic XII narrates it in a very girly voice. You can download the video here or watch it below. Decadence website.
You may remember brought you the first news on Zeno Clash back in January, an action / fighting game made on the Source engine which looks really promising and fun. Developers ACE team will be releasing the game via Steam in April for just $20!
Andres Bordeu from ACE team has kindly provided an interesting update on Zeno Clash's development
In regards to the game’s development I would like to announce that Zeno Clash will include a new Survival Mode with a friends ranking system. The Survival Mode features several challenges where the player will have to defeat all opponents to climb through levels. Players will be ranked by performance and speed and they can compare their scores against friends through a leaderboard. We took in consideration the feedback we were getting from the community and decided Zeno Clash needed a game mode with a competitive component where the players could enjoy the fun of the combat mechanics without having to go through the single player campaign again.
A really promising game on the Source engine, if only we could see some more of the combat mechanics from the developers. Luckily ACE team have provided...just that! (see below). Keep up to date on the Zeno Clash website.
This weekend you can buy World of Goo 75% off standard price that is $4.99 / 4.99€ / £4.24.
World of Goo is a multiple award winning physics based puzzle / construction game made entirely by two guys. Drag and drop living, squirming, talking, globs of goo to build structures, bridges, cannonballs, zeppelins, and giant tongues. The millions of Goo Balls that live in the beautiful World of Goo are curious to explore - but they don't know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious.
Criterion have confirmed today that their awesome racing game Burnout: Paradise: The Ultimate Box will be making its way onto Steam in the near future. More details are promised soon.
Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:
Gameplay changes
Added a duck timer that prevents duck spamming while running around on-ground
In-air, players are only allowed to duck once before they touch ground again
Fixed several bounding box issues with jumping, falling, and rocket jump air-walking. Bounding box should be much more accurate there now
Increased backstab check so that Spies can side-stab again
When disguising, Spies now always start showing the primary weapon in their disguise, and can then switch it with the last-disguise key
TF2 Fixes
Fixed flamethrower loophole that resulted in the flame effect being stuck on while the flamethrower wasn't really firing
Fixed exploit that allowed players to circumvent the force-fire timeout on the pipebomb launcher
Fixed a bug that caused Natasha's slow on hit effect to be inverted from 75% to 25%
Restored sawmill_logs.mdl file, fixing some user maps that used it
Fixed some localization issues with Scout achievement strings
Removed the "Final" phrasing in the map loading screen
Engine fixes
Fixed a server crash on startup under Linux
Fixed a buffer overflow issue related to network string tables
Gamestats uploading is now done asynchronously. This fixes the client timeout issues on map changes
You will be able to play the full game for weekend for absolutely nothing, what is great is that the game is getting a major update later today which will see loads of new gameplay modes, maps and characters as well as 57 Steam Achievements. This is gonna rock.
Below are the links to 4 new videos showcasing the new 'Survival Mode' which will be available with the free downloadable content release on PC and xbox 360. The videos show one of the survival maps from the Dead Air campaign, and the other three show action from the new lighthouse map.
Secondly IGN have enjoyed a hands-on play test with Valve and put down their thoughts here. Its a good read, with some great information about what to expect from Survival mode specifically. Some of the key points are as follows:
In all of the play testing that the Valve designers have done while creating this mode, none of them have ever survived past the 10 minute mark. The best so far was about nine minutes, with a team of elite players battling like crazy to keep one another alive. IGN's experience at Valve averaged around three or four minutes a round.
You'll get multiples boss zombies at a time; they often saw two or three hunters or smokers leaping around the battle while the mindless horde minions were everywhere. In one battle, there was a tank, a boomer, a couple of smokers, and a hunter hitting us at the same time. It's even possible to get two tanks at the same time
12 Survival levels available, 11 of which are taken and modified from the existing four campaigns
There is one entirely brand-new level in the DLC called Lighthouse which the designers say may be the toughest level of them all
You can earn bronze, silver, and gold medals if you survive long enough. Though the medal times for each map will be tailored for each map, right now the basic idea is that you need to survive for at least four minutes to get bronze, six minutes to get silver, and eight minutes to get gold.
Creative Assembly's latest addition to the critically acclaimed Total War series, Empire: Total War was released on Steam today, featuring full integration with Steamworks.
"Working with Steamworks was very straightforward," said Mike Simpson, Creative Director at The Creative Assembly. "The small investment of time to integrate Steamworks not only saved us development time, it helped us develop a better product that we can easily extend with updates and downloadable content post launch."
Empire takes place in the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, and features new additions to the Total War repertoire, including full-scale naval battles and an American campaign for independence. The demo is also available on Steam to try before you buy.
The winners in the Seventh Annual Mod of the Year Awards have all been revealed and mods for Valve games feature heavily all the way through the different award catergories.
There were many honourable mentions in the released Mod of the Year category including Insurgency, Sven Co-op, Empires and Dystopia. Half-Life 2 Wars was at 10, Age of Chivalry at 8 and Eternal Silence was at number 7. Pirates, Viking and Knights 2 came in at 6 and Zombie Master was in 5th place. Portal: Prelude was in third place and Zombie Panic: Source came in second place. The BF2 Mod Project Reality was the number one mod in this category.
Black Mesa received an honourable mention in the Upcoming Mod category. The Neotokyo mod for Half-Life 2 was in second place and Dead Before Dawn for Left 4 Dead was voted top of this category.
Of course there were many other awards handed out, head over to the Mod of the Year Awards page to find out more.
