the daily inxling!

I’m very fussy with my choice of games, and it takes a good game to capture my imagination, and moreso to get me hooked. Since Left 4 Dead was released some 9 months ago, there have been times where instead of sleeping and indulging in normal activities (useful, healthy pursuits like eating and going to the gym), I’ve been on my Left 4 Dead server (another sure sign I really like a game is when I go to the effort to run my own server!). It’s safe to say I’m a big fan of the game.

And then, at the beginning of May, Killing Floor stumbled along. Killing Floor, The budget priced pretender, perhaps even usurper to the zombie-style gameserver crown.

And while Killing Floor didn’t perhaps have the polish round the edges that Left 4 Dead did (and a multi-million dollar budget to suit), it’s certainly sent shockwaves in the direct of Valve, rich from the successes of a game many considered to the best of 2008.

Going head to head, Killing Floor is pretty much akin to Left 4 Dead, in the newly formed versus mode. Wave after wave of Zombies, with achivements for simply staying alive. Left 4 Dead certainly has the depth and longeitivity of an impressive release; but there’s just something about Killing Floor, and a reason why I’m playing on my Killing Floor server at the weekends, and not on my permanently full Left 4 Dead game servers.

Killing floor servers- the bad bits

• Some have likened the game to an old version of Quake (wrong really, because its based on the UT2004 / RO:OS engine). Overall, I feel this is a little harsh. The graphics aren’t the best, but in-game, and through the menus, they do reflect their price tag.
• Bugs, and more bugs. While the development team appear to be frantically ironing out problems, glitches in the server browser and in-game (Stalkers getting stuck, and being invisible to find!) haven’t helped the mixed reviews.
• Although I’ve not found myself too bored yet (gaming hours are testament to this), I do wonder how long it’ll be before I and the community grow bored of the same old game play (although it’s said new gametypes will be introduced over time).

It’s fair perhaps to say in reflection, the ‘weaknesses’ in Killing Floor, aren’t plenty, but they are glaring in places.

Left 4 Dead game servers- the sucky

• Fans of the game will wonder why L4D2 is being touted for release in November. Still no proper SDK support, so you can automatically download custom maps. And thus a real lack of support for custom map, bar through plugins such as Sourcemod. They really should have sorted that out before plotting the sale of the sequel.
• The scare factor. My hypothesis is that Left 4 Dead is more ‘cartooney’ to appeal to a younger market. It’s ok to headshot zombies if they look like they are out of a comic book. But with this, Left 4 Dead just isn’t as scary as Killing Floor, which looks far more raw, and despite the inferior graphics, more real.
• In light of the above flaw in Killing Floor, perhaps not a fair observation. But for the extra money we paid for this game, the campaigns seems a little on the light side. I can’t be the only one that was expecting more gameplay for my £?

Killing Floor- the juicy

• The Max Payne style slow-mos are fantastic. Particularly when you have a fully loaded pistol. Nothing more satisfying than blowing Zombie brains to pieces, with extreme precision.
• Map support. Where Left 4 Dead fails in this department, full custom map support has been met enthusiasm from the gaming community. More customisation = more longevity.
• The crappy characters. The cockney cries of “Money, money money”. And “Stand still, I’m not trying to shag you”. While others might point to this being another unpolished part of the game. It’s a light relief from being attacked by a half-human arachnid.

Left 4 Dead - why its a Zombie classic

• Wide choice of gameplay. Campaign, versus and survival give way more scope and variation that Killing Floor just doesn’t.
• While Killing Floor seems more of a shooting frenzy, Left 4 Dead is far more tactical and offers a superior sophistication of coop. You can’t afford to run off Rambo-style on this game. You’ll get eaten.
• It would be unfair to criticise the cartoony style characters on Left 4 Dead, without complimenting the smooth and aesthetically pleasing environment the source engine gives you with Left 4 Dead. The levels are polished, and the bugs and glitches are fewer.

Shall I buy a Left 4 Dead server or Killing Floor game server?

The obvious answer is both, because What Left 4 Dead servers offer, Killing Floor gameservers make up. And vice versa.

If you were to pick one, the big deciding factor as always is the price. Killing Floor costing a tad over £10, which is excellent value for money.

In conclusion, I might upset a few by suggesting Killing Floor a marginal winner. And I base this decision on Left 4 Dead seemingly making way for Left 4 Dead 2 in November. And the fact that Killing Floor has only just started with the more open customisation base.

But really, if you like your Zombie Games, I’d definitely be owning a copy of both

An update for TF2 game servers was released around 1am this morning.

Please run update on your control panel to install this update, then restart the game server.

Engine
——
Fixed Day of Defeat: Source server crash when loading  dod_jagd.

Team Fortress 2
—————
Added a “Discard”  button to the item pickup panel.
Added a backstab custom death animation to  the Heavy.
Changed default for tf_arena_use_queue to 1. This was the original  behavior prior to the last update.
Changed the Dead Ringer so it can be  activated while carrying the flag.
Increased the Force-A-Nature’s damage by  10%.
Fixed not being able to reflect arrows with the Flamethrower.
Fixed  The Huntsman drawing a muzzle flash under lagged conditions.
Fixed the  background color of the Spy disguise panel not always matching his disguise  team.
Fixed idle players being kicked when the server has tf_arena_use_queue  set to 0.
Fixed Spies not being able to sap a building if an enemy player was  colliding with the building.
Fixed getting a real target ID on an enemy Spy  that’s disguised as one of your teammates if you are disguised as an  enemy.
Fixed the Ambassador not shooting enemy sticky bombs.
Fixed Spies  being able to automatically cloak after uncloaking at the moment of a weapon  switch.
Fixed Jarate instantly exploding when thrown in some places, like the  final area of Badwater.
Fixed spectators not having their items removed when  they enter spectator mode.
Fixed Sniper “civilian” exploit where players  could crash the server.
Fixed a couple of cases where viable backstabs would  fail.

When you think of immortality, you sum up an image of a deity. Indestructible. And that’s not far off Counterstrike. As I write, just shy of 40,000 people are playing on Counterstrike Source game servers world wide.

Only World of Warcraft puts Counterstrike Source to shame. And let’s face it- that game is as addictive is heroin, and it’s not even an FPS.

So why is Counterstrike Source still so popular, 5 years on?

• Vast array of mods. Zombiemod, Gungame, Deathmatch. Heck I even played on an INX surf gameserver the other day. That was….interesting for a gaming traditionalist like myself, use to the orthodoxy and conservatism of dust only CS Source servers.
• Maps. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands? So much variety. Some terrible, some beyond fun. But it’s hard to get bored of the same old Counterstrike game server.
• The l33t skill factor. Many players jump from CSS server to server pumping their stats. Call of Duty 4, TF2, arguably more a community feel to it. Counterstrike servers are full of Pro-Plus junkies, fiercely competitive, who will fight to the death. Quite literally.
• The banter. Let’s face it. I don’t know about you, but if I return home from a night on the town, slightly intoxicated the first thing I do (after pouring a bedtime drink), is jump on a Counter-Strike Source server. Where else can you laugh at the array of swearing and anger- OMFG! FFS HAX! SPAWN CAMPING NOOB!

One day when I’m in my 80’s they’ll have total virtual reality games. With bullet sensitive clothes, and hopefully even a girl if you come out top on the scoreboard.

But I’ll still be playing with the old school CS Source kru

A required update for Team Fortress 2 is now available.  Please run hldsupdatetool to receive it.  The specific changes include:

- The Ambassador now does full critical hits on headshots, instead of mini crits
- The Cloak & Dagger now fully drains the cloak meter, even if the Spy leaves cloak early
- Fixed Spy disguise menu not being visible in HUD minimal mode
- Server log improvements:
- Added “player_extinguish” event for servers to log when a Pyro extinguishes flame with the airburst
- Fixed kill descriptions for Force-A-Nature & Sandman, so server logs can distinguish them
- Identified feign deaths in the events sent to server logs
- Fixed server crash related to the Jarate

Jason

Killing Floor is pure unadulterated fun, and I’m spending the majority of my weekend playing it. Its gorey, it’s buggy, it’ll scare the crap out of you, and it’s only around £11 on Steam

Killing Floor was released on Friday, and seems to have already really taken off in the online gaming world. There’s a very considerable amount of Killing Floor servers online at the moment. Play it with the lights off, seriously, I dare you

To celebrate the launch of Killing Floor we’re offering a Killing Floor game server at a very cheap £0.99 a slot. Please visit our Killing Floor game servers page to buy your own server.

Update to left 4 dead has been released, just launch your game and it will update as follows;

The Left 4 Dead Survival Pack is now available for the PC and Xbox 360, free of charge to all owners of the game. The full change list for the PC release is below. In addition, both the retail and Steam versions of the game (PC and 360) are now available for a special price. Check Steam and local retailers for pricing details. For more information about L4D, please visit www.l4d.com

Survival Mode

• New gameplay Mode
• 16 maps including Last Stand
• Leaderboards
• 7 new achievements

Versus Changes

• 2 new versus campaigns
• Fixed a case where versus team score would continue to be recalculated after the score panel was displayed
• Fixed an issue with recalculating the versus score health bonus for a player when they are rescued from being incapacitated
• Fixed being able to start a swing as an infected, then teleport to the survivors and have the claw swing hit a survivor
• Fixed a case where teleporting to the survivors would not reset the ability timer
• Fixed an exploit where you could load the chamber of a weapon with bullets by holding down the melee key
• Fixed a case where it was not possible to join a game while it was in a finale
• Fixed a rare case where listen servers would speed up the game over time
• Removed convars related to melee fatigue
• Fixed a case where infected players would get a respawn time on their initial spawn into a map

Server Changes

• Made ms_force_dedicated_server not require cheats
• Add a message when queuing a heartbeat
• Simplified setting of game mode
• Removed convars director_no_human_zombies and director_holdout_mode
• Added mp_gamemode [coop,versus,survival]

General

• Added lobby join and leave messages

A required update for Team Fortress 2 is now available.  Please run hldsupdatetool to receive.  The specific changes include:

Game Changes:
- Reworked the character loadout screens to support future features.
- Added the ability for players to permanently delete items from their inventory using the new Backpack menu. This does not reset achievements. Once an item has been deleted it can never be re-earned
- Added the ability for players to reset their player stats using the Reset Stats button on the Stats menu. This does not reset achievements
- Added a “player_teleported” game event that is sent when a player is teleported
- Updated cp_junction_final to score per-capture instead of per-round. This fixes the map not working correctly with Tournament mode and the stopwatch
- Scouts now drop the flag if they’re carrying it when they start phasing

Fixes:
- Fixed instances where Steam connection problems would cause some unlocked items to be unusable
- Fixed the custom crosshair menu not clearing itself when “None” is selected for non-English clients
- Fixed warning about not being able to execute skill1.cfg when starting the dedicated server

Jason

A required update for Left 4 Dead has been released.  Please run hldsupdatetool to receive the update.  The specific changes include:

Game and client changes:
- Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down
- Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected
- Addressed some surround sound detection issues
- Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left 4 Dead on Windows Vista
- Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded

Dedicated server changes:
- Corrected an issue where Windows based dedicated were sending spurious shutdown notifications to the master causing - them to delist temporarily
- Fixed dedicated servers not resetting the versus team swap correctly–you could join a dedicated server that had a - previous game that was swapped and arrive on the other team than what was selected in the lobby
- Renamed the tags for sv_search_key to use “key:” in the server tags instead of “sv_search_key.” This should help with issues of the 63 character limit of server tags
- Fixed an occasional server crash related to voting

Jason

To update your Left 4 Dead game servers please run the update button on your control panel.

I was stuck for what to title this article. A couple of options I ran through were:

“Gears of War II is what GeoW should have been.”
” ‘Gears of War 1.5′, not ‘Gears of War 2′ ”

A tech demo is defined by wikipedia (who else?) as being:

“a prototype, rough example or an otherwise incomplete version of a product, put together with the primary purpose of showcasing the idea, performance, method or the features of the product.”

The original Gears of War was lacking several major features listed in the INX Gaming Manifesto, most noticeably a lack of an offline Instant Action game mode. It also lacked flexibility: there was no skirmish mode, there were in total only 14 enemy types (including Raam and set pieces such as Corpsers, Reavers, Nemacysts, Seeders and Kryll, which don’t really count). It also lacked a fleshed out story line, and balanced multiplayer. But that was a different “article” (rant).

There was no good reason not to include a “horde” mode in GeoW, even a stripped down one would be better than none, although I realise that optimisations to the UT3 engine made it easier to do the way it was done in GeoW2. There was no good reason not to allow us to do multiplayer skirmishes offline. Gears of War 2 doesn’t feel like the sequel to Gears of War, it feels like the game it should have been. Gears of War acts as a tech demo, a sample of the potential that a Gears of War game could have, and Gears of War 2 feels like the game it should have been.

Where were the chainsaw duels in GeoW 1? Where was the horde mode? Where was the variety of scenarios in the story mode that GeoW 2 produced? And above all, where was the flamethrower?

- John

Daily Mail Source

T**s

S**t

F***ers

Apparently Ubisoft’s Scrabble Game has been using offensive language to beat an 8-year old at scrabble.

How did no one on the Dev team think “Hey, we should pop a word filter on this beast, yo!”? Come to that, why wasn’t it sufficiently tested by Ubisoft and Nintendo?

If you don’t test your games, then mistakes will get made. Sometimes very embarrasing ones.

- John