CounterStrike:GO and TF2 source code leaked in retaliation to SJW!!

Link to the story.

Pretty good summary of the article:

At the same time, he was leaking the codebases, he was also airing Valve’s dirty laundry. 

 ...

Half-Life 3 and Source 2:
>Source 2 is literally Source 1 with Rubikon on top of it.
>The biggest feature of Rubikon is thermal physics which are not even present in Alyx.
>Thermal physics were to debut in Half-Life 3.
>Half-Life 3 was to take place 10 years after HL2 and be a completely separate story.

Left 4 Dead 3:
>Left 4 Dead 3 was 95% completed and made in Unity.
>Gaben is pissed about this because releasing an Unity game is an “image problem”.
>Old guard want to port the game to Source 2, but Source 2 is not ready.
>New people are most familiar with UE4 so they want to port L4D to UE4 instead.
>Gaben wants it to run on Source 2.
>Source 2 is not ready.
>Project put into the freezer forever.

Continued, other interesting shit.
>SteamVR was in reality basically developed by Oculus while Valve rather focused on the controllers.
>Oculus wanted to support SteamVR by default and they were all for selling Valve’s games on their platform and selling their games on Steam.
>Just ahead of release of CV1, Valve’s head of VR Alan Yates out of nowhere accused Oculus of industrial espionage and threatened them with lawsuit if they don’t remove SteamVR support from their games.
>Yates is very happy about this because people blame Oculus instead of him. 

Continued, more stuff from the leak:
Half-Life and Nintendo:
>Nintendo offered Valve $300k for a Half-Life game that would be exclusive to NX (Switch).
>Valve wanted to go with it and make an RTS game for Switch with touch controls.
>Father Grigori was supposed to be one of the “playable” heroes.
>Gordon Freeman was supposed to make a cameo and TALK because “he only doesn’t talk because he’s a protagonist”. Valve didn’t understand why this would raise a backlash.
>Valve was not aware that Lambda Wars exists.

"VALVe is not your friend..." Good article on Polygon

Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming - The illusion behind the “Good Guy Valve” reputation.

If you were to ask the average PC gamer, they’d swear up and down that there’s no way they’d ever give their money to such a corporation [such as Google]. They’d not only be caught dead before helping a company like that come to power, they might even join the resistance to stop them. 

And yet, that sort of operation is exactly what the PC gaming community has been supporting, promoting and defending since 2004 when Valve more or less forced us to install Steam by bundling it with Half-Life 2.

 Basically gamers are dumb.  Who'd have thought?!?

HL2 - "Hunt Down The Freeman"

Really bad commercialized Halflife 2 mod: "Hunt Down the Freeman".  It costs $30 $17, but from what I read, it seems there are better Halflife 2 mods out there.  Why does VALVe and Steam allow their IP to be raped and humiliated like this?  Oh yeah, because money lol.  You can buy it here.  I will personally buy it when the price goes below $4, which I feel will happen in the next Christmas sale.

Also playthrough video which I have not bothered watching:

HL2 Mod Review: ICE Expansion - IT HAS PENGUINS!

Jarek4GamingDragon reviews HL2 mod "ICE Expansion."

Steam Skyrim Workshop charging for mods

Gopher: "Whelp, it's officially all over.  Bethesda has killed the modding community."

Annoying kids in multiplayer games

 

The last bit of some kid's crazy racist rant on Team Fortress 2.  He spent a total of 30 seconds actually playing the game and thirty minutes talking about how he hates black people.  Gotta love the types of people that play Free-To-Play games on Steam!  Actually his Steam profile is http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198192367582 , but I'm pretty sure it's the same guy who's trying to evade our server ban by creating a new Steam account.

Sweet Half-Life - A long HL1 Mod

This is a pretty lengthy mod.  It's long, it's difficult, and for some reason, easily forgettable in my book, especially after playing hundreds of Half-Life mods through the years.  But this one has new weapons, new enemies and new code.  Normally that is what attracts me to playing new mods - seeing new content, but this mod came out long after HL2 was already out, so I was already burned out on Black Mesa-themed mods.  But I appreciate the effort that went into after all these years later, and it has some funny bits of humor thrown in near the end.

Here is a speed run, where, I'm pretty sure, the guy must have played through the whole game in slow motion and sped it up to normal speed.

Quick Mod Rundown

Mods or maps that I never finished but were impressive enough to warrant a mention.

The Citizen 2 - (Source Mod) Really good sequel to 'The Citizen', with impressive level design, annoying voiceovers, and overall great presentation.  Annoying cutscenes and voiceovers though.  The game got stuck for me after about fifteen minutes in, when I got to the hockey arena and the guy who was supposed to open the door at the ticket booth started spazzing out.

Castle Creep - (Halflife 1 Mod)  Puzzle-style maps with basic blocky level design.  Started out really atmospheric with lots of combat later on.  I ended up getting stuck on the map with the big office desk and the array of buttons (which I presume is to open some door somewhere).

Parasite Eve 34 - (Halflife 2 map) Very blocky map.  You start outside a massive castle/cathedral.  Also brought my system to a crawl.  It had some epic music and colorful lighting.  It kind of reminded me of an Unreal Tournament map. The interiors are very dark and some textures are missing.  Definitely needs work, and possibly categorized as unplayable, but I'd like more maps to at least have more attention-grabbing, wide open areas.

Another Source Engine game - Blade Symphony

This looks interesting... A sword fighting game on Steam.

http://www.blade-symphony.com/

Probably going to pre-order it tonight but wont get around to playing it until later...

Derek Smart hasn't committed suicide yet!

And for the low, low price of 200 dollars, you too can have access to what is essentially a tool to separate idiots from their money!

Gamers are Fat

How to make money in Game Design

1.  Take any videogame idea.
2.  Add zombies.
3.  ????
4.  Gamers will buy it because gamers are fucking dumb, simple imbeciles.  Profit.

Residual Life

Another Black Mesa simulator, but this is actually fun.  Level design is true to the original Halflife and there was enough interesting things to see in the intro that made me keep playing through.  Fun mod, one new enemy type, no new weapons, and good, consistant level design.  There were a few memorable combat areas and clever puzzles. All in all, a good, solid Halflife mod.

A short review - Vengeance

I know I haven't updated in a while, but I've had this Halflife mod installed in my Steam folder for a while now, called Vengeance.  It's just another HL1 mod, set in Black Mesa, that is no different than any other mod of similar nature.

It starts out with text that fades in and out, along with camera cuts that fade in and out.  The text is in broken English, and the title states that this is 'Episode 2' or 'Part 2,' I don't remember.  My gameplay experience consisted of waking up in a dorm room or something, walking into a train car, then seeing a three minute cutscene of a train slowly making it's way across an underground lake, and finally I got out.  I walked my way into a series of rooms with bad design, came across a very narrow hallway with a scientist walking through it, and my adventure ended when said scientist plowed right through me, squashing me into chunks of meat.

So why am I bothering to showcase this?  I have no idea, but after months without playing a Halflife mod, I thought I might as well.  Maybe it gets good after that, but probably not.  I think what probably drew me in was the 62 mb filesize.  I expected maybe it would have some interesting music in it, or some new enemy models or weapons, but nope.  There's about 23 maps about 3 megabytes each.  I hate to judge a map based on a short playtime, but I think I just lost the will to play any mod that is set in Black Mesa or that doesn't contain new assets.

http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/vengeance-half-life/

Ruin Christmas for whiny gamers who don't matter

So it seems with the new Steam contest, you can complete objectives to earn prizes, coupons, or 'coals'.  Coals by themselves are worthless, but if you earn seven of them, you can craft them into a free game.  Additionally, the more coals you have in your inventory, the higher chance you have of winning the Steam ultimate prize: All the Steam games, plus hundreds of second prize winners.

Now here's where I take advantage of the situation.  I have about 10 dummy accounts.  I made them using different emails so they couldn't be traced to my primary email.  But the thing you need to remember is that you need to own a retail game in order for an account to be authentic (ie you can't add friends or trade certain goods if you're not authenticated.)  Additionally, in order to trade certain goods, your account has to be in good standing for 90 days (meaning it CAN'T have been banned).  It's a good thing I created these accounts a long time ago.

I would have recommended buying the Humble Indie Bundle 4 for a penny (and I still do), but they caught on to this scheme, so now you need a minimum of 1 dollar to get a Steam key.  Still, one dollar to authenticate is not that bad, that's ten dollars (well, for me it was ten cents American) to get 10 legitimate Steam accounts, which will pay off when you get coals to do with as you please.  In addition, the money goes to a good cause, AND you get some Steam games which can help you get even more coals, so everyone wins and no one loses.  So far I managed to complete about 7-8 objectives on each account, yielding six games, some coupons I probably won't use, and some coals to spare.

Really though, I don't know why people like to complain about this.  Do these gamers realize that there now exists, even if temporarily, a 'coal economy'?  With any economy there will always be farming of one sort or another.  Do complainers think VALVe doesn't know about this?  They wouldn't have made coals tradable if they knew it was a bad idea.  There is nothing in the Terms against creating dummy accounts, despite what the retards on the Steam forums say.

All in all, there are some hardcore farmers out there who have a hundred accounts, I mean just look at this shit, this PEDXS guy has over 200 dummy accounts.  Though they may have thousands of coals, they still could lose as the drawing is random.  The chances of you actually winning are slim to none, so if you have fifty coals, you may as well craft them into something useful before they disappear in January.

Get Frozen Synapse NOW.

The Humble Indie Bundle has a new bundle where you donate however much you want and you get some games on Steam for free.  The deal expires in six days, so act fast!  You get some good games for donating any amount (even 30 cents, but how can you sleep at night, you cheap bastage!?).  But the real prize is Frozen Synapse.

I'll admit, the graphics of Frozen Synapse really turned me off.  But once you play past the tutorial, beat the first few levels, and get into the swing of things, it's really a simple, but deep, strategy game.  This is dubbed a 'simultaneous, turn-based strategy' game.  Basically, in the planning stage, you plan out your units maneuvers.  At this point you can also try to predict your enemy movements by creating a mock scenario using the known position of the enemies.  When both players are ready, they both hit the primer button and let the AI battle it out.  There are five basic units: Shotgun, Machinegun, Sniper, Grenade, and Rocket.  There is a sort of rock-paper-scissors element with the sniper, machinegun, and shotgun units, with the shotgun winning in close-range everytime, while the sniper will win over longer distances.  But that is not always the case.  A unit behind cover will win against a unit who is exposed, while a crouched unit will win against a standing unit.  There are exceptions to some of these rules, but once you play through and beat the single player campaign, you should have a good idea what units are ideal for getting the job done.  There is no element of 'randomness' and no hitpoints.

One thing neat about multiplayer is that you can make your move against someone who is offline.  You can have multiple games going on over a period of weeks if you don't feel like staying up trying to finish a game.  If you don't move for two weeks, however, you automatically lose.

The single-player campaign is one of the better single player stories in any strategy game since Starcraft, in my opinion.  Some of the scenarios seem impossible, but once you beat the odds, it's quite satisfying.  The music is also another great aspect of the game.  If you like electronic game music from the 90's (think Crusader:No Remorse, Unreal Tournament, and Command and Conquer) then you'll love the Frozen Synapse's music, created by nervous_testpilot.

Definitely buy it if you love strategy games (turned based or realtime), and even if you don't like strategy games, try it out just by donating however much you want to the Humble Indie Bundle, which comes with some other great games.  The money goes to a good cause so even if you don't intend to play anything you can gift the Steam keys to a friend.

Living under a rock...

Wow.  Apparently Duke Nukem Forever was released last month and slipped under my radar.  To be fair, I haven't been keeping up with videogame news so that's my fault.  But it seems that the game is one of the biggest flops in videogame history.  I remembered years ago that this game was being pimped out like mad.  That asshole George Broussard kept posting his silly 'teasers' of blurry images and every obsessive fanboy started to froth at the mouth.

It's funny that Daikatana used to be the biggest joke in videogames.  I guess Duke Nukem Forever is the new Daikatana.

Bloody Good Time (PC)

This is a pretty fun game if you play with people you know.  I wasn't able to to play for more than an hour of deathmatch.  I played about fifteen minutes with bots, which was pretty underwhelming, and another round with some friends.  It's very different from other deathmatch games.  The object is to kill other players without being seen by the police, so I guess there's some stealth element there.  It feels weird without a run or crouch button, so it's very slow paced.  A few negative points - there's only three maps, but the price was five dollars American, so I suppose you get what you pay for.  Another thing is that the Director's voiceover repeats the same things over and over again.  Real annoying.

For the modders out there, you should know that there is no SDK available (and probably never will be with Ubisoft's history).  Additionally, this is not Garry's Mod compatable, nor does it come with Source SDK Base (which comes with all VALVe Source games and is required to play source mods)

All in all, a fun little diversion.  I guess I can't complain since I was gifted this game through Steam friends.

E.Y.E - A new Source game coming soon?

Check this out.  A source engine first-person RPG.  Watch the video on the main page, it looks pretty awesome.

School Shooter North American Tour 2012

How about a school shooting mod?  Seems lame they'd do something like this for the sole purpose of getting attention, but I guess any publicity is good publicity in the world of videogame mods.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/school-shooter-north-american-tour-2012

It's been done before, anyways.  Anyone remember Pupils of Cyberdemon's School Doom 2?  It was a pretty enjoyable Doom 2 total conversion, and it was made a few years before Columine.