A new dawn has come on Steam, with four Half-life 2 mods being given access to the Steamworks SDK. The scoop comes from Steam Review who quote the Synergy Mod’s site (a co-op mod for HL2) as saying that they:
will be releasing Synergy and future updates through Steam! Valve Software has allowed us to do so by giving us access to the Steamworks SDK.
We are honored to be one of the four first selected mods to be given this opportunity. We will certainly put this to good use!
For you players, this means that you will see Achievements and Stats coming to Synergy in later updates. (Not to mention the automatic updates, provided by Steam.)
This really is great news for Steam users. While initially we are only getting 4 of the numerous mod’s out there, there are a number of benefits to this system. There is now much more incentive for modders, since they will be able to distribute their mods far more quickly, easily and to a greater number of people. On top of this, it means that us players will get more mods and that means more gameplay time, for free!
Just to add a little dampener, this doesn’t necessarily mean that these mods will be appearning in the Steam store, however I think it isn’t an unreasonable jump. Still, automatic updates of mods, achievements and stats from these differing types of game is a definite bonus! I for one look forward to seeing many more mods coming to light over the next few months! 
I recently came across this article which details an e-mail conversation with Robin Walker, one of the main dev’s on Team Fortress 2.
In it Robin states that he disapproves of instant respawn and that they cause things to be “heavily weighted towards the defenders in maps like Dustbowl & Goldrush.”
I take Robin’s point, that all the maps were designed with re-spawn waves in mind, but for me it doesn’t answer the key question - why did they do this? Why not just design the maps initially around an instant respawn? Robin says they put them in for a “variety of positive reasons” but never states what these are.
Personally, I don’t go looking for instant respawn servers, but when I stumble across one, I’m a very happy bunny! I don’t tend to sit down for hugely long play sessions, so being able to get back into the action as quickly as possible is a huge bonus to me. Who knows, perhaps they’ll take this into consideration when creating the new environments? Probably not, but if there is one thing that we do know, Valve tend to listen to their players. What are your views on this matter?
P.S. If you’re wondering where the awesome picture above came from, it’s the winning entry from this photoshop contest over on Facepuch Studios forum.
Two new games have been released by Frogwares and published by Focus Home Interactive.
Sherlock Holmes - Nemesis and Dracula Origin both fall into the Adventure genre and have a very respectible Metacritic Scores of 71 and 72. Both have a price tag of $35.99. Watch the trailers or play the demo’s below:
Sherlock Holmes: Trailer, Demo
Dracula Origin: Trailer, Demo
Just a few updates for you this week:
A really nice little update has been released for Audiosurf, which makes the following changes:
- Audiosurf friend lists are now automatically populated with friends from Steam
- Forced match collections can no longer reset the chain multiplier
- Soundtrack CDs now use correct artist names instead of “various artists”
Especially pleasing about this update for me is the addition of Steam friends list importing. This is a feature that I felt was severely lacking in the first instance and am very glad it has finally been implemented!
Updates news has also been posted on the Official Team Fortress 2 Blog regarding new environments. This is quite exciting - moving away from the old ‘wild west’ look and into new places is a really interesting development, and it will be good to see how the manage to make the characters fit into a new world…
Finally, there is a huge update to Savage 2: A Tortured Soul. Full list of changes after the break:
Continue reading ‘This Week’s Updates’
“What!?” I hear you say, “our favorite independent developer could be selling out”!?
But do not fret, all that happened is that Doug Lombardi has only said that “anything is possible”. He said that he would be happy to talk about acquisition - he’s not saying that it will happen.
And while your initial reaction may be a bad one, just think of the possibilities that could come out of Valve if there was even more money behind them. If they did get bought out, you would have to believe that anybody who bought them would be crazy to go and change things since Valve have such a successful formula already.
Not only this, but they’d also have to stupid to get rid of Steam, a system that works, and works well. We all know that EA have had their fair share of problems when it comes to digital distribution, so getting their games released over Steam would benefit everyone.
Who knows how this will pan out, but I for one am not worried at the moment.
The highly controversial Eternity’s Child has been updated! Those debates I have linked to are utter nonsense when you consider the game is only $4.49 right now.
- Improved controller compatibility
- Allowed configuring which controller axis can be used for moving or aiming
- Xbox360 controller bumpers can be used as buttons now
- Birds are twice as fast, and have 35% as much health
- Fixed crash when switching anti-aliasing
- Fixed possible achievements issue
- Changed the title page to fade out sooner for each level
We recently had a bit of a shift around of the networking setup in SteamReport HQ, and while everything was working fine, last night when attempting to log into steam I was hit by the following error:
As I said, everything else was working like a dream, so I couldn’t figure out what was causing this error. I went to the official Network troubleshooting tips page, and checked that the servers were all ok - they were.
So, I then went to troubleshooting this issue. I disabled my firewall, I disables all programs but Steam, and nothing seemed to work. So I slept on it.
In the morning, the same problem. I was at the end of my tether…
Then a saving grace, a last resort Google search gave me this post on the Vista Forums. The suggestion which is made is something that i recommend for anyone who is having connection issues with Steam before messing about with anything else… especially if you’ve just changed your networking setup. The following is what is suggested to solve the “Could Not Connect to the Steam Network” error:
delete the data files with .blob extensions in your Program Files>Steam directory (Eg. ClientRegistry.blob, AppUpdateStats.blob). This will cause it to rebuild the Steam Registry and perhaps might resolve the issue.
After trying this, Steam worked like a dream! So for anyone having connection issues, and you’ve just changed your setup - give this a try - you never know, it may just save you a LOT of hassle!
The achievement clamp down continues with this patch.
- Fixed _resetgamestats command causing server crash.
- Fixed clients earning achievements when a player they’ve recently damaged suicides
