News

"It all began with a 3D-model, and soon the idea to extend this theme as a non-commercial fan project was born."

BlackMonkeys, the team behind this epic mod for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, announced on Christmas Eve that their project Star Wars Mod: Galactic Warfare has just entered Public Beta. The mod is a total conversion and will change every aspect of CoD4 into everything Star Wars purists love and cherish. Battlegrounds, famous locations, the vehicles and weapons are all included. Combined with the excellent multiplayer of CoD4, this mod promises epic warfare of galactic proportions to fans of either franchise the mod is based on.

11 months in the making, Star Wars Mod: Galactic Warfare, is now available for the public to wreak havoc in as either as a trooper of the Imperial Forces or as a soldier from the Rebel Alliance.

At current there is only one map included in the beta release, but BlackMonkeys assure the community that more maps, character models and weapons are in development, and will be included at a later stage.

Download Star Wars Mod: Galactic Warfare here!

Related links:
www.blackmonkeys.de
www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-mod-galactic-warfare

Splash Damage once again combines their Cristmas cards with a fund-raiser for the endagered species, their beloved mascot, the tapir.

As a founding clan and major part of The Group Thing, Connect Gaming will of course support and do our best to try and raise some awareness of the Splash Damage Christmas Tapirthon '09. As you may or may not know, the tapir is Splash Damage's official mascot and is depicted in most situations and pages on their company website.

This card is the one we recieved over at The Group Thing, with our custom TapirScene™

The back of these cards read:

"Tapirs are endangered, but you can help! Simply customise the card with the enclosed sticker sheet, post a picture of it on your website, and send a link to tapirs@splashdamage.com. For each of the first 30 submitted Tapirscenes, Splash Damage will donate money to tapirs.org conservation project."

All four species of the tapir are all endangered! With your help, they can be saved!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Good news Everybody! Custom content support has arrived so all the code monkeys and modders can bgin making us new stuff in which to scream "Aaaaah, I've ben smokered!!!" like girls.

The Left4Dead Blog has the scoop but to quote the blog "We are releasing the Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools and Left 4 Dead 2 Add-on Support today.

PLAYERS: If you are not looking to design but play custom campaigns all you need to do is install the add-on support package. Just go into steam and open up the Tools tab. Look for the entry labeled Left 4 Dead 2 - Add-on Support click and install it. This download is sizable, but will update your L4D2 installation to allow running ANY map, including custom maps made for the original Left 4 Dead. Once installed, you do not need to run this application, it will always be active.

We will be updating the Left 4 Dead 2 game UI to include links to this package when applicable but for now please just download it directly. If you see any missing textures or models from your favorite map let us know in the forums.

DESIGNERS: Besides also downloading the above file you will need to download the Left 4 Dead 2 - Authoring Tools. Downloading it will add applications, utilities, and example files that are useful for building L4D2 game add-ons. These are similar to the tools released for Left 4 Dead, but include many updates and new features. Among the most useful are:

Gamemode Logic: Designers can now make a single map that can behave differently depending on the gamemode in which it is being played. This can dramatically reduce the file size of Campaign add-ons, as the same map can be used for Co-op, Versus, Scavenge, and Survival.

Director Logic: Maps can now alter their layout and behavior depending on how "angry" the A.I. director is. The better the Survivors are doing, the angrier the AI Director seems to get. This allows you to base variable paths and other events on the player's skill and current conditions.

Scavenge Mode Support! All the elements map authors need to support Scavenge in their maps. This includes game props as well as a full example in the form of Deadline 2, an updated tutorial campaign.

We have included an updated tutorial to help you get going and as always you can join the discussion on the map designer email list. What we want for New Years is to get to play your custom maps in Left 4 Dead 2.

For the best user experience and to take advantage of the new map and nav mesh formats, Left 4 Dead 1 Map Makers will want to compile Left 4 Dead 2 specific versions of their map in the new tool.

Happy Holidays,

The Left 4 Dead 2 Team"

From the TF2 Blog discussing their beta on AI bots with "human like reflexes and senses"

"With the success of the AI systems of Left 4 Dead, we've been continuing to develop these technologies to create new kinds of game experiences. Team Fortress 2 is an excellent "sandbox" for explorations of this sort, and we've been quietly doing so for much of this last year. Some of the results of these explorations are TF "bots" — AI-driven player proxies with simulated humanlike senses, reaction times, and tactics. Although the TFBots are not yet complete, they play a pretty decent game of King of the Hill.

We thought you might enjoy testing your skill against these work-in-progress digital killing machines.

We'd also like to hear your thoughts on how the bots are behaving. Although we have our list of behavior bugs to tackle (this is a beta after all), we're sure you'll discover issues we haven't yet seen. If you'd like to give us bot feedback, you can post your thoughts in our new Bot Feedback sub-forum, or send us an e-mail at tfbots@valvesoftware.com. In either case, please tell us the three things you hate most about the bots, and the three things you like best about them (as well as anything else you think we should know).

Since this is a beta test, the TFBots are only functional on these King of the Hill maps: koth_viaduct, koth_sawmill, and koth_nucleus. They don't understand the rules of multiple point capturing, cart pushing, or flag getting... yet. There's also no interface in the game to accessing them yet (we'll add one in an update shortly), so you'll need to access them manually.

To add bots to your game, use the console command tf_bot_add. This will drop a random bot onto a random team (assuming there is a free player slot). The tf_bot_add command can also take up to three optional arguments: , , and , in any order. For example, tf_bot_add 10 will add 10 random bots to the game with auto-assigned teams. Typing tf_bot_add pyro blue will add a Pyro to the blue team. Entering tf_bot_add red 5 will add 5 random bots to the red team. The command tf_bot_add red 3 heavyweapons will add three heavies to the red team.

In order to put specific bots on specific teams (for a bots-vs-humans game, for example), you may want to disable automatic team balancing. To do this, enter mp_autoteambalance 0 followed by mp_teams_unbalance_limit 0.

To remove a bot, use the console command kick . To remove all of the bots in the game, use the command tf_bot_kick all.

TFBots are "players", and take up player slots. They run the exact same code that human players do, moving and firing weapons by pressing "virtual buttons". The bots have simulated humanlike senses, and only know what they see, hear, and touch. They also have realistic reaction times and aiming limitations. They don't "cheat" or use omniscient knowledge of the server state to make their decisions."

Play as Soldier or Demoman? Check out the updates now!

Looks to make some interesting gameplay changes, I will be giving this a good go over the next few weeks! X-mas, Baileys and or Jack Daniels and some "Multiplayer Mayhem" for me!

Hope to see you on there.... now to practice rocket jumping spade attacks! "The Equalizer : This melee-slot pickaxe becomes more deadly the more damage you take, letting you move faster and hit harder the more wounds you endure. Get close enough to death, and you will become Death himself."

See it all here:

http://www.teamfortress.com/war/part6/index.htm