A geek, gamer and programmer from Israel. I'm primarily a PC gamer with a few PS3 games. I usually post gaming-related content, music and my own thoughts on plenty of things.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
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Valve’s Source Engine Gets Depth-of-Field And Improved Dynamic Shadows
Valve have just announced a new free game called “Alien Swarm”, which was developed by a group of talented designers who were hired from the modding scene. According to Steam, “…the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics.” The game looks pretty interesting, but the part that caught my eye was the rather quiet announcement of several new features for Source, including Depth-of-Field, improved dynamic shadows and a (real) third-person camera.
These new features will be part of a new version of the Source SDK. In addition, the game will include the full code base for the game and the code for the updated features for Source. Neat, huh?
[Source: Valve’s official Twitter account and Alien Swarm’s Steam store page]
Bugs, bugs, bugs!
Room For One, Left 4 Dead 2’s newest Mutation, is packed with achievement-related bugs. I never finished The Parish, because the finale was so hard. But apparently, finishing it in 5 minutes (On Easy because it’s so hard and I was playing with bots) in Room For One grants me the “Bridge Burner” achievement!
Also, joining a Room For One game in Hard Rain afterwards granted me two more. I joined right at the end, and even though I didn’t win it, (Though I was close and the campaign ended with me jumping to the boat) I got the “Weatherman” achievement (Never finished this as well) and the “Confederacy Of Crunches” achievement, even though I didn’t finish the campaign just with melee weapons!
This new mutation is an achievement whorehouse!
Half-Life 2, Episode One and Episode Two now on Mac with Cloud support and Achievements!
EDIT: Valve just made the Orange Box on sale for 30% off! If you have yet to get Portal or if you’re interested in Team Fortress 2, I recommend you to get the entire Orange Box package for $20.99. If you get the three Half-Life 2 games separately, it comes down to $18.17. So it’s your call: “Should I pay an extra $2.72 or shouldn’t I?”
Good news! Half-Life 2 and the two episodic sequels: Half-Life 2: Episode One & Half-Life 2: Episode Two have just been released on Mac with brand new Steam Achievements for Half-Life 2 & Episode One and Steam Cloud support for all three! Start your game on one platform and continue it on the other! In addition, all there are sold for 30% off their original price for a limited time! That means: $6.99 for Half-Life 2 and $5.59 for Episode One and Episode Two each.
I recommend you to buy all three installments right now. Half-Life 2 is a very, very good game and so are Episode One and Episode Two.
In fact, 4 games out of 5 in Valve’s Orange Box package have been ported to Mac so far. Now all that’s left is Team Fortress 2.
Congratulations Mac gamers! Half-Life 2, the sequel to Valve’s highly-successful debut title, is coming to Mac OS X today. Expect a whole other bunch of games to come as well, seeing as it’s a Wednesday and each Wednesday a bunch of Steam titles get released for Mac.
Note that even though Half-Life 2 is a sequel, you do not need to play the original game to understand the plot. I played Half-Life 2 without playing the original Half-Life and had no problem whatsoever. But I suspect Valve may even release the original Half-Life as well, since they’re supposed to release a bunch of new games for Mac today.
Valve have recently released Steam for Mac, along with Mac versions of over 50 titles. But, more importantly…
PORTAL IS NOW FREE!
That is, it’s free until May 24th. But, it’s not “free-to-play until May 24th” - it’s free to add to your account until May 24th! Meaning, you only have to click “Install Game” on Portal’s page before May 24th (using the Steam client, of course) and it’s yours for free, forever. Act now!
