PC Gamer

Unreal Engine 4 screenshots feature fire demon and snowy landscapes

Epic have been showing off the next iteration of the Unreal Engine to developers for a short while. Wired got a look recently, and have posted their impressions alongside a few new shots showing a fiery demon, some busy wireframe scenes and a lovely vista.

Epic haven’t released the demo video yet, but Wired describe plenty of new tech, including an advanced particle rendering systems and a lighting program that models the way light bounces around rooms entirely in real time, bypassing the typical level design techniques that “bake” light and shadow into the textures of a scene. The days of designers hand-placing individual light shafts in a scene may well be over.

Poll: Do you use more than one monitor?

Last night, as is my wont, I was flicking through RSS headlines and spotted a post on Microsoft’s Building Windows 8 blog which looked quite interesting. This morning, the post is gone – presumably for further editing somewhere along the way.

Since the post has been taken down I won’t go into too much details about the way Microsoft says it’s improved multiscreen use in Windows 8 – obviously something in there wasn’t right and I’ve no way of knowing what that is. There was, however, some useful stats about dual and triple screen use which led me to wonder: how many pcgamer.com readers use more than one monitor?

Kingdoms of Amalur devs in difficulty after missing state loan payment

38 Studios appear to be having some problems paying back hefty loans owed to the state of Rhode Island. Blue’s News highlight a report from the Boston Herald saying that the studio missed a $1.1m payment at the start of the month and are now requesting more money.

Studio founder and former baseball star Curt Schilling held a private meeting with state officials earlier today to discuss the state of the company. Afterwards, officials responded by deciding to not decide anything for a short while. With taxpayer money on the line, the studio could face hard times ahead.

Blizzard apologises for Diablo 3 server issues. Launch preparations “did not go far enough”

Blizzard has released a statement following widespread server issues affecting Diablo III since its launch on Tuesday. Some players have seen pre-release error messages, connection issues, and even lag spikes during single player games. Now Blizzard are saying sorry.

The statement admits that “despite very aggressive projections, our preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough.” As a result, Blizzard have moved the launch of its real-money auction house “beyond our original estimated date of May 22,” though they don’t specify exactly when.
Blizzard also thanked the game’s enthusiastic fans, and believe they have addressed most of the core issues. They will continue to monitor the servers, which we can only assume are still rammed with enthusiastic clickers.

The post follows days of problems with the game’s servers, which are believed to have caused the game’s Metacritic user review average to drop to a meagre 3.6. Read on for all the info, direct from Blizzard. For more, read Tom’s Diablo 3 review as it happens, or check out our complete launch guide.

Steam enables remote downloading for your convenience

Valve has taken the remote downloads feature we reported earlier this month out of Beta. The latest update allows users to remotely manage any machine synced with their account, providing it is active and connected to the internet.

Users can manage their library of games remotely via the web or mobile, downloading pre-loads, new releases, or their latest purchases, as soon as they’re available. That means your new downloads can be installed and ready to play when you get home from work; an enticing prospect for bargain-hunting PC Gamers, or ones who like managing their gaming time efficiently.

For more instruction, visit Valve’s Steam support page.

Borderlands 2 collector’s editions announced

There are two types of Collector’s Edition for Borderlands 2. There’s the $99.99 Deluxe Vault Hunter’s Collector’s Edition for those who really like Borderlands, and the $149.99 Ultimate Loot Chest Limited Edition set for fans who really, really REALLY like Borderlands.

The cheaper box comes with a Marcus Kincaid bobblehead, a map of pandora, a download code for the digital comic, an art book and some stickers. The ultra-box is modelled in the style of a red Borderlands loot chest (minus the randomised megaguns), and comes with a set of lithograph postcards, some Sir Hammerlock field notes, a “steel book case” and big ID chart that lists all of the creatures you’ll encounter in Pandora. Also, most importantly, there’s a cloth map. In case you’ve never held a cloth map, it is the best sort of map a map could hope to be.

Activision were “looking for excuses to dump” ex-Infinity Ward heads in 2009, document claims

According to a court document supplied to Giant Bomb, Activision’s former IT director was asked to hack into the e-mail, phone and computer accounts of former Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella.

The document in question is a court filing that forms part of the imminent trial between Activision and the Modern Warfare creators. In it, former IT director Thomas Fenady claims that he was asked to “dig up dirt on Jason and Vince” in 2009 by George Rose, Activision’s chief legal officer at the time. During his deposition, Rose denied that this was the case.

Indie Royale All Charity Lightning Pack is live, £10k already raised for charity

Adding the word “lightning” to things tends to make them instantly exciting, and adding the word “charity” makes them nice, so the Indie Royale team have hit on a good thing with their “All Charity Lightning Pack.” It’ll let you pay a small amount for a bundle that includes floaty gobble ‘em up, Osmos, violent but awesome party game, BUTTON, Rabbi-tastic adventure The Shivah and the surreal, serene explorathon that is Blueberry Garden.

ALL profits are divided between four charities, including Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, act!onaid and Unicef. The minimum price for the pack fluctuates. If more buyers pay over the required minimum, the price will drop. Otherwise, it’ll rise gradually. Right now it’s set at a pleasantly low £2.57 and the total donations figure just ticked over the ten thousand mark. WELL DONE EVERYONE. The deal will close in 79 hours at the time of writing.

Rift three faction PvP hits test servers today

A new three-way PvP faction war mode will land on Rift’s test servers later on today. From 4pm PDT / 11pm players will have the chance to and jump into a new PvP warzone in a new version of Stillmoor to do battle for a cluster of control points (or Sourcestone Extractors, as they’re called).

As a member of one of three new factions, Ascended must seize a certain number of these areas to win. “The match ends when a single team has claimed 40% of the control points or 5,000 players are killed” explain Trion on the Rift site, “once this happens a 10 minute timer will start, this is your chance to make a last grab for control.”

The importance of playing games with your kids

We constantly hear about the “perils” of gaming and the “corrupting” influence our favorite hobby has on young generations, but the positive side of gaming rarely gets its time in the spotlight. I recently had a quick chat with Tom Purdue, the new community manager for KingsIsle–the dev team behind Wizard101 and Pirate101–where we chatted about the positive influence that parents playing videogames with their kids can have.

Diablo 3 lore and backstory: an interview with The Order author Nate Kenyon

Diablo 3 is out. Finally. It’s consuming our free time. But even now that it’s within our grasp, we don’t always have access to our computers. Sometimes we have to do other things like ride in a car, sit in a classroom, or attend a relative’s special event. These mundane activities do not have zombies to click on for loot, but you can still get through them thanks to the terrific, dark Diablo 3 prequel novel The Order by Nate Kenyon.

Tribes: Ascend downloaded 1.2 million times, Hi-Rez’s MOBA entering closed beta May 31

This doesn’t mean that Tribes has 1.2 million unique players, mind you, but it’s still a heartening stat. I still can’t quite believe that a small group of independent developers in Georgia dug up the license to a hardcore, classic PC game, made it free without compromising its spirit or nuances, and are doing this well.