Being absolutely honest about your skill, as I have above, is probably in your interest. “Over the coming months we will make selections from the survey participants. Sometimes we might add experienced players, other times new players. Sometimes 1.6 players, sometimes CSS players, sometimes people who have played neither.”

“If you don’t fill it out, you won’t be getting a key,” reads the post. Of course, Valve also states that active, current CS:GO players can expect to receive keys to gift to their friends through Steam.

Dammit, Norm.

With the addition of the Incarnate system in Issue 20: Incarnates, we introduced a complete end-game experience to City of Heroes. Fundamental to this experience is the Incarnate Trial. Since last April, we’ve introduced six Incarnate Trials to City of Heroes, and the upcoming Issue 22: Death Incarnate will bring the seventh, Dilemma Diabolique.

Each Incarnate Trial has been designed to bring new and unique experiences to our game, with challenges that are commensurate with the rising power and skill of our players. From BAF (Behavioral Adjustment Facility) and Lambda Sector, to the Keyes Island Reactor and The Underground, to TPN Campus and Minds of Mayhem, each trial was designed to push the limits of what we thought was possible in City of Heroes, both for us and for our players.

However, we’ve been learning and constantly refining our development strategy based on the feedback provided by our players. Dilemma Diabolique embodies the latest step in our trial design philosophy. This new Incarnate Trial represents a combined goal of providing a more challenging experience to our players while introducing fun and understandable game mechanics.
Some of the things we’ve learned that are incorporated into Dilemma Diabolique include 5 main lessons.

1. The importance of the “Rest Stage”

The initial trials, BAF and Lambda, did not include any “rest periods” during which players can pause, gather their thoughts and proceed to the next stage. Keyes, on the other hand, was designed with intermediate stages, but these stages were more intended to facilitate movement from location to location than actual “rest.” These trials remain frantic throughout their duration.

Lessons from both of these combined to teach us the importance of pacing the stages in a such a way to give players time to collect themselves. When one stage’s location leads directly to the next, with no transitions or abrupt mechanic shifts, we use a 30-second timer. When one stage has a “transition”, either in locale or major mechanic, we instead have designed the trial to allow players to choose when they want to proceed. Both of these approaches come into play in Dilemma Diabolique.

2. The importance of information

Incarnate Trials can be fast-paced, hectic experiences, and from very early on we realized that we would need to provide more information to our players than a raw MMO endgame encounter typically offers.

Initially, we tried to provide much of this information through captions, floater text and the Help box affixed to each stage’s UI, but this proved to be less informative than we desired. We have since begun experimenting with using the UI itself to provide short text directions that can guide players. These directions are displayed only when necessary, and do not clutter the UI when they are not a factor in the event.

Dilemma Diabolique represents the furthest development of this system; entire mechanics are now explained in the UI during rest stages. This is intended to help trial leaders focus the group on what’s important in upcoming battles while they explain what to expect.

UI elements—no matter how well-designed—won't protect you from those massive claws, however. MOVE!

3. The importance of keeping player’s opponents within expectations

From the powerful stuns of the Olympian Guard to the deadly stones of TPN’s protesting citizenry, we’ve occasionally made the “trash” enemies in Incarnate Trials more difficult than would be expected. Regardless of the reasons for that choice, the general consensus is that it’s a point of frustration for players.

Based on these experiences, you’ll find that the “lesser foes” you will encounter in Dilemma Diabolique will not have any overpowering tricks up their sleeve. While some of the enemies do have mechanics intended to make them priority targets, none of these villains have been designed to be the force that stops your progression through the trial.

4. The importance of feeling well-rewarded

We have introduced some very challenging and difficult trials, but we have not always done so with rewards equal to the challenge. The best comparison for this is Keyes Island vs. TPN Campus.

Keyes Island, in its original form, was probably the hardest content ever introduced into City of Heroes, but did not offer significantly improved rewards to match that level of challenge. Players rightly pointed out that simpler, quicker Incarnate Trials such as the BAF, Lambda, offered equivalent rewards. On the other hand, the TPN Campus Incarnate Trial we recently introduced is arguably even more challenging, but players have embraced its difficulty partly because it is also the most rewarding content we’ve ever produced.

For Dilemma Diabolique, we have tried to continue this trend. Though it’s a less mechanically challenging or complex trial than either TPN Campus or Minds of Mayhem, the increased base level shifts of the bosses made us feel that “always on” Empyrean Merits, which are an especially valuable endgame currency, was the way to go for this trial. Though there are no mid-trial rewards—like the ones found in The Underground or TPN Campus—we feel that the faster pace of the trial for maxed Incarnates is reward in itself, since it makes accumulating Empyrean Merits for our most dedicated Incarnates a faster endeavor.

5. The importance of mechanics

There have been times when we’ve designed mechanics with a very steep learning curve, which could prevent even seasoned players from ever feeling “at ease” with them. This, in the end, didn’t increase player confidence in their mastery over an encounter, and could be quite fatiguing.

In Dilemma Diabolique, we attempt to address this not by eliminating complex mechanics altogether, but by a combination of better explanations (as noted above), a reduced number of mechanics operating simultaneously, and lowered potential for the mechanics to “make or break” an encounter.

These are just a few of things we’ve learned over the course of the past year, with the help of the feedback our players have provided through their participation and thoughtful postings. We’ll apply these lessons as we continue to develop new and interesting designs for our trials. Combined, we’ll be better able to make fun and interesting challenges for our Incarnate players. We hope you enjoy the result, and that you continue to offer your feedback so we can improve the system even more in the future.

To learn more about Dilemma Diabolique and the rest Issue 22: Death Incarnate, you can visit City of Heroes’ Facebook page or the official website.

The Guild Wars 2 beta sign up page is now live. It’ll only be open for the next 48 hours, so you’ll want to get in there ASAP to throw your name in the hat. Head over to the Guild Wars 2 beta-sign up page now to apply. Good luck!

The Xbox Live Marketplace listing also contained a bit of info about what the DLC will contain, but it’s quite spoilery, so I’ve quarantined it beneath the indomitable red ‘Read and Comment’ line below. If you’re avoiding spoilers like the genophage then stay up here where it’s warm and safe.

From Ashes will apparently contain a Prothean team mate. This ancient race is supposed to be entirely extinct, but somehow, at least one has survived. VG247 highlight a number of Prothean lines that one fan managed to find hidden away in the files of the recently released Mass Effect 3 demo.

“I have learned a lot from working on Terraria and plan on using what I’ve learned, building upon it, and moving forward with another, even better project,” he says. He’s also about to have a baby, which tends to get in the way of coding. And sleep. The other member of Re-Logic, Finn “Tiy” Brice has already moved elsewhere to work on Starbound.

Sad news for Terraria fans, but it’s had a great run. Terraria was promising on release, but grew enormously with major updates after launch. One patch made it 150% more difficult, another one at Christmas added evil snowmen and many more added new monsters, biomes and spectacular weapons. At £6 / $10, it’s probably one of the best value games on Steam right now. If you like the idea of exploring the tunnels of a huge, randomly generated world, finding “megashark” machine guns and taking on giant evil eyeballs, you should check it out.

I’m not sure if humanity has yet invented a unit capable of measuring the kind of manic, gun-loving hysteria exploding out of every frame of the new Borderlands 2 trailer on RPS. It’s possible that language alone can’t contain this amount of concentrated wub wub in one place, which explains the appearance of words like “bazilliondier” and expressions like “get read to joy puke your face off.”

Between the beats there’s mention of a September 18 release date. That’s for the US, the Borderlands 2 site says that it’ll be released internationally on September 21. If the concentrated, brilliant mind-bludgeoning above has rewired your brain into a state in which you must buy Borderlands 2 now or explode, there are various pre-order options advertised on the Borderlands 2 site. A refined, expanded version of the first game would do very nicely indeed.

Ascend currently features five maps, nine customizable classes, and three modes: Rabbit, a free-for-all mode which awards points to the flag carrier; Team Deathmatch, which awards double points to kills scored by the flag-holding team; and traditional Capture the Flag.

Temple Ruins, a firey new CTF map, will be introduced before the open beta update.

Before the game opens to all on Friday, a major update will add a new mode called Arena Deathmatch, which will include two maps specifically designed for it; a new CTF map, Temple Ruins; a new Team Deathmatch map, Inferno; two new Soldier class unlocks; as well as several interface changes, balance tweaks, and bug fixes. Existing players will retain all progress and unlocks, and Hi-Rez doesn’t plan for any character wipes.

If you’re not in the closed beta, the upcoming public release will cost you nothing but time to check out. Purchasing gold gives you immediate access to additional classes and weapons, but those can also be acquired with experience earned in-game, and upgrades like larger clips and reduced reload times can only be earned with XP, so lacking funds won’t put you at a serious disadvantage. (Those with the cash can speed things up by purchasing XP boosters, but even so, the game’s balanced well enough that upgrades or no upgrades, you’ll never be a helpless weakling.)

Being the camping jerk I am, my current go-to class is the pesky, sniping Sentinel. For me, nothing beats picking a skiing flag carrier out of the air, but the game accommodates a ton of play styles. Gavin, for example, takes a bulkier approach, as seen in the Juggernaut class video we put together a while back:

For more on Hi-Rez’s approach to the series, check out our interview with Executive Producer Todd Harris, which was recorded prior to November’s closed beta launch, and scroll down for more screenshots of the new additions. Oh, and check back later this week for a very relevant giveaway!

Lava Arena, an upcoming map for the new Arena Deathmatch gametype.

Air Arena, another Arena Deathmatch map.

Soldiers can look forward to two new class items: the Utility Pack and Proximity Grenade.

A Konami GDC job ad, spotted by Joystiq, mentions that Kojima Productions are looking for “project engineers for the latest Metal Gear Solid targeted for high-end consoles and PC.” The ad is also looking for engineers capable of developing “network gameplay functionality for online games,” which obviously implies a multiplayer component. Beyond that, there are few details, but if it’s anything like every other MGS game, it will be quite wonderfully mad.

Eve Online’s rookie ships are finally getting a makeover. The increasing intricacy of Eve’s ship design over the years has slowly left the tiny starting vessels behind, so it’s probably about time they received an update. You can examine the concept art for the redesigned rookie ships on the Eve Online dev blog. They look pretty swish, but it’s worth noting that the old ones didn’t look bad at all, apart from the Reaper, which looks like several satellites trying to mate.

You check out the dev diary above for a look at how CCP went about designing the new craft and read on to see the old and new designs side by side. If you’re interested in trying out Eve Online, you can sign up for the 14 day free trial and pilot the new vessels for yourself when they’re released.

The old Reaper. Spindly and weird.

The new, chunkier Reaper. He's been at the Kit Kats.

The boxy old Ibis.

The sleek, curvy new Ibis.

The old Impairor. Probably the best looking Eve starter ship.

The new Impairor. Still sexy.

The lumpy, organic old Velator.

The new Velator. Not quite as interesting to my eyes.

Modern Warfare 3 gets the same ambient occlusion treatment, boosting war torn grittiness by 32%. Additional AO for the Diablo 3 beta applies a chunky 35.2% hike to lingering sense of dread levels and PhysX fixes improve Batman: Arkham City’s bat-punchiness with 10% extra Pow! 4% extra Zam! and a minor increase to overall levels of Biff! You can download it now from the Nvidia site, where they also have some fancy interactive screenshots that show off these Ambient Occlusion updates quite nicely.

This can o' whoopass: totally free.

As if this deal couldn’t get any sweeter, mmmm licorice, Aion is also including patch 3.0 in the mix for all players. The patch will add a new stylish mount system and player housing, which you can decorate and show off to your friends. You’ll also get two new zones, six new dungeons (including a 24-player raid), and the level cap will be raised to 60. We’ve played around with all of the new content and will have our hands-on impressions in the next issue of PC Gamer US (May 2012).

The Aion website has an interesting story driven trailer for the announcement and you can check out the Ascension page for more details on the update.

What better way to break open today’s toughest campaign issues than the imminent threat of becoming demon food? The just-released President’s Day Surprise DLC for Dungeon Defenders unlocks four new skins, including President Obama and Mitt Romney, then sets you up to battle for points while avoiding a giant patriotic demon. Of course you’ll also be fighting your fellow players, and at some point Michelle Obama will probably use a machine gun to rain lead pain down on George Washington. If only every presidential debate was this entertaining.

The free DLC unlocks more than just democratic mayhem. Two new pets (a Democrat Donkey and Republican Elephant) and two new weapons are also added. Would-be dungeon debaters can pick up their boxing gloves via Steam.

League of Legends’ latest champion is a massive water-logged diver, who looks more than a little like one of Andrew Ryan’s creations. Lucas, Gavin, and Hollander Cooper discuss his tidal highs and lows in the latest Champion Roundtable, assessing whether or not this seaworthy tanky-jungler is worth the ticket of admission. One thing’s for certain: toss him in a lane with Annie, and you’ll be having flashbacks to the dystopian Rapture all game long.

As always, you can download League of Legends for free on the game’s official site.

“Alan Wake on the PC has been something both us and the fans have wanted since the original Alan Wake was released” says Aki Jarvilehto, executive VP at Remedy. “It’s been such a long journey and now that the game is finally out, it’s very emotional to see such a positive fan reaction to it. We hold PC games very dear to our hearts at Remedy, so in a lot of ways, this feels like finding a lost child, you get to reconnect with something you love and cherish and want to spend more time with it in the future.”

That’s quite the dramatic simile, Aki. But hmm…delighted? Looking at Steam stats (at 11:15 AM PST, actually a fairly-populated time on Steam—although not necessarily when people are playing Alan Wake), the current daily peak for concurrent players of the game is just 2,012; comparable to the same stat for Deus Ex: HR, Dead Island, and Portal 2.

I guess that’s good, right? According to Joystiq, it took just two days for Remedy to recoup its development and marketing costs for the port.

“We’re all getting older—I just had my first child,” Ironclad producer and co-founder Blair Fraser told us as he explained the origin of the project. Ironclad is known for Sins of a Solar Empire—the intricate, massive sci-fi 4X game that can take an entire day to play. Building a shorter-form strategy game fulfills one of their broad goals as a studio and as aging people, and it lets Ironclad tap into a genre that continues to grow. But between Dota 2, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, SMITE, Blizzard DOTA, Rise of the Immortals, Realm of the Titans, and others—it’s also a genre that’s suddenly crowded with similar experiences.

In order to distinguish itself from that pack, Ironclad is trying to integrate RTS gameplay that plays in parallel with MOBA-style champion-on-champion combat. Sins of a Dark Age will use champions (Heroes, in their terminology) as the primary playable characters, but minions will be human-controlled by a separate role, the Commander. Commanders won’t have a character on the battlefield themselves, but they’ll work with Heroes by directing minions manually and throwing down special spells that do things like temporarily increasing mining rate (economy) for their teammates. From the press release: “As Commander, you’re responsible for building your base, directing your peons and positioning your defenses. It’s up to you to properly train your units and use them to support your team’s Heroes in calculated assaults on enemy positions and to capture key resources. The Commander role allows players to call upon larger-than-life ‘Realm Powers’ to turn the tide of battle.”

Ironclad’s other priority is making SoaDA accessible; part of that means building incentives for players to be not-jerks to one another. “Sins of a Dark Age is easy to learn and accommodating to both new and veteran players of any strategy genre and is designed to minimize griefing and other common causes of hostility in the community,” reads the press release “The innovative match design means never missing out on a match or a session being ruined by players dropping out: instantly rejoin games or jump into shorthanded battles to save the day and earn bonus rewards for yourself and your clan.” If someone rage-quits your game, in other words, an entirely new player will be able to fill that slot (and they’ll earn something extra for doing so).

In addition to PvP, SoaDA will include some PvE scenarios where players can team up against AI. Oh, and it’ll be free to play (duh), but Fraser from Ironclad assured us that they “Won’t sell power,” only Heroes, factions (associated with Commanders’ different unit types), skins, and other aesthetic stuff.

We’ll genuinely excited about this; adding a Commander sounds like a great way to mutate the existing template for MOBA games into something new, and hopefully in a way that creates real teamwork. Go read more about it and see more concept art on the game’s website.

But, waitaminute. Haven’t we seen exactly the same strategy from another keyboard and mouse pedlar not so long ago? Yes, I’m certain Roccat’s new site rings a bell.

I’m not entirely sure what Roccat is aiming at with it’s reversal of Razer’s pre-Christmas catchphrase – they’ve changed it from ‘PC gaming isn’t dead’ to the more quizzical “Isn’t PC gaming dead?” To be honest, the campaign didn’t work out all that well for Razer anyway – it’s Blade laptop is still very much a concept device, which looks to be very expensive for what it is.

At least Razer was doing something a bit different though. I’m loathe to give Roccat’s shameless rip off the air of publicity, especially as it may result in you inadvertently signing up for their email newsletter. I’m only writing about it now to poke fun at it. Poke. Poke. Poke.

In other news, an Alienware X51 landed in the office today and I’m pleasantly surprised by it. I don’t want to play favourites here, but there’s a lesson in the big A’s approach that others would do well to follow: if you’re going to announce a PC gaming device that you think is really revolutionary, make sure you follow up with real product quickly. And don’t posit yourself as some sort of saviour – by attracting more console gamers over to PCs, Alienware’s machine will likely do more to help our hobby than anything which thinks it can single handedly change it forever.

Who knows, Roccat might have something genuinely interesting to announce at CeBit, which is when the timer’s due to expire…

Today we took our first proper look at Nadeo’s upcoming ShootMania, experienced three full minutes of pre-rendered space war, and took cover as Tim’s excitement for Diablo 3 surged through the office like a runed tidal wave. Rich and Graham, meanwhile, just like it when footballers lie down. Click through for the rest of today’s round-up.

• Hurley from Lost plays a bit of StarCraft 2. His APM is slightly higher than Rich’s.
• A student has remade the opening sections of Dark Forces 2 in CryEngine 3. We like this a lot.
• The Secret World will be out in June.
• Also in June, Spec Ops: The Line.
• LA Noire gets DirectX 11 support.
• Rift’s portalling into Southeast Asia.
• Runescape developers Jagex reckon that physical games retail simply won’t exist in ten years.
• RPS note that GSC games have started appearing on GOG. No sign of STALKER yet, though.

 
That reconstruction of Dark Forces 2 is impressive stuff. What classic gaming location would you like to see remade in a modern engine, readers?

In the beginning, you’re just a wizard with a weak wand, but as you hoover up experience for each kill, you’ll level, grab new weapons and unlock new classes. There are a few roguelike genes caught up in Realm of the Mad God’s weird, tangled DNA. If you die, your character stays dead forever and all his items are lost to the void. It’s so fast paced it’s hard not to just start over again instantly on death, making this very, very moreish.

It’s been free to play for a while on the Realm of the Mad God site, but its arrival as a free to play game on Steam gives us a good excuse to recommend it. Its Steam debut means its scatological collection of worlds will be packed full of low level wizards rushing around shooting chickens. 85 players at a time can jump into Realm of the Mad God’s instanced zones, which results in some spectacular, chaotic co-op monster slaying. Give it a go, you almost certainly won’t regret it, until your clicking finger falls off.

We asked him why he thought they were less popular these days. “I think a lot of it is the multi-platform consideration,” he said. “Games have this huge marketing spend so many of these shooters look to go multi-platform, meaning not just the PC but at least two consoles as well.”

Todd says controllers don’t offer the same freedom of movement as a mouse and keyboard, making it harder for devs to put an emphasis on raw dexterity: “The control scheme on the consoles does limit somewhat the speed and the twitch in which a game can operate – I mean your turn distance is only so far.”

“That’s not to say that someone couldn’t make a fast twitch game for those consoles,” says Todd, “But it’s easier to go to a lower common denominator – not having to turn as fast, not having to look 360 degrees in an instant – to make more of a hide-and-seek style, corridor-based, tactical shooter,” he says.

You should be excited about Tribes. It’s superb, and currently in closed beta. Luckily, the latest issue of PC Gamer comes with a beta code and 350 gold – that’s enough to unlock a specialist class or pimp out one of you existing ones. Subscribe, or grab your copy of the March issue.

The even more surprising figure, CD Projekt’s point of view, is that the original Witcher also did quite well, shifting 400,000 copies. “The sales results for The Witcher, five years on from the game’s premier, are remarkable,” CD Projekt Red managing director Adam Badowski told Eurogamer. “If anything, they prove that the content we put into our games ages well. The Witcher will continue to generate buzz in the coming years.”

The Witcher 2 will certainly create a buzz in the coming months. The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition is due out on April 17. The 1.1 million players who already have a copy will get their version upgraded for free.

The latest update then adds onto an already great game. Yet when I read the latest notes for the beta, I was worried: it appeared that the developers were removing complexity by altering the way runes: subtle (or not so) alterations to how each of your skills performed, were presented to the player. Previously they’d drop like loot. Now they’re earned at level up points.

Turns out, Blizzard were right. And I was wrong.

Diablo is all about loot, yes. But it’s also about taking a character through to level cap. As I’ve played, I’ve started to worry that the pleasure of levelling up would gradually dissipate as the number of new skills available topped out. Previously, you’d stop earning new skills at level 30 – despite the level cap reaching 60. It’s impossible to see in the beta, but I was concerned that the later levels would turn into a pure grind. You’d start losing one of the core reasons to level up: discovery of new stuff.

Runes change that. Now, it feels like runes are additive to the skill tree. As a Barbarian, you learn Bash at the start of the game. But you start to learn the runed iterations of Bash as you level the character – and suddenly, you’re drowning in new stuff every level. There’s the bash that adds a shockwave, or the bash that generates additional fury. This new way of thinking about the skills has me hooked. I can see another five playthroughs of the beta coming just to discover the runes available for each skill on all the classes.

The second big change that’s worth addressing: the game in it’s default state prescribes builds to you from the start by defining where certain skills should appear on your ability bars. For my Barbarian, Bash and Cleave were assigned to my left mouse button, rend and hammer of the ancients (a giant AoE smash) to my right. Support abilities are on the 1 key, health potions on Q.

I can see exactly why this direction is in place: it’s to prevent newcomers from creating degenerative builds. And it works. It’s a nice piece of design where the interface directs smart choices. It’s optional, too – a set of armbands for those who want to paddle in D3’s bottomless loot pool.

There’s one criticism I still have, though. Right now, you can swap your skills in and out at any time. But when you do swap them in, they’re hit by a cooldown, meaning you can’t use them for about 30 seconds. This is rubbish: too often I’ve been excited by a new skill and its inherent possibilities for hilarious axe based experimentation on the nearest zombie. Instead I’ve got to wait for the cooldown to pass.

Oh, another criticism. It’s not out yet. Dammit.

The extended cut of yesterday’s Mass Effect 3 trailer has appeared on All Games Beta triggering some debate in the PC Gamer office. The shot that caused the controversy occurs at 2:19, when Shepard steps forward and his assault rifle mysterious pops up off his back all by itself. How?

Tim reckons a it’s down to a stealthy butt clench. We watched it again, looking for some sign of tension on Shepard’s face, but there was nothing. Then Chris said something about the neural interface implants that Shepard’s had since the start of Mass Effect 2 that would let him unholster his guns with a thought but we weren’t listening because we were too busy thinking about Shepard’s bum. Will we discover the truth of the matter when Mass Effect 3 come out in two weeks? No. Definitely not. We’ll probably get to beat up some Reapers, though, so hooray for that.

Their tale will be told across a mini-series of adventures and, according to the Banner Saga website, is aimed at players with an appreciation for “art, story and strategy.” There will be decisions, conversations and consequences, as you might expect from a team that’s worked at Bioware. There will also be multiplayer. Free, multiplayer in fact, carefully deduced from the notice on the official site suggesting that “free multiplayer combat” is “coming soon.” A Banner Saga trailer is due to be released soon as well, which will hopefully give us a good look at more of that artwork.

Why is this interesting? Because ReRAM, or ‘resistive RAM’, is one of those disruptive technologies like wireless power or 4G that’s been under development for years, but is suddenly looking like it might happenin our lifetime. ReRAM could, if manufacturing kinks are worked out, replace both system RAM and hard drives in PCs of the future.

ReRAM is being touted as the successor to both current system memory chips and hard drives. And it’s not just SanDisk that’s been showing an interest in this super-storage of late.

The importance of ReRAM is that it combines the read/write speeds of DRAM – the stuff on those memory chips in your PC – with the non-volatile nature of flash memory. In other words, they don’t forget stuff when you turn the power off. Potentially, it’s the best of all existing technologies: bulk storage that runs at system memory speeds.

Theoretically, a PC with enough ReRAM memory in would mean no more loading times, ever. All your data would always be kept in the equivalent of today’s system RAM.

On top of that, ReRAM is expected to require little power, and it can be manufactured on tiny manufacturing processes with high yields.

The principle of the ‘memrister‘, upon which ReRAM is based, has been around for 40 years. Memristers work by ‘remembering’ the amount and polarity of current that passes through them as electrical resistance, which enables them to store data in ReRAM. HP believes that memristers have other potential uses as logic gates and switches that “could one day, for example, act like synapses inside computer circuits, mimicking the behavior of neurons in the human brain”.

Interest in memristers and ReRAM has spiked in the last few week, moving from highly specialised news feeds to mainstream tech sites including the BBC. Up until now, ReRAM has been most closely associated with HP which has led development of the technology. In January, however, Japanese firm Elpida which put out a press release that claimed it had a working ReRAM protoype that was capable of switching state at 10 nanoseconds – the same as DRAM.

Then, at the start of this month, ‘Technology Licensing Company’ Rambus – a well known player on the patent district circuit – announced it had acquired Unity Semiconductor for $35m. Unity’s CMOx technology is another candidate for the grand unification of memory theory, which includes patents that cover memristor interfaces too.

Other familiar names who are working to commericialise ReRAM include Sony, Panasonic, Micron, Hynix, DSI and more.

Expect a lot of news about ReRAM over the coming months. Hynix and Elpida both reckon they’ll have ReRAM-based chips in production some time next year.

(Image credit: HP Labs)

7,000 beta invites were also set out last week, with another 2000 planned for today. Valve say that they’re sending out invites to active Counter-Strike community members, and are running contests on big CS sites like Gamebanana. “We will also have a survey up in the coming weeks that can help you get your name on the list for a key,” they say.

The new Counter-Strike blog also mentions Valve’s plans to balance the game based on feedback from top CS pros. Their main focus at the moment is on weapon recoil, which is essential to the feel of Counter-Strike’s finely balanced guns.

“Recoil is tricky. It isn’t just math. It’s also about feel and one of the defining parts of Counter-Strike,” say Valve in the latest blog post. “A few weeks back we had pro player Salvatore “Volcano” Garozzo by our offices and one of his biggest pieces of feedback he gave us was about recoil. It was still too hard to control.”

Valve have adjusted weapon recoil twice in the last week, bringing it down and then asking players for their opinions each time. “During this Beta, community feedback is really important to us,” they explain. “Counter-Strike has been around for 12 years and has been played by over 25 million players. We want to make sure to capture all of that experience and knowledge as we make Counter-Strike: Global Offensive the best version of Counter-Strike.”

Also, if you’re unsatisfied with Skyrim’s map, or have the urge to perch an ipad next to your monitor so you can plan your route and scout ahead with a few gentle strokes, the Bethesda blog has word of a new official app that you can download to your Apple device right now. The free version will give you the map of Skyrim and the nine major cities. Interior maps and more locations can be bought as extras. You can grab that from the App store now. Meanwhile, here are those patch notes from Bethblog.

LAUNCHER

• Fixed issue with downloading mods when you are subscribed to more than 50 mods
• Fixed crash when loading a subscribed mod that has been removed from Workshop by the author
• Mod load order functionality

 
BUG FIXES

• Fixed occasional crashes when loading a save that relies on plugins/master files that no longer exist
• Fixed issue where controls would become unresponsive while charging an enchanted weapon
• Fixed issue where controls would occasionally become unresponsive while switching from third to first person while using the Arcane Enchanter
• Fixed issue where controls would become unresponsive if activating a crafting station with autorun active
• Fixed issue where keyboard would fail if Rename Item was selected before choosing the number of charges, while using Arcane Enchanter
• Fixed several issues with remapping buttons while using an Xbox 360 controller
• Fixed issue where pressing Escape button after fast traveling but before the loading would cause certain menus to stop working properly

It’ll be a few months before we find out. Until then we’ll have to much about with Blizzard’s Diablo 3 skillset editor. It’s a tinkerer’s paradise. If the idea of creating a Sorcerer that specialises in dropping meteors of ice doesn’t thrill you, though, there’s always this linky list of today’s PC gaming news. Today, a game that teaches kids to code games, a tour of Valve’s offices and today’s Dead End Thrills pick from Alice: Madness Returns.

• Today’s Dead End Thrills shot is this smoky skyline from Alice: Madness Returns.
• Penny Arcade take a tour of the Valve studios.
• We mentioned the recent Black Ops 2 rumours earlier. The site that ran the Amazon listing story claim to have been blacklisted by Activision as a result. Activision tell Kotaku that “we believe this was a misunderstanding and are working towards a resolution.”
• Eve Online Crucible patch 1.2 is out, with a new trailer.
• InCrysis have compiled a big selection of lovely videos and screens of art an environments created using CryEngine 3.
• Gamasutra chat to the BBC about their upcoming Doctor Who game and why they’re making games.
• Job listings suggest that Crytek are working with EA on something new.
• GIBiz think about the threat of future IP laws like the recently semi-defeated SOPA, PIPA and ACTA acts.
• VG247 report that Alan Wake has made the money that Remedy put into developing and marketing it, which is nice.
• Code Hero is a game that aims to teach kids to play games. A kickstarter page has been started to help fund development.

 
What are you looking forward to playing in the next few months?

Beyond that, very little is yet known about the game, beyond the concept art above and the image on NextFrictionalGame.com and the odd strange message like this one:

“THE EVIL MAY HIDE THE GREATER EVIL. BUT THE EVIL ALSO HIDES THE GREATER GOOD. THIS WORLD IS A MACHINE. A MACHINE FOR PIGS. FIT ONLY FOR THE SLAUGHTERING OF PIGS.”

What do you reckon, robotic pig flight sim?

Treyarch and Infinity Ward have taken it in turns to churn out annual editions of Call of Duty over the last few years, so it’s likely that Treyarch are working on the next one right now. Given how well the first Black Ops sold, a sequel would make complete sense. Would you be interested in a Black Ops 2?

In our list of ways to get around in videogames, jet packs rank pretty high. In our list of things we’d quite like to kill in games, dinosaurs are also pretty high. That makes it well worth mentioning the imminent arrival of Orion: Dino Beatdown, a game about flying around in jetpacks beating down dinosaurs in an open world battle for survival. It’s made by Spiral Games, and looks like a nice, budget interim release while they continue work on their big multiplayer shooter Orion: Prelude.

If you were among those who contributed to the Orion kickstarter project last year, you’ll get a copy of Dino Beatdown for free. Everyone else will be able to buy it on Steam and OnLive next month for $9.99. Spiral promise “a wealth of post-release support,” too, which will hopefully expand the range of lizards we’ll get to fight. Find out more on the Spiral Games site.

Gabe even went into depth on DRM and how it affects game sales. He reckons intrusive measures can result in a false economy: “You know, it’s a really bad idea to start off on the assumption that your customers are on the other side of some sort of battle with you.”

“We tend to try to avoid being super dictatorial to either customers or partners. Recently I was in a meeting and there’s a company that had a third party DRM solution and we showed them: ‘Look, this is what happens, at this point in your life cycle your DRM got hacked, right? Now let’s look at the data, did your sales change at all? No, your sales didn’t change one bit.’”

The Valve boss says customers are getting unnecessarily pissed off, and developers are losing out on sales thanks to the restrictive measures: “We tell them ‘You actually probably lost a whole bunch of sales as near as we can tell, here’s how much money you lost by bundling that with your product.’”

“Giving customers a great experience and thinking of ways to create value for them is way more important than making it incredibly hard for the customers to move their products from one machine to another,” concluded Gabe.

If you’re interested in how the habits of purchasers have changed since the Kickstarter page went live, Tom, who rarely misses a good graph opportunity, has taken a look at the figures. The adventure game is due out in October this year and backers will get early access to a Steam beta.

Runestones are no longer items. Formerly you could find them in the world and combine them to create stronger versions. Each of the five different types of rune would have five ranks which would convey increasingly impressive damage boosts to the skill they’re slotted into. That’s all gone. Runestones are now “Skill runes.” Instead of picking them out of chests, you’ll unlock them alongside your combat abilities as you level up.

That’s not all, as game director Jay Wilson explains in the latest Diablo 3 blog post. “The new skill rune system does not have ranks, and we’ve instead made each around the equivalent to what the rank 4 or 5 rune was previously,” he says. “One click, you make your rune choice, and you get an explosive benefit to that skill. That feels a lot cooler.”

New rune skills will be added regularly as your character grows stronger. “With each level you’ll unlock at least one new skill or rune, and in most cases you’ll be unlocking three or four,” Wilson says. “The most immediately exciting part of that system is that skill runes begin unlocking at level 6, which means that players in the beta test will finally be able to play around with some rune variants.”

Skeletons aren't very good at playing Just Dance.

The main problem with the old system, Wilson explains, was the sheer number of runestone variants involved. “With around 120 base skills, that meant there were around 600 rune variants; on top of that, each variant had five quality levels each, meaning ultimately there would be something like 3,000 different runes in the game… and we knew we were heading toward a problem.” The number of runestones needed to support the system was leading to a “serious and tedious” case of ‘inventory tetris,’ in which runes would have to be shuffled and rearranged to make room for other items. Blizzard hope the new system will be more intuitive.

The revamped system will still offer a huge amount of skill customisation, but the changes alter the way that rune alterations are delivered and dictate the pace at which you’ll acquire them. The Diablo 3 skill calculator shows off the splendid variety of changes runes can make to each classes standard selection of abilities. It’ll let you poke around Diablo 3′s entire skill tree, too.

Diablo 3′s release date is set for sometime between April and June. This runestone overhaul is just the latest in a series of big changes to Diablo 3 over the past few months, including a redesign of the core character stats system and the removal of companion pets.

This is the full length version of the CGI Mass Effect 3 trailer EA teased last week, in which we learn what happens to those sunflowers. They … don’t make it. The little girl is also toast. This means WAR. Which means SPACESHIPS and LASERS and POSING with GUNS.

Not a bad trailer, but will the game be able to deliver that sense of a huge galactic struggle? Will it really feel like we’re part of a massive space war, dictating the future of humanity and its alien allies? We’ll find out in less than three weeks when the game is finally released.

An extended cut of the trailer is set to be released tomorrow, which will be the third version of the video released within a week. Mass Effect 3 is also due to be launched gently into space pretty shortly to give orbiting aliens an early look, the lucky buggers.

The PC Gamer Rig is the best value PC you can build for under £1,000/$1,550, and thanks to some recent juggling of components and suppliers there’s been a fair bit of that budget left to play with in recent weeks. Since we can afford it, now that the Microsoft X4 – a long time favourite in the office – is getting harder to get hold of and more expensive it’s time to find an alternative.

A lot of keyboards have passed through the labs recently, and there’s been a promising resurgence of interest in those with keyswitches of the mechanical kind. Corsair’s beautiful looking K60, QPAD’s superb MK-85, Razer’s double brace of Black Widows and the pricey but pleasant Mionix Zibal 60 have all been tested and found wanting almost solely as a result of the cost. As important as it is to own a good keyboard like these, though, even I’d struggle to part with more than £100/$150 for one unless I’d just had an unexpected windfall of some kind.

But in amongst a box of mice and race controllers from Steelseries that arrived for review this week, I think I’ve found the perfect keyboard: the 6G|V2. It’s been around for a few months now – longer in the US – and now I’ve had chance to play with it I realise I’ve been waiting for it for a long time.

The 6G|V2 is basic. Very basic. Compared to the outstanding looks of Corsair’s aluminium K60, it might as well be wearing a pastel shirt and a perm, it’s so very 1980s. It doesn’t come with as much as a wrist rest, so resolutely does it eschew modern affectations like ergonomics. It doesn’t even have legs to prop it up into a more comfortable position if you wish.

There’s no backlight or macro keys or fancy driver suites, either. Just a Cherry MX Black switch under every key that has a smooth mechanical action without the tactile click of some keyboards. Which in my zealous crusade to convert all PC Gamer readers to the joys of a mechanical keyboard, I’m going to gush about.

The buttons themselves are slightly heavier to push than the MX Red switches favoured by Corsair and QPAD, which remain my favourite of the Cherry suite. Many typists prefer a little more resistance than the Reds offer, though, as it can help to prevent mis-strikes.

What’s important about the Steelseries ‘board, though, is the price. Short of hopping onto eBay or finding a bargain at the local car boot, it’s just about the cheapest mechanical keyboard around. It’s up against Razer’s Black Widow or Black Widow Stealth Edition, slightly cheaper in some places, pricier than others. Of the two, I prefer the design and non-tactile keys of the 6G|V2.

At £67/$85 it’s still what most people would consider expensive for a keyboard, but that’s only £30 more than the X4 cost last month. That’s an investment I’d argue is worth every penny, personally. Especially as the whole Rig is less than £5/$15 more than last week including the mechanical keyboard, thanks to shopping around on prices elsewhere.

What’s in the Rig?

CPU

Intel Core i5 2500K

£155.60/$229.99
Unlocked for overclocking, but if you’re on a tighter budget you could go for a cheaper fixed speed chip.

Motherboard

ASUS P8Z68-V LX/Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3

£74.98/$109.99
Good boards with plenty of tuning tools and Crossfire graphics support (not that that’s important with the NVIDIA card below).

RAM

Crucial Ballistix Sport

£31.99/$51.99
Good quality RAM at a good price. Expect comments below about how x-brand is better.

3D Card

GeForce GTX 560Ti

£149.48/$229.99
The UK store only has a few cards left at this price, so expect them to sell out fast.

Hard drive

500GB hard drive

£54.98/$43.99
Still not quite the right time to buy a hard drive, but things are looking better.

DVD drive

Samsung SH-222AB

£10.35/$17.50
You don’t need a DVD drive anymore, but you’ll need this or a large USB stick to install the Windows 8 beta.

Case

Bitfenix Outlaw

£39.98/$48.95
Not just good looking, but soft to the touch too.

Power supply

OCZ ZS Series 650W

£57.98/$74.98
Plenty of power for what you’ll need.

Mouse

Logitech G400

£24.66/$36.98
Classic Logitech design with a modern 3600dpi sensor.

Keyboard

Steelseries 6G|V2
£66.95/$84.99
It’s not quite the cheapest mechanical keyboard around (I think that honour goes to the Solidtek KB-6600BU, which isn’t widely available in Europe), but at this price you really should treat yourself.

Sound card

ASUS Xonar DG
£20.87/$27.60
Not essential, but a great extra for £20.

Monitor

Iiyama Prolite X2377HDS/AOC i2353Ph
£144.97/$179.99
Alternatively, you could try the excellent Dell U2312HM for £25 more – the stand alone is worth the extra.

Headset

Creative SoundBlaster Tactic 3D Alpha
£37.00/$45.47
I’m not the biggest fan of Creative headsets, but to get better you’ll need to spend a lot more.

Total: £869.79/$1182.41

That’s £4.59/$14.33 more than last week.

Is it a liberating experience experience to be free of those clunky desk mounts, or consolisation of the PC gone too far?

While I’m not a huge player of racing games, I do enjoy taking them out of the garage occasionally, and like to keep a wheel handy just in case I’m in the mood. I never watch motor racing on TV any more, though, so while I can appreciate all the buttons and dials on the controller as being useful and authentically modelled on something or other, I’m much more interested in the Simraceway wheel because it’s really well built and small. It packs tidily away in a drawer when you’re not using it.

It’s also completely driverless, even for the assist dials and twiddly bits.

There is, apparently, an optional steering column mount which can tether it to a desk, but if the motion control works well enough that really shouldn’t be needed. You forgo force feedback, obviously, but you do get all those buttons, a wheel that’s been ‘tested by pros’ according to the spec and – most importantly – well built peripheral that makes similar console accessories look like the cheap toys they are.

Although it works as a motion controller, it isn’t wireless. The S1 is connected to your PC via USB and that’s just fine by me – it should make it more accurate and responsive, getting rid of the sluggish dead zones wireless controllers can have in fast games. Early impressions are that it’s a reactive as most wheels, even if it takes a while to get used to fact it floats freely in front of you.

I even quite like the Simraceway online racer which it’s designed to work with, and which I wouldn’t have ever tried if it weren’t for the wheel review.

The problem with the S1, though, is the price. At £100 it’s not exactly an impulse buy for a Sunday driver who likes the convenience of a disembodied wheel, but the lack of force feedback is going to rule it out for anyone with that sort of cash to spend on peripherals. Anyway, there’s no foot controls, so acceleration and braking is handled by paddles on the back, which suggests it lacks of the kind of realism sim fans want.

I love the concept, the design and the rubberised finish. I just can’t see myself buying it.

Still, I might change my mind – these are just first impressions. I’m going to do some more testing and put a full review in next month’s mag.

Unmanned

Molleindustria. Play it on the dev’s website.

On one side of the screen, an interactive task. It could be playing Call of Duty, it could be shaving, or it could be something altogether more serious.

On the other side, dialogue choices. You steer the path of the stories Unmanned tells, selecting from multiple options at various points as the scenes progress.

From the mind of Italian indie dev Molleindustria, this is a quite extraordinary game, one about war, morality, love, confusion, the appropriateness of 18-rated videogames for children, behavioural disorders and workplace romance.

You’re stationed in Afghanistan, but you return home at the weekends. What do you tell your wife during a phone conversation? What do you do with your kid during those precious moments you’re not away? What do you truly believe about the situation in the Middle East? These are questions the game asks of you.

It also asks you to balance your talking with your actions. At multiple points, you’ll be holding an in-depth conversation while concentrating on an important task. Maintaining a successful marriage of the two not only affects the course of the game, it also leads to additional achievements – ones that are given extra gravity by their context at the end of the game.

It’s moving and thought-provoking, and challenging in more ways than one. Molleindustria’s unique style is helped along by Jim Munroe’s excellent writing and an understated soundtrack from Jesse Stiles. Absolutely brilliant.

SCP-087

Haversine. Download link.

A closed door. If you turn around at the start of the game, it’ll be the last thing you see before you begin your descent in this bizarre and unnerving – or, perhaps, just lengthy and boring – staircase simulator.

It’s based on a fantastically weird internet Wiki that I’ll say no more about, in case you’re not aware of it. Seek out The SCP Foundation if you’re interested. I’d recommend going into SCP-087 blind if possible, though. If you do, you’ll be left either bored rigid, or scared stiff.

Know that something happens. Eventually. It could take a minute, it could take an hour. If you’re fond of the deliciously creepy, play as much as you can manage – whether that’s to the ‘end’ or not – then hit up SCP for some chillingly brilliant tales.

The Love Letter

Axcho, Knivel. Play the game on its website.

It’s tough being the popular kid at school. You can never get any peace and quiet, it seems. But that’s all you’re asking for – just a minute to yourself so you can read the mysterious love note someone’s left in your locker.

This fun five-minute game tasks you with evading your hordes of groupies as you try to read the letter your admirer has demanded you don’t let anyone else see. That’s quite difficult when tens of other kids are all vying for your attention.

You’ll run around pixel-art corridors, trying your best not to draw attention to yourself. Class starts in five minutes, and whoever your admirer is, she wants you to meet her before then. This is cute, surprisingly challenging, and well worth those few moments of your time.

Dwarf Fortress

Bay 12 Games. Download it, with a massive update, from the official site.

The world’s most intimidating free game is back with a vengeance this week. Dwarf Fortress, the famous roguelike society builder, got itself a huge Valentine’s Day update that fixes an impressive number of bugs and adds a quite remarkable amount of content.

Eleven months in the making, the patch includes cities in Adventure Mode, fort defence against werewolves, zombie-infested tombs, a new navigation system and, oh my goodness, so many other things.

If you’ve tried Dwarf Fortress, you’ll probably already know how much all this is likely to appeal. To the game’s credit, despite being bigger than ever, the many tweaks and adjustments over the years have made it less terrifying than it used to be. Never played it? Concentrate hard on some tutorials, then give it a go. It’s worth the experience, at least.

2QWOP

Bennett Foddy. Play it on the developer’s website.

Bennett Foddy’s QWOP, released a few years back, was an oddly hilarious game that saw you taking control of each individual limb of an olympic sprinter. The aim: finish the race, don’t fall over your own legs.

Now he’s released a two-player split-screen version, meaning this is now a game where a grand total of eight limbs must be individually manipulated at the same time.

2QWOP game won’t work on some keyboards, thanks to multiple simultaneous button presses. That hasn’t dulled my ambition to try controlling both runners at once, though. I have eight fingers, right? I can totally do this.

Wait, I hear you cry. Mega Man? Are you actually from Mars? In what universe does the little blue bomber originally known as Rockman count as obscure? He’s had roughly twenty million games and counting. A TV series. A bad throat condition in Captain N, even! Mega Man 2 still stands as one of the most successful gaming passion projects of all time, with its developers following up on the world’s ‘meh’ response to the first game by working their asses off in their spare time and creating a platforming legend, even including Quick Man’s stage, which can suck it through a sewer pipe.

And yes, that’s true on the NES. But we’re not looking at the NES games. No. This Mega Man (along with a sequel, Mega Man 3) was created just for the PC… and it fails in every conceivable way to live up to the series’ legendary reputation. Mega Man? Ha! More like Smegma Man…

My god, it's like I'm actually IN a dull, boring warehouse!

In the unlikely event that you’ve never heard of the Mega Man games before, here’s a quick primer. You’re Mega Man, aka Rock, a humanoid robot built by the good scientist Dr. Light to battle evil and probably do the dishes between adventures. Your rival is Dr. Wily, who apparently looked at his future and decided that anyone with a name like that would be hard pressed to run a kitten sanctuary. Instead, he opted to grow an awesome moustache and try and take over the world with reprogrammed service robots, not to mention take ridiculous advantage of Mega Man’s unwillingness to kill humans. Early on, this made some degree of sense, as warriors like Fire Man and Cut Man and Elec Man took the field. Later, he was reduced to the likes of Dust Man and Sheep Man and it frankly got a little sad.

For comparison purposes, this is what a good Mega Man game looks like.

The series’ big gimmick is that you can play most of its levels in any order you want – the only exception being a final run on Wily’s doom fortress when his regular robots have been destroyed – and collect each boss’ weapon when you defeat them. This adds a tactical element to the game, because as well as each gun handling completely differently, each boss is weak against a different weapon type and it’s up to you to figure out the best route. At least, it was before Wikipedia existed. In Mega Man 2 for instance, the Metal Blade was easily the best general weapon, due to being able to shoot in any direction instead of just straight ahead like Mega Man’s regular weapon. To get it though, you probably wanted to do Quick Man’s hellish world of lasers first and recover his boomerang… which in turn would be easier if you’d already swung by Flash Man to collect his time stopping power. And so on and so forth.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, if you like. Though that’s not where the name comes from.

The kicker? That's not just a mean trap. It's a checkpoint.

The NES games had amazing graphics (for the time – the first Mega Man came out in 1987, Mega Man 2 in 1988 and the PC version in 1990), awesomely memorable music that most old-school gamers can hum on command, an awesome selection of themed levels, iconic bosses, terrific weapons and the kind of challenge you could sink your teeth into without getting too frustrated, except for Quick Man’s bit.

Honestly, the PC version only has one real problem: not having any of that stuff at all.

Let’s start with the bosses. The first Mega Man had six bosses (not including Dr. Wily’s guardians in the fortress assault) – Cut Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, Bomb Man and Guts Man. He had GUTS! The sequel upped this to eight – Metal Man, Air Man, Crash Man, Bubble Man, Quick Man, Heat Man (no relation to Fire Man), Wood Man (the jokes have been done, yes) and Flash Man (those too).

Mega Man on PC has… three bosses.

Three. Trois. San. Drei. III. The square root of sweet bugger all.

'I kinda hoped more people would show up to my party,' thought Mega Man, depressed.

The DOS version also featured absolutely no music, phenomenally sloppy, uninspiring art, and the kind of control system that makes you suspect someone made a bet with the programmer. Let me explain.

Behold the NES controller. It has two action buttons. A jumps. B shoots. Start opens the menu. Select pauses. Simple, yes? Unfortunately, the makers of the PC version looked at the hundred or so buttons available to them on the average keyboard, and figured it would be a shame to waste them.

Please, move your keyboard towards you, and actually put your fingers in a good position to press these keys. For directions, you use the arrows. Fine, no problem. Makes sense. To shoot? Space bar. Now, guess what Jump is. Ctrl? Alt? Hah. No. Jump is the J key. Move your hand and feel how comfortable that is. Next, to change weapons, you need to open your menu. That’s Escape. To actually choose anything from that menu though, you have to press its shortcut – which depending on the weapon or item you want to use can be P, D, S, V or E. And you have to press one of them, because Escape doesn’t do a damn thing when it’s open. You may now proceed to smash your face into your keyboard.

Things actually get worse from here.

Ah, Volt Man. Wired for crap.

Despite only having three main levels – and three incredibly short ones at that – Mega Man leaves every stone unturned in its quest to be interesting. Sonic Man’s stage is the Frustrating Underwater One, Elec Man lives in a mostly black cave with a few wires above it, and Dyna Man… Dyna Man lives in a bloody warehouse. A warehouse with some fire pits in the basement, and probably a “0 Days Since Our Last Accident” sign in the breakroom, but a warehouse none-the-less. Before fighting him, I half assumed he’d be armed with some kind of deadly tape gun, and there’d be an apologetic note from Dr. Wily on the doorstep saying “Just go with it, I’ve got much better stuff in the castle, I promise.” Instead, he turns out to be armed with bouncy dynamite that manages to be one of the least satisfying weapons in the entire Mega Man canon. And lest we forget, this is a series whose most beloved instalment enthusiastically gives you the ability to shoot lead bubbles from your hand and called it a weapon.

Dreadful as the maps and graphics are though, at least Duke Nukem apparently liked them.

Before you can fight any of them though, you have to face – by far – the nastiest enemy in the game. The main menu is behind a door, guarded by a jumping robot dog. He requires almost pixel-perfect precision to jump away from, is next to impossible to shoot (and respawns if you actually do) and is quite happy to destroy you several times over before the game even starts.

This turns out to be a ‘friendly’ warning from the designer…

I JUST WANT TO GET TO THE MENUUUUUUUUUUU!

Each main stage takes a couple of minutes to get through. In fairness, the NES levels weren’t huge either, but there were more of them, and Mega Man 2 especially did a good job of mixing things up with secret bits, mini-bosses and various challenges as you ploughed your way to Whatever Man at the end. Just as importantly, you’d likely be replaying them many times over as you did the bosses in different orders, so keeping them small and to the point actually worked in its favour.

This epic battle could... be going better...

Mega Man on PC doesn’t have this luxury, so it tries to slow you down by being a spectacular dick. And that’s the generous way of looking at it – the other involves words like ‘cack-handed’ and ‘total arse’. It goes out of its way to screw you over, in ways that include – but are no way limited to…

- Checkpoints on conveyor belts leading to death pits
- Tiny projectiles you can barely see
- Enemies too low for you to shoot with your primary weapon
- Respawning enemies
- A lack of health and other useful power-ups
- Tiny disappearing platforms over death pits
- Death pits with exits you have to move into while falling from the screen above
- Inconsistent character animation timing
- Unforgiving collision detection
- Fighting environmental features like magnets and enemies, simultaneously
- Knockbacks when hit
- The constant urge to slit your wrists and scream “I’m free! I’m free!”

Platform games can be difficult, but there’s a difference between dying because you’re not good enough, and because the game itself just stinks. The recent Mega Man 9 on Xbox 360 delighted in being nasty and mean-spirited, but it got away with it because it played reasonably fair. The first time you jump over a pit and get ambushed by an enemy flying upwards, you die. After that, you start taking precautions. Here, there’s no way around having to take enemies you physically can’t shoot or avoid – all you can do is take as little damage as possible and hope to recover the health in the next corridor.

Mega Man 3 of course took the opportunity to fix all of these problems, and by fix, I of course mean ‘not fix’. It had more levels, each headed up by a slightly redrawn sprite from the NES games, and were much more complex in layout, but the background music was still a delightful chiptune called The Sweet Sound Of Silence and the frustrations were firmly there. At least Mega Man 2 was spared the horror.

Basically, if you’ve complained about a recent console port because of shonky controls or a lack of graphical options and so on, take at least some solace in the fact that it could have been worse!

But wait! There was another game. What of the PC’s other attempt at Mega Man – Mega Man X?

Well… that one was a little bit better…

I’m kidding, of course – even if this video does use a far, far more awesome version of the level theme than the actual game. This was a much more respectable port of a superb Mega Man, even if platforming and the PC were never really kissing buddies. True, it did suffer from bosses with names like “Chill Penguin” and “Armored Armadillo” and the awesome “Boomer Kuwanger” (his special weapon, sadly, not a throwable boomer-wang), but just look at it. It’s not a game that sits in my heart along Mega Man 2 except for Quick Man’s stage, but it’s one that at least deserves to wear its name.

The original DOS game though? Best forgotten. The only nice things I can possibly say about it without my nose suddenly stretching out by seven miles is that the cover art was better than its inspiration’s and that you might possibly be able to burn the disk for fuel when the worldwide apocalypse plunges us all into an inevitable Mad Max style wasteland. If you don’t mind dying of plastic smoke inhalation.

Hmm. This is probably why nobody ever asks if they can quote me on game boxes…

Bah, who cares. At least I can defeat Air Man…

This week, PCG Little League team captain Evan’s letting the fans do the talking, with Chris, Tyler, Gavin and Lucas also on the roster for listener question overtime. Besides a rundown of the latest releases that are worth your attention, we do our best to answer the queries phoned in by our beloved listeners. Also: learn of the imminent super-villain origin story which Evan set in motion one fateful year ago.

PC Gamer US Podcast 305: Community Extravaganza

Have a question, comment, complaint or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext 724 or email the mp3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

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Follow us on Twitter:
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@Cantista (Chris)
@tyler_wilde (Tyler)
@GavinFYG (Gavin)
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Dredmor and its expansion can be had for $7.49 on Steam, if you’d allow us to recommend it as a worthy way to spend your (long, if you’re American) weekend.

Click here for a full version of the wallpaper.

Now it’s time to wrap up other PC gaming goings on. It’s a bit of a bumper edition today because we missed the last couple. Read on for the latest list of links, including a guide to cracking car sims, Bobby Kotick’s new job, an odd new direction for Second Life creators, Linden Labs, and the latest video of the intriguing Andoran Oblivion mod, which is gradually being imported into Skyrim’s engine.

• Mark Morris on Gamasutra looks at the differing player reactions to the hacks at Sony and Valve.
• Today’s Dead End Thrills shot features the free open road of Project CARS.
• Speaking of driving things, Gaming Daily’s Craig Lager continues his guide to cracking racing sims over on RPS.
• Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick joins the board of directors at Coca Cola.
• Here’s Eurogamer on how Remedy convinced Microsoft to let them make Alan Wake.
• City Impostors players have been struggling with a recurring reset glitch.
• Tactical Intervention, from the co-creator of Counter-Strike, is due to arrive in Spring.
• Battlefield Heroes is getting mad scientists.
• promising Andoran Oblivion mod is being ported into Skyrim with the Creation Kit.
• Dawn of War 2: Retribution gets a balancing patch.
• High Moon tell Kotaku why there isn’t a PC version of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.
• A Game Informer interview with Gearbox reveals that they had the Heat license for a bit, and are exploring the idea of doing more licensed games.
• The creators of Second Life, Linden Lab, acquire LittleTextPeople, a studio that specialises in “next-generation interactive fiction.”
• Over on GamesRadar, David Houghton writes about why it’s probably a good idea just to dump the next console generation and game on PC instead. “Consoles are increasingly a place in which only the big budget, safe bet titles are nurtured. Where once consoles made games more accessible, now they’re the equivalent of an expensive, exclusive, slightly wanky night club. Only the rich, fashionable friends of the management stand a chance of getting in” he writes.

 
And lo, in a storm of HTML I vanish for the weekend. I shall be attacking the Tribes Ascend beta and shuffling my way towards 50 in Star Wars: The Old Republic until I return on Monday. How about you?

The THQ store is currently offering a free copy of Metro 2033 with every Darksiders 2 pre-order as well. The angelic armour set and a few of the characters you’ll get to meet in the Gamestop side mission pack are shown in the five new screenshots below.

Trion send word that they successfully set a new record with 21,879 marriages in 24 hours. We were one of them. It was a straightforward ceremony. Vows were exchanged, rude jokes were made about Chris’s height, everyone downed ten goblets and gained the “drunk” buff at the reception, then we ran naked into a leafy life rift and enjoyed the irony of watching our hippies get hugged to death by a living tree.

In fairness, there was a benefit to getting married in Rift on Tuesday. “All participating players received the unique in-game title “The Avowed,” and hopefully snapped some wedding images to share with their children” say Trion. We did snap some pics of the ceremony, which took place in Rift’s special wedding instance. Here they are.

If you find a copy when it lands, it’s yours. Unless it lands in a volcano. In that case it’ll belong to Ifrit, Lord of Fire, who is not going to give it back without a fight. Each copy has been fitted with a GPS tracker and the Mass Effect site will be updated with their progress as they gently fall back to Earth, or become dislodged and fly off into some distant corner of the universe. The lucky few who do manage to retrieve a disk will get to play the game about a week before release.

If you think the chances of a copy of Mass Effect 3 falling out of the sky onto your lawn are too slim to plan around, there’s always the Mass Effect 3 demo, which will let you try out the first couple of missions and the co-op survival multiplayer mode.

It’s going to be massive. Literally massive. “We use as much space as we possibly can in order to accommodate over a hundred people from each server fighting on every map,” explains Mike Ferguson in the latest Guild Wars 2 developer diary entry. “These are the largest maps we can make in Guild Wars 2.”

Taking the castles of The Mists will earn your army supply that can be used upgrade your defences, or you can spend it on war machines that can be used to attack enemy walls. Smaller groups can take minor townships and camp sites to earn more resources, and you can even persuade groups of NPC to join your cause by completing impromptu quests for them in the field.

Ferguson gives an example of how this will work. “You might help a group of ogres protect their camp against constant harpy assaults. In return, your new ogre allies will go rampaging toward the nearest enemy objective or send out patrols to help you hold on to your territory. These factions won’t fight for you indefinitely, but they can help turn the tide of battle.”

You can jump into The Mists at any level. Your character will be boosted to level 80, but when you kill other players they’ll drop loot appropriate to your PvE build. “Any gear that is dropped for you will be level appropriate,” says Ferguson. “The player that was killed doesn’t lose any of their own equipment—that would suck—so you’ll never need to worry about losing your favorite rare weapon if you are defeated.” You’ll also earn experience that’ll help you level outside of PvP.

The really neat part is that we’ll be able to take specific forts in The Mists for our guilds. Each guild can only hold one keep at a time, but the keep can be upgraded to give bonuses to team members within a certain area. So, the PC Gamer guild could take a castle, rename it PC Gamer towers and choose a buff to apply to nearby server members, helping out the team. “These bonuses can increase stats, give allies more health, or even increase the maximum amount of supply that players can take from the supply depot at that location,” says Ferguson. “If you want to help your realm build siege weapons faster, that supply increase will be a must.”

It sounds exciting, but extremely ambitious. Ferguson says that ArenaNet “didn’t want to build anything less than the best large-scale PvP combat ever.” Have they succeeded? We’ll have to wait and see. Guild Wars 2 should be out later this year.

Look up there! Mojang are making games! For the duration of the weekend they’ll be throwing together new ideas and making a game from thin air, like wizards. You’ll be able to pay what you want for the end result in the new Mojam Humble Bundle.

Nobody quite knows how the game will come together over the course of the next 60 hours, but the team have run a poll on the Mojang site to try and decide their direction. They’re planning to use the most popular and least popular choices from each list, which means they’re currently set to make an “ancient Egyptian steampunk real-time strategy racing game.” You’ll be able to watch their progress live on the video stream above.

In most Humble Bundles, revenue is divided between the developers and a selection of good causes, for the Mojam Humble Bundle, ALL donations will go to one of four charities, including Child’s Play, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Charity: Water and The American Red Cross. You can use the sliders on the Humble Bundle home page to divvy up your donation between them. Here’s a handy video explaining the whole thing.

The doors will slam shut again at 1pm PST / 9pm GMT on Sunday, but if you really loved your time shooting men in the head, you can pay slightly less than you normally would to shoot more men in the head in the full game. It’s 33% off until 10am PST / 6pm GMT on Monday. If you already own the game, now’s the time to jump back in and politely school these fresh recruits. Be gentle. It’s their first time.

Baldness and Brancos! That’s your takeaway from today’s new Max Payne 3 gameplay trailer. In it you’ll find multiple Maxes, another glimpse at the setting, which spans New York and Sao Paulo, and plot details concerning Payne’s employer and the kidnapping of his trophy wife.

We recently got a hands-on demo of the game, so we should have more details for you as we get closer to its May 29th (US), June 1st (Europe) release date.

Still got it! (The moves, not the hair)

Tom wrote about the dubious nature of one of Air Buccaneer’s pre-order bonuses yesterday. The one that lets you destroy the entire world… once.

The remake of the Unreal Tournament 2004 mod could still end up great though, despite the silliness. Ludocraft are still looking for donations via indiegogo but, for now, you can download slice of Air Buccaneers HD for free from the official site. And why wouldn’t you do that? Going on the recent trailer it’s got snow, smoke, airships, cannons and massive draw distances. That’s a bona-fide recipe for success.

Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 7 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first.

A few shots in this batch could be from a prettier version of the original, which is actually rather exciting. A few others look like they were painstakingly posed with dev tools to tick seven different marketing boxes, then carefully post-processed to blend the explosions and muzzle flashes just so. We’ll never know, of course, but it’d be cool to see more that look like someone actually playing the game (above) and less like box art.

But even though alternate distribution platforms can be profitable, Chris admits that landing Prison Architect on Valve’s platform was the ultimate aim: “I think Steam is obviously the market leader. I definitely think that. And I would feel very frustrated if I had a game and Valve turned it down. Getting on Steam is like a number one objective for us, so we have to make sure the game is good enough.

Introversion’s managing director, Mark Morris, is just as modest about their future titles: “It’s a really good litmus test, If Valve aren’t launching your game, you really have to ask yourself why.”

“If we gave Steam a steaming pile of turd I don’t think they’d put it on Steam just for old times’ sake.” continued Chris. The other extreme is Xbox Live Arcade which does have extremely rigid requirements for release. They won’t release anything until it’s totally finished, 100% bug free, matches their menu, and user interface guidelines. They’ve made it very hard to actually make games on there and make money, because it just takes so damn long to meet all their requirements.”

The creative director praised Valve’s open-door policy: “Valve are kind of like in this middle zone, which seems to work really well. They will release games that are buggy, unreliable and a little bit crashworthy, but they don’t consider that to be a major drawback because it’s a PC game: ‘We could wait another year until it’s totally polished, or we could release it.’ They’re kind of willing to go with that, but they’re also willing to host really cutting edge indie stuff right next to big commercial stuff like Skyrim. And sometimes the indie stuff will get a bigger bang. They don’t think Skyrim is more worthy of than VVVVVV.”

Introversion recently annouced that Prison Architect will be entering paid alpha later on in the year. Until then, why not read Graham’s Prison Architect preview?

Tim’s probably feeling pretty good right now. Double fine set a goal of $400,000 to help fund an upcoming point and click adventure via Kickstarter, but $1,862,568 has already been pledged.

What are Double Fine doing with the excess? Tim says that their upcoming “old school point and click graphic adventure” will now end up “a lot better.” It’s now confirmed for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and a couple of Android devices. The English version will even get voiced characters.

Backers of the project will be able to use Steam to access the closed beta when it hits. He also mentions that a DRM-free version will become available for those of you who like things a bit more “loosey goosey.”

Do you like things a bit more “loosey goosey”? I know I do.

1) It demonstrates how grey the area of ownership of copyright and materials can be when it comes to mods and total conversions.
2) the documentation we’ve got access to gives a good detail on how Blizzard view themselves and their ownership of community content
3) It may have an interesting knock-on effect on the validity of EULAs.
4) The result of the dispute may have a knock on effect on the DOTA mod itself
5) it’s like watching your mom and dad go through the early stages of a trial separation.

In order to make sense of what’s going on I’ve been digging through Blizzard’s filed trademark objection, and what it might mean for DOTA and community content in the long run. To make it clear: the case is just about the trademark for the name DOTA.

The first point to make: at no point do Blizzard explicitly state that they wish to own the DOTA trademark. In objecting they’re not at present, trying to trademark DOTA for themselves. However, they believe that the terms DotA, Dota: DOTA and Defense of the Ancients are all part of their Warcraft 3 business. Much of their objection hinges on one word: Ancients.

Valve's DOTA 2 in action. It's really good.

So: to the legal stuff!

The first paragraph gets right to the point, doing a good job of summing up Blizzard’s objections. Blizzard say DOTA is a varient of Warcraft 3, and has been exclusively associated with Blizzard games, built on the mechanics of Warcraft 3, using Warcraft 3 art, and starring Warcraft 3 characters. Open and shut case, right?

Paragraph 1: “By this Opposition, Blizzard seeks to prevent registration by its competitor Valve Corporation (“Valve”) of a trademark, DOTA, that for more than seven years has been used exclusively by Blizzard and its fan community, under license from Blizzard. By virtue of that use, the DOTA mark has become firmly associated in the mind of consumers with Blizzard, including to signify a highly popular scenario or variant of one of Blizzard’s best-selling computer games, Warcraft III. Over the past seven years, the mark DOTA has been used exclusively in connection with Blizzard and its products, namely Warcraft III. Most notably, DOTA has been used as the popular name of a Warcraft III software “mod” file that has been distributed, marketed, and promoted by Blizzard and its fans (under license from Blizzard); that utilizes and is built upon the 1 Warcraft III game engine, interface, and gameplay mechanics; that is comprised of Warcraft III characters, items, spells, artwork, textures, and color palates; that can be played only using Warcraft III software and via Blizzard’s online service Battle.net ; and whose name (DOTA, an acronym for “Defense of the Ancients”) is a reference to Warcraft III characters known as the Ancients.”

But wait! There’s more. Paragraph 2 says Valve have had nothing to do with DOTA, and if they were to be granted it, consumers would believe that Valve’s products (i.e. DOTA 2) are associated with Blizzard.

In contrast to Blizzard, Applicant Valve Corporation (“Valve”) has never used the mark DOTA in connection with any product or service that currently is available to the public. By attempting to register the mark DOTA, Valve seeks to appropriate the more than seven years of goodwill that Blizzard has developed in the mark DOTA and in its Warcraft III computer game and take for itself a name that has come to signify the product of years of time and energy expended by Blizzard and by fans of Warcraft III. Valve has no right to the registration it seeks. If such registration is issued, it not only will damage Blizzard, but also the legions of Blizzard fans that have worked for years with Blizzard and its products, including by causing consumers to falsely believe that Valve’s products are affiliated, sponsored or endorsed by Blizzard and are related or connected to Warcraft III.

Hank Bot: always defending mid. TAKE A CHANCE HANK BOT, GO TOP!

Hmm. This is where it gets tricky, and where I think Valve will be able to push back. Valve certainly haven’t used the mark DOTA formally in a commercial game, yet. But, in Icefrog leading development of DOTA 2, they have a developer who helped create and improve DOTA on their books. Valve Corp may not have created DOTA, but, they employ someone who did.

The next question is does Icefrog own DOTA? According to Blizzard and their EULA; probably not. The key section is paragraph 8 and 9 and 10, where Blizzard explain the terms of their EULA and how it relates to mods and maps created using the bundled World Editor.

Paragraph 8: Use of the World Editor (and Warcraft III) is subject to the terms of an End User License Agreement (“EULA”) between Blizzard and users of Warcraft III. The
EULA sets forth the relative rights and responsibilities of the parties regarding their use of Warcraft III and the World Editor. The EULA is displayed to users during the installation of Warcraft III and the World Editor. All users of Warcraft III and the World Editor must consent to the EULA by clicking on a button labeled “Accept.” If the user declines to assent, he or she may click a button labeled “Decline,” at which point the installation will terminate, denying access to the user. If a user declines to accept the EULA, he or she may request and obtain a full refund from Blizzard of the purchase price.

We should totally test that refund policy at some point.

Paragraph 9: Pursuant to the EULA, Blizzard grants to the user, subject to the terms of the EULA, a limited, non-exclusive license to install Warcraft III and the World Editor on his or her computer, use the game for noncommercial entertainment purposes, and distribute Warcraft III mods to other users via the Battle.net game service. Warcraft III’s EULA clearly specifies that all underlying intellectual property rights in and to Warcraft III are owned by Blizzard: “All title, ownership rights, and intellectual property rights in and to the Program and any and all copies thereof (including, but not limited to, any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audiovisual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, and `applets’ incorporated into the Program) are owned by Blizzard or its licensors.”

So: you’re fine to do with the Warcraft III engine what you want as long as you a) distribute your mod over Battle.net, and you make no claim of ownership of the titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue…

Dota: just like chess. But with more jungling.

Pro-tip for mod-makers: if you have dreams of potential commercial success, never ever use anything from the fiction of the game as the name of your mod.

Paragraph 10: The EULA prohibits the use of Warcraft III or the World Editor for any commercial purpose without Blizzard’s prior written consent. In addition, the EULA restricts any distribution of “New Materials [defined as modifications of Warcraft III created using the World Editor] on a stand-alone basis… through any and all distribution channels, including, but not limited to, retail sales and on-line electronic distribution without the express written consent of Blizzard.”

Pro-tip #2: you’re probably best not making a mod after all.

The next section explains how mods are made, and how DOTA is distributed: i.e. it is a map for Warcraft 3 and you play it on Battle.net, and it is constructed entirely from Warcraft 3 art and code. And that if you’re making a mod with the Warcraft 3 engine, you’re making a mod under the terms of the EULA.

I think that if Blizzard had stopped at this point, I’d have said job done, move away Valve. But they start making odd claims that I don’t think stack up. For instance: they try and claim that by promoting DOTA in-game and at their events, they therefore own the trademark. And that because Blizzard have already licensed DOTA to other companies, they have ownership of the DOTA trademark.

Blizzard DOTA has a worryingly fun looking goblin shop.

Paragraph 16: Since at least 2003, Blizzard has used the DOTA Marks extensively and consistently in interstate commerce. Blizzard has distributed in commerce products bearing the DOTA Marks, including the DotA Mods. For example, Blizzard has offered for download the DotA Mods directly via the Battle.net network and/or the Blizzard.com and/or Warcraft.com websites. Blizzard also has regularly and consistently advertised and promoted the DotA Mods via the Battle.net network and/or the Blizzard.com and/or Warcraft.com websites. Blizzard also has regularly and consistently advertised and promoted the DotA Mods at its annual convention, Blizzcon, at gaming events and conventions, and in the gaming and mainstream media.

I think the key word here is consistently: if this goes to arbitration I’d expect Valve to make Blizzard show how and where they’ve advertised DOTA on their official sites, and in-game. In five minutes messing about with archive.org, for instance, the warcraft.com domain mostly re-directed to the worldofwarcraft.com trial, or blizzard.com. However, it is true that Blizzard have hosted DOTA tournaments at Blizzcon – and have licensed DOTA to e-sports broadcasters as early as 2005. And promoting and/or hosting something doesn’t necessarily mean ownership, even if the status of DOTA as a mod of Warcraft means there’s a grey area.

The next section of the document relates to how Blizzard are already licensing the DOTA trademark to external organisations. And it starts to get really, really interesting.

Paragraph 17: Blizzard has licensed various third parties and third party websites, including but not limited to the websites www.dota-allstars.com, www.playdota.com, and www.getdota.com , to distribute and promote the DotA Mods, and to use the DOTA Marks in connection with such distribution and promotion, subject to and consistent with the terms of the Warcraft III EULA. To the extent that the owners of any of these websites have used the DOTA Marks in commerce, they have done so pursuant to license with the Blizzard and for the benefit of Blizzard.

i.e.: all those DOTA sites? They’re under license from Blizzard, too. I do wonder if that’s an implied license, or something you’d have to apply for via legal@blizzard.com.

We interrupt these proceedings for a brief musical interlude. Dear Mr Judge man. Have you ever heard of popular modern beat combo Basshunter? He’s a Blizzard licensee. Apparently.

There’ll be a new focus on religious mechanics, along with nine new civilisations and a heap of fresh units. You’ll also get to sample one of nine new leaders, including Prince of Orange and Boudicca.

Gods and Kings will also bring spies to the world of Civ. They’ll break in to your opponents cities and have a rummage around for exclusive info. Get a super sneaky one involved and they might even steal you some advanced technology and help to rig elections in your favour. Dirty buggers. We’ll also get to interact with two new city-state types: Mercantile and Religious. As Dennis mentioned: “Earning a diplomatic victory is now more about being a good Global Partner to all the states, and less about amassing a lot of gold and spending it on them.”

The expansion is due in Spring this year. We’re not sure of the price, yet. Click through for an image of the updated interface.

LEGO Minecraft’s “Micro Worlds” are available for pre-order at Jinx.com right now. The beans have been well and truly spilled at a conference in Denmark this morning. You’ll actually get your hands on the sets in the Summer. Until then, reserve your blocks by laying down $34.99/€34.99/£29.99 on the official site. Mojang are donating 1% of the proceeds to charity.

“I played a lot with Lego bricks as a child, and that’s influenced how I made games. I prefer games with levels that are modifiable. I don’t like static levels.” said Notch, speaking at the conference today.

Each “Micro World” is cube-shaped. “Because Minecraft is cubes,” says LEGO’s Tom Courtney. Each block is represented by a 1×1 LEGO plate with a tile on top. They’re not completely square, like in the game, but each “modular vingnette” comes with its own selection of hidden resources, which is canon. Whether you’ll be able to melt down four brown blocks to construct a workbench block is yet to be confirmed. Actually, I’ll confirm it now: you can’t.

“There are problems of scaling,” admitted Notch. “Minecraft has huge long tunnels, and you can’t really fit that in to a living room. But I think the Lego guys have creating something that’s really great, that really feels like Minecraft.” According to the press release, when Notch saw the models for the first time, he exclaimed “Woohoo!” We can believe that.

Miniature Steve and Creeper models also feature in the set, although they’ve been rebranded as “Micro Mobs.” The sets originally came about thanks to LEGO CUUSOO, where fans can submit, and vote for, inspired LEGO sets.

Are you already pre-ordering?

Click through for some of the more amusing notifications, courtesy of reddit. Warning, one of them is a bit rude.

Let us know any proposals I’ve missed in the comments and I’ll update the post accordingly.

Even though Notch mentions he and Tim “haven’t spoken much,” he confirms the high profile pair are planning on meeting at GDC, which happens in a few weeks. He also mentions that the 13 million quoted by Tim was “three times higher” than his original estimate, but that he’s still up for fronting the cash. The Minecraft dev says he would be operating purely as an investor, saying “I wouldn’t want to have any creative input.”

“I have NO idea if this is actually going to happen, he clarifies. “The kickstarter stuff obviously changes the playing field a lot. Investing that incredibly high amount of money also requires a lot of planing and discussion, and I’ve never done anything like that before, but I do have contacts and advisors to help me out.

“All I know is that IF the numbers work out and IF they still want to do it and IF they don’t decide to self fund a sequel by doing more crowd funding (which is honestly what I would’ve done if I were them), I would be most interested in doing this type of investment,” he continued.

Then Notch got a little angrier: “Point is, stop hyping over this, internet! You’re going to scare me into doing things secretly instead of being open and transparent via twitter. I am incredibly scared of the very real risk of people feeling let down just because I took a chance at something that doesn’t end up panning out.”

He signed off by hinting at a future where his quotes feature less prominently in news feeds: “I realize you won’t stop hyping, so I’ll just go into hiding for a few years if it falls through.”

It’s not a definite confirmation then, but close enough. Until then, don’t believe the hype (unless posted by Notch or Tim). Then you can hype all you like. We’ll have more on Psychonauts 2 as soon as it’s confirmed.

More info on the games enhanced released can be found on Steam or you can check out the game’s website.

360 Screen

PC Screen

360 Screen

PC Screen

360 Screen

PC Screen

We also get a crack at XCOM: Enemy Unknown, 2K’s second (and more faithful, we think) reboot of the turn-based classic. In our reviews section, we verdictize high-fidelity flight sim X-Plane 10, X3: Albion Prelude, Dustforce, Flatout 3, Dear Esther, Earth Defense Force, Q.U.B.E., and more. This month’s Reinstall revisits Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, one of the highest-budget games of its time in 1994 and a beloved FMV classic to boot. In Massive Attack, MMO reporter Josh Augustine preps you for the endgame of Star Wars: The Old Republic, with full-page maps and a detailed walkthrough of the first level 50 Flashpoint. Hard Stuff reviews the successor to Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPU, the Core i7-3960X.

Click within for a full look at our cover’s jetpacking gentleman.

Click for a full version of this jetpacking, gun-firing man.

April 2012 is headed to subscribers now, and will be on newsstands by February 28.

We put Vaas on our cover this month to spread the madness and let the world know about our six page Far Cry 3 preview. The third game in the series will revisit the beautiful tropical setting of the first game and this time not everyone on the island will be a respawning homicidal maniac. Subscribers have had the issue for about a week already, but it should be hitting shop shelves as you’re reading this. This month all of our readers get a key that will grant access to the excellent Tribes: Ascend beta, and six pounds worth of World of Tanks cash.

There’s plenty more inside, of course. Our huge tips feature is packed full of moderately worthwhile advice that will threaten to catapult your gaming skills into the realm of slightly above average. Graham’s been seeing aliens, too. Partly because he’s been out to see XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but mostly because he spent too long staring at Vaas when designing the cover. Read on to discover what else lies in wait in issue 237.

We’ve overclocked our trio of captive precogs with extra lightning this month and pointed them at the future to gain leads on the games of tomorrow. Our finest wordsmiths have spent weeks interpreting their visions and returned with previews of Hitman: Absolution, Ridge Racer Unbounded, Gettysburg Armoured Warfare, War of the Roses, Microsoft Flight and Max Payne 3.

In reviews this month, we deliver verdicts on The Darkness 2, Dear Esther, Earth Defence Force, Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction, X-Plane 10, Race Injection, Home Sheep Home 2, Real Warfare 2: Northern Crusades, QUBE, Total War: Shogun 2 DLC, Unity of Command, Steel Armour: Blaze of War, Swift*Stitch, X3: Albion Prelude, Winter Sports 2012, Satazius, Fate of the World: Tipping Point, Pirates of the Black Cove: Origins, Duke Nukem Forever: The Doctor Who Clones Me, Space Marine: Chaos Unleashed DLC and Postal 3.

With the future and the present dealt with, we called in Jon Blyth to take his critical axe to the latest re-releases in They’re Back. Prototype, Gothic 3, Time Commando, Demigod and Desperados 2: Cooper’s Revenge. Meanwhile, in this month’s Extra Life, raids are wiped in The Old Republic, gonads are thoroughly kicked in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Tom Francis tries to make it through Skyrim using nothing but the power of illusion and Chris Donlan grudgingly masters arcade shooter Jamestown.

There’s tons more. Chris Thursten mourns the loss of Star Wars: Galaxies and reflects on the three years he spent building a character, only to see him squashed to death in the end by a giant Ewok. We’ve taken a look at military simulators in this month’s special report and Adam’s rounded up the best PC cases out there in this month’s hardware review.

Issue 237 will be hitting shops now. You can also buy it online, download a copy through Zinio or read it on your iDevices with our Apple Newsstand edition. If you fancy getting the latest issue earlier, cheaper and wrapped in a special cover, you can subscribe.

Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 6 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first.

“To be honest, we are a little surprised by how many people bought Dear Esther so quickly,” say the Indie Fund. “We were expecting the game to have a niche appeal. In fact the situation is quite different.” Dear Esther has so far sold more than 16,000 copies in its first day.

The Fund were slightly reluctant to fund the game in the beginning because they were worried it go down well with Steam’s mainstream audience. “We appear to have been very wrong about all this,” they say. “We are happy to have been wrong.”

For our verdict on Dear Esther, check out our Dear Esther review.

The latest CG trailer for Far Cry 3 sets up the premise quite nicely. The psychotic one in the red vest is Vaas, the star of the E3 trailer. It looks as though he’ll be hunting you through the jungle as you try to find a boat, any boat, to take you away from the wilderness gone mad. You had a choice of characters to play as in Far Cry 2, but none of them were innocent holidaymakers caught up in a gang war. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any transition between ‘man on holiday’ and ‘man who can single-handedly take out a base with a toothpick.’

Tripwire Interactive have just announced that Killing Floor has sold a million copies. They’ve even managed to sell two million pieces of DLC. To celebrate, they’re knocking 85 per cent discount as part of Steam’s Midweek Madness sale. The discount applies to the vanilla version and the bundle that comes with a pile of skins for your characters.

Are you still playing Killing Floor? Everyone has nightmares about the Patriarch, right?

Do a bit of research and things get more interesting. There are already World of Warcraft and Starcraft board games available. They’re appropriately themed to mesh with the game lore and, according to the informed hivemind that is Boardgamegeek, genuine fun to play.

Imagine Team Fortress 2 – The Board Game. It would play out on a top-down map of 2Fort with miniatures to represent each of the classes, and it would be the best game ever. You could create a personalised deck of items to take into battle, and Valve could make loads of money by selling booster packs and officially sanctioned paints, just like in the PC build.

That’s my idea, but what do you think would be the ideal video game/board game crossover? Think about both mechanics and plasticy bits then post your ideas below. The most inspired wins a copy of EVE: Conquests – a board game based on CCP’s eternal space opera. Your contributions will be judged by Friday and I’ll send the prize anywhere in the world. Good luck!

Still, behind all that fuzz, there are some mean new enemies in the latest round of Resi 6 screenies, including the tentacled-armed J’avo. These ugly beasts are a lot smarter than zombies. They have a basic grasp of language and teamwork, and can regenerate mangled limbs into even more dangerous forms. The first five screenshots offer a flip book portrayal of what will happen to you if one of those arms gets hold of you. Take a look.

I remember being really annoyed that Just Cause 2 gave pre-orderers a hovercraft. AirBuccaneers HD, a multiplayer hot air balloon combat game, gives them the ability to destroy the world. Pre-order it now for $15 or more, and you’ll get the one-time use spell you see in the clip above: it kills everyone on the server, ends the game, and destroys the universe.

This, it could be argued, is a bit much.

AirBuccaneers started out as one of the most sublime Unreal Tournament 2004 mods. It was team-based deathmatch in steampunk hot-air balloons, and you needed a team just to keep one afloat. Steering, lift, weapon loading, aiming and special abilities all had to be co-ordinated.

Air Buccaneers HD is the same idea, but remade as a standalone game in Unity3D – a popular engine for indie games. It’s in pre-alpha at the moment, and they’re currently seeking $100,000 in funding from pre-orderers.

Funding the project gets you access to the current version right away, but you won’t get the ability to end the world until the game reaches beta, or possibly release. You only get to use it once, but even so, giving them to everyone at the same time seems like a recipe for disaster. Join a server – damn, someone destroyed the universe. Map loads – damn, someone destroyed the universe. Map loads – ooh, no-one’s destroyed the universe… Destroy the universe!

If it does cause problems, it’s hard to see what LudoCraft can do about it – they’ve stressed it repeatedly as a selling point. If they plan to limit it to a certain map or let servers disable it, that ought to be made clear when charging money for it. And while it makes a great headline, if the game is good, do you even want a button that simply stops you all from playing it for a while? With a slow-paced game in which a good team invests a lot of time and effort – and a bad team can quickly get frustrated – I can’t imagine world-ending ragequits being much fun.

Their crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo – a site both visually and functionally like Kickstarter – offers a range of rewards for different donation amounts. The amounts themselves are rather odd, though – the minimum is $15, but the next tier up is $70. Update! There’s now a $30 option that gets you the soundtrack – thanks CuddlyBunny.

They escalate in large, puzzling jumps – the next tier is $270, but the only extras are a physical copy of the soundtrack you’re already getting digitally, and your name in the credits. A pencil portrait and a hoodie takes an extra $6,030, and a copy of the source code comes to $700,000 – seven times the amount they’re hoping to raise. It’ll be interesting to see how people respond.

I’m not convinced by their approach to funding it, but I hope LudoCraft meet their target and finish the game. It looks gorgeous towards the end of the trailer above, and more games should be daring and odd. Just not daring enough to sell the apocalypse.

Vid via the vigilant RPS.

He also talked a bit about Valve’s plans for their next big Dota 2 tournament. The Dota 2 International took place at Gamescom last year, offering Dota pros a shot at a piece of the $1.6 million prize pool. Valve are going to at least match that amount in the next tournament. Johnson said that “if you look at any major sport around the world that has an audience of similar size to Dota’s you’ll find that those at the very top in terms of skill tend to make a lot of money.”

“Frankly, we think the teams represented at The International deserve this kind of money for what they do. We all know how hard it is to master Dota,” he added.

Replays of many of the competition matches are still available on the International site if you want to see the pros in action. The next International will take place in Seattle. When asked whether the Penny Arcade Expo would host the tournament, which is scheduled to run from August 31 to September 2, Johnson said “good guess, but nothing is finalized just yet.”

“Like last year, we’ll be covering all of the costs for the teams and players to make their way to the event” said Johnson. If you want to grab an invite for your team, Johnson recommends that you “play in Dota tournaments and perform well. We’ve all been watching every tournament that we find internally, looking for what teams we think should be invited.”

The space lobsters are coming for the daffodils. Earth is doomed. This teaser is a short clip of a full CG trailer set to be released on Sunday, and is the latest piece in an escalating frenzy of Mass Effect 3 marketing materials surrounding the release of the Mass Effect 3 Origin demo yesterday. It contains a couple of missions and a taste of the new multiplayer mode and got us so excited that we livestreamed it.

Executive producer Casey Hudson tweeted the day before yesterday to let us all know that Mass Effect 3 has gone gold. It’s finished. All we have to do now is play the demo over and over again while we wait all those disks to be printed off and ferried to shops ahead of release on March 6 in the US and March 9 in Europe. What do you think of the demo? Are the new close combat moves big and punchy enough for you? Does James Vega bulge too freakishly? Is Shepard still badass enough? Let us know your thoughts.

They’re GCN for less than $160/£125, potentially as low as $109/£80, give or take a few non-specific currency units either way once the cards actually appear on sale. Does the launch mean AMD now dominates the low end GPU market as well as it has the high?

Recap time: last month, AMD became masters of the graphics universe with its Radeon HD7980 and HD7950 ‘Tahiti’ cards. As a debut turn for its new GCN architecture they couldn’t have done better, at least as far as performance goes. Price wise… at upwards of £450 for a single card it’s a tough sell to anyone who’s not running multiple monitors, stereoscopic 3D or a giant 4K screen.

Ranking below these HD7900 cards, however, there’s an HD7800 ‘Pitcairn’ chip planned for the £150-£250 range and these: the HD7770 and HD7750, codenamed ‘Cape Verde’.

Internally, the new cards are very similar to the Tahiti ones. You can read our architecture overview here, but the highlights as far as the Cape Verde cards are as follows:

• 10 ‘Compute Units’ for a total of 640 processor cores in the HD7770, eight CUs/512 cores for HD7750 (compared to 32/2048 for HD7970)
• 40/32 texture units (HD7770/HD7750)
• 16 ROPS (both)
• 1GHz/800MHz core speeds (HD7770/HD7750)
• 4.5GHz equivalent memory speed (both)
• 128-bit memory bus (both)
• 28nm process (both)
• Support for DX11.1 (both)

As you can see, the HD7750 is basically an HD7770 with a couple of CUs disabled and a lower clockspeed. Both chips have high resolution (4K) display support for cinema resolution HD TVs which are due this year, and AMD’s impressive power saving technology ZeroCore. They also both support hardware acceleration of video encoding, although there’s no applications which make use of this yet.

Here’s the bit you’ve been waiting for: how do they perform? Not terribly well, by all accounts. With the caveat that GCN is still very new and we’re expecting to see much better performance as the drivers mature, early reviews suggest that if you’ve been holding out for superfast benchmarks for under £100, you’re going to be disappointed. According to most sites who’ve seen the cards so far, the HD7770 is beaten in most games by the older HD6850, which you can pick up for less than £90 in some places. Given that the HD6850 is the slowest card I’d recommend for gaming at the moment, it means that unless there’s some truly exceptional driver optimisation still in the works, HD7700 is a massive disappointment for those hoping they’d be able to save a lot of money on their next build.

Worse, it doesn’t bode well for the HD7800s either: AMD’s current strategy seems to be about matching the last generation of cards for their price/performance ratio, rather than moving things on a bit. Stick with this strategy, and I can’t help feeling that they’re leaving wide goal open for NVIDIA’s forthcoming mainstream Kepler chips – if you’ve held off upgrading this long, you might as well wait a bit longer, after all.

Here’s what the web has to say:

• Anandtech thinks the HD7700 has potential thanks to overclocking ability and low power use, optimistically mooting that ‘there’s no such thing as a bad card, only bad prices’.
• TechRadartopttt generously calls it a ‘reasonable success’.
• Hexus goes for the tautologous ‘MSRP prices bring meatier GPUs into play’. Yes, quite.
• Tom’s likes the HD7750 for a living room PC, where its ‘attributes are particularly viable’. Personally I’d still go for the cheaper Fusion plus asymmetrical CrossFire option.
• Hardware Heaven, however, bucks the trend and awards 9/10 to an overclocked version of the HD7770 from Sapphire.

As ever, I’ll save a final judgement until the review in the mag.

That’s a new trailer for Stardock’s upcoming expansion to Sins of a Solar Empire. It’ll bring jumbo-sized Titan ships and new faction choices to the outstanding 4X space strategy game. It’ll also provide a much-needed graphical update to the four year-old title.

There are three reasons why I still boot up Sins of a Solar Empire: I get a dizzy thrill every time I zoom from an extreme close-up to a map overview (I call it the Supreme Commander effect), and I enjoy playing co-op in a universe so vast that I hardly ever encounter other human players. Also, I like telling people I’ve been playing “Sins of a Solar Empire” because it makes me feel cool.

This fan made film, Inceptionauts, was used by Tim Schafer in meetings with publishers to try and sell the idea of a sequel to Psychonauts. “It’s better than any trailer we ever had for the game” Tim Schafer said to Kotaku. But it wasn’t enough to persuade any businesses to part with their money, until Notch went onto Twitter last week with a simple message. “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen.”

“I feel like I was being proposed to on the jumbotron at the baseball game.” says Schafer, but an offer on Twitter is one thing, a publishing deal is another. A sequel would need to at least match the budget of the original, which cost around $13 million to make. Schafer told Notch how much cash he might need to front production. “As soon as I mentioned the amount of money he said, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’”

It’s still not a done deal, there are private negotiations happening between Mojang and Double Fine. From a cold numbers perspective, a follow up to Psychonauts is a bit of a risk. Schafer told Kotaku that the original sold just 400,000 copies initially. “It wasn’t enough for us to make money,” Schafer admits, but since then sales on Good Old Games and Steam have gone extremely well. One of those Steam sales pushed Psychonauts ahead of Call of Duty in revenue earned that day.

Schafer also mentions that Double Fine have had a sequel in mind from the beginning. “We had a lot of plot elements that were backstory in that [first] game that we planned on revisiting in the future and tying it back in,” Schafer said. “We had a longer story arc planned for those characters.” He’s being coy about specifics, though he says that there are “ideas to take them to a more international setting.”

Double Fine have been having a few funding adventures recently. Their kickstarter campaign to support development of a new adventure game currently has $1.7 million in donations.

That sure is a lot of bucks for a virtual band, but isn’t the gift of a ring all about the gesture rather than the bling? Would you pay a hundred dollars for a TF2 item?

Mild detective work tells us that MechWarrior Tactics is probably a Facebook game. The studios credited at the bottom of the page are social game developers—Roadhouse Interactive and Acronym Games are also collaborating to create Family Guy Online. So it’s probably not a successor to the squad-based isometric wonder that was MechCommander, but who’d say no to more mech games? Look for more intel in a week.

Update: Stephanie Schopp, a PR representative for the game, has emailed to let us know that MW Tactics is “not a Facebook game.” Yee-haw!

Within: watch the saved video to get a sneak peek into your future life as Shepard, the total jerk or merciful angel.

Part 1

Part 2

Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 5 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first.

It think it’s why I find Starcraft II so draining: 40 per cent of my brain attempts to recall build orders while 50 per cent of it attempts to implement them. The remaining 10 per cent of my powers are dedicated to countering my opposition’s tactics and/or coordinating with my team. Then I panic and have a brainsplosion.

Tribes: Ascend makes me feel just as satisfied but without the brainspolosion. Over the past few weeks I’ve established my role as a Technician and dedicated time to getting good at it. Yes, sometimes I feel like an overpowered caretaker compared glory hunting Pathfinder, but they don’t get to casually chat with Tim as we lure dudes into a web of turrets, motion detectors and force fields.

Whoops! I just remembered that it’s Valentine’s Day, and that my intro isn’t the least bit romantic. Here’s some TF2 sweetness to compensate.

Click through for more PC gaming news.

• Mojang says Minecraft clones are too “boring” to sue over.
• L.A. Noire might get a sequel. Ooo.
• Do you dream of being on EVE’s Council of Stellar Management? Now’s your chance.
• Some footage of the latest expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire has landed.
• Here’s an interview with one of the new writers at Bioware.
• Expect more GTAV news in a “few months.” AND NO SOONER, OK?
• Our friends at Nintendo Gamer launched their new website today. If you’re fond of waggling a Wiimote in your spare time, check them out.

As we reported last week, Rift are celebrating the gift card industry’s happiest day of the year with an attempt to break the Guiness world record for most in-game marriages in a day. We’ll be taking part: at 7.00pm GMT tonight on the European Icewatch server, Tom Senior and I will be tying the virtual knot. This is what we are actually doing with our Valentine’s evening. We’d like you to join us. Please?

We’ll be forming a wedding raid near the fountain on the south side of the Guardians’ capital city, Sanctum. Make your way there and look for a dwarf in a tuxedo called Burt – that’s me, and if I look nervous it’s because I’m about to marry a colleague on what amounts to a dare.

None of this would be possible without the help of generous players who’ve made sure we’re in a position to throw the wedding of a lifetime an afternoon. One of those players is a gentleman named Shadowsock, and he has a message for a former guildmate.

Aww. See you at 7.00pm, readers. Bring gifts. We could use a new toaster.

Krater is attempting to fuse the fast, bloody combat of Diablo with more thoughtful squad management. The devs are listing big names like X-Com and Syndicate as inspirations, and there will be a massive crafting system to back up the exploration and monster mincing. Your squad will change as members leave or die, and as every item in the game can be crafted, you’ll have complete control over your squad’s gear and set-up.

Krater is about to go into public pre-alpha testing, in which they’re aiming to get tons of feedback on an early build. If you’d like to get involved and see how Krater’s shaping up, you can follow the latest announcements on the Krater site and follow developers, Fatshark, on Twitter. Meanwhile, here are a few of the latest screenshots from the current build.

Players have had plenty to choose from. According to Bethesda “more than 2,500 mods have been published by the gaming community.” It’s an almost overwhelming selection that ranges from new armour and upgraded textures to new combat moves and devastating magic. Thankfully, the Steam Workshop now has a much needed search bar, making it easier to find mods your friends have recommended. Speaking of which, here’s our round up of some of the best Steam Workshop mods so far.

There are some gems in the bug fix list as well. “Demons masquerading as gods will try a little harder” and the devs have “restricted mandates so they’ll be more reasonable.” Thank heavens for that! Find the rest of the patch notes below. For more Dwartress, check out our Dwarf Fortress diary, a tale of seven drunk dwarves and their quest to reach hell.

New stuff

• cities in adventure mode that have various buildings, dungeons, items, livestock, etc.
• protect your community from secret vampire dwarves or hunt them as an adventurer
• defend your fort during the full moon or risk a werewolf infestion — hunt/be hunted as an adventurer
• face armies of the dead in dwarf mode or visit their necromancers’ towers and learn their secrets as an adventurer
• evil regions where the dead and pieces of the dead can come alive, with evil mists and rain
• tombs built in world gen which can be visited in adv mode, either beneath towns or out in the wilds — beware the dead!
• revamped justice/witness/death notification system in dwarf mode
• immigrants to your fortress will now be historical figures whenever possible, which means more family relationships and history for each one
• dropped items/bodies tracked between plays in the wilderness anywhere in the world
• more battlefield information tracked/war dead raisable in world gen
• all sponsorship animals and their giant/man versions are in the game now
• various new abilities for creatures (see file_changes.txt for list and syntax)
• adventurers can use creature abilities/learned powers and they can be tested from the arena
• new site travel map to make navigating towns easier
• reading/swimming/observer (for traps) relevant in adv mode now
• established historical figures can lead bandits
• rivers block movement in adv mode travel
• eating/drinking required in adv mode
• ingested syndromes are now possible
• ability to make campfire (from ‘g’) and warm items at campfire/fire/magma (from ‘I’) in adv mode
• traps work in adv mode, once spotted they can be ignored
• gems now have different cuts
• necromancers can write books about various topics (all books are in their towers as it stands)
• moon phase indicator in fort
• alphanumeric world gen seeds and some more world gen params (see file_changes.txt)
• the legends xml has a lot of new info for historical figures

 
Major bug fixes

• buffer overload from aborted world gen fixed
• fixed cave-in-on-embark issue with hidden underground structure, and a few others

 
Other bug fixes/tweaks

• designations over z levels all at once now possible
• unit screen divided into four sections
• rivers/pools have ramps now
• able to trade portions of stacks in both modes
• messed with adv mode currency trading and made items teleport to you
• tweaked how fire damage works
• made vision work through floor grates and bars properly
• fixed some road/bridge problems
• crystal glass items possible again
• tweaked adventure mode swimming and alt-movement readout (use alt-movement to get into a river you want to cross)
• skeletons/zombies replaced by animation effect
• demons masquerading as gods will try a little harder
• restricted mandates so they’ll be more reasonable
• stopped blank map from being exported when you back out of detailed map export

The Legacy system offers a shared level that exists across all TOR alts, but while it’s currently possible to gain Legacy levels, there are no rewards attached to them. Lead writer Daniel Erickson confirms that 1.2 will give players with Legacy levels access to a greater selection of races when creating new characters.

“The species that will be unlocked in Game Update 1.2 are species currently in the game that will become available to classes and factions where you haven’t seen them before,” says Erickson. “New species are in consideration for the future but we don’t have any details to share right now.” Jawa Jedi, anyone?

The next major update will also add dual spec support. That’ll let players create two different skill set-ups and switch between them at will, which could be useful for creating specialised PvP and PvE builds. We won’t be able to switch advanced classes though. Bioware see the specialised trees that open up at level 10 as “fundamentally different class designs.”

Erickson also mentions that “there’s a new Warzone planned for Game Update 1.2 which we’re already testing internally.” Bioware are also working on a new rankings system which will be used to improve the matchmaking system. There currently aren’t any plans to let players queue for a particular type of Warzone, however.

Finally, fashion conscious characters will be happy to hear about a “vastly improved ‘Hue to Chest’ system” which will co-ordinate outfits a little better. Bioware also say that “there are more customization and quality of life improvements along those lines hot on its heels.” Patch 1.2 is due sometime in March.

Total War’s biggest expansion will also feature their most modern setting to date. That doesn’t mean that we’ll lose out on cavalry charges and mass infantry melee, though. Japan’s traditionalist forces will put the art of war to the test against new threats like long-range artillery, gatling guns and well-drilled ranks of gunmen. Each of the six new factions will be fighting for or against the Shogunate. Your role as the leader of one of those factions will be to push Japan in one direction or the other, ideally by creating an army that consists entirely of horses and rampaging them from one end of the country to the other, trampling the enemy underhoof. Horses FTW.

Fall of the Samurai is a standalone expansion, so you won’t need a copy of Shogun 2 to play it. The expansion is due out on March 23. Which side will you take?

Version 2.0 of the superb iCEnhancer mod for Grand Theft Auto IV is now freely available on creator Hayssam Keilany’s site. Providing your PC can run it at more than a handful of frames per second, it’ll turn Liberty City into the almost photorealistic version of pseudo-New York shown in the trailer above. The mod’s creator is planning to release a “Natural” version soon, which could provide the more muted tones we’ve seen from previous versions of iCEnhancer. If you like the look of this, Keilany’s also made a version of iCEnhancer for Skyrim. What do you think, time to install GTA IV again?

Is there any bigger darling on the internet than Tim Schafer and Double Fine right now? After all, you guys forked over north of a million bucks just to see the man revisit the point-and-click adventure genre, a wonderful little gaming niche where bigwig publishers fear to tread.

Related to that, late last year our very own Logan Decker sat down with Tim (and Double Fine’s mysterious millionaire/heroic partner, Steven Dengler) to talk about the uphill battle involved in simply porting games like Costume Quest and Psychonauts. Have a watch.

With the nine new quests available, as well as new rewards both in game and in the store, players will have plenty of fat lootz to entice them back to the adventure in Winds of Change.

Players looking to begin part three of Winds of Change will want to head into the sewers of Shenzun Tunnels and speaking to Miku. While many of my fellow Guild Wars players will probably find the missions to be a breeze, I struggled as I completed them. The first mission was a particular challenge, with enemies swarming me from all directions as my heroes and I fought them off. Then died. Again, and again. While I’ve been playing Guild Wars for a while now, I don’t necessarily have the best gear, and very few expert skills. If you’re in the same boat, I highly recommend working on these quests with guild mates, as that will make things much easier.

Eww. I thought it was just crocodiles in the sewers!

Spoilers Ahead!
I was a big fan of the undercover mission, which had me mingle amongst outlaws and thieves to find out why there was a recruitment drive for new minions in the seedier elements of society. Nothing like a little detective work to keep things exciting.

That's right. We're all that!

While I’m still building up the courage (and teammate roster) to take on this final chapter in the Guild Wars story, I’ve done my research and know what we’ll be facing there–and it sounds amazing!

The final fight has you battling against Minster Reiko (head of the Ministry of Purity) herself, as she summons illusions and phantasms to beat you back. Keep her occupied, destroy her constructs, and you’ll find that “The Grand Illusion” bar on-screen will decrease. Bring it to zero and you win. It’s a fun way to handle the non-traditional boss fight. It keeps you on your toes as you keep her busy, all the while whittling down the Illusion bar.

Once you’ve completed this mission, you’ll find that Miku is now available as your newest hero!

The rewards are excellent, the story hit a chord with me, and the experience is a blast! I can’t wait to complete it later this week, and connect some of the final dots leading up to Guild Wars 2.

Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 4 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first.

That’s time anomalies dealt with, then. Now for the small matter of all the interesting PC gaming news that’s been happening today, with the most serious links first, and the rest arranged to deliver PC gaming news at maximum intensity. Are you ready?

• On Friday Gabe Newell said that hackers may have gained access to encrypted credit card data when they attacked Steam late last year. That’s on Develop.
• Steam went down for a bit yesterday, too. Valve’s explanation: “Our data center’s uninterruptible power supplies experienced a power failure.”
• Today’s Dead End Thrills image is this great shot of Batman in Grand Theft Auto IV.
• The freshly launched Hookshot have had a chat with Tim Schafer about making a million bucks on Kickstarter.
• Richard Cobbett takes a look at interactive Oblivion webcomic, Prequel on RPS.
• Mass Effect 3 has gone gold.
• It looks like Sins of a Solar Empire devs, IronClad, are about to reveal something new.
• Blue’s News note that version 2.0 of the terrific iCEnhancer mod for Grand Theft Auto IV is out now.
• A Guinness World Record poll places Call of Duty: Black Ops as the best game ending ever. Portal is at 7.
• MCV mention that Lucasarts have agreed to license another decade of LEGO Star Wars games.

 
Eve Online. As much as I love it, I can’t play it for more than a few days before getting distracted like a squirrel that’s somehow gained control of a spaceship and been asked to forge a new life among the stars. But I do love space. Hmmm, quite the dilemma. Maybe I’ll just go back to Star Wars: The Old Republic. What are you playing at the moment?

The latest patch also adds new “ornamental buildings” and makes loads of fixes and balance tweaks. If you wondering whether Anno 2070 is worth a punt, check out our Anno 2070 review. Meanwhile, here’s the full patch list from Steam.

Main changes:

• Additional ornamental buildings added
• Implemented ‘Instant pickup’ feature
• Military balancing refined
• The feature that lets you choose environmental influences in the Continuous Game settings does now work properly
• The single mission ‘Return to C.O.R.E.’ does not support Coop play anymore, due to complications with the NPC slots
• Increased the probability of a tornado disaster and the interval at which they can occur

 
Additional changes:

• Refined license balancing
• Rebalanced diplomatic actions ‘Stock trading’, ‘Research money’, ‘Investment’ and ‘Shady deal’
• Improved residence interface
• Improved rewards for Disaster Quests
• Explosions that are caused by disaster rather than player actions, do not destroy roads anymore
• Considerately increased the effect of the media channels ‘Check Up – The Consultation’, ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ and ‘Safety in Research’
• Increased building costs of the ‘River sewage treatment plant’
• Rebalanced energy and building costs of the ‘Deep sea warehouse’
• Fixed a graphical issue in 1600×900 resolution
• Fixed an issue where a Production Chain was still displayed in the Building Menu after the Ornament tab was opened
• Fixed an issue where Keto reappeared hours after she was defeated
• Fixed an issue with the display of the amount of inhabitants the Warehouse interface
• Fixed an issue with the build blocker of the Offshore wind park
• Fixed several minor text issues in tooltips, menus and achievements
• Fixed a minor graphical issue with the numbering of stacked items
• Fixed an issue where two items that affect all buildings of a certain faction had no effect on some buildings
• Fixed an issue where the ingame chat of a previous session was occasionally still displayed in a later session
• Fixed an issue where the camera would not change the zoom from under water to above water after clicking on a newsbar entry that related to an above water event
• Fixed a minor graphical issue with mobile buildings that occurred when the player did not have enough resources to build them
• Fixed a wrong mini map ping in one of Hiro Ebashis quests
• Pressing the ‘shift’ and ‘u’ while selecting another players residence buildings does not prompt the ‘Cheat discovered!’ message anymore
• Fixed an exploit that let you infinitely stack item effects on a single ship
• Fixed an exploit in the single mission ‚Free Market Economy’
• Fixed an issue where the wrong portrait picture of another player was displayed in multiplayer
• Fixed several issues in the Mission Ranking screen
• Improved third party reactions to trading with foes and friends
• Fixed an exploit that allowed unlimited gain of Influence with Tori Bartok by building and demolishing the same Academy building
• Multiplayer stability further improved

If you’re not to keen on those, FMScout also mention that the reputable WeeGiE patch is due to hit the Sports Interactive forums this week.

So now that they’ve passed 1.6 million dollars, do the contributions break down differently? Yes! The graph above shows how much money each donation option made – blue bars are from last week, red bars are today’s figures. Now for some interesting stats, and what they mean.

The total money raised is up by 272% of its previous figure, but the individual donation amounts haven’t increased at the same rate. To be clear, “up by 100%” means it’s doubled.

PLEDGE $15 OR MORE – up 463%
The finished game in all of its awesome glory on Steam, exclusive access to the PC Beta on Steam, access to the video series, and access the private discussion community.

PLEDGE $30 OR MORE – up 375%
HD download of the documentary series with extras, Digital game soundtrack, and all previous reward tiers.

PLEDGE $100 OR MORE – up 246%
Original “Double Fine Adventure” poster (suitable for framing) exclusive to the campaign, special thanks in the game’s credits, and all previous reward tiers. (posters will be shipped for free in the US, and for $10 internationally)

PLEDGE $250 OR MORE – up 204%
“Double Fine Adventure” Poster autographed by Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and the rest of the design team, and all previous reward tiers.

PLEDGE $1,000 OR MORE – up 223%
Mini portrait of YOU, painted by the game’s artist, and all previous reward tiers.

The trend is a massive shift towards the cheaper options, to the point that the $15 option has now made more money than both the $100 and the $250.

It makes sense for three reasons: firstly, the most passionate and supportive fans of Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert’s point-and-click stuff are likely to have heard about this pretty sharpish, and put their money down without hesitation.

Secondly, the project is already funded. It’s still worth donating if you want the rewards, and to show support, but it’s no longer necessary for the project’s survival. Lastly, most of the extremely pricey top-tier options were limited, and now they’re gone.

Still, $15 is a significant price to pay for a game that doesn’t even exist yet. And despite the shift towards that option, 45% of the 47,000 people who’ve paid for this unknown game have ponied up double that or more for a special edition.

Again, it’s an incredible show of support for some heroes of PC gaming, and a genre most publishers won’t touch.

It’s described as a “level 1-100 Futuristic Sound Device,” and will set you back a hefty £7/$10. A portion of that will go to a community member. The Boston Boom-Bringer is the latest item to be promoted from the Steam Workshop, which is still overflowing with nonsensical but brilliant items like an Anubis headdress for the Pyro, a Soldier plushie on a stick and this magnificent bug mask.

That’s what’s on offer with the rather remarkable BytePac hard drive enclosures. Order one, and you’ll receive a box full of SATA to USB cables in the post. Empty the box out and you can fit a standard 3.5inch drive inside with plenty of room for air flow. It’s fully recycled and recyclable, guaranteed for five years and designed to look like a magazine boxfile for archiving and labelling multiple drives full of old game saves and screenshots.

Admittedly, the chances that you’ve upgraded your storage lately are fairly slim, given the price of hard drives at the moment. Even so, if you’ve got an old drive or two kicking around in the bottom of a drawer, this seems like a good way to put them to use.

The design has apparently been stress tested by opening and closing the main flap 10,000 times, but even so I’m not sure the cardboard case will be rugged enough for moving the drive around much. Still, if your router has a USB port around the back this could be a great way to set up a down and dirty NAS drive. I can see it working really well with something like PogoPlug, for example, for serving up videos around the home or making your own personal cloud service.

It’s a neat idea even if – as the manufacturer admits – at £29.45 for the full set of leads and three boxes it’s a bit pricey for what it is. Still, they win kudos back for actively encouraging you to copy them and build your own cardboard caddy if you want to.

The video below has more details about Bytepac, and there’s even more info over in the product FAQs.

(via Scienceblogs)

Still it’s nice to see Payne’s back in his leather trench coat, shirt and tie combo. That’s Classic Max chic. He’s joined by his two other styles, Grizzly Commander Riker chic and Breaking Bad chic, in the new screenshots below.

“I want to share my favorite two graphs of the past few weeks with you folks,” says CCP Veritas. To have a fortnightly favourite graph, you must look at a lot of graphs, but this one is pretty good. It shows how the time dilation kicks in as soon as server load is detected, reducing the game speed for players affected players and, most importantly, restoring the game to its natural speed afterwards.

This snapshot was taken during a massive fight on one of Eve’s nodes, server components which support many of Eve’s star systems at a time. CCP posted an account from Lovelocke on Eve Swarm, one of the players involved in the fight. “The lag was barely noticeable,” he said. “1400+ in local, super capitals with fighter bombers swarming, doomsdays, Drake missiles, etc, yet with TiDi in full force there were no crashes, no unresponsive modules, no MWD’s that wouldn’t turn off.”

“Astonishing. I still don’t fully understand what TiDi is, its explanation far too technical for my fragile little mind, but whatever it is CCP have certainly struck gold,” he adds. You’re not alone, Lovelocke. You’re not alone. In conclusion, it looks like Time Dilation is working. Now all that’s left is for CCP to apply slow-mo time dilation principles to real war. Oh wait, I forgot. Platoon got there first.

BUT WAIT. DON’T GO. THERE IS A BONUS GRAPH.

This one shows how players across the cluster were affected during the battle. CCP Veritas calculates that “12.87 hours of simulation time in total have been dilated out of existence” during the 12 days measured. “The spike down at the end there is our new TiDi-enabled shutdown routine, which pauses the universe while shutting down,” Veritas adds. “It’s kinda neat like that.”

The Mass Effect 3 demo is imminent, but if, like me, you have a genetic predisposition to absorb everything related to Mass Effect 3 immediately with no care for spoilers, then you might enjoy these many minutes of footage from the first couple of missions.

VG247 spotted the videos, uploaded by a YouTube user who apparently got early access to the demo. We get to see a few familiar faces like Anderson and Ashley, and see more of the half man, half neck hybrid James Vega machoing his way around the corridors. Is it possible for a man to have too many muscles? James Vega has the answer, and that answer is “yes.” He has the look of a man permanently on the verge of explosive decompression. Don’t salute too hard, Vega, you could pop at any moment.

The demo is due out tomorrow, and the full game is out on March 6 in the US and March 9 in Europe. Here’s part two of the demo footage.