July 13, 2012

How Steam is about to change it's role (PCGamer) [Updated]

Source: PCGamer

Tom Francis at 04:01pm July 12 2012

(snip)

Instead, Valve reps Anna Sweet and DJ Powers took us through a series of new Steam features that change its role in the industry: from an under-staffed megapublisher to a hands-off distribution platform. I can’t talk about all of it, but these are the two most important bits:

Unapproved updates

While Valve have always encouraged developers to update their games frequently, those updates would previously need to be approved before they went live. They’re now changing to a new system, where developers can make updates live themselves, with no oversight from Valve.

What if your update breaks the game? Customers will tell you, and if you don’t hear them, Valve will tell you what customers are telling them. But ultimately, it’s the developer’s responsibility to check this stuff, release good updates, and fix anything that breaks

(snip)

Greenlight

From August 30th, developers will be able to post a video, description and screenshots of their game, finished or not, and ask users to vote on whether it gets released on Steam. The games that get the most votes will get a green light. When they’re finished, they can be sold on Steam. Valve’s only involvement is to make sure the final code runs, and is roughly what was promised in the video.

Read more: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/07/12/how-steam-is-about-to-change-its-role/

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Seems like an interesting development for independent developers. Apparently the process for actually getting on Steam is getting simpler (if you can get the necessary votes, I wonder if there is a B-option for getting on for those who can't), and also updating a game is streamlined, so that patching bugs, adding features etc. can be done quickly and without having to go through a (possibly lengthy and complicated) approval process.

The only downside I see (as mentioned in the article) is that a faulty update might go live. Maybe Steam could counteract this be including a "Roll back to previous version" option for a game, so that you can re-download the last functioning version. Don't know if that's technically feasible though.

Greenlight (as I understand it) will only be for indie games, AAA games won't be affected. A few people in the comments sure would have liked to give Ubisoft, EA, Activision etc. a piece of their mind...

June 9, 2012

6 days left for Humble Indie Bundle V - Indie games and charity (cross-platform)

In case any of you weren't aware of it yet, there are slightly less than 6 days left to purchase the Humble Indie Bundle V.

It is pay what you want, and the money goes to the developers, the Humble Bundle people and charity (Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation). You can decide how to split your payment.

The games featured are:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
LIMBO
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Psychonauts

If you pay more than the average (at the moment $8,22) you also get:
Bastion
Lone Survivor
Braid
Super Meat Boy

All games are DRM-free and work cross-platform on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Also included are the soundtracks to five of the games.

You can find all the info here:
http://www.humblebundle.com/

Of the bunch, the only game I already knew is "Amnesia: The Dark Descent" and it's a great game. I also heard good things about LIMBO and Psychonauts (made by Tim Schafer of LucasArts adventures fame) and some of the others, but I'm not directly familiar with them. Yet!

April 15, 2012

Early build screenshots of Mojang's space-sim "0x10c"

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/12/ox10c-screenshots-show-early-build-shadows-shapes-that-arent-cubes-and-tf2-soldier/

Notch has started working on a new project, which is a space simulation game called "0x10c" (no official word yet on how that name is to be pronounced). It sounds very interesting, so I hope they manage to pull it off, because it is an extremely ambitious project. Seamless landing on planets from space, a fully working on-board 16bit computer system, mining, looting and trading etc.

For now they plan to release it like Minecraft, so interested people can get in on the fun on early builds. The game is still in the very early stages of development so it'll probably be a while before anything is released to the public.

All the info can be found on the official website: http://0x10c.com/

March 6, 2012

I've become crazy-cat-person in Minecraft...

Last week I started a new Minecraft game (I started off on snapshot 12w08a, which in the meantime has become v1.2.3); I moved into one of the houses in a village (one of those tiny 3x3 block jobbies), expanded it into a sizeable building, did some mining and built a Slime spawner/grinder. Then I went exploring the new jungle boime, ran across an ocelot and turned it into a cat. I came across another ocelot, tamed it and took both cats home. Then I figured out they can breed and now I'm sharing the house with six cats. Incidentally I've noticed all the villagers have disappeared, could it be they got tired of the endless meowing?

I'd gotten away a bit from the game recently, but with this new update I'm in fully addicted again. I move the game be renamed "Minecrack" and that it come with a warning label!

Well, I'm off to the Nether to check on my nether wart farm.

February 22, 2012

Borderlands 2 trailer (with launch date)

I enjoyed the first Borderlands, even though it was pretty samey and I eventually stopped playing while plodding through the DLCs. Although that might be because I didn't have anyone to play Co-Op with. But considering I bought it on sale with all the DLCs for €12 it was worth it.

So I'm definitely gonna be keeping an eye on this, even though I probably won't buy it on day one.

February 12, 2012

Anyone have any experience with online collaborations?

I'm thinking about picking up an old project of mine again, which is a kind of industrial mix of rock/metal and electronic music. But, since I know very little about electronic music, and until now I arranged the electronic parts by trial and error, I wanted to see if I can find somebody to collaborate with, who can take care of the electronic side. In case anybody is curious you can find some of my songs here http://www.myspace.com/chaosunltd/

I was wondering if anybody knew any good sites for finding musicians to collaborate with or if anybody had any experiences with collaborating with other musicians online. I came across this website http://www.indabamusic.com/ which seems to be a site for collaborations, does anybody know it?

Thanks in advance for any info.