Tools

With the Dragon Age: Origins Toolset, users can create custom adventures for Dragon Age. The toolset can only be installed on a machine that has the full Dragon Age: Origins game installed. The EclipseRay Lightmapper Source Code is an optional add-on.

Download the Dragon Age: Origins Toolset (472 MB)
Download the EclipseRay Lightmapper Source Code (6 MB)
Download HD Dragon Age: Origins Toolset Trailer (80 MB)
Check out all Dragon Age: Origins downloads

Epic has released the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free version of Unreal Engine 3 for aspiring game developers. It's absolutely free for noncommercial and educational purposes. Those that wish to use Unreal Engine 3 for commercial use will need should refer to licensing terms at www.udk.com/licensing. The press announcement, demonstration video and features list can be seen after the jump. For more information, users can visit the official forums or the UDK documentation page.

To demonstrate the power and versatility of the development tool, there are two free games available, made using the UDK. They are:

Whizzle: A vertical scrolling puzzle game in which players swim through levels as Whizzle, an adorable sea creature that collects items and frees tiny comrades from captivity. Avoid the electrifying stingers of the jellyfish! More information about Whizzle, including a developer diary video, can be seen after the jump.

The Ball: An episodic, puzzle-based action game. Known as one of the most award-winning Unreal Tournament 3 mods in the $1 Million Intel Make Something Unreal Contest, "The Ball" has won honors for Best Use of Physics, Best Game Type and Best FPS Mod. Toltec Studios has ported over its UT3 mod to UDK, and the free, standalone version of The Ball is available for download.

Download Unreal Development Kit (562 MB)
Download HD Unreal Development Kit Launch Trailer (80 MB)
Download HD UDK Psyonix Developer Diary (344 MB)

Download Whizzle (112 MB)
Download The Ball (359 MB)

Unity is a multiplatform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. This 30-day trial version gives aspiring developers a chance to build their own games without laying down thousands of dollars. It's available in both PC and Mac versions.

Download Unity Game Development Tool 30-Day Trial (162 MB)
Download Unity Game Development Tool 30-Day Trial [Mac] (290 MB)

It's only been a day since Windows 7 officially released, and there is less than a handful of games that currently support DirectX 11, but there is now a benchmark available to gamers to see how well their hardware performs.

Developed by Unigine Corp using its proprietary Unigine engine technology, Heaven the first benchmark that measures the performance of DirectX 11 while showcasing its beauty. System requirements are shown after the jump along with a video of what the benchmark looks like.

Features include:

• Native support of OpenGL, DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11
• Comprehensive use of tessellation technology
• Advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion)
• Volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm
• Dynamic simulation of changing environment with high physical fidelity
• Interactive experience with fly/walk-through modes
• ATI Eyefinity support

Download Unigine 'Heaven' DirectX 11 Benchmark (127 MB)

As some developers continue to dodge the question on whether or not they will release or support third party mods for their games (*cough* Infinity Ward *cough*), Valve is actually fulfilling a promise they made last month. Namely they have now released all of the character model and animation sources for their multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2.

But Valve is throwing out some extras as well. They have gone ahead and released some of the models and props they used for their various "Meet The" movies they made for the various Team Fortress 2 characters (the first ones come from the "Meet The Sniper" film). These models are not meant to be used in playable maps but they are still kind of cool for mod makers to have for use in maps and/or fan-made films.

The fantasy RTS game BattleForge from EA's Phenomic studio has changed a lot since it's release as a retail game earlier this year. It has since turned into a free-to-play downloadable game and a few weeks ago it became the first official PC game to support DirectX11 graphics via a patch.

Today BattleForge players get another bonus; a free map editor to play with. The editor, which players can download via the game's latest automatic patch, will allow anyone to make PvP or PVE maps and share them with others. The player created maps don't allow for rewards to be given to players like extra cards, experience points and the like. They also can't be used in ranked games. Otherwise you can go nuts. There's even a PDF tutorial to get you started.

While Crytek first announced their plans for CryEngine 3 some time ago, today the game developer announced that their third version of their game graphics engine technology is officially available for purchase by third party developers. While this version is designed to work for PC game development team, CryEngine 3 is the first version to be made for console developers as well.

Crytek emphasizes the fact that CryEngine 3 will allow game developers to work on a single PC but see and play the results of their work on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. That means we could see a lot of multi-platform games using CryEngine 3 in the future. It's likely that the first CryEngine 3 game will be Crytek's own Crysis 2 that's due out sometime in 2010.

Earlier this year, NCsoft announced that they would be launching a Guest Author program for their super hero MMO City of Heroes, allowing major outside talent to create new storylines for the game via the Mission Architect tools. Today NCsoft announced that acclaimed comic book author Bill Willingham will be added as one of the first people or teams involved in the Guest Author program.

Willingham is best known for his work on Fables, the DC Vertigo comic that takes a new spin on familiar fairy tale characters. He will be creating a City of Heroes mission called The Quest for Magic. He joins Red Vs Blue creators Rooster Teeth and PvP comic strip creator Scott Kurtz in making new missions for the MMO. All are scheduled to be made available to players of the game for free beginning on October 13.

In related news, City of Heroes is allowing all inactive accounts in good standing to be reactivated from now until Sunday at 11:59 pm PT. Also all characters will receive double their normal experience points during this weekend.

Last March, Emergent Game Technologies seemed to be doing well for itself. The maker of the popular Gamebryo game graphics engine (used, among other games, for Fallout 3) had secured some new funding and launched a new product, Gamebryo Lightspeed. Now it appears there's a bit of a bump in the road as Develop reports that Emergent will restructure the company with some jobs lost as a result.

The number of jobs lost in the restructuring is currently not known. However, it does plan to continue development of Gamebryo Lightspeed with a spokesperson saying the restructuring will "actually provide greater resources to answer immediate tech needs, but also creates greater opportunities for Emergent to collaborate with development studios throughout the development process."

While there's no word yet on if a demo for Dragon Age: Origins will be released, developer BioWare has just announced plans to release the game's character creator as a free separate PC application (sorry console gamers; no such thing for you) on October 13.

The character creator for the long awaited fantasy RPG will let PC gamers experiment with making characters from the game and allow them to save those characters on their hard drive. When the PC version of Dragon Age: Origins is released on November 2, players can import their characters into the game. You can also upload the image of said character to the upcoming social networking site for Dragon Age: Origins which should launch on the same day the character creator is released.

In related news a new sample from the upcoming novel Dragon Age: The Calling has been released on the game's official web site.

The patch updates Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood to v1.1 and addresses a number of gameplay issues, including bug fixes, multiplayer class balancing, and more. Also available is the Content Creation Pack - a set of mod tools for gamers to create their own custom maps and levels for the game. Patch and Content Creations Pack notes can be found after the jump. The Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood demo can be downloaded here.

Download Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood v1.1 Patch (58 MB)
Download Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood Content Creation Pack (120 MB)
Download Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood Demo (1.05 GB)
Check out all Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood downloads

This patch updates Call of Duty: World at War to v1.6, which includes the Map Pack 3 expansion content. New multiplayer maps are: Battery, Breach, Revolution and the bonus Der Riese (nazi_zombie_factory) zombie level. Users will need to first have their games updated to 1.5 before using this patch. The German version has its own patch and also must be updated to 1.5.

There's also an update for the Call of Duty: World at War mod tools to coincide with the new content. Be aware that it is an incremental update, and users will need to have the v1.3 mod tool installed before applying that patch.

Continue reading after the jump for a list of changes for both the patch and mod tools.

Download Call of Duty: World at War v1.6 Patch (Map Pack 3) (1.2 GB)
Download Call of Duty: World at War v1.6 German Patch (261 MB)
Download Call of Duty: World at War v1.4 Mod Tools (55 MB)*
*Requires v1.3 Mod tools

This client allows users to set up a dedicated Wolfenstein multiplayer server without having to install the full game. The full Readme file notes are shown after the jump.

Download Wolfenstein Stand Alone Server Client (498 MB)
Check out all Wolfenstein downloads

This collection of development tools lets players create custom content for ARMA II. More information about these tools can be found at the Bohemia Interactive community site. The demo can be downloaded here.

The suite of tools include:

• Oxygen 2 Personal Edition for Arma II - model editing and animation package
• Visitor 3 Personal Edition for Arma II - terrain and map editing
• TexView 2 - texture convertor and viewer
• BinPBO Personal Edition - packer
• Sound Tools - sound and lipsync utilities
• FSM Editor - tool to edit and compile fsms used in Arma 2
• BinMake - conversion tool
• Tools Drive - main working directory for tools with mandatory data files

Download ARMA II Mod Tools (33 MB)
Download ARMA II Demo (2.84 GB)
Check out all ARMA II downloads

ACE Team's wild looking first person action game Zeno Clash has become successful enough that the development team has released free downloadable content for the game since the game's launch last April. It's also announced plans for a full sequel. Now the company is letting everyone else get access to the original game's code.

This week the SDK for Zeno Clash was released via the team's Wiki page. That page also has documentation on how to use the mod tools. Yes, now you will be able to make your own levels and mods for one of the oddest looking PC games released in recent memory. Have fun.