day-of-defeat posts

It's Bulletstorm release day. How many of you bought it today? Also how many of you checked out the Dragon Age 2 demo? Today sure was busy in PC gaming land:

• Dungeons and Dragons Online celebrates its fifth anniversary this week with new content and special events.
• Steam has a new minor update for Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch.
• Steam also has an automatic update for Star Ruler.
• A new entry in the official Bethesda Podcast has been released with company PR head Pete Hines answering fan questions.
• A new Kickstarter.com campaign has started to help fund the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in San Fransisco.

Valve continues to add to the number of its games that can be playable on a Mac. We have seen Mac versions of Portal, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source. Now comes word that one of Valve lesser known games, Day of Defeat Source, is also now available to play natively on Apple's machines.

Like most of the rest of the Mac games on Steam, players who already own the PC version of Day of Defeat Source can download the Mac version for free and both Mac and PC owners can play each other online. The WWII themed shooter began as a Half-Life 1 mod in 2000. The mod was later purchased by Valve and turned into a stand alone retail product in 2003. The Source Engine version was released in 2005. While the game has had a number of bug updates, this is the first major update for Day of Defeat Source since 2008 when new achievements and a new map were added to the game.

We are smack dab in the middle of the holiday sale on Steam and as usual the PC game download site has some great deals that can be had for just one day only at some rock bottom prices. One of the best deals today is for the PopCap collection where you can get all 30 PopCap casual games on Steam for just $49.99. Compare that to the collection's usual $99.99 price and the $224.70 price if you purchases each game in the collection separately.

Other games on sale until noon Eastern time Monday include Dead Space for $10.19, Hearts of Iron III for just $7.49 and Zombie Driver and Day of Defeat: Source for $2.49 each.

Breaking into the video game industry isn't easy, but one great way to make an impression to create mods for existing games. Indeed there have been one or two occasions where a mod of a game has become more popular than the game it's based on. Valve has been a champion of these kinds of mods and games and has even bought a number of them into their fold to be released as commercial titles.

While technically their next game Left 4 Dead is an all original property the zombie co-op shooter has the spirit of a mod that was later made into a full game. In this feature we look back at both mods and mod teams that have move on to make some terrific first person shooter style titles including, yes, a number of Valve games.

Click on the image above to continue reading the feature article

Congratulations, soldier: you survived another week. It's Friday afternoon, and instead of going out partying with your friends, you're anxious to get home, sit down at your computer, and play some new games. Sounds fun! Too bad you're broke. Lucky for you, PC gaming has an impressive library of classic games that are available online for cheap. Hang out with us every Friday so we can take you on a guided tour of some of the greatest bargains available throughout the many tubes of the Internet.

Welcome Big Download's Virtual Bargain Bin, the cure for your weekend gaming woes. This week's pick: Valve Complete Pack.

Anyone could come up with a lot of reasons for why Valve is such a successful company. Ask any two people what makes Valve so successful and they'll probably point to different things. Some will say their cabal style game design and free content updates. While others will point to the Steam platform, mod support and integration of top mod designers. Some may even call out Gabe Newell himself. Oh and don't forget Doug Lombardi, either. We could go on and on about just what made (and continues to make) Valve so very special. Though I doubt it's any single one of those things as opposed to many of them at the right moments in the right way. Or in other words, a lot of chance, determination and some vision.

What I do think can be gleaned from the success of Valve, is where PC gaming will -- or at least should be -- going over the next few years. Hit the image above to take a look at what I think their model of game design and business decisions has to offer the wider PC gaming market.

Valve released a trio of updates over its popular Steam service this morning, with one update apiece dispersed among Day of Defeat Source, Team Fortress 2, and the Steam SDK.

Day of Defeat Source primarily received tweaks and fixes, with issues such as viewmodels skipping fire animations, a quickswitch exploit, and jittery model lag. Developers will find much to love in the new Steam SDK Beta, which includes new features such as Particle, Material, and Commentary Editors. Finally, the world's many TF2 players will see rendering and simulation increases, as well as allowing "Mods to set which ConVars control the sv_tags settings."

If you're an aspiring modder, than Garry (creator of Garry's Mod) has a list of ten things he'd like you to consider when creating your mod. All ten of the tips seem like solid advice, especially the last one -- which rounds the entire list out quite nicely. We're big -- no scratch that -- huge supporters of mods and their creators here at Big Download. It's the mod community that makes PC gaming so very special. The good kind of special, not the kind of special you tend to encounter in most Xbox Live conversations (NSFW).

We can't count the number of hours we've spent playing everything from Team Fortress and Day of Defeat to Dystopia and Pirates, Vikings and Knights II. Although now that we look at it, there's a strong tendency for FPS mods, which makes us wonder what kinds of mods we'll see after Starcraft II launches.