source-engine posts

The funny Team Fortress 2 videos have showcased all but two of the multiplayer shooter's character classes; the Medic and the Pyro are the only two left. In a new post on the Steam message board posts by Team Fortress 2 community member "Political Gamer", he claims that during a visit to Valve's offices this week that the Medic will be the next TF2 class to get the trailer spotlight.

The report claims that the video is one of the best of the TF2 character classes yet made and that it is about 80 to 90 percent done so it should be released "soon". In related news the Source Engine film maker will also be released "soon", according to the report.

The report also has a audio link to an interview with Team Fortress' co-creator Robin Walker that should be of interest to Team Fortress 2 fans. The same report praises Valve's next game Portal 2 quite a bit (GOTY 2011 is mentioned) and even mentions being able to see DOTA 2 being played (no details, however).

[Via PCGamer.com]

A member of the Team Fortress 2 community (who is called "Political Gamer" on the game's official message board) got a chance to visit Valve this week and as part of the visit he got to meet Valve's head man Gabe Newell. During the visit "Political Gamer" says he got to find out a few interesting future plans for Valve's Steam PC game download platform from Newell.

As posted on the Steam message board, the report has Newell stating that a video recorder for Steam will be made available "very soon". This presumably means that folks will be able to record in-game video via the Steam client much like they can now take screenshots from any game via Steam.

Even more interesting is that Valve is thinking about possibly expanding Steam support for iOS (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch) and Android-based devices. The report makes it sound like this is something that Valve is just thinking about rather than something that is in active development but it certainly brings up some interesting possibilities for the future of the Steam platform.

[Via PC Gamer]

It was only a matter of time, we suppose, before someone figured out how to get the Xbox 360's Kinect motion controller camera to work with Garry's Mod. The popular Source Engine-based sandbox PC game/mod hybrid now has the Kinect treatment via a third party hack program.

This Kinect hack comes surprisingly from an engineer who works at the Yelp web site (yep, the site that's about displaying reviews of restaurants and the like). You can see the results in the trailer after the jump where he uses the Kinect controller to mainly kick around objects and even rag doll characters around. You can also download the actual code at the GitHub.com web site.

[Via Blue's News]

Valve's Source Engine technically debuted in 2004 with the release of Half-Life 2. While the developer has made a number of improvements to the Source Engine since then, many of its tools are still hard to use. Indeed the engine's Hammer level editor has changed little since the release of the original Half-Life in 1998.

In a recent interview on the Steamcast podcast, Valve head man Gabe Newell admitted, "our current tools are... very painful." He added, " ... we're spending a tremendous amount of time on tools right now." Newell didn't give a time when the revised SDK would be released but did say, " "when we're ready to ship those I think everybody's life will get a lot better."

Last fall it was announced that Dino D-Day, the Source Engine-based multiplayer shooter of Nazi-bred dinosaurs battling the Allies in WWII, would be released via Steam on March 1. As happens with most games the development team at 800 North has decided to take its time to make the game a better experience. As a result, Big Download can exclusively reveal that the the release date for the final commercial version of Dino D-Day has been pushed back a few weeks and is now scheduled for release on March 29.

The good news is that there will be a beta version of Dino D-Day that will be released on March 1. The beta will have all of the human character classes, all of the weapons and all of the dinosaurs in the full game but will only have one map and gameplay mode, according to what 800 North's Abe Scheuermann told Big Download today. The beta version be limited to 1,000 people so keep an eye out on the game's official web site for sign ups. The final version will add more maps and gameplay modes and players can expect free content updates for Dino D-Day after its commercial release. Pricing has yet to be revealed.

It's been a while since we have looked into the development of the upcoming Source Engine-based first person shooter Nuclear Dawn. This weekend the development team at Interwave Studios posted up a new blog entry. Progress seems to be going well with the blog update stating that the game has been in closed alpha testing, including input from Valve.

Unfortunately, the testing has apparently shown that Nuclear Dawn's plans for drivable vehicles in the final version won't be implemented. The blog post states, "There are many reasons, but they all boil down to 'not enough time before release'. The game is in feature lockdown mode, and there simply is not enough time to tweak the physics and net code to the degree that we require to fully realize our vision of vehicular combat.." Interwave sees this move as a good thing in the long run, stating, "Not having to focus on vehicles at this moment will make Nuclear Dawn a more powerful product, as we hunker down to forge an unforgettable combat experience."

You may remember that back in late 2009 we reported on Tactical Intervention, a new first person shooter which was being developed by Minh Le, one of the original co-creators of Counter-Strike. The game's publisher, FIX Korea, held two periods of closed beta testing for the game in 2010.

Since then, however, info about the game's status has been slim to none. Big Download contacted FIX Korea for an update on Tactical Intervention's progress. Its spokesperson told us via email, "We have been solving various issues of development for quality game after (closed beta test) for North America. The release date for game has not been set yet." Naturally we will be keeping an eye out for any future info on the game.

While there's been a lot of attention about the massive sales of Minecraft another indie sandbox game has been doing pretty darn well, thank you very much. It's Garry's Mod, the title from UK-based Garry Newman. Technically this "game" isn't stand alone since you need to have a Source Engine-based game installed to install and play Garry's Mod.

However the mod continues to sell well as posted by Newman himself in a recent blog post. Back in late October he admitted the game has sold over 770,000 copies since it was first released. In his new blog post Newman states that sales of the game went up by 30 percent in 2008 following the game's first full year of sales in 2007. In 2009 sales increased again by 31 percent and in 2010 sales went up yet again by 33 percent. Yes, that means that despite being available for four years sales of Garry's Mod have increased nearly 100 percent since it was first launched. Newman credits the game's massive community, the number of updates the game has received since launch, the evolving Source Engine features and of course Steam where Garry's Mod is an exclusive. As Newman states, "It's becoming the PC's appstore. Every PC Gamer has it installed. It has saved PC gaming."

Earlier today we reported that Minecraft had now sold over 500,000 units, an astonishing level for an independent game available only via download. It's anyone's guess on how long that rate of sales will last but we suspect its creator Markus Perrson would love the longevity of another acclaimed sandbox-based game, Garry's Mod.

The $10 Source Engine-based mod (it still requires another retail Source Engine-based game to work) is the creation of UK-based Garry Newman. It launched as a commercial product on Steam in late November 2006. On its two year anniversary, Newman revealed Garry's Mod had sold 312,541 copies. Kotaku, in a new feature about Garry's Mod today, got Newman to state that the game has now sold 770,628 units in its lifetime which means the rate of sales has actually increased since two years ago.

Earlier this week there was some excitement when the Steam web site showed that the Source Engine-based shooter Nuclear Dawn had been "released'. However it turned out that the issue was with the Steam site as it gave an incorrect release date for the game.

However that slight misunderstanding was enough for the Nuclear Dawn development team to come out of hiding and give an update on the game's status. It states, "The good news is that Nuclear Dawn will be a few more months in the making, and Q1 2011 is more than a hazarded guess." it also hints that a beta announcement is coming "in the next two weeks."