General

• ModDB European Download Servers Live
  The EU based servers ModDB announced at the end of October have announced that Noesis Interactive will be handling educational material for the Unity engine.
• John Cleese on Creativitiy
  Webcomics.com linked to a video in which John Cleese gives a talk about creativity. It’s worth a watch.

Half-Life 2

• Gamasutra interview with Marc Laidlaw and Eric Wolpaw
  Two of Valve’s “writing lynchpins” discuss the writing of Half-Life 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead 2.
• Podcast 17 Episode #55
  This week’s Podcast 17 predominantly covers the Left 4 Dead 2 demo release and Eurogamer Expo 2009.

Unreal Development Kit

• Unreal Development Kit Release
  A little company called Epic Games who’re responsible for a fairly low-key series of game engines carrying the Unreal name have released a free version of their latest effort, Unreal Engine 3. This means you can use the engine that powers Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War (one and two), Bioshock (one and two), Arkham Asylum, Borderlands, Mass Effect (one and two) and Mirror’s Edge (among others) for free to make your own game. Oh and you can release it as a commercial product too, and not pay anything unless you make over $5000 (check the licensing information). This isn’t some old version they had laid around either – it’s the newest version with Lightmass, Swarm, Ambient Occlusion and the new Content Browser.



• The Ball UDK Demo
  As shown on the UDK website The Ball team have released a UDK version of their mod, dubbed as “The Ball UDK Demo”, and have announced the project is going commercial. I haven’t had chance to compare yet but it sounds like it’s had a bunch of content stripped out of the UT3 version (hence the demo moniker) but you don’t need UT3 to play it. If you’ve been drooling at their screenshots and not had chance to play yet then what are you waiting for?



• Prometheus 4.0 UDK Release
  Not to be outdone, the Prometheus team have put out a standalone release of Prometheus, though this is a full-fat version with more content than their last UT3 release, and they’re also going to be going commercial. They’ve got a rather unusual gameplay mechanic involving multiple versions of yourself playing back actions to solve puzzles, but their well-voiced tutorial level will explain it better than I can so get clicking!

Unreal Tournament 3

• The Ball Cahua Announcement
  Toltec Studios have announced the next release of The Ball for UT3, which will be the final mod release of the project and will be landing next week.



• The Haunted Pre-release 3.0
  The Haunted are sticking with UT3 for just a tad longer and have released a pre-3.0 version version of the mod. They’re aiming to get all of the final bugs ironed out before the full 3.0 version of the mod is submitted for the Make Something Unreal Grand Finals next week. After 3.0 the mod will be ported to the UDK version of the engine though they haven’t confirmed whether it’ll be commercial or free (unless I’ve missed something).

Feedback on GM’s series of news roundups is always greatly appreciated, particularly about the images this week.
If you’ve got news or views you want to share, post on the forums or email: david@gamesmodding.com

General

• ModDB Halloween Extravaganza!
  Dave from ModDB picked some spooky mods he thinks people may have missed to contrast last years community-voted list.
• Unity engine goes free for Indie developers
  The Unity Developer Engine has been made available for free to independent developers with versions for Windows, Mac and iPhone.

Battlefield 2

• Battlegroup Frontlines Update #72
  The World War 2 for Battlefield 2 mod’s team are showing off two new German vehicles as well as the fact they’ve created a YouTube account with videos about the mod (rather than just of it) which I very much approve of.

Half-Life

• Seven years of Natural Selection Interview
  Dave from ModDB features again, this time with an interview with Charlie from Unknown Worlds, who’re responsible for Natural Selection and its sequel.

Half-Life 2

• Insurgency Beta 2.5
  A new version of Insurgency is out with a lot of work put into ‘improving the visual quality of the mod’ as well as the usual fixes and tweaks you’d expect.
• Podcast 17 Transmission 17609 (#54)
  This week’s Podcast 17 episode is full of discussions about various updates.
• Zombie Panic! Source 2.0 Release and Competition Results
  The latest version of Zombie Panic! Source, featuring a sizeable change list, is now available via Steam. The team have also announced the winners of their Halloween prop modelling contest.

Unreal Tournament 2004

• Out of Hell Release
  For the past seven years one man (plus a soundtrack guy) has been working on a UT2004 mod, that mod is now out there in the wild. It looks great, especially for Unreal Engine 2, and features a fifteen level singleplayer campaign with ten weapons.

Unreal Tournament 3

• Warm Gun Sound Design Interview
  Warm Gun have an interview with their sound designer Steve Whetman and also have a download of a document/tutorial that managed to get him an industry job.

Feedback on GM’s series of news roundups is always greatly appreciated.
If you’ve got news or views you want to share, post on the forums or email: david@gamesmodding.com

General

• ModDB EU Download Servers
  ModDB have announced they are adding five new EU download servers, to be online in early November.
• ModDB ‘Groups’ Changes
  ModDB have changed their Groups system to make it easier to identify fan pages from developer ones. ‘Groups’ are fan groups while ‘Developers’ or ‘Companies’ are exactly that.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

• No Dedicated Servers or Modding Fiasco
  It was recently revealed that Modern Warfare 2 for PC would be using a matchmaking service instead of the usual server lists and that the game would not support mods. Over 158,000 unhappy people have signed a petition against the lack of dedicated servers though Infinity Ward have expressed that there’s no going back now.

Diablo III

• Leonard Boyarsky Interview
  Hellforge have grabbed an interview with Leonard Boyarsky, Lead World Designer for Diablo III and ‘one of the masterminds of the Fallout world’.

Half-Life 2

• NEOTOKYO° Update Release
  NEOTOKYO° have released some updates in the form of a client patch, server patch and an “SDK Lite” release with props for people to make their own maps for the mod.
• Podcast 17 Transmission C:17441
  In the 20th October episode of Podcast 17 there’s quite a lot of Left 4 Dead 2 discussion with Joe W-A of Shotgun Sunrise and the Fly Gabe Fund plus the usual release and media run-throughs.

Unreal Tournament 3

• The Making of CTF-Pipeline
  Bazzwano (Bryan Sparksman, a mapper with second, third and fifth place maps in the MSUC contest) has updated his ‘The Making of CTF-Pipeline thread at BeyondUnreal‘ which includes quite a few nice screenshots of the steps involved in creating various materials and meshes for the map and explanations about some of them.
• Sound and Music Tutorial Level
  billy.stupid has posted an interactive sound and music tutorial that was recently exhibited at the Audio Engineering Society convention in New York. As you walk around the environment you can watch various videos about Unreal Engine 3 audio/music use and game audio in general.
• Matinee Video Tutorials
  Recently micahpharoh posted on the Epic games forums about some tutorials aimed at machinima makers using Unreal Engine/Tournament 3, the twelve video series is here on YouTube and covers a number of things you can do with Matinee. Though they’re made with machinima in mind you can use Matinee to create cutscenes and to add various things like movement to your levels so they’re worth a watch if you’re not all-up on Matinee yet.

Feedback on GM’s series of news roundups would be greatly appreciated.
If you’ve got news you want to share, post on the forums or email: david@gamesmodding.com

Crysis

• Codename: Dead Bird Community Update #4
  After a two month period of running quiet the team have posted Community Update #4 showing off some nice character, weapon and environment media including an ingame video.

Half-Life 2

• Podcast 17 Transmission C:17183
  In the 12th October episode of Podcast 17 there’s the usual discussion features along with a (partly later retracted) seventeen minute rant about Randy Pitchford’s distrust of Steam and more importantly an interview with David and Michael of the Half-Life 2 mod Orion.
• Zombie Panic: Source v2.0 Information
  Zombie Panic: Source have posted a news update with screenshots of a new map, a new character, three new melee weapon models, a sneak-peak at an objective mode map, some music and a changelist for v2.0.

Red Alert 3

• Condition Red media updates
  The RA2 into 3D total conversion Condition Red has been releasing a steady stream of media for a while now, including a rather nice Soviet Battle Lab model, a few ingame screenshots showing buildings and terrain and the textured Grizzly Tank unit.

Star Wars: Jedi Academy

• Moviebattles II RC3 Patch 4 Release
  The Moviebattles II mod team have released a new update with a number of balancing tweaks and bug fixes along with some more significent changes.

Unreal Tournament 3

• Renegade-X 0.36 Patch
  The Renegade-X team have released a 0.35 > 0.36 incremental patch. Annoyingly you have to go to their ModDB news post to find out that the update includes two new maps (a straight remake of Hourglass and a modified version by the name of Horologe) as well as fifty-seven fixes, tweaks and changes.
• HyperBlast Weapon Pack Preview
  DrakeBD of the Hypergames2K8 team is showing off two of the weapon models from the HyperBlast weapons pack and has also named another five of the twenty weapons it will include. The District 9 Arc Rifle is particularly nice.
• Mapping tutorial released by HappyConscript
  HappyConscript has posted a tutorial on basic mapping for Unreal Tournament 3, aimed squarely at beginners.

Feedback on GM’s series of news roundups would be greatly appreciated.
If you’ve got news you want to share, post on the forums or email: david@gamesmodding.com

General

• Digital Distribution Summit
  “Presenting a series of hour long talks by industry veterans who discuss how much indies are earning with their Steam, PSN, XBOX and iPhone games. And how you can get your title onto these platforms and help it become a hit.”

Public Relations

• Wolfire’s PR Tips
  Wolfire has written a great article on his public relations strategy as applied to Overgrowth.

Coding

• Be the Man: Beginning Games Programming #1
  Ambershee has written an 8 page tutorial on programming, aimed at aspiring games programmers, who have never seen code before.

Half-Life 2

• Age of Chivalry update
  The Age of Chivalry team have unveiled some new weapons and released a hotfix to correct some bugs.
• CSS SCI FI 3: Hardwired
  PlanetPhillip has an early release of ‘CSS SCI FI 3: Hardwired‘, a mod in which you play missions set in the Half-Life universe, but using Counter-Strike: Source maps.
• Podcast 17, Transmission: 17015
  Transmission Code: 17015 is up, covering L4D, mod releases, media and more.

Halo 3

• How to Make a Good Infection Map
  WikiHow has a collection of tips and hints for making Infection maps.

Infinity

• Large Update
  Indie game Infinity has posted a large update, including info on a new tool: ASEToBin, which “allows contributors and artists to export their model from 3DS Max’s .ASE file format and to visualize and prepare the 3D model for integration into the game.

Steam

• Garry’s Mod Sale Stats
  Garry has released the sales figures for his mod-turned-retail ‘Garry’s Mod‘.

Unreal Tournament 3

• Make Something Unreal Contest Finalists
  The finalists for the Make Something Unreal Contest Phase 4 have been announced.
• New Hardcore Oldskool Low-Poly Map Pack release
  HOLP3 Volume 2 has been released.

Feedback on GM’s first news roundup would be great.
If you’ve got news you want to share, post on the forums or email: david@gamesmodding.com