Travis | Cheerful Ghost

Terraria Giveaway

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Hello Pickaxe Lovers,

Cheerful Ghost is back with a new contest! This month we wanted to do you a solid by giving you the chance to play the amazing game of Terraria. We will be hosting a Cheerful Ghost Terraria server for the duration of the contest and giving you extra chances to win the game.

There are three chances to win. The first is a SteamGifts giveaway, head over to SteamGifts to enter:
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/GRXPh/terraria

In addition, we’re giving away two copies on CheerfulGhost, one on Feb 10th and another on Feb 17th. To enter to win on Cheerful Ghost all you need to do is add Terraria to your games list and write about what you would like to do in the game and why you think it would be awesome. For instance, what you would like to build, craft, mine or even... KILL! We'll pick our favorite idea each week.

All Terraria lovers are invited to join us on our server which we’ll be hosting for the next three weeks. Server details here: http://cheerfulghost.com/panickedthumb/posts/957

Remember to have fun but be cool, Cheerful Ghost is a community of totally awesome people.

THE FINE PRINT:
* Make sure “Terraria Contest” is somewhere in the body of your post. No worries, we will find it but this will help.
* We are giving away one copy of Terraria on Steam Gifts and 2 copies on Cheerful Ghost to the first and second winner. The first winner will be chosen on Feb 10 at 5PM EST and the second on Feb 17 at 5PM EST.
* All posts to Cheerful Ghost center around games in your list SO your post must be for "Terraria" to be counted for the contest. Comments do not count.
* This contest is only for people who do not have Terraria, not to add something to add to your inventory for trading. We will check the winner's Steam inventory to check that the winner doesn't already own the game before giving it out.

* We rule on the side of fun in the case any problems arise.

For historians, our old contests:

http://cheerfulghost.com/panickedthumb/posts/781
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/485

Aliens: Colonial Marines trailer is just bad.

I loved the Aliens games back in the day, and I love Gearbox Software, so the pairing of the two leaves me really interested in this game. Even this terrible trailer can't change my mind.

The voice-over is so cheesy. It's like an 80's Army B-Movie. Mikey Neumann from Gearbox, the head writer of Colonial Marines (and the voice of Scooter... CATCH A RIIIIIIDE!) felt the need to publicly disown the dialogue.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/24/new-aliens-colonial-marines-trailer-heavy-on-the-colon/

But it's ok. A fan fix for the trailer was released. https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=H20QEkP-UOk

Evoland teaches you a history lesson

A game currently on Steam Greenlight is a trip through time. Starting with the monochrome pixelation of Game Boy games and moving into modern 3D, Evoland takes the player through the history of Zelda-style adventure games and Final Fantasy-style JRPGs. The video doesn't show nearly enough, but it would seem the developers really understand each era the game represents, and remember them as fondly as we do.

To vote for this blast of nostalgia on Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=122301377

The new Xbox is going to be EPIC, people!

Cheerful Ghost has received an insider tip from an anonymous Microsoft employee with some new info about Redmond’s next console offering. According to our insider leak Microsoft is working on a new console called “Xbox.” While this may lead to some confusion considering it shares a name with Microsoft’s first console, it makes sense as a brand, as you’ll see below, with the plans Microsoft has for it.

Xbox is not only going to be a console but a platform for future gaming devices, such as the X Surface. This will be a new gaming tablet, not running on standard Windows 8 or RT, but on a new gaming focused OS that has the familiar Metro interface, but powerful enough for console-level games. This will allow for more incremental upgrades as new X devices are released, making the Xbox a hub for all your gaming hardware.

“Microsoft is really pulling out all the stops and this console will be its biggest release to date” our source went on the record to say. “The Xbox will allow you to play games, listen to music and do what you love so much better than anything that came before it.” And with a CPU spec increase of 3X it leaves little to the imagination that this will be something special.

I’m sure consumers will jump at the chance to buy new devices year after year to play all the games coming out, and this is a perfectly reasonable choice for Microsoft after their tablets and Windows 8 have been so poorly received. And the confusing naming convention seems like a bad idea on the surface (no pun intended), but I’m sure Microsoft knows what they’re doing!

We will keep checking in for more in the coming days where we will report everything that gets sent to our inboxes, totally raw and unfiltered-- we don’t worry about little things like vetting our sources! Want to share some info about the new PS4 that has the processing power of IBM’s Watson supercomputer and is controlled exclusively with Donkey Kong Jungle Beat bongos? We’re ready to believe you!

For more info: http://x-surface.tumblr.com/

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/24/2013 at 02:52am

Looking forward to it being able to play music!

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 01/24/2013 at 09:32pm

Very cool, can't wait to learn more!

David_Woods wrote on 01/24/2013 at 11:05pm

Aaaaactually, this disappoints me. IMO the benefit of consoles in the past has been their focus. There's been a little deviation in the last generation in the form of their respective network offerings, with expanded media options, but their main focus hasn't deviated from being a game console. To hear "Xbox is not only going to be a console" sends shivers up my spine. It sounds like the business/enterprise side of MS is starting to infect the gaming division. I liked it better when they were separate.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/24/2013 at 11:10pm

David, please pay close attention to the last two paragraphs and read the source at the bottom of the page. I think you may have missed some important bits.

And congrats again, btw! Very happy for you.

David_Woods wrote on 01/25/2013 at 04:10am

Wow. LOL.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 01/25/2013 at 09:54pm

Don't worry D_W, I was fooled too, just didn't want to admit it lol

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The Elder Scrolls Online: New Trailer and Beta

Bethesda released a new epic trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online today, as well as opening a sign up page for the limited public beta.

I've been out of the MMO scene for a while, but I signed up. I'm interested in seeing what they can do with this. The lore aficionados are a little upset that this seems to go against established canon, but I'm not incredibly worried about that if the game is good.

The trailer is certainly pretty, some uncanny valley stuff in there to be sure, but it's all pre-rendered, no gameplay. The gameplay trailers have looked interesting, but not convincing one way or the other-- I'm just going to have to get my hands on it.

The sign up page can be found here: http://signup.elderscrollsonline.com/

Will_Owens wrote on 01/23/2013 at 11:29am

Although not a fan of MMORPGs or the newer Elder Scrolls games, I'm interested to see how they adapt the gameplay of being a one man army/savior for an entire province to a multiplayer environment. I'm sure it will have a lot of initial interest, but I see it going the way of the Star Wars online RPG.

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/24/2013 at 01:23am

I think its hard to compete with WoW. Lots of MMO'ers will try the latest "NOT WoW" game and then discard quickly because its not WoW. People say they want a "NOT WoW" game but continually discard games and head back to WoW.

The new thing for MMO's is have a time in the sun with the subscription model and quickly pivot to F2P. Not a bad road if you can make money there and eventually many MMO's would be epic after 10 years of development its just expectations are pretty high for games in that space.

jaelte wrote on 01/27/2013 at 08:39am

Well, I signed up. Now for the waiting game, I suppose. I haven't played any MMORPG in awhile, but I'm somewhat intrigued by this one.

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/27/2013 at 05:50pm

Its an interesting idea, but like @Will_Owens I am interested to see how they pull this off.

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Steam Guides: Player-created guides come to Steam

Steam now has a section for player-created tips and guides on the Community Hub. It's similar to what you might find at a site like GameFAQs. For example, here's one about how to find the Minecraft easter egg in Borderlands 2: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121138540

These guides are accessible in the Steam Overlay, which means that you'll be a little closer to your guides now. They seem a little more full-featured than GameFAQs' offerings as well.

For more: http://steamcommunity.com/guides

Skyrim: Dragonborn Feb 5 for PC, PS3 DLC coming!

http://cdnstatic.bethsoft.com/bethblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/dragonbornsony-2.jpg

On February 5, the Dragonborn DLC is coming to PC finally.

In bigger news, all three DLCs for Skyrim are coming to PS3 in February, each for 50% off in their first week!

Full story here: http://www.bethblog.com/2013/01/18/the-dragonborn-comes-in-february-and-hearthfire-dawnguard-too/

Rage: The Scorchers Giveaway!

Greetings Friends of the Ghost,

You may remember our Borderlands 2 Haiku Contest & Torchlight 2 contest from last year. The new year is upon us and its time to bring you the next best thing. I love Rage. Recently jdodson completed the new Rage expansion: The Scorchers and we want to share the love with all you awesome people. The game is beautiful and a really exciting addition to an already great game. A bit about what to expect with The Scorchers:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/899

We are giving away a copy on Steam Gifts as per usual to drop in one lucky person's Steam account on January 30th. No strings attached. Head over to SteamGifts to enter that contest:

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/5NstE/

To increase your chances to win we are pulling out the BFG. Add Rage to your game list here on Cheerful Ghost. Once it’s added to your list write a bit about your thoughts on Rage and what you thought about it. Want to share a picture of how you tricked out your Cuprino? Awesome. Want to post a story about playing Legends of the Wasteland with your friends? Rad.

We will choose one winner purely at random, assigning a numerical value to each entry and using random.org to determine the winner, and a second winner based on which name or story we like the most.

Remember to have fun but be cool, Cheerful Ghost is a community of totally awesome people.

THE FINE PRINT:
* Make sure “Rage Contest” is somewhere in the body of your post. No worries, we will find it but this will help.
* We are giving away one copy of Rage on Steam Gifts and 2 copies on Cheerful Ghost to the first and second winner. All winners will be chosen by January 30th at 2PM PST.
* All posts to Cheerful Ghost center around games in your list SO your post must be for "Rage" to be counted for the contest. Comments do not count.
* This contest is only for people who do not have Rage: The Scorchers, not to add something to add to your inventory for trading. We will check the winner's Steam inventory to check that the winner doesn't already own the game before giving it out.
* We rule on the side of fun in the case any problems arise.

For historians, our old contests:

http://cheerfulghost.com/panickedthumb/posts/781
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/485
www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/RaQNV/borderlands-2
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/9ev8Y/torchlight-ii

A piece of history resurfaces. Half-Life ALPHA!

Reddit user jackaljayzer recently posted a pic of his alpha disc from 97, which of course led to many requests for info, and eventually a request for a disc image. Since then he's ponied up the goods, and has put the disc on eBay. Currently the auction is up to $610!

Please note that the legality of this is a bit gray, and the morality is entirely up to you to decide.

Original post: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/15qgwr/national_treasures_hipster_grandpa_you_probably/
Follow-up: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1665n3/update_finally_got_a_copy_of_that_half_life_alpha
eBay auction: http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-WORKING-CD-Half-Life-Alpha-Version-9-8-97-NO-RESERVE-/110998722321?

Will_Owens wrote on 01/12/2013 at 02:07am

I forgot that this is pretty much what the game looked like when I first played it. I got a Voodoo2 graphics card just for Half Life!

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/12/2013 at 02:42am

Its a piece of gaming history and unless he signed something giving away ownership rights to the disc or something, its his property. Unless I don't understand something about ownership in this particular case.

As I watch this video I realize how artifacty games were then and how much it doesn't bother me at all in this case. The game is immersive at this point and you can even see some Portalish level designs or flavor in places.

Glad the game evolved to what it is, but this is awesome and seeing this kind of history is really quite interesting.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/12/2013 at 03:51am

Jon, in terms of ownership, the disc itself I'd totally agree with you, but the download link is different. A 1997 press-eyes-only disc for an alpha of a game that's long been released that almost everyone owns is still intellectual property, but I doubt there's much of an impetus from Valve to want this stopped. It's not like trade secrets are going to escape or anything.

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/12/2013 at 05:16pm

Good point. I still think this should be out there for people to experience. Sold? Less interested that, more interested in people getting the history of it :D

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/13/2013 at 05:05am

My thoughts as well! I haven't fired it up yet, but I hope to soon.

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The Verge interview with Gabe Newell

Gabe did an interview with The Verge recently about the Steam console, Steambox, Piston, Bigfoot, whatever you want to call it. Read it here:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852144/gabe-newell-interview-steam-box-future-of-gaming

It's an interesting read, and the fact that they're building this platform, this paradigm, that anyone can pull from makes me very happy. Hopefully the fact that anyone can make a Steam "console" doesn't muddy the waters. It's one thing that has held Linux back, the confusing variety, but if Valve can pull this off it may change the way we game in some significant ways.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/09/2013 at 01:53pm

Tungsten, looks like quickmeme blocks sharing like that with a transparent gif overlay.

SignalWarden wrote on 01/09/2013 at 08:35pm

I think as long as the variety exists in the hardware and not the software/UI it shouldn't be an issue. It would basically be following the Android model, which works quite well. In my opinion market competition can only be good in cases like this.

Tungsten wrote on 01/10/2013 at 01:43am

http://imgur.com/UU2dM

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/10/2013 at 01:58am

Much better! And I agree! :)

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/10/2013 at 01:58am

This is a great interview, thanks for posting. I have been reading a lot of "ho hum" and opinions that seem to think this is a mistake Valve is making. I will put some of my chips firmly in the "this will be a game changer" bucket. I know, I should be cynical but I am not, this is what I want, so like Tungsten I am excited.

SignalWarden wrote on 01/10/2013 at 05:27pm

I'm not going to lie. I hate corporations and consider them my enemy. Google won't charm me and I'll never have both a Coke AND a smile. But I'll say this... Valve totally won me over. I want to have Valve over for dinner and I'd totally watch Valve's dog while their away. I can't envision Valve making a move that is not a sound one. I'm stoked for this and if it were a single company trying to make a Steam box, I'd think, "This won't work" but if you fill the market with options, people will take notice and it will become successful. I'm very excited to see how this all pans out.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/10/2013 at 06:41pm

"I want to have Valve over for dinner and I'd totally watch Valve's dog while their away."

This was almost poetic. I love it. I'm right there with you, they won me over. I know many felt about Steam in the beginning the way a lot of people feel about Origin now, but they've come around in a major way.

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/11/2013 at 01:28am

I didn't do much with Steam earlier, not because I thought Valve was evil, but because buying the physical pressed game disc was often cheaper. Now thats really not the case and I jumped pretty far into Valve's ecosystem since.

Tungsten wrote on 01/11/2013 at 02:01am

I like the interview because it wasn't "Hey, look how great our new technology is! You are going to love it!" (I'm looking at you WiiU)

Instead it was: "We are going to give you what you want. If it sucks, we're not making it"

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/11/2013 at 02:48am

They are a pretty cool company that way. Thinking of customers above anything else is a great way to approach stuff. One could say much about Valve but they really give a shit about doing the right thing by people.

Tungsten wrote on 01/11/2013 at 10:49pm

I got a lot of great feedback about Valve in my interview with Zach Barth... now if I can just get around to transcribing it.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/12/2013 at 01:26am

You interviewed Zach Barth? You gotta transcribe! That sounds interesting.

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/12/2013 at 02:10am

beansmyname Supporter wrote on 01/12/2013 at 04:40am

Is anyone else running the Steam beta in Linux yet? Steam is the only reason I still have Windows on my laptop and it's a touch disheartening to see some games performing better in Windows 8 than they do in Linux. However, Valve has helped advance the driver support for video cards by working directly with the vendors, so I am confident the kinks will get worked out by the time they release the actual Steambox.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/12/2013 at 04:50am

To Microsoft's credit, games perform better for me in Windows 8 than in Windows 7.

But you're right, games don't run as smoothly yet. I haven't tried TF2, and there aren't any other Valve games available yet, but from what they say Left 4 Dead 2 runs better in Linux than in Windows. There are a few things at play here. You have the Linux desktop model which is a bit flawed, drivers that aren't optimal, and developers who are less invested in getting the Linux version up to snuff. It's going to be a bit of a process but having been in the beta for a while I can tell things are getting better, slowly.

But bean, I have one suggestion for you, or rather, one set of suggestions. First, what video card and desktop environment are you using in Linux? There are a few optimizations that can make worlds of difference.

beansmyname Supporter wrote on 01/12/2013 at 05:17am

E17 on ArchLinux, Intel HD 3000 (the bare minimum for the beta spec), Core i3, 4GB of RAM I know! It's hardly worth calling it a gaming rig. My desktop, which had MUCH better specs, died and I needed a replacement computer...not just for gaming.

L4D2 isn't yet available in the Linux beta. Sad, because that one runs real well on this hardware in Windows, which is one of the reasons I signed up for the beta. I had an empirical baseline for performance.

I haven't tried TF2 in a couple of weeks and I was running XFCE before switching to the lighter Enlightenment 17. In Windows, framerate is low, but playable. In Linux, not close.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/12/2013 at 06:29am

OK well, that negates my advice. Unless there's a way in E17 to turn off desktop compositing when full screen apps are in use. I can't remember if it uses compiz or something else for its compositing. And my other suggestion was a setting in nvidia-settings, so that's worthless as well. I tried! :)

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/12/2013 at 05:19pm

I am running Steam on Linux and opened Tf2 and it seemed fine to me. I have a reasonably powerful Desktop with an Nvidia card. So far, I think the biggest detractor is the lack of available games but over the next bit that should change.

Since I do CG development on Linux I had to run Steam using Wine to chat with people while I was developing. So for my primary use on Linux, which is to talk to other people, it works great :D

SignalWarden wrote on 01/12/2013 at 07:59pm

I am running it on Linux just for chatting as well. I haven't even bothered with any games because I know it's not going to be ready for some time. I feel like it would be a waste of time to adopt it as a serious platform just yet. For me personally anyhow.

beansmyname Supporter wrote on 01/13/2013 at 01:20am

E17 has an option to disable compositing on fullscreen windows. Already taken care of. :) I know that part of it is also my very low-end integrated graphics card. When L4D2 becomes available, I'll give that a shot. Until then, I'm hoping more of the Humble Bundle titles get added. Bastion and Binding of Isaac, to name a couple.

I have yet to actually try the voice chat in Steam but I'm glad to hear that works well!

jdodson Admin wrote on 01/13/2013 at 07:22pm

Hoping for all the Bundle Linux ports to come to Steam for sure! L4D would be awesome and if companies like iD that have Linux ports would submit them would be awesome too. Lots of Linux ports just need to be added to Steam of existing titles.

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Travis4

547 Posts

Terraria Giveaway

Aliens: Colonial Marines trailer is just bad.

Evoland teaches you a history lesson

The new Xbox is going to be EPIC, people!

The Elder Scrolls Online: New Trailer and Beta

Steam Guides: Player-created guides come to Steam

Skyrim: Dragonborn Feb 5 for PC, PS3 DLC coming!

Rage: The Scorchers Giveaway!

A piece of history resurfaces. Half-Life ALPHA!

The Verge interview with Gabe Newell