General Discussion [ Page 77 ]

It's not gaming but...

I've tooled around with Blender before, but I've left it alone for about 6 months now.

Enter Cycles

Cycles is Blender's new renderer and I must say that it is a thing of beauty. It's fast, it's practical, and, most of all, it makes lighting and materials make sense, something that has been a major hurdle in my modeling hobby. Oh, and the near real time renders (for small resolutions) help tremendously.

The image I've attached took about 20 minutes to model (and I'm really bad), but the real key is that the lighting and materials took about 2min.

For someone who actually knows what they're doing see: http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/introduction-to-cycles/

Hunting For Steam Game Easter Eggs

The other day I wondered what hidden bits of rad one would find by looking through the files Steam installs for the games I played. What I found was pretty interesting as some games install some cool files and stuff they don't advertise. Understand that all I did to find this information was click around in in my Steam games folder for this information. I recommend you do the same and post your findings to this post or make your own post about it.

Together lets find all the awesome stuff in our Steam games.

But first the steps to finding Steam game Easter Eggs:

Open Steam

Go to your game Library

Right click on a game and select Properties

Select the LOCAL FILES tab

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A Glimpse Into The Future of Next Gen Consoles

One of my friends on Twitter @groveronline asked me what I thought of a recent Reddit post by KR4T0S, an industry insider with some knowledge of the next generation console hardware. Its a really interesting read and I recommend you check it out.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/16tttt/orbis_unmasked_what_to_expect_from_the_nextgen/c7zfgtg

I want to respond to a few points he brings up:

"If both the 720 and PS4 are running AMD CPU's then that is a revolution, what that means is every developer working on consoles and PC will have a grip on the architecture of all three platforms. The 720 is a Windows PC, the PS4 is a Linux PC. I was wondering how Valve were going to... Read All

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

The Game Chasers Sin City Shenanigans Part 1.

Found an interesting YouTube series called Game Chasers. It is a reality TV style show of a couple of dudes that hunt down awesome Retro Styled games and systems.

Let me know what you think of it, I find these kinds of video game shows really interesting.

Dat Firehose: Free Bundle & Doom Gangnam Style

If you had a problem with The Humble Bundle costing money now there is a solution in The Free Bundle. Right now The Free Bundle is collecting a few interesting Indie games such as Nitronic Rush, Ascension, Celestial Mechanica, Imscared & Abobo Big's Adventure.

http://www.thefreebundle.com/

This week in GoG, a weekly YouTube short showcases what was released and other GoG awesomery. This episode features Cultures 1+2 release, Kings Bounty Crosswords GoTY & more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXfP9VJl0BQ

To showcase what is possible with the new HTML5 Cavas technology some enterprising souls wired up Doom 3 and Gangnam Style. The Demons dancing does seem quite... Read All

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang

Recently I watched a neat documentary called "Minecraft: The Story of Mojang." Essentially its a documentary that follows the rise of Minecraft and chronicles the journey. Notch, the owner/original developer of Minecraft is featured heavily as are other employees as they join Mojang. The documentary features other notable gaming luminaries musings about Minecraft such as Peter Molyneux and Tim Schafer.

The documentary is tonally similar to Indie Game: The Movie in how its shot. I was completely engrossed in the film start to finish and to me the movie didn't suffer from any pacing problems.

The creators of the film are employing a pretty interesting distribution model.... Read All

NES Complex Demonstrates Universal Game Cases

Just found an awesome how-to video by NESComplex on creating universal cases for your NES Collection. He goes over design, to print to how to construct the cases for your NES library.

"In this update video I demonstrate the storage system I use for many of my NES games: Universal Game Cases UGC and printed box art covers from www.thecoverproject.net. I show how to print them from PowerPoint, and modify the game cases for NES games using a multi tool. I also address using DS Cases for GBA games and the problem with doing this if you live outside the states. If you know of any websites abroad, let me know and I'll add them to the description! I hope it helps!"

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Quickplay of The Journey Down

I had a lot of fun playing this game. It's just plain fun. And unlike almost every point and click adventure of late there is no boogeyman and my character remembers who they are...

Dat Firehose: Valve Bits & BL2 Golden Keys

Valve posted that Linux client usage is already at 0.8% where Mac client usage rose to 3.7%. Wonder how these numbers will change as more games are ported to Mac and Linux?

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

To celebrate the awards Borderlands 2 won in 2012 2k is handing out 5 golden keys to everyone. Remember to use your keys as you seem to max out at 10!

http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/community/articles/983/awards-and-celebrations

According to a recent interview with Gabe Newell, some developers are earning as much as 500k per year adding content to the Steam Workshop. This just in, I am considering switching my career to "digital hatter."

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