Mercenary Kings is a neat looking Metal Slug styled shooter that was funded on Kickstart last year I totally missed. The game is being made by Tribute, the awesome team that brought us Wizorb and is currently in the closed Steam beta for Kickstarter backers.

The video above shows off the shooting, missions and crafting that makes Mercenary Kings unique. The game also boasts 4 player local co-op something I plan on trying out with my friends.

If you played Metal Slug in the arcade, like me, you might love this franchise. The last new Metal Slug was in 2009 and it seems that now its just re-released on systems in various forms. I picked it up the Metal Slug anthology on the Wii and whereas the games are awesome, the translation and controls were not. Getting a __GREAT__ version of this awesome style of game on PC is very interesting to me.

According to Tribute, the game will initially come to PC followed by a Mac and Ouya port. They did say that a Linux port is possible and would be released on Steam if it was made.

When a formal release date is announced, I will let you know.

I am very happy to be able to bring you the totally new and completely awesome new Cheerful Ghost Events! Cheerful Ghost Events is a system designed to make it easy to schedule games with your friends by:

• Magically translating all events to your local time. Even if your friends live in Hong Kong and you live in Portland the event will show up translated for your local time.


• Some online games allow 30 people to join, some are 1 on 1. We let you specify how many people can join your events and also show you how many spots are open for events you want to join.


• After you create or join an event you can easily add it to your Smartphone or Google Calendar for a reminder.


• After you join or create an event, you can talk with everyone else about it up to the time it happens and afterward!

But don't take my word for it, check it out and join an event!

http://cheerfulghost.com/events

Funny, but a very defective mine. Well defective looney tune style.

After Microsoft's XBox One reveal, it seems Sony is pushing the Playstation 4 efforts in a very different direction. Sony released a interview with indie developer Jonathan Blow(of the Braid fame) about his new game that will debut on the Playstation 4 called The Witness. Instead of focusing on TV, movies and sports, Sony seems to be focusing on games and indie developers.

Still unsure if I will pickup a Playstation 4, but so far Sony is pushing this a bit closer to my style.

In the video Jonathan talks about being an indie developer and that he can pick what games he wants to create. He talks a bit about The Witness and there is some video showing it off. Whenever I see the game I can help but think of Myst.

iD Software is really forward thinking tech company in that it releases the source code for its older game engines and level tools. Don't take my word for it, check out the code they have released on github.

https://github.com/id-Software

This kind of thing should be applauded because when game companies release the source to their games it means that the odds you will be able to play the games you love in the future is pretty good. Plus its awesome to play a game you love on any platform you want. Its also a great way to learn how a top notch game engine operates.

Intro Fabien Sandlard a guy with an awesome hobby, he looks at released game source and blogs about it. Fabien has reviewed Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 3, The Original Doom 3, Doom & the Wolfenstein iPhone port code and more.

Recently he looked at the source for Doom 3: BFG Edition. Doom 3: BFG Edition is interesting because iD back-ported code from Rage into Doom 3: BFG Edition. They also had to get Doom and Doom 2 running inside the Doom 3 code itself, which is an interesting technical feat. The article is pretty interesting and seems accessible to non-programmers(full disclosure, I am in fact a programmer).

A cool bit I found Fabien's article:

"Overall the reader gets an immediate understanding of each part of an algorithm and I hope it will inspire people to write better code: Modern software development is not about being an ace programmers anymore. It is about being a team player that empowers co-workers with: Elegant design. Easy to read and commented code implementing it. Doom 3 BFG ranks high on both those metrics. "

Fabien is spot on here. Wizardy in code is all well and good, but writing good code anyone can understand and maintain is much better when you work on a team.

http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3_bfg/index.php

A.N.N.E. the awesome new 2D metroidvania Kickstarter was recently funded and the games creator shared his excitement in the video above. Awesome to see the game to drop early next year and for more information check out my interview with the games creator, below.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1272

Blizzard will be releasing a new Diablo III graphic novel "Sword of Justice" next month. Written by Aaron Williams and art by Joseph Lacroix this will be a pretty nice addition to your Diablo collection of awesomery.

http://us.battle.net//d3/en/blog/9762740

New Humble Weekly Bundle dropped today featuring Alan Wake. More reasons to pay what you want for games you might want to try.

http://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

demilogic posted a new video update on Terraria 1.2 showing off smooth walking, new house roofs, armor, rock launchers, waterfalls, in game music, painting and more. The video also shows up the new in game mini-map.

"Preview for the slopehalfblockwaterfallpaintrocketlauche­romgwhatisthatthingeater'sbone 1.2 update. Also there is a minimap. The update is far from done, we are aiming for a July release. Thank you for your patience and continued support."

I will be running a Cheerful Ghost Terraria server when the 1.2 update drops in July so stay tuned!

comment sharing

After Travis posted about the new XBox One I commented in that post and realized I wanted to share the comment on Twitter. I didn't want to make up a post and then share that, I just wanted to share the comment in Travis post. So this evening I added a share button to the comments that allow anyone to get a URL that links back to any post comment. This lets you share any comment on the site you find useful. I have read some really epic comments on Slashdot and Reddit I have linked to and this allows you to do the same. But don't take my word for it, head into an active comment stream and check it out.

new event system - coming soon

For quite some time people have told me they want it to be easier to play games with the Cheerful Ghost community. In the past, someone had to create a post and then people commented if they wanted to play. When the time came to play, sometimes people forgot or didn't join in because of timezone strangeness. Needless to say, it works for some but its not awesome.

For the last month I have been working on an awesome new system for Cheerful Ghost to schedule gaming events with the community. The new Event section will allow anyone on the site to join and create events easily on the site.

If you want to schedule a session of Left 4 Dead on Steam Saturday @ 1pm you will easily be able to do that. Since we all live all over the world the new event system will automagically translate the event times for you. So if I create an event in Portland with a start time of 1PM, when Travis looks at the event in New York he will see 4PM. It doesn't matter where you live, Cheerful Ghost will automagically translate the event time for you to your timezone.

Left 4 Dead 2 only supports 4 players so the new event system has a mechanism to hard limit the amount of people that can join if you say it should.

Events in many ways act like posts and as such after you create your event you can comment in it and share it easily on Twitter, Facebook & Google+.

I am pretty busy and as such use my calendar to schedule my life. Once you join an event you can easily add it to your Smartphone, Desktop or Google Calendar. This is a really hot feature and I just added it this evening. Its so magic seeing the event get added to your iPhone calendar :D

I am still in deep development on this but its already working well. I plan on doing a soft beta launch very soon and plan on releasing a teaser video in the next few days so keep a look out for the new goodness.

Been following all the posted development activity for Starbound over the last few weeks and wanted to bubble some up to your attention. One feature I thought was interesting is that they are adding in game 3D printing. Its an interesting feature and ill have them describe it for you.

"We’re also working on the 3D printing interface, which is very similar to the crafting interface but you’re also able to “scan in” items to reverse engineer them. Almost any object you find in the world can be scanned/reverse engineered to allow you to print it using ‘pixels’. However, anything you make with a 3D printer will be marked as “printed” and will have a much lower value. If you want authentic gear you’ll have to find it."

I am not sure if that means the item will be usable, so if you print a gun you get a usable gun but this would be awesome if just for placable items. They have also put in support for speech bubbles and made the space travel a bit nicer on the eyes(video above).

They are keeping some stuff under wraps, which is pretty fun. As always, when there is talk of a beta or release date you will be the first to know.

http://playstarbound.com/17th-may-progress
http://playstarbound.com/20th-may-progress/

I think I may post every time Steam has a sale on all the Unreal games because I love them so. This one also has the added benefit of being cheaper than I have ever seen.

Nab all the Unreal games for $10. Offer ends may 27th.

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/683/

Seriously, do yourself a favor and frag with one of the most fun tournament shooters around!