Totally excited for this new Rage expansion and the official press drop illustrates why:

"Battle an all-new maniacal bandit clan, wreak havoc with new brutally efficient weapons and explore undiscovered areas in RAGE’s new official add-on pack, RAGE: The Scorchers™. Fight alongside new allies to thwart the Scorcher clan’s deadly plot to destroy the Wasteland.

The add-on pack also includes ‘Ultra-Nightmare’, a new high difficulty mode, as well as an ‘Extended Play’ option that allows you to play past the original ending of the game - giving you the opportunity to finish collecting items and achievements."

I appreciate the Extended Play option as it allows you to circle back and complete aspects of the game you missed during your main play through. I slated to go back after I completed the main story and take a swing at all the races but at the end of the game they locked that down and I didn't want to create a new game just to complete those races.

Rage is very pretty and these screen grabs are no exception! I look forward to the beautiful new shooting and looting. OR SHOULD THAT BE SHOOTIN' AND LOOTIN'?

http://bethsoft.com/en-us/games/scorchers
http://www.bethblog.com/2012/12/14/rage-dlc-arrives-tuesday-on-ps3-360-and-pc/

Oh right, the new pack drops this Tuesday on Steam and consoles.

The latest Starcrafts Episode is a promo for the North American Starcraft League. As I was watching the video on the YouTube page I noticed this comment:

"Why did the Infestor fall down the stairs?

because its imbalanced"

ZING! :D Good one Fenix855!

One of the grand daddies of MMO's, Everquest went free to play. It was the first video game I heard tethered to the idea of video game addiction. It was also the first game that, according to rumor caused the end to many relationships as one partner spent so much time playing Everquest the relationship flew apart at the seams. Whereas I had no known proof of this, the stories seemed real enough. It was also coupled with a new concept to me that people could spend "too much" time playing video games. I sort of dismiss that sort of notion now as digital life is all encompassing and one can spend the same if not more time simply reading news articles, looking at Facebook or a Smartphone.

That said, my first throws with this game was largely from a negative "this game will suck your life from your bones" perspective. Needless to say, I totally wanted to lose my life to it, I just never got the opportunity. One reason for that was at the time my wife and I were quite poor and we had no money for the subscription. I was able to flirt with disaster a few times though and I loved every second of it.

I was able to play it a bit over at a friends house that played religiously. He let me create a character and I picked an Elf Necromancer. I remember summoning my pet from bones I collected from killing Skeletons and then hoarding more bones to sell to other players in a stack. Doing those simple things in the game were so awesome and I badly wanted to join the ranks of Everquest players, but it wasn't meant to be. I took out my Everquest angst on Telnet MUD's and spent many an hour huddled around my screen slaying creatures and leveling up in a text based world.

The last few years I have hoped Sony would release Everquest as a Free to Play game and recently noticed my wish came true. The details of how that works are on the Everquest site.

http://www.everquest.com/free

I created a Gnome Wizard and eagerly started the game. Right away I noticed a few things I hadn't before. Early on, there was a bit of BBS / Internet drama about Everquest stealing from MUDs. Some people accused Sony of stealing code from MUDs to make Everquest. I never really understood the argument, Everquest is a 3D game and MUDs are all text. As I played the game now I notice Everquest does draw heavily from MUD's and as such requires much more typing than any new MMO. A staple of modern RPG's / MMO's is to click a NPC to initiate dialog. In Everquest you must type "Hail" and click. Then you have to read the dialog and parse out words you can use to continue the conversation. As I realized these mechanics were central to the game, I remembered the old calls of Everquest "borrowing" from MUD's and the argument made more sense to me.... 13 years later... Not saying Sony actually stole anything, but I understand the argument better now.

That all said, if you have never played Everquest or wanted to come back to it after being years apart now is a great time to do that. It is available from download from the Everquest site and is a new entry in Steam under Free to Play.

Was able to talk to the 0 A.D. project, something I have wanted to do for some time. 0 A.D. touts itself as "A free, open-source game of ancient warfare" and has been in development since 2001. Its totally free and available for download at the site right now:

http://play0ad.com/

jdodson: I have been tracking the progress of 0 A.D. for years! I think Age of Empires II, beyond some balancing is practically a perfect game. It sucks because it is really broken on modern Windows now. Getting an entirely free software version of this kind of game that can be modified by anyone and updated for modern systems interests me. I view Free Software as preserving culture. Its easy to see in cases like Doom where the source is available and it has a life well beyond its early years. This isn't so much a question as a thank you for doing what you do, its really important work.

Aviv: Thanks, we really appreciate it. We think of 0 A.D. as something that anyone can tinker with and add to, and your insightful comment shows that future-proofing may be one consequence. Indeed, there's something to be said about FOSS's ability to endure over time.

jdodson: I understand you get this often, that said when you do guys expect to release 1.0? :D

Aviv: It is very hard to predict. We are currently revising the game design and setting aside money to support paid development to make sure we can complete it soon. We will keep everyone posted on developments as soon as matters are finalized.

jdodson: When you look at 0 A.D. now I wonder what you are most proud of?

Aviv: We are proud of attracting a global fan base of thousands of people, often from different online communities, from classic RTS game aficionados to FOSS and GNU/Linux enthusiasts. We love the comments we get, like, "It's like Empire Earth, Age of Empires, and Rise of Nations had a baby and it came out free!" and "This can't be open source. It rocks too much!" We hope to live up to these expectations and ship a complete game ASAP.

jdodson: How many people work on 0 A.D. right now? What do they all do for the project?

Aviv: It varies over time. Usually there are about twenty official members of the team, doing everything from drawing portraits of ancient Persian kings to programmers teaching the AI how to rush human opponents. Contributors from outside the team also range from musicians playing the flute and drums to artists making 3D models of Mauryan buildings. Over time, the cumulative number of people who have contributed to 0 A.D. easily grew into the hundreds.

jdodson: What's the funnest game of 0 A.D. you played? What did you learn from that match?

Aviv: Once we played a match and one player was seeing a state of the map that was totally out of sync with the other players. He thought he was doing quite well, but on everyone else's screens he was being totally destroyed. On other occasions, we learned we needed to improve the in-game chat interface, we made many balancing changes etc.

jdodson: As development of 0 A.D. has progressed, I wonder if playing a game along the way evolved 0 A.D. development in some way?

Aviv: The big influence, of course, was Ensemble Studio's Age of Empires series, specifically Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings. We want to imitate some of the gameplay of the medieval-themed AoE2 in an ancient setting, like the original AoE was set in, and with improved graphics. Many of our members and fans remember those games fondly, and the classic RTS gameplay and historical focus of the series is something we'd like to capture with 0 A.D. A tall order, we admit. Other influences come from Creative Assembly's hardcore Total War series, Stainless Steel's classic Rise of Nations (like the territory system), and Activision's dynamic The Battle for Middle Earth franchise. Other concepts in 0 A.D., like ranks, heroes and our technology tree, derive from games like Generals, Warcraft III and Civilization, respectively.

jdodson: What feature of Age of Empires or the like did you want to keep out of 0 A.D.? Something you felt could be better?

Aviv: The original Age of Empires games were excellent, so there weren't so much features we wanted to leave out as much as features we wanted to add, like the citizen-soldier concept, batch training and the technology trade-offs. We have also paid meticulous attention to historical authenticity and given each faction unique building designs and many unique units. Other planned features that build upon the AoE series, some of which were implemented in other RTSs, are: capturing buildings, formations with combat bonuses, running/charging, real ship movements, and concealment/ambushing.

jdodson: I wonder if you could highlight some of the tech behind 0 A.D.?

Aviv: We have our custom engine, Pyrogenesis, built in C++ on top of certain libraries (OpenGL, OpenAL, ENet, SDL, SpiderMonkey, FCollada, wxWidgets, Vorbis, CxxTest, Boost, libxml2, libjpg, libpng, zlib, ...). Scripts are written in JavaScript. The 3d models and animations can be created in any software, as long as it can export COLLADA files (.DAE). This includes Blender, 3DS Max, and others.

jdodson: Wildfire Games released Rome at War mod for Age of Empires II: The Conquerors. Is this actively maintained now? How many people from that project are still with Wildfire Games?

Aviv: Rome at War is not maintained anymore, but it was recently packaged as part of the Age of Empires II: Forgotten Empires mod. The only contributor left from those days is Jason Bishop (Wijitmaker), who handles finances and pops in on the forums every now and then, as an adviser and a go-to person for those questions only an old-timer could answer.

jdodson: Wildfire Games was also working on The Last Alliance a game set in Tolkien's Universe. Did any of the work make it to 0 A.D.? Do you anticipate this work might make it to a 0 A.D. mod?

Aviv: TLA was an idea that was born at about the same time as 0 A.D., but was abandoned over time. After the mid-00's we put it informally "on hold" and forgot about it. This September we got around to formally announcing that the development of TLA would be discontinued until further notice. (We also announced that original content created during the design of TLA would be preserved as a cultural asset for Tolkien devotees, and as inspiration for those interested in fantasy mods and games.)

We do hope people make fantasy and other mods for 0 A.D. in the future, though. We also advise modders to make sure they draw on original settings, civilizations, stories etc. This is the best approach to avoid infringing on other people's intellectual property. (Thankfully for 0 A.D., nobody can claim copyright for ancient history!)

jdodson: As you are making progress on the project to the eventual 1.0 I wonder what you guys need? Developers, donations, testers?

Aviv: We're glad you asked that, because we're always looking for new contributors to join 0 A.D. and help promote the game to a more complete state. We are always seeking new programmers in all fields of programming, from low-level code to AI and random map scripts and higher-level programming. We are always looking for graphic artists, both 2D, and textures, and user interface, and also 3D models and animation. We're looking for people to help us organize the development, document it, manage contributions in sound, and many more openings.

jdodson: 0 A.D. launches and is well received. What's next for Wildfire Games?

Aviv: Probably some patches, and also starting to design an expansion pack with new civilizations spanning 1 A.D. - 500 A.D., new gameplay features that didn't make the cut for version 1.0, and more.

jdodson: When the game is launched have you considered Greenlighting it on Steam?

Aviv: It's definitely an option. As soon as we feel comfortable marketing 0 A.D. as a finished game, we'll look into all sorts of new distribution methods. That is still a little far off.

jdodson: What are some other Free Software projects you guys really respect?

Aviv: Blender has been a huge help for 0 A.D. art development in recent years. We also use GIMP and Tortoise SVN, and I am typing this on Notepad++. Also, OpenAL Soft have been very responsive to our bug reports.

jdodson: What games are you guys playing right now?

Aviv: First, of course, we are playing 0 A.D. Alpha 12, due in just a few days, to test for any bugs. Some of us are also playing games from the Total War series, etc.

jdodson: Do you want to believe in the Loch Ness Monster?

Aviv: It would be interesting if what people saw was actually a relic of an ancient civilization in Loch Ness.

This cartoon totally nails how I felt going to Toys R Us to get a Nintendo game. Walking down the aisle, looking at all the boxes and picking that one game I obsessed over until my next birthday.

Thanks Mom!

Image from Zac Gormans Blog:
http://tmblr.co/ZyT1fxZ9x9_j

In this episode of that wacky Game Shop, the gang play a game very similar to Minecraft together. It uses a pretty cool four player split-screen that works really well for the episode.

"Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition, the legendary FPS in which the Earth's greatest hero provides a steady flow of bullets and badass one-liners, is available on GOG.com, for the low price of one smile, for the next 48 hours. That's not all. For the first time in history, this supreme space-alien slaughter simulation is also available on Mac!"

Duke Nukem 3D Free and now on Mac? Awesome. Best head over to GoG and nab this game before the clock runs out. Never played any Duke games personally so here is my chance to redeem myself!

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/duke_nukem_3d_atomic_edition

Looks like Blizzard is experimenting with Diablo 3 on consoles. No official plans yet they are getting it working.

http://www.polygon.com/2012/12/10/3752536/diablo-3-running-on-consoles-still-not-an-official-blizzard-project

Riot Games, the makers of League of Legends is now dealing with "big data" and how to scale that to millions of users. As a programmer I find this sort of thing interesting.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/12/08/207248/for-league-of-legends-creator-riot-games-big-data-is-serious-business

Valve wants to get DoTA 2 running on tablets but it looks like the current offerings are not hefty enough to power DoTA 2.

http://kotaku.com/5967051/valve-wants-to-get-dota-2-running-on-tablets

A pretty interesting game Eador Genesis was recently launched on GoG. Looks like a good game for people that love turn base strategy games.

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/eador_genesis

This weekend I made my way to the Mall for a bit of Holiday gift retrieval. As I made my way through the morass of Holiday Shopping Victims I noticed a Wii U Kiosk. I navigated my way through the Horde and spent some time watching kids play and asked the attendants some questions about some of the games.

One thing I took away from checking out the Wii U is that the games are very pretty. The New Super Mario Brothers Wii U & Scribblenauts HD look stunning.

One game stood out to me as a pretty fun example of the new Wii U tablet style controller was Nintendo Land. Nintendo Land is essentially a set of Wii style party games similar in tone to Wii Play & Wii Sports. The rep. was alternating between two Nintendo Land games: Mario Chase and The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest.

Mario Chase is a game where one Mii takes the role of Mario with the Wii U Tablet Controller. The Mario player's screen and game is controlled entirely on the Wii U tablet while the other 4 Mii's dressed like Toad use the Wiimotes to try and catch Mario. So it seems certain games on the Wii U can support 5 players! The interesting thing watching the game was the integration Nintendo gave for Mario Chase. Only 3 kids were playing with Wiimotes so the 4th split screen box was showing the web cam of the kid holding the Wii U tablet, I snapped a pic showing it off here:

http://i.imgur.com/HCwME.jpg (Three kids with Wiimotes chasing the kid with the Wii U Tablet)

The other game they showed from Nintendo Land was The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest. This was essentially Zelda Four Swords with Wiimotes. Looked like quite a bit of fun.

http://i.imgur.com/pu2sq.jpg

I asked the rep. if I could transfer my old Wii saves to the Wii U and she said I could. I sort of threw this question out expecting her to say no so I was surprised to learn you can do it. For me, this increases the chance I might upgrade to the Wii U. I wonder if Sony and Microsoft's next generation console will allow this?

http://www.nintendofuse.com/2012/11/20/wii-to-wii-u-system-transfer/

A few images from the experience:

A Wii U Kisok Panel: http://i.imgur.com/LHZ8O.jpg
Mario Chase Overmap: http://i.imgur.com/yM1kW.jpg
Mario Chase Starting: http://i.imgur.com/6sf4t.jpg
Apparently Nintendo Uses Mac: http://i.imgur.com/6hiWU.jpg

Like many of you, when my Holiday time off comes around I plan on playing some games. Minecraft will no doubt be played and it seems that Mojang will be updating it so you can ring in the New Year Minecraft Style.... Minecraft Style.... OP, OP, OP!

From the Mojangs mouth:

"What’s this? This doesn’t sound like a redstone update at all!”, you say. “Indeed,” we say. Thing is, we* suddenly decided we wanted to make sure that you have fireworks for New Year’s Eve, so we’re working in several parallel branches of the code now. One is for the 1.5 “Redstone Update,” and one is now for a 1.4.6 patch update. This update will be out before Christmas, and 1.5 will wait until January (or possibly February)."

Ill be checking the Wiki after the patch drop for the recipe.

http://www.mojang.com/2012/12/minecraft-snapshot-12w49a/