May 30, 2012
Portal At The Pictures: Lab Ratt
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (John Walker)

There's a great attention to detail here.

Portal has been a surprisingly prolific source of inspiration for many high quality products, so a short fifteen minute film based on its universe isn’t that big of a deal any more. However, what I love about Synthetic Pictures‘ Aperture: Lab Ratt (as spotted by The Sixth Axis) is how, in making a film based on Valve’s Lab Rat comic, how successfully they portray the evil of GLaDOS.

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May 29, 2012
A Portal Movie so Good Valve Should Make it Official
Kotaku

First teased earlier in the year, Synthetic Picturehaus' amazing Portal film Lab Ratt is now complete and ready for viewing. So you should watch it.


It tells the story of Doug Rattman. Doug, aka the guy who did all the paintings you find tucked behind the walls in the game. It starts a little slow, but once things start to go poorly, the flick really hits its stride.


Lab Ratt runs for 14 minutes, so have a cup of tea handy before hitting play.


Lab Ratt [Synthetic Picturehaus]


May 28, 2012
Dota 2 Update - May 28, 2012
Product Update - Valve
- Improved dashboard positioning/sizing for 16x9 resolutions.
- For live games, fixed the WATCH button coming up too early and an error where you could be connected to a game that has already completed.
- Made changes to hero picker based on community feedback.
May 28, 2012
You'll Swear This Half-Life Headcrab Was The Real Deal
Kotaku

You'll Swear This Half-Life Headcrab Was The Real DealYou may have seen this years ago, but since there's a good chance you haven't, here. See it now.


Last week's story on that awesome StarCraft statue outside Blizzard's French offices reminded us that the primary artist involved, Steve Wang, is no stranger to amazing video game craftsmanship.


Back in 2005, he made this stunning Half-Life headcrab, originally as a piece for his kid's Halloween costume, then later being adapted as a display piece.


I'm not sure what makes it so damn creepy. I think it's the veins. Urgh.


You'll Swear This Half-Life Headcrab Was The Real Deal You'll Swear This Half-Life Headcrab Was The Real Deal You'll Swear This Half-Life Headcrab Was The Real Deal You'll Swear This Half-Life Headcrab Was The Real Deal You'll Swear This Half-Life Headcrab Was The Real Deal You'll Swear This Half-Life Headcrab Was The Real Deal


Steve Wang FX [MySpace]


May 25, 2012
May 25th Update - Flu Season, PAX?
L4D Blog

Flu Season
The smell of spit and bile in the air.

This Coop Mutation is a mashup of "Boomer Shooter" by SR69MMJC and "Spitters!" by Karma Jockey. The only specials are Boomers and Spitters. The only commons are the result of the Boomer. The only other change is we amped up everything about these two Specials. But don’t worry you’ll be okay as long as you avoid all the goo flying in the air.

PAX?
PAX Prime is taking place this year from August 31st to Sept 2nd. It is a great event filled with gaming and gaming culture. While the tickets have already sold out, we are curious to know how many L4D players will be visiting. So the question is simple – will you be attending PAX Prime this year?

May 25, 2012
Left 4 Dead 2 Update Released
Product Update - Valve
Updates to Left 4 Dead 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Changes:
- Next Mutation: Flu Season
- Removed a demo ConVar that was being used for an exploit

Dead Center 1:
- The lower windows should no longer be accessible (versus map grief).

Dark Carnival 3:
- Adjusted brush that was blocking a truck interior, to no longer block the truck interior.
- Adjusted the rollercoaster event start to make it more difficult to skip.

Hard Rain 2:
- Adjusted blockers on the pipe-hop shortcut to provide better coverage.

Hard Rain 1/5:
- Adjusted blockers to better cover the added box which itself covers an invincible spot.

The Passing 1:
- Added blockers for survivors along the railings in the upper areas to prevent them from leaving the map or getting stuck out of bounds
May 24, 2012
Dota 2 Update - May 24, 2012
Product Update - Valve
- Added Ogre Magi!

- New Dashboard! (feedback here)
- New Hero Picker! (feedback here)

GAMEPLAY

- Enabled Treant Protector in Captain's Mode.
- Spectre: Fixed Haunt Illusions having collision.
- Lifestealer: Fixed Rage being dispellable.
- Spirit Breaker: Fixed Charge of Darkness immediately failing when cast on Razor's Unstable Current.
- Bounty Hunter: Fixed a bug that could sometimes allow Jinada to work on buildings.
- Fixed Black King Bar not dispelling Haste and Double Damage.

UI

- Revised performance bar calculation and display.
- Added support for putting bots into individual slots in a private lobby.
- Fixed issue where the camera would recenter when quickly switching between different control groups.
- Fixed incorrect player id when pinging runes.
- Added a short cooldown to the chat message when pinging a rune.
- Added disconnected player icon in scoreboard and top bar.

AUDIO

- The game start horns now play different cues from each team location and are now spatial.
- Added sound when the courier delivers items to you.

VISUALS

- First pass at spectator-only Roshan timer.
- Added overhead healing messages for Warlock and Bloodseeker.
- Fixed a visual hitch sometimes experienced while spectating using Directed view.

BOTS

- Increased bot cautiousness when going to the side shop.
- When invisible, bots will now only use abilities or items that they really want to use.
- Bots are now more likely to roam and gank when invisible.
- Juggernaut bot will no longer offensively use Blade Fury when he's sufficiently powerful (better to just attack).
- Zeus will now use Wrath in teamfights.
- Fixed bug where Vengeful bot could try to swap out-of-range allies.
May 24, 2012
Make It Count
TF2 Blog
Voting on the most recent map contest at TF2Maps.net is now on! Your help is needed to determine the top three of the 27 entries. With all sorts of interesting dynamic elements available in these maps you should download them and give them a play and vote for your favorite. All the details, and a trailer, are available on the contest website.

May 23, 2012
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Beta Update Released
Product Update - Valve
• Fixed server crash when total number of player reaches 64
• Fixed issue with mouse cursor becoming non-visible after launching a game via the server browser
• Fixed UI crashes related to more than 10 players in a game
May 22, 2012
Counter-Strike: Source Update Released
Product Update - Valve
An update to Counter-Strike: Source has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Counter-Strike: Source. The major changes include:

  • Fixed a client crash related to dynamic model loading
  • Fixed dedicated server not receiving restart requests when updates are released
  • Fixed IP bans not applying to RCON access
  • Fixed server crash exploit related to audio buffer overruns
  • Fixed server crash caused by using changelevel2
  • Updated console logging system to minimize opening and closing of files, greatly improving performance under certain conditions
  • Additional improvements for client/server stability
  • Fixed a problem that allowed malicious clients to disable the "ping" and "status" commands for other connected clients
  • Fatal engine errors are now written to the server log file
  • Added sv_lowedict_threshold and sv_lowedict_action which allow the engine to take action before running out of free edicts
    • Possible values for sv_lowedict_action are: 0 - no action, 1 - warn to log file, 2 - attempt to restart the game, if applicable, 3 - restart the map, 4 - go to the next map in the map cycle
  • Added changelevel_next server command which changes to the next map in the map cycle
  • Added mp_restartgame_immediate ConVar which has the same effect as mp_restartgame without a delay
...