Sep 14, 2012

PC Gamer

This week's best deals ► FTL, Max Payne 3, and more
FTL: Faster Than Light released at 10% off on both Steam and GOG, GameStop opened its trunk in the parking lot to reveal deals on Max Payne 3, Killing Floor, and Amnesia, and Guild Wars 2 is 25% off at Get Games for European customers. That's just the beginning of our weekly savings spelunking expedition, so come along with me for more unnecessary analogies. And weekend deals.

25% off Guild Wars 2 at Get Games - $41.24 (Europe only)
50% off Max Payne 3 at GameStop - $29.99
50% off Killing Floor - $9.99 at GameStop
15% off Battlefield 3 at Amazon - $33.81
10% off FTL: Faster Than Light at GOG - $8.99 (Also on Steam)
30% off Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD on Steam - $6.99
25% off PC downloads at Green Man Gaming with the voucher code GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G

Steam ► Sam & Max, Oddworld, and more
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD released today at a 30% discount, and Steam has also put together an Oddboxx bundle with all of the Oddworld games for 10.49. Also, Train Simulator 2013.

30% off Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD - $6.99
75% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution - $7.49
70% off Sam and Max Complete Pack - $14.99
10% off FTL: Faster Than Light - $8.99
33% off Vessel - $9.99
10% off Train Simulator 2013 - $26.99!
More Steam deals

Green Man Gaming ► 25% off everything

Use the voucher code GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G to receive 25% off a digital download by Monday September 17th at 4 a.m. PDT. Plus, tons of Saints Row: The Third DLC is on sale! Fun fact: if you mush all the DLC together, you get Saints Row: The Fourth, the illegitimate, possibly inbred son of Saints Row: The Third. He eats K-Y Jelly.

Get Games ► Guild Wars 2
You can still get Sleeping Dogs for 25% off and Borderlands for 50% off. New this week, Guild Wars 2 25% off codes are back in stock. There's also the usual selection of pre-order and other discounts.

25% off Guild Wars 2 - $41.24 (Europe only)
25% off Guild Wars 2: Digital Deluxe Edition - $56.24
25% off Sleeping Dogs - $37.49
50% off Borderlands - $9.99
More deals from Get Games

GameStop ► Max Payne 3, Killing Floor, Amnesia
GameStop continues to cross off every price it can, but digging through its pages of sales this week revealed some pretty darn good stuff. Here are some of my favorites:

75% off Age of Empires III: Complete Collection - $9.99
50% off Max Payne 3 - $29.99
50% off Killing Floor - $9.99
75% off Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad - $4.99
75% off Mirror's Edge - $4.99
50% off Amnesia: The Dark Descent - $9.99
67% off Hard Reset - $9.99
More GameStop deals

GOG ► Diamonds of D&D
Aside from 10% off FTL: Faster Than Light, GOG has its usual themed sale. This weekend, it's all D&D deals...wait, what's this?! *Spit take.* Something new for GOG: the discounts scale with the number of games you buy. At one game, you'll get 30% off, buy two and get 33% off each, and so on up to all nine games for 65% off each. *Cleans up spit.*

Links to the individual games are below, but if you want the scaling deal, you have to go to the hub.

30% - 65% off Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Baldur's Gate 2 Complete - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Icewind Dale 2 Complete - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Icewind Dale Complete - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off The Temple of Elemental Evil - $4.19 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone - $6.99 - $3.49
30% - 65% off Planescape: Torment - $6.99 - $3.49

Amazon ► The Over-The-Top TopWare Bundle
Regular Amazon is way less fun than Labor Day Amazon -- it's pretty much back to the same 'ol, with games like Modern Warfare 2 and Civilization V on sale again. There is a new bundle sale, at least: the Over-The-Top TopWare Bundle includes 13 games. You probably don't want all 13.

85% off The Over-The-Top TopWare Bundle - $14.99
50% off Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - $9.99
15% off Battlefield 3 - $33.81
50% off Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X 2 - $9.99
21% off Sid Meier's Civilization V - $23.82
51% off Deus Ex: Human Revolution - $14.68
60% off Mount & Blade - $6.03
More Amazon PC game downloads

GamersGate ► A horde of romance

It's the same deal as last week: a giant, colorful patchwork of box art and red discount stickers. Only a few deals stick out at me. 50% off BioShock? Sure. 20% off To The Moon (Friday only)? Not bad. Miss Chic Romantic for only $7.48? Sounds goo- hey, wait a minute.

GameFly ► L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire is the highlight of GameFly's sparse list this weekend.

75% off L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition - $7.49
75% off L.A. Noire - $4.99
More GameFly deals

Let us know in the comments if you find any more great deals, and if you feel like sharing: what are you playing this weekend? It's all FTL: Faster Than Light for me. Well, not all, but lots of it.

Sep 7, 2012

What We Are Up To - Barashka

Community Announcements - [TW]Yoshiro

<a href="http://www.heroesofstalingrad.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/barashka1.jpg">WIP Image 1</a>

A long railroad bridge, scattered buildings, bunkers facing each other across a long gully. Sound familiar?

For long time Red Orchestra fans it should, because I'm talking about Barashka, the next official map for Red Orchestra 2. Featuring combined arms gameplay and thrilling cat and mouse chases between infantry and armor as they duel for control over territory, we are bringing this classic RO map back to life.

<a href="http://www.heroesofstalingrad.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/barashka2.jpg">WIP Image 2</a>

While its full facelift underway to bring it up to RO 2 standards, we will shortly be adding it to the stand alone beta so players can help us with feedback on gameplay. We look forward to playing this classic map with the community again (and it is quickly becoming one of my favorites)!

A lot of community members have been asking when we'll be adding more vehicles to the game, particularly troop transports. The short answer is that we've shifted around our plans a bit and additional vehicles are something that we're still looking to add, but won't be coming in the really near future. This is partially due to Rising Storm catching us by surprise - in a good way! Once we played the early versions of Rising Storm we knew it was going to be awesome, and decided to turn it into a full product. This means a lot of the Tripwire team have been cranking away working on Rising Storm along with the Rising Storm team to get the game ready for release. We've also been hard at work supporting the RO2 mod community by working on SDK updates and Steam workshop support which we're very excited about. Steam workshop should really revolutionize the way community mappers distribute their maps and make it much easier for players to find the cool content mappers and modders are working on.

We've also heard the murmuring in the community with speculation about how Rising Storm will be priced. While we aren't yet ready to release the exact pricing, we will clarify something right now. We will not be throwing the current RO2 community under the bus!!! Our current plan is to allow existing RO2 owners to upgrade to Rising Storm at a significant discount compared to someone that just buys Rising Storm outright. Additionally, we will not be splintering the community by keeping players separated. Servers will be able to run RO2 and Rising Storm maps back to back on the same server. Finally, while we're not quite ready to release the details of exactly how it will work, RO2 players that don't own Rising Storm won't just get booted off the server when a Rising Storm map comes up. Rather RO2 owners will be able to play Rising Storm even if they haven't purchased the add-on, likely with some limitations on weapon/class selection. So to summarize, RO2 owners will get a discount on Rising Storm, and everybody will be able to play together on the same servers!

Aug 24, 2012

What We Are Up To - Workshop

Community Announcements - [TW]Yoshiro

In my previous WWAUT post I mentioned that we are working on a number of items as we push towards our next major Red Orchestra 2 update. Today I want to focus on another upcoming item sure to please both fans of Red Orchestra 2 and Killing Floor.

As you probably know, we here at Tripwire are big fans of modding (many of us having gotten our start in the Make Something Unreal contest), and support it through the release of our SDK's, contests to promote content creation and more. The latest being the <a href="http://www.heroesofstalingrad.com/counterattack-map-making-competition/">Counterattack Mapping Contest</a> for Red Orchestra 2 with thousands of dollars up for grabs! With phase 1 done and judging getting underway, the custom mappers are already hard at work for their phase 2 entries.

But we aren't stopping there, the next big thing we are doing is integrating <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/">Steam Workshop</a> into both Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 2! This feature of Steam allows players to browse content created for our titles, find what they like and subscribe to it with the click of a button. This will keep them always up to date. You can read more on all it all works <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshopsubmitinfo">here</a>.

We look forward to the fans having an easier time finding the great community generated content, from maps, mutators, and total conversions.

Aug 20, 2012

A Rising Storm of Phase 1 Map Entries

Community Announcements - [TW]Yoshiro

Aug 15, 2012

What We Are Up To - Gearing up for the next major RO 2 Update

Community Announcements - [TW]Yoshiro

Welcome back to the latest edition of the What We Are Up To post. For those just joining us, these are designed to tell you the community what is going on behind the closed doors here at Tripwire. Today is the first in a series that will be touching on our immediate and long term plans for RO 2. This post will focus on the map, multiplayer campaign and player requested refinements.

As some of the players have noticed, like before the Game Of The Year update, the RO 2 beta (the stand alone beta, NOT the opt in beta) has been updated. This has brought the beta to the same version as the live game. As the weeks and months go on we will be continuing to introduce things to the beta for player feedback before it all eventually ends up in the next RO 2 patch.

The first change, which has already been introduced in the beta, has been to turn on Multiplayer Campaign. Stay tuned to the RO 2 beta forum in the future as we schedule tests to gather feedback from players and identify what needs work.

Coming shortly we will have player requested refinements entering the beta as well. Increased stamina capacity in classic, a change to player movement while players are firing machine guns, as well as some tweaks to countdown and UI functionality to help players understand what is expected of them and what is happening during the game.

Also on the way will be our next official map. While we aren't ready to give out many details just yet (including the name), what we do want to do is let players know what our goal is with this map. It has been designed to bring back one of the combined arms style of experiences from RO 1 that has not been represented in an official map so far. Multiple tanks on both sides engaging each other over large tracks of land while infantry move up and capture the objectives. If the tanks try and get up close and personal in the objectives without friendly infantry support they will soon find themselves dodging infantry exposing themselves only long enough to damage or destroy the tank. We think it will be an great addition to to the gameplay of RO 2.

We'll be looking for feedback from the community on all these things and more as the beta advances. In the coming days I'll also be touching on major system changes, the upcoming Rising Storm and more. Speaking of Rising Storm, some of the Tripwire team is on the ground in Germany at Gamescom with Tony from Rising Storm, so keep your eyes out for new information and media!

Jul 27, 2012

July 27th Patch Notes

Community Announcements - [TW]Yoshiro

There is a patch coming today for RO 2. It will be a large download, but that is because we're converting our files over into something that will work much more efficiently with Steam's new content system. Future downloads will much smaller allowing us to update the game more often. Other changes include:

<b>Maps</b><ul>
<li>Mamayev</li><ul>
<li>Balanced reinforcement count in Allies favor</li>
<li>Added additional cover</li>
<li>Added ammo depot to Axis staging area</li></ul>
<li>Barracks</li><ul>
<li>Improved cover between NCO barracks and Admin</li>
<li>Modified area that could be used to fire on a spawn</li></ul>
<li>Pavlovs House</li><ul>
<li>Moved ladder in Zabs house to a better location</li>
<li>Modified initial Allied spawn protection</li>
<li>Added new routers to help the Allies leave their spawns without getting killed as easily</li>
<li>Modified several spots in Zabs House that could be used by the Axis to overlook the Allied spawn exit</li>
<li>Modified Allied spawning location when the Axis are pushing the final Allied objective</li>
<li>Added additional cover to some areas of the map</li>
<li>Blocked off tank access to the yellow building area behind Zabs House</li></ul>
<li>Red October Factory</li><ul>
<li>Rebalanced reinforcement count</li>
<li>Added additional map time</li>
<li>Decreased artillery use timer</li>
<li>Removed 2nd Axis tank</li>
<li>Modified number of window firing points for Axis on the 1st obj</li>
<li>Modified initial Russian spawn protection</li>
<li>Added more cover to the 1st and 2nd objective areas</li></ul>
<li>Station</li><ul>
<li>Added more cover to the initial Axis approach</li>
<li>Modified 1st Axis spawns </li></ul>
<li>Spartanovka</li><ul>
<li>Modified capzones for Housing Block 1 & 2 </li></ul>
<li>Grain Elevator</li><ul>
<li>Added several obstructions to break up line of sight</li>
<li>Increased capture time on last objective</li>
<li>Increased duration before allies lose all of their reinforcements</li>
<li>Fixed map boundary times being 1 second</li></ul>
<li>Commissars House</li><ul>
<li>Added new cover from first spawns</li>
<li>Added cover to road ahead of Commissars North Hall</li>
<li>Increased size of snow mounds around Commissars House</li>
<li>Modified map boundaries</li>
<li>Modified objective setup</li>
<li>Modified spawn locations and handling </li></ul>
<li>Training</li><ul>
<li>Fixed ref pose bots in squad leader training </li>
<li>Fixed minor lighting issues across all maps</li></ul></ul>

Gameplay<ul>
<li>Fixed bullet impact effects not being visible when on a fixed MG</li>
<li>Fixed weapons getting lowered while aiming left from prone</li>
<li>Increased spawn protection time to 20 seconds if standing in the area when it’s activated</li>
<li>Correct initial ammo count for P38 and TT33 (added one)</li></ul>

UI<ul>
<li>Fixed the scroll bar on the server browser player list. It should no longer continue to snap to the top.</li>
<li>Fixed voted maps sometimes disappearing from the right-hand map voting box</li>
<li>Fixed flickering text on the loading screen when downloading a custom map</li>
<li>Fixed “FT1, FT2, FT3” etc text stuck on screen for squad leaders and commanders</li>
<li>Fixed Marskman roles missing from some maps in action mode. Squad view shifting down as roles open up eventually making roles un-selectable.</li></ul>

Webadmin<ul>
<li>The 'Mutate' command can now be used from the management console</li></ul>

<b>* Attention Modders *</b>
We found that most custom maps will need to be republished if you haven't already done so using the opt-in beta. Mutators are generally still compatable, but we recommend all modders briefly test their content. Continue checking the modding forum for more info.