Aug 23, 2010

Dead Rising® 2 - Valve

Be scared. Be prepared. Another zombie apocalypse is quickly approaching from the zombie masterminds at Capcom. DEAD RISING® 2, sequel to the critically acclaimed original, is now available for Pre-Purchase.

Dead Rising 2 takes the zombie survival horror to Fortune City, America’s latest and greatest entertainment playground. Featuring a new story, two online multiplayer modes (2-player co-op campaign and a 4-player “TV show” themed Pay-Per-View event that pits humans against zombies), thousands of on-screen zombies and more, Dead Rising 2 takes zombie survival horror to a whole new level.

As Chuck Greene, you have 72 hours to save your infected daughter, clear your name and survive the hordes of hungry zombies before the military comes in and nukes the city. To ensure your survival, you can combine everyday objects to create numerous deadly combo weapons and slaughter the ravenous zombies. Dead Rising 2, it’s where Creativity Kills.

Aug 23, 2010

Counter-Strike: Source Beta Update Released

Product Update - Valve

Updates to Counter-Strike: Source Beta have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Counter-Strike Source Beta

Fixed a memory leak in the dedicated server.
Fixed a problem that could cause the crosshair to expand briefly after the trigger is released.
Made crosshair scale independently of framerate, matching the old behavior at 100 fps. This does not affect actual recoil, fire rate, or spread – only the expansion of the crosshair. Added cl_legacy_crosshair, which defaults to the new behavior.
Made the crosshair for the Glock and Famas scale correctly upon firing in burst mode.
Removed ability to jump to inaccessible locations using grenades (flashboosting). Added sv_enableboost (defaulted to 0) for those who prefer to allow this behavior.
Fixed an issue with involving incorrect armor protection vs. grenade damage. Added sv_legacy_grenade_damage (defaulted to 0) to allow servers to revert to the original behavior.
Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the freezecam sound to be heard when spectating a player who dies.
Fixed an issue that could cause KeyHintText to generate junk characters.
Prevented ragdoll spasm that could occur when using the jointeam command.
Addressed a problem with the sniper rifles that prevented unzooming during auto-reload after shooting all the bullets in a clip.
Fixed an issue with the AWP and Scout that could cause their zooms to vibrate briefly after a reload.
Fixed map cycling so that the cycle now starts from the map selected by the user instead of going back to the first map.
Fixed mp_restartgame so that it resets MVPs as well as score and deaths.
Removed fun fact from achievements summary screen and associated playerblotter functionality.
Throttled warning messages for disabled achievements to no more than once every 60 seconds.
Made disconnect messages wrap so they don’t get truncated.
Made kick / disconnect messages more legible.
Made the silhouette that appears when you hit AUTO-SELECT on the Terrorist choose a class screen fit within its borders.
Made the ‘X’ that closes the achievements screen visible by default in 1280x720 resolution.
Fixed lock radar rotation option in the GUI. Setting this option now works.
Fixed a buffer overrun exploit that could be used to attack/crash servers.
Fixed a crash at startup when no sound emitter scripts were loaded.
Smoke grenades:
- fixed occlusion bug.
- made it bigger.
- reduced grenade elasticity.
De_Inferno
- fixed known exploits and bugs.

Aug 23, 2010

Rhythm Zone Update Released

Product Update - Valve

Updates to Rhythm Zone have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Users now have the option to turn Track Sway on/off in the options menu. If you turn track sway on, you will get a higher score multiplier while it is swaying. The track will still not sway in 4:3 screen format for the time being. We’re working on an update to get sway to work in all screen formats.
Users can now turn on the Advanced Audio Engine. This increases audio playback quality and will play back in stereo. Also, the synchronization between game events and the music will be greatly improved. This option is turned off by default and we ask that all users turn it on and provide us feedback. If we find the new audio engine is working well for everyone, we'll turn it on by default in the next update.
When manually editting song data in your library, the maximum character count has been increased to 255 for each field.
Unicode tags are now read properly should Last.fm fingerprinting fail.
Song length timer now present on gameplay screen.

Aug 23, 2010

Alien Swarm Adds AI Director, New Difficulty

Alien Swarm - Valve

Since release, we've received a ton of feedback and feature requests from the Alien Swarm community. The most requested additions are more variety and greater difficulty.

With that in mind, we've added "Onslaught" mode, which introduces an AI Director that dynamically generates swarms of aliens based on several factors, such as the squad's stress level. Onslaught works with any difficulty setting and ensures no mission plays the same way twice.

Speaking of difficulty, we've also added a "Brutal" difficulty level for those of you who told us "Insane" wasn't insane enough. How brutal is Brutal? Nobody on the Alien Swarm team has managed to complete a mission on it.

If for some crazy reason Brutal is still too easy for you, there's now a "Hardcore Friendly Fire" toggle. When enabled, friendly fire deals full damage immediately, flamethrowers set teammates on fire much faster, and turrets will hurt you if get caught in their crossfire. HCFF truly tests your team’s ability to work as a elite squad. Coordinating movement and firing lines become an even more integral part of the game.

Finally, to reward the most dedicated players, we've added 3 new IAF Promotion Ranks: Platinum Star, Osmium Star, and the coveted Iridium Medallion.

Aug 20, 2010

Left 4 Dead 2 Update Released

Left 4 Dead 2 - 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:

Mutation

Developer Choice - Last Man On Earth

Added vote option to enable All Talk in Versus.
Added vote option to Restart Chapter in Versus.
Added the ability in the lobby for all players to vote on starting the game.

Gameplay

Removed Defibs and First Aid Kits in Realism Versus. Survivors start with a First Aid Kit, but all world spawns are disabled.

Addons

To avoid conflicts between Community Campaigns, only content vpks get loaded when starting a campaign.
Added console command "show_addon_load_order" that prints out the order of loaded vpk files.

Authoring Tools

VPK files now support their own sound.cache file.
Use the command "snd_buildsoundcachefordirectory " to create the sound.cache file that you should include when you create your vpk file.

Aug 20, 2010

Sol Survivor Update Released

Product Update - Valve

Updates to Sol Survivor have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Sol Survivor 1.7 fixes:

Fixed Survival Co-op resource modes having no effect.
Fixed clients being unable to return the the menu while a game is in progress.
Fixed a rare crash when starting games.
Fixed a crash when using the Bypass Campaign option.
Increased the lobby connection timeout.
Added resource modes to Versus.
Added sudden death to Wars games that reach maximum escalation.