Jeb has posted on the Mojang blog with a list of tweaks made by the pre-release version of the latest patch for Minecraft. A few of the tweaks are directed at making Minecraft's cats less damn lazy. Ocelots that would formerly behave like tamed cats will behave like the roguish wild things that they are and domestic cats will now be "less eager to sit on things" and "less patient." They're basically OUT OF CONTROL.

Other entries include smaller fixes for chat errors and a "potential issue with village door detection" that could result in a plague of villagers pottering around like idle Creeper bait. The devs have done a bit of ghostbusting, too. "Removed all ghost entities under the command of Lord Herobrine." PHEW. Read on for the full changelist.

Changes:

Added shift clicking support in furnaces
Added method to easily acquire blocks you have selected in the world in Creative mode using the ‘pick block’ key
Made the Direct Connect dialog remember the last IP for the current session
Fixed issues detected certain links in chat
Fixed wild ocelots behaving like tamed cats
Fixed various chat crashes
Made cats less eager to sit on things
Made cats less patient
Fixed world generation failing under certain circumstances
Fixed issues turning off sound under certain circumstances
Removed all ghost entities under the command of Lord Herobrine
Fixed crash when pasting certain characters in chat
Fixed slash ‘/’ key not behaving correctly in certain environments
Fixed command matching being too greedy (for example: typing ‘/stophammertime’ no longer stops your server)
Fixed not being able to click coloured links
Fixed potential issue with village door detection (which could cause too many villagers)
Made using a stack of bowls on Mooshrooms not consume the whole stack of bowls
Made punching a TNT block with flint and steel in hand destroy and drop a TNT block (right-clicking will activate the TNT)

 

Graham's been drifting around Ridge Racer: Unbounded's streets today, but has encountered a widespread problem with the City Creator, in that it doesn't even slightly work. After naming the track and trying to get into the track creator screen, the game crashes to desktop. It's a problem that many players have been experiencing, according to reactions on the Steam forums.

Developers, Bugbear, have posted on Twitter saying that they're aware of the issue. "Looks like we have a PC patch issue preventing the City Creator from launching. Working on it, will update when resolved."

That'll be soon, hopefully. The City Builder lets players create custom tracks stretched across 64 blocks. You can increase the complexity of your custom levels by unlocking new parts as you play, and your creations can be shared with friends online. Check out the trailer above for a glimpse of what you're in for.

The tremendous success of Double Fine's adventure game kickstarter campaign has had a dramatic knock on effect. A post on the Kickstarter blog outlines a few stats showing that many other Kickstarter projects, not just games, have benefited from Double Fine's success.

"Before Double Fine, one video game project had exceeded $100,000. Now, nine have," says the blog. Kickstarter has been around for a couple of years, before the Double Fine adventure game $1,776,372 was donated to games. "In the six weeks after Double Fine, $2,890,704 was pledged ($6,227,075 counting Double Fine)."

Of the 60,000 first-time pledgers, 22% went on to back another project. The majority of that money went towards other game Kickstarters like Brian Fargo's Wasteland 2 campaign, but significant donations were made towards film, video and comic projects. A miniature industry has sprung up from the generosity of thousands of new backers brought in by the Double Fine adventure game. It's inspiring, but can it last?

Word of mouth and media coverage have spread Kickstarter's name far and wide, which has certainly helped its cause, and pushed tens of thousands of potential backers through its pages. It looks like the site is seeing big benefits for now. "Each project is not only promoting itself, but the Kickstarter ecosystem as a whole," says the Kickstarter blog.

Kickstarter projects are a dubious deal for backers. You pay for a project that doesn't exist, with no contractual guarantee in place forcing the project leaders to deliver. Typically the reward for putting money into a start-up is returned in the form of a percentage of profits from the sale of the eventual product further down the line, but a donation to Kickstarter isn't an investment, it's a charitable donation.

Of course, the likelihood of seasoned developers like Double Fine defaulting on their promises is minimal, and the genius of Kickstarter is that it allows games to be made that could never happen otherwise. Eventually a project will fail, or produce an end product that leaves backers feeling short changed, but there haven't been any disaster stories yet, so Kickstarter's success looks set to continue. What do you think of Kickstarter, have you backed any projects?

CCP's Fanfest is an event like no other in the PC gaming calendar. Over a thousand EVE Online players congregate in Reykjavík, Iceland, to talk, play and dance EVE. But this year's event wasn't just concerned with the future of their sci-fi MMO. DUST 514 - the PS3 shooter that'll give PC EVE players the chance to nuke console players from space - was playable at the conference.

We wrote up our first impressions of DUST 514 last week, but we also asked the most hardcore EVE players we could find for their take. Which player do you most agree with?

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta keeps getting bigger. The latest patch has added a new Arms Race mode playable on Shoots and Baggage. In Arms Race, every player starts with the same weapon, and gains a new one with every kill. The first player to get a kill with the final weapon, the knife, wins the round. Dead players respawn immediately and the round time is extended to give players time to murder their way through CS:GO's arsenal.

The patch adds a few new weapons, too, including the Scar 20, an auto-sniper for Counter-Terrorists, the G3SG1, an automatic sniper rifle for Terrorists, and the Zeus x27, a one shot insta-kill taser available to both teams in casual mode.

If you're looking for something less wild, the classic Aztec has been added to the map rotations. Here are the patch notes in full from the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive site.

Maps:

Added Arms Race maps – Shoots and Baggage
Added Aztec to Classic maps

 
Gameplay:

Arsenal Arms Race game mode is a single extended round with instant respawn. All players start with the same weapon and get a new one each time they kill an enemy. The progression of unlocked weapons ends with the knife. The first player to get a kill with every weapon wins the match.
Added ‘Find A Game’ to the Play options menu screen. Find A Game allows you to join an online game of a specific type. This update offers Arsenal Arms Race and Classic Competitive game modes. The map cycle groups include:

Classic Maps
Arms Race Maps


 
Added new weapons:

Scar 20 – CT only auto-sniper.
G3SG1 – Terrorist only auto-sniper.
Zeus x27 – Casual Mode only weapon available to both teams.
 
Adjustments have been made to increase the base accuracy of all weapons.
 
Jump and land penalties have been decreased, and the rate of stamina gain has been increased.
 
Bot difficulty has been tuned.
 
HE grenade damage has been adjusted per pro feedback.

 
Models

Added two new player skins:

Phoenix Faction
GIGN


 
UI

Death notice order reversed.
Updated Italy mini map image.

 
Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug in the keyboard + mouse options screen where changes were resetting.
Fixed the consecutive loss bonus persisting through halftime. Solves the problem of teams receiving extra cash early in the second round of the match.
Fixed end match scoreboard saying it was a tie in Arsenal Mode.
Fixed a bug where penetrating shots were doing full damage after the penetration.
Fixed a bug where the desired distance required to defuse the bomb wasn’t being used.
Fix for the HUD alert panel coming up incorrectly.
Fixed for bots not being able to defuse bomb.
Fix for bug in Demolition mode where players would start the first round of the second half stuck in level geometry.
Fix for radio message font appearing quite large at higher resolutions.

 

I just recieved a press release from Wargaming.net claiming that Dragons are about to appear in World of Warplanes. They've come to "prove you wrong," supposedly.

Are Wargaming.net having a pre-April fools lol? Does the early press release mean we should give the announcement more credit? No. Warplanes are serious business but dragons aren't quite as serious. Also: everyone knows that putting Otawing in the level VI dragon clasification would render him completely OP. Click through for more images of dragons fighting planes, along with a dramatic teaser trailer.

“Adding dragons into World of Warplanes has been one of the most challenging aspects of game development so far,” said Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi. “Dragons are so different from planes; they are much more edgy and self-willed, but if you put in just a little more effort, they will serve you well. I’m happy we’ve finally announced them!”

There's been quite a kerfuffle as of late around Almost Human's Legend of Grimrock, the traditional grid-based dungeon crawler that's coming to Steam and GOG.com this April. Truth be told, we're stoked to try out the game's first-person, party-of-four questing—slashing skeletons and avoiding trapdoors like it's 1990. Want to see what it looks like when you marry Skyrim-level graphics with gameplay from two-decade-old RPGs? Read on to see how you can snag a copy free of charge.

We’ve got ten GOG codes to give away, so you'll be able to download the game right away when it's released on April 11th. To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment below stating your favorite old-school RPG below and what you love about it—we're talking Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master, Shadowgate-type games. We’ll select the lucky winners on Tuesday, April 3rd, who'll receive a code for the game in the inbox of the email that they used to register their PCG forum accounts. Good luck, and try not to step on any spike traps in your pursuit of treasure.

Weekends were designed for relaxation, catching up on chores, and dicing up the various spawn creeping out of the underworld. Path of Exile can help with two of these. The dark-and-bloody action RPG is throwing its first public event and that means you're just a click away from hours of demon-slaying entertainment at the beautiful price of free.

Set to release this year, Path of Exile brings the clicking mayhem of Diablo II to the instanced world design of Guild Wars. Towns act as giant trade hubs and combat areas are instanced to provide full and individual challenges to small groups of players. Among those challenges are hordes of enemies that need dispatching via one of six classes like the Maurader (strength-based zombie dicer) or the Witch (intelligence-based demon cooker).

The team at Grinding Gear Games has been working on the closed beta since August, but now they need your help with seeing how the game stands up to larger load of players before open beta. They're allowing complete public access to all the closed beta content during the weekend. All you have to do is sign up on their website and download the game (link will be available via their website tomorrow). The servers will go live at 5pm PST Friday, March 30th (01:00 GMT Saturday) but this event is a stress test so be prepared for some patching and downtime while you check out what the game has to offer.

If you want more info, check out our earlier preview or visit their website for details on the public stress test weekend