Welcome to Watch Survival

Hello Bloggers and Readers and Survivalists and Gamers! I see you have found your way to Watch Survival. This web space is all about my favorite genre of video games. What you will get on Watch Survival is News and Updates on Current and Up-coming Survival Games.


Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The Dead Linger Alpha is Released

Happy Halloween everyone! In Light of Halloween as promised The Dead Linger has Released their alpha build of the game today!  Stuff that they have done so far is looking really good.  As it is an Alpha there's tons of work to be done and this basic release barely scratches the surface for the game but it is a great start to some zombie survival fun.  The official post containing all the information about the alpha and what to expect can be found below at the link.

http://www.thedeadlinger.com/archives/1139

I won't copy and paste the whole article but I'll throw this video up here for everyone to see how the alpha plays so far.


Can't wait to see what direction this game takes and to see further development take place.  Seems they are off to a good start.

Dayz Stand-alone Update

Hey everyone just noticed there was some new information about Dayz posted.  This info talks about how the structure of Dayz is based on MMO technology. This is great news I believe because if most information is going to be ran server side this should reduce the potential hacks dupes and exploits caused by a client side ran game.  The official post can be seen here on the Dayz developer Tumblr.

http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/post/34430567933/whatever-you-say-it-is-it-isnt

Monday, October 29, 2012

Project Zomboid Monday Status Update

Indiestone have released another monday status update for project zomboid.  It's mainly talk about NPC's and the new system and a little about the newest map stuff they are working on.  I'm hoping it won't be to much longer before we get an update out to play.  I'm really wanting to play this game smoothly with all the new features without tons of bugs.  Anyways,  the link to the official blog post is below as is the copy and paste of status update. The screenshot of the new tutorial house for Kate and Baldspot looks awesome.


http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/10/things-to-do-in-muldraugh-when-youre-dead/


-----copy and paste-----



Greetings gentle survivor. This week we’re going to have a cup of tea, a Nice biscuit (note to non-UK readers, there is actually a sort of biscuit called a ‘Nice’ biscuit) and a cosy fireside chat with our writer Will. He’s the one who puts the cuss-words into the dirty-bird mouths of Muldraugh survivors, and he wants to share his thoughts on RC3 with y’all.
Let’s update you on what’s happening elsewhere first though. Last week we caught up with Lemmy and his work on the NPC survivor ‘metagame’ – and that’s taken up most of this week too. We’ve now got a good lump of code that transforms walky-talky NPC groups into ‘meta groups’ when they wander away from your direct vicinity, still retaining the same goals and paths but in disembodied form. This is still very much the focus of his work – but NPC raids, item distribution and optimizating the game whenever he sees an opportunity are also in his PZ-style line of sight cone.
Map-wise Binky is still deeply buried in the lay-out of the map cells, dropping placeholders into areas to make sure everything looks okay and will play well – before diving in with a hammer and chisel to make new buildings permanent. His most exciting moment this week came with the selection and construction of Kate and Baldspot’s new tutorial home. It looks like this!

Without wanting to add too much drama to our cosy Monday development post, Mash had some trauma while she was on holiday in Mexico. She got bitten by a Sea lion. (We know!). Formerly, when pressed, she used to say that the most incredible thing she’d ever been attacked by was birds – on two separate occasions. Now, however, she can add Mexican marine mammals to the list. She’s back now in any case – safe, sound and starting preliminary work on a brand new map cell for later on down the line.
Finally Romain has been balancing his seasons, researching agriculture for the implementation of farming and streamlining the UI. For example, to barricade a window, you don’t need to have all the items equipped if everything is in already in your inventory. ‘Barricade’ will pop up as a UI option, items (hammer, plank) will be auto-equipped and a nailing you will go…
Anyway, here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. It’s… well… it’s me…

Why is that picture of you dressed as Batman?
I lead a double life. Sometimes I write for games, like Project Zomboid, and sometimes I write about the games themselves. Sometimes, when you go to write about said games there’s a Batman costume there. I don’t know why, but that photo really was from a special moment in my life.
Well, okay. So what are you up to at the moment in terms of Zomboid and RC3?
While Andy and Mash busy themselves with the new map and Chris and Romain tackle Java coding that’s beyond my ken, right now I’m sketching out the NPC dialogue that’ll crop up whenever you send a follower (or a few of them) off on a looting mission. It’s probably one of the biggest jobs I’ve had so far, since we need player requests that are Friendly, Neutral and Aggressive – and responses from NPCs that reflect their mood state too. On top of that we need streamlined ways for your chosen foragers to report how they got on, who died and who was injured. In the fullness of time we’ll also have cool stuff like your followers recognising former comrades, who’ve turned into zombies on away missions, banging on the door. There’s an epic amount of material to cover!
Will the new NPC trait system have any effect on your writing?
Yep, certainly. The traits will be really useful ways to label the various different NPCs and their individual characters – so I’ll be able to create some custom dialogue for more cowardly or foolhardy followers to mutter at opportune moments. A lot of this will be written and implemented post-RC3, but for this build something I will be doing is using followers flagged with more ‘negative’ traits to respond to you in a more desperate fashion when they’re sent off to loot supplies – and to whinge more when they return with flesh wounds.
The major feedback I get from Lemmy, Binky and Mash is that I need to inject NPCs with a much greater sense of doom – which is tricky to balance with the more functional ‘go here!’, ‘yes boss!’ dialogue. With the new traits, however, I can present a certain slice of the Muldraugh community as maudlin, suicidal and desperate people – meaning that the tragedy quota will always be topped up.
I’ve also written a few scenarios where you’ll meet people who’ve taken overdoses, or have quite simply lost the plot as the zombie apocalypse has developed. They won’t be people who can join you, but they will give a stronger flavour of the breakdown in society. You’ll be able to steal their stuff, or just put them out of their misery – if you so choose.
Any other scenarios you’d care to share?
Well, we’re trying to engineer a few ways to meet other survivors – other than just bumping into them while you’re exploring the town. As such I’m creating a few meetings with NPCs who’ll want to trade supplies (for example, a character who wants to swap a weapon for a certain number of bottles of booze) – so simple fetch quests, with the possibility of grouping to follow.
When can we expect all this?
The joys of Lua and the new UI system mean that everything I’m doing is quick and easy to code into the game. As such, there’s no reason to suppose that what I’ve already written won’t be packed in RC3. What I will say, however, is that I’m even keener to get my hands on the new code than the PZ community!
I’m desperate to see my stuff in the game – to find out what works, and what doesn’t. As such, beyond RC3, I think people can expect to see a lot of editing and fine-tuning in the dialogue systems while we try to strike the right balance between chit-chat and ominous silence. Everyone’s feedback will be more than appreciated at that point.
What’s happening with Kate and Baldspot these days?
The Kate and Baldspot tutorial storyline is currently scripted quite a bit beyond what people first played in the demo – there’s a new character that joins proceedings, and a fair degree of medical activity. It’s all been in the can, and ready for distribution in the code, for a really long time – but we need RC3 finalised before it can be put into action.
My current working relationship with RingoD is that I do my scribbles, then fire it all over to him for processing. Once the game build has stabilised, however, we’ll be able to work together a lot more closely when creating new PZ Stories and developing the one we already have. I already know the two new characters we’ll be introducing next, but I’ll keep them under wraps until we’ve actually got to the stage when they’re in active development.
As well as character dialogue, there’s a more general world story going on. Will you also expand on stuff like the radio broadcast in the tutorial?
Right back at the very start I wrote out emergency radio broadcasts that would splutter into action as every in-game day went passed. A small slice of this is what ended up in the demo. I definitely want to get that into future builds to expand on what’s happening in the world beyond Muldraugh – and also maybe to flag up game-changing stuff like the water and electricity supplies running out. Again, that’s something that’ll be going into the game beyond RC3.
So what other stuff are you up to other than PZ?
Like I said before with the Batman stuff – unlike Lemmy, Andy and Mash I don’t work full-time on Zomboid. I still do a lot of writing about games for websites, and recently won a Games Media Award for a website called Hookshot Inc. I occasionally do a smidge of writing for other games that are in development too, but nothing I’ve worked on recently has been announced yet – so I’d better keep schtum on them!

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Minecraft Pretty Scary Update 1.4

Minecraft has officially released their pretty scary update!  Lots of good things added in this patch. I'm currently browsing for a new seed to start a new world now to test out all these new things.  Wow there was a lot of "new" in that last sentence.  Anyways, the patch notes can be found at the link below and they are very very long so I'm not going to do a copy and paste here for sake of space saving.

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Version_history#1.4.2

Monday, October 22, 2012

Project Zomboid Monday Status Update

Hey everyone! It seems Project Zomboid has released another monday status update. It's great to hear so new information about what is going on. I've been playing PZ a lot recently and I'm really exciting for the new update to finally come out.  Anyways, this Monday's blog tells us a lot about the new NPC system and how working with them has become more important.  It looks like they are going to be a lot more complex in the next build of the game.   Short interview with the developer also helps let us know what's going on.  The full Official post can be located at the link below.  Or read the copy and paste.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/10/the-coding-of-the-living-dead/



----copy and paste----

If it’s Monday, then it must be time to open the curtains, take down the barricade and worriedly scan the horizon. Yes, survivors of Muldraugh – it’s time for an update on The Indie Stone’s slow, yet relentless and inevitable, march to the front door of your safe house.
This week we’re chatting with Chris ‘Lemmy’ Simpson about all manner of mischief – including streaming, NPCs and how to care for whippet puppies. Before he gets his moment in the sun, however, we should say that things are still coming together. It’s likely, for example, that the code and map deliveries will coincide for the update – although we still need to play with item distribution, create a new tutorial house and get RingoD transplanting the action into K&B’s new home.
We know that people are chomping at the bit for the new update, and we know that reading about the new stuff we’re introducing is a bit of a tease when people have gone without for so long. We’re aware that stuff like the improved NPCS sound a bit feature-creepy, but assure you that the work spent in fiddling around with them is a necessity brought on by the necessity of introducing map streaming. There’s a lot of necessary stuff going down, basically.
In terms of polish, too, at the moment we’re systematically going through the game and trying to fix and polish as many of PZ’s gaping holes as possible. NPCs and the UI were two of the biggest holes that needed quickly barricading shut ASAP. Lemmy will explain a little bit more about all this, and our plans for thicker and faster future updates, after we plaster a picture of his big stupid face all over your computer screen.

First things first, how’s Cally the Wonder-Dog?
She’s doing great! Though she’s teething so is leaving nice sharp presents for us to stand on along with nice soft smelly squishy presents – though she’s finally getting the hang of doing the latter outside. That’s a clever nickname you came up with for her there, because we certainly do wonder about her.
Huzzah! So, anyway, how has the recently-added map streaming changed the game, and the way you code it?
Well the main difference is obviously there’s a lack of any loading screens when walking around the map. The impact this has is on the immersion – you never see that black border and you’re never aware of, say, being in the ‘top left corner’ of here or the ‘bottom end’ of there. It’s just one big seamless world. From a coding perspective it’s saved a ton of memory since we’ve been able to go back to only having the 0.1.5d map-size loaded into memory. That memory save is what made the streaming a necessity – many people would have struggled with the code in its former state. It’s also brought a few challenges with it – but they’ve been welcome ones really. We now need to think about how to deal with NPCs in a more meaningful way, for instance.
So what are you currently doing with those hardy Muldraugh NPC-types?
This has been the subject of many a four-way Skype design chat, and even more latte-supping with Binky. Will (who is the one asking these questions, but never mind let’s not confuse things) has written a mountain of NPC chat that’s yet to go into the game, and we want to use that to its fullest. The thing is, with streaming potentially making the ultimate persistence of the NPCs more difficult, we had to rethink how they work on a fundamental level.
As such, we’ve been looking at quick design ways to get most ‘bang for your buck’ with NPCs. Trying to make them the HAL 9000 of zombie survival seems to be a fool’s errand, especially when one day in the far-flung future only 1/1000th of the map will be loaded into memory. So right now I’m working on a ‘meta-game’ that extends across the entire map that has virtual survivor groups moving between buildings, looting and surviving according to statistics that’ll let us trigger infinitely more interesting NPC encounters. I’m also implementing more information to the player on NPC survivors, including traits in the form of ‘observations’ and a few more group commands for them.
Here’s a screenshot from the current build, where I’m printing out a debug overview of the world with survivor groups (red = aggressive, green = friendly, white = mixed) to see how the survivors get on. With the new meta-game survivor groups can now last for weeks, even months, without dying.

When people play the update, what will they notice as being different about fellow survivors?
NPC meetings should be infinitely more interesting. Instead of running around from one vague X, Y coordinate to another – and telling you to ‘fuck off’ – they could be say… running to their safehouse and invite you to come along. Alternatively they may be ambushing you at your safehouse to steal your stuff, or perhaps be in the middle of an altercation with one of their teammates.
NPC meetings will still be driven by a sandbox environment, but will be more like story points when you meet them. Also they’ll be massively more useful since you can tell them (or they might decide independently) to go on looting missions. You’ll be able to ask them to go get food, and then see them wander off for a day or so. They may come back, they turn into a shambling corpse somewhere, they may bring those supplies – and if they do return they might’ve taken a bite in the process.
Here’s the unfinished ‘send characters on looting mission’ selection screen, where you can choose (by observing the character’s personalities and traits) who to send to get supplies (or die horribly in the attempt).

And here’s the WIP character info screen. Please note a stupid illiterate programmer wrote those descriptions as placeholders, and not our resident writer…:

So, if an NPCs is capable of bringing in more food than he/she can eat, then they could well suddenly prove to be an asset and not a liability. Finding tough, survivable NPCs will be a big help to surviving longer. Since the NPCs will have such relevance now – you’ll be able to check a character sheet of sorts which will describe observations that you’ve picked up from them. In fact Will has just sent these over, so you can have a sneak peek.

Lastly, to make survival harder and to make NPCs ever more necessary we’re going to be a lot stricter with item distribution. You can expect it to be a lot tougher to scavenge food and resources to survive – since the high loot area will be mid-town where all the zombies are. So a lone wolf without good survivalist skills will find it tough, so might need to look to others for support.
Sweet. We’ll probably expand on all that the NPC stuff when Will (who’s me) gets his slot in the spotlight next week. Is there anything else you’ve added that would interest the PZ community?
Well primarily all the new NPC stuff, from the UI to the meta-game, is completely written in Lua. As such it’s fully moddable, expandable or even replaceable.
Speaking of which you were posting enthusiastically on the forums about the work of one EasyPickins. Who is he, what’s he done and what does it mean for the PZ community?
We approached EasyPickins a month or so ago because, quite frankly, even with his awesome awesome improvements to TileZed, our map production was just way too slow. We came with a few ideas and some rough prototypes we’d put together and he quickly transformed them into WorldEd (which he’d actually been working on for the existing map system), and made some exciting improvements to TileZed on top of what we’ve already shown off in our recent video.
He’s also made TileZed about a hundred times more polished and nicer to use. He’s made a mechanism for converting a big BMP (say 3000×3000 for 10×10 cells) into grass, trees, sand, gravel and so it’s all blended together with intermediate tiles, and then spits it out 0_0 to 9_9.tmx. So then you’re ready to start creating buildings with BuildingEd, and to simply drag them into place in WorldEd or TileZed. A click of ‘Export’ will then create files to simply drag into a new Maps folder, meaning that your new map will be selectable as a new game along in the new front-end.
EasyPickins has been astoundingly fast, and everything he produces is really polished and professional. He’s continuing working with us and we’re very excited at what the future will bring with map production speeds to both us and the modders.
Over on the Desura boards you recently explained why we couldn’t release early versions of what we’re currently working on. You used quite a good Scrapheap Challenge analogy. Could you possibly cut and paste that here for a wider audience?
“If anyone’s seen Scrapheap Challenge or a 3 day time-limit DIY show or something. That’s alpha funded dev. You have a pile of garbage for weeks, then it all comes together within the last few minutes. We can’t just arbitrarily ‘release something’.”
It’s completely understandable, but frustrating to read ‘just release it damn it!’ when what you’ve currently got is a version of the game where all the zombies are zipping around at 1000mph (Romaaaain!) or there’s only food getting spawned in the map (meeeeeeee!). You just know that releasing what you’ve got in front of you is the worst thing you could possibly do!
We’ve often ended up releasing earlier than we planned to just because we were worried it’d been too long, and we reached a point where we felt we could ‘just release something damnit!’ and thought, well our community want it, we’ll give it to them. Sadly this has resulted in a lot of our community still playing an older release of the game, and people elsewhere who perhaps weren’t aware of their ‘test release status’ who assume Zomboid is shoddy buggy stuff.
This is the last thing the game, or the community need. So all of us made a pact this time that the next version of the game would be ‘right’. A few quick patch bugs aside, we’re just going to remain steadfast and release the best version of Zomboid there has been since day one. And also, finally, get those poor (yet awesome) souls at Desura an auto-updating version of the game.
What’s it like working with our new recruit Romain? What’s he beavering away on? Will all his work be present when we update?
Romain has been great! After getting the new weather system in, he’s currently implementing farming, after which he’ll be looking to implement the campfire stuff (since, as the Starks say, ‘Winter is Coming’). It’s such a massive relief to me to know that if I’m ever stuck guts-deep in something that the game’s code isn’t at a standstill, and that someone is still getting stuff in there. I’m sure people have noticed a sharp drop in the number of stressed coding tweets since he joined! I’m sure farming will be in the next update. We’ll see about campfires after that.
Something else that it sounds Romain has brought to the Indie Stone’s table is a potential new approach to bug-fix builds. Could you elaborate?
It’s the system Romain uses where he works, and basically involves maintaining two concurrent builds of the game. There’s one that’s frozen from the last update, and one development build that new features are implemented into. This means that if a bug is reported, we can fix it in the development build and them merge the changes across to the frozen build. Once we’ve fixed enough, we can simply release that frozen build as a bug fix release – without people needing to wait for the development work to get to completion. It should have a dramatic effect on both our ability to approach bigger development tasks freely, as well as our ability to quickly fix problems with the game after an update – and to speed up the frequency of the updates.
Anything else that you’d like to mention?
XCOM!
Can we have a photo of Cally the Wonder Dog please?
Yes!

Oh, and while we’re at it here’s a quick screen of the new map cultivated from Binky’s work-station. We’ll be back mid-week with the next instalment of Community of the Dead. Thanks all!

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Minecraft 1.4 Pre-Release is up

Just a quick note to let everyone know that Minecraft 1.4 pre-release is up for grabs. It is basically the same as the final version of 1.4 before it goes official.  They have added some pretty interesting things in the recent updates and I'm looking forward to enjoying them.  More information and the download for 1.4 can be found at the link below.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/636-14-pre-release-available-right-now/

Dayz standalone Screenshots

Rocket has been keeping busy working on the Dayz standalone project.  He has updated us with a few screenshots from interiors showing off some of the work they have been doing on Dayz. Things are looking pretty good. The textures are great and have some good detail from what I can see considering they are on medium settings apprantly. The pictures can be found at the link below on rocket's tumblr.  I'm sure revamping Chernarus isn't the most easy of tasks.

http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/




Friday, October 19, 2012

Torchlight 2 Update Released

A new patch for torchlight 2 was recently released by runic games.  They seem to be squishing a lot of bugs and increasing performance a lot recently.  You can't be mad at them for that.  Click below for the official post on their forums or just read the copy and paste patch notes below.

http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=44060

----copy and paste-----

Patch 1.14.x.5 (now live)

Postby travisbaldree » Wed Oct 17, 2012 4:23 pm
Patch 14 has now gone live!

Here are the patch notes-

GRAPHICS
*Intel HD graphics cards should not show ghosting/smearing effects if shadows are enabled

PERFORMANCE
*LARGE performance optimization to buff/debuff bar displays when there are a large number of overlapping, nonexclusive effects (damage over time, and duration based effects or knockback )
SKILLS
*Shield Bash bonus damage now deals the stated amount(charged and uncharged)
*Wolfpack will properly strike turrets
*Bonuses due to proximity now always expire properly
*Damage bonuses/reductions for Battle Rage properly expire
*Fixed Critical Hit bonuses on some effects not properly incorporating bonuses to crit
*Pet damage bonuses are applied to effects

LEVELS
*Three Sisters zone now has an appropriate level range for proper NG+ reward scaling
*Various issues resolved in Luminous Arena in multiplayer
*Level determinism fixed (Was broken with precacheing in previous patch - could result in triggerable elements and some structural elements re-randomizing on load, or in multiplayer)
ITEMS
*Set reward for Inquisitor set altered to a functional bonus
*Fixes to the summon skull proc on equipment (prevents it from spawning exactly on a target)
*Effects based on proximate monsters now work properly with socketables
*DOTs were not properly attributing experience if the effect was applied from an item instead of a skill

MISC
*Target Dummy is Charm resistant
*Fixed issue where rebinding Close All Menus could lock you in pause mode
*Fix for shift-click casting a left-click spell and then selecting an item (would previously auto-attack)
*Pet enhancing bonuses work more consistently for pets attached to OTHER pets
---end copy and paste----

Minecraft Snapshot 12w42a Ready for Testing

Minecraft released the new snapshot a tad early so they can get as many testing as they possibly can before the official release of the 1.4 patch.  Information can be found below. Glad they changed anvil creation cause it was a huge iron hog, still is but at least it is a little better. 

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/634-snapshot-12w42a-available-for-testing-early/


-----copy and paste notes-----

Mojang is offering a special treat today - an early Snapshot!  1.4 is due to release next week, and the early Snapshot release allows Mojang more time to get the update as playable and awesome as possible before launch.

Today's Snapshot includes a helping of:

  • Anvil block has been tweaked (it’s cheaper to create, minor visual changes, and you can repair tools using wood/ingots/diamonds)
  • Bats no longer trample crops or trigger pressure plates
  • Redstone repeaters can be “locked” (fixed output) by having a powered repeater connected to its left or right side
  • Updated language files
  • More bugfixes & tweaks!

Grab the Snapshot today, and see 1.4 early - it doesn't include all that 1.4 has to offer, but it comes pretty darn close!

----end copy and paste-----

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Diablo 3 1.0.5 Update is Live

Patch 1.0.5 is now live a crossed all servers for Diablo 3.  I'm really liking the drop rate changes here they were much needed. I actually found 3 upgrades within the time I played yesterday on Inferno Act1 was quite surprised considering I've not used the AH to equip my level 60 monk I was glad to find upgrades. The Patch notes are longer than a short story so I'm just throwing up the link for the official blog post by blizzard.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/7528695/Patch_105_Now_Available-10_16_2012

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Dead Linger Alpha Release Date set

Just happened about this little spec of info a few minutes ago.  The Dead Linger has set a release date for their Alpha it's 10.31.12!  Looking forward to trying this thing out soon.

Countdown timer  from their website here
http://www.thedeadlinger.com/tdlsplash/tdl_alphasplash.html

Offical Blog post here
http://www.thedeadlinger.com/archives/1052

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Project Zomboid Menu Screens Video and status update

Hello survivalists!  Project Zomboid Uploaded a new video showcasing the new menu's they are putting in.  I can't wait for the steam release it's going to be so wonderful.  This video shows us how we can load multiple worlds,  map mod support and save games for different maps.


Just noticed there's also some good information on the forums as well. check this thread here.

http://theindiestone.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=10376 Some really exciting stuff in here about updates!  Sounds like the game is going to make the zombies a lot harder and less cannon fodder.  I honestly think this is great news.   Such exciting changes for this game.  I really think they know what they are doing here and these changes they describe sound like much needed additions.

<edit> just noticed the blog post Q and A and wanted to add it in here for more info on map creation and editing. Looking forward to seeing the new world they are building.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/10/knox-gets-real-spotlight-on-binky/

Friday, October 12, 2012

Torchlight 2 Elite Hardcore Episode 2 is done

Well I'm just grinding away in torchlight 2 on my HCE (hardcore elite) outlander in episode 2. This class is a lot of fun hope I keep surviving to bring more videos. Couple of close calls and I find a great spell at the end that makes the run worth it.
  

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Torchlight 2 Elite Hardcore Episode 1 and patch notes

Today on the menu we got some torchlight 2 action for everyone! I'll start first with showing Episode 1 of my "Until I Die" series for elite hardcore torchlight 2.   Hope everyone enjoys it and gives it a like on youtube. I'm having a great time playing this game at the moment and recording it is fun enough. It's mostly a blind run through as I have not completed anything for Torchlight 2 yet except up to General Grell which is only the boss for the end of the first area.  That just makes the play all the more exciting though cause I never know what is around the next corner.  I've played plenty of ARPG's in my time though (Diablo 1,2,3/Torchlight 1/ Champions of Norrath/ Baulder's Gate/ Titan Quest ect) I don't think I'm going to be doing to bad at all.  Anyways, Check it out and tell me what you think.


Second of all, Runic released the new patch for torchlight 2 today.  The patch notes can be found below.

http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=42924

--copy and paste ------

patch notes for version 1.13.x.12

Misc

  • Fixed Engineer armor set that was showing up as white geometry
Performance

  • Additional UI performance improvements
  • Additional rendering performance improvements
  • Precacheing of skills, missiles, and particles to reduce the appearance of stutters the first time those assets are viewed on some machines
Stability

  • Fixed a crash that could occur with a dying pet that proc'ed on save restoration
Skills

  • Fixed some issues with Stormclaw bolt chaining
  • Blazing Pillar will no longer give enemies the ability to burn you!
  • Shockbolts and Shocking Orb can now build charge
  • Fixed several non-working augment affixes
  • On-Death Procs properly cool down if required (Fixes several issues where a proc ceases functioning after a period of time)
  • Blade Pact and Stone Pact last for listed time
Items

  • Lore item set now has a tangle ability, instead of a nonfunctional acidrain proc
  • Several affixes that work based on unit proximity can work in parallel, when they could not before
Gameplay

  • Fixed several issues where procs could be precluded from activation
  • Set bonuses based on nearby monster count work properly
  • Some more multiplayer XP distribution fixes related to player/killer delta
  • Can't turn alignment on something that attaches to its master
  • When a left-click skill is bound, skills won't track a second mouse click if you click and click-away again (keeps you from pointing the wrong direction sometimes)
  • Player block cap set to 75 instead of 50
  • Elemental armor reduction can't reduce armor below zero
  • Champions all have 100% charm resistance
  • Siege Turrets have 100% charm resistance
Level Scripting

  • Can't prematurely activate Vyrax tower warp with teleportation
  • Various minor level fixes
  • Various visual updates to the Three Sisters' Lair
  • Some snow effects were not properly tagged as 'weather' so would not disable when weather was turned off
  • Tutaran trap fixes
  • Alchemist can no longer be 'started' on his third stage by rerolling, going to the next level waypoint, and back up.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Torchlight 2 Comes to WatchSurvival!

Hello everyone!  I have decided to Include Torchlight 2 into the mix of games on Watchsurvival and wanted to let everyone know.  I already had Diablo 3 hardcore listed so I thought it only fair to include torchlight 2 hardcore as well because I am simply having a blast playing torchlight 2 on hardcore elite difficulty (more fun then Diablo3 hardcore I must say).  Do not tell me Torchlight 2 Hardcore Elite is not survival because let me tell you it's no easy feat to accomplish. Having Died probably 5 or 6 times on hardcore elite already I can tell a trip through this game on HCE (hardcore elite) should be considered extremely dangerous for your health. lol  The below screenshot proves my point well and should be a great start to playing this game on hardcore mode.  I simply couldn't get any closer to death then this.


State of Decay Guns informaiton

It appears Undead Labs is keeping busy polishing up State of Decay. The more info and updates I see about this game the more excited I become to play it.  Looks like it is going to turn into a very awesome zombie apocalypse sandbox game.  5 bucks says all these awesome zombie games are going to come out at once and make our heads explode!  Anyways on to the info! Guns! Everyone loves a large selection of guns. State of Decay isn't afraid to give us some. Click the Link below for the full information or just check out this convenient gun chart they made for us.

http://undeadlabs.com/2012/10/news/well-shoot/#more-5490

Gun List Chart.

Project Zomboid Weekly Update Status

Hello everyone! Got another weekly update status from Project Zomboid.  This week we get a status update and a small interview with Indiestone's newest recruit Romain aka Robert Johnson! I'm sooo hyped for this newest version of PZ. It's taking a while but it's going to be well worth the wait to play a polished updated version of this game with all the new features.  Shouldn't be waiting to much longer now I don't think.  Below is the Link to the PZ blog page with all the info. Or read the copy and paste below the link.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/10/picking-the-brains-of-pzs-newest-recruit/


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It’s time to get to know the new survivor. The Indie Stone have been working with Romain Dron (internet name RobertJohnson) for a month and a half, so we thought it was high time to put him front and centre in a blogpost. Romain was previously a high profile PZ modder, but now he’s part of the team – and deserves a shot in the limelight…
But wait, first let’s interrupt this emergency broadcast with a status update on RC3 – before cutting and pasting it into the build status thread on the forum. Right now we’re building in more NPC stuff to help them cope with a streaming world, and optimizing the PZ mainframe to reduce load times – aiming for it to only take a few seconds to get from the menu and into the game.
Chris is also working on an automatic no-render system so that buildings auto-hide when the player walks behind them – instead of relying on the zones defined in the editor. There’s also some exciting stuff happening with map creation tools, which is in turn helping Binky and Mash put the finishing touches on the new areas of Muldraugh that’ll be merged with the game soon after RC3. The remarkable EasyPickins is creating some brilliant stuff for us when it comes to mapping tools which will help modders hugely when they are publicly released.
And Romain? Well we’ll let him tell you personally – although he’s not a native English speaker so Will’s anglified some of his thoughts. We knew we’d taken on-board a talented developer and a passionate PZ fan, but what we didn’t realise that he’d turn out to be such a total, total sweetheart. Take the floor Monsieur Dron.

Hello Romain! Who are you, where are you from and what’s your story?
I’m 26 years old, I live in north of France and I’ve worked in Java for 4 years. I started coding at the age of 12 with Ultima Online (my custom language then was C#), studied electronics at school and finally got a degree in php/photoshop stuff.
How did you first discover Project Zomboid? What made you want to mod it?
I discovered PZ by searching for zombie games on Google after finishing Dead Island. I first tried some flash games like The Last Stand, then found PZ. I tried the demo (0.1.5), after an hour of playing I wanted to buy it.
As far as the modding goes, I was reading The Walking Dead – in which they were growing their own food. That was something I really wanted to do in a zombie apocalypse! When I bought the game I did some research and saw that it was in Java, so thought “Cool, java stuff! I can try to dev a few things”. Seeing as modding was in lua, though, I started with basic item creation while I worked out how to mod in farming.
I’m not really a graphic artist (at school I was more php than photoshop), so I searched for artists on the forum. Thankfully I found the wonderful Thuztor, and then I got down to learning lua. It was great working as a team with Thuztor, and really fun to make the mod as realistic as possible.
Where does your knowledge in Java development come from?
It’s from when I started to work in my current job. I knew nothing about java (I’m a good liar!), but then I started to watch some tutorials and did a few side projects to learn faster. And now I love Java! Who doesn’t? (I’m still sure I can make Lemmy love java…)
Is it a surprise to you to find yourself part of the Project Zomboid development team? What’s it been like so far?
Oh yeah, it was a big surprise, a great follow-up to us releasing the demo of our farming mod! I’ve barely had time to realize that I was just a modder three months ago, and now I’m part of the team!
Working with Lemmy is really good, he’s really smart and he’s a working machine. [Editor’s note: Romain not paid to say this]. I knew that Project Zomboid was a lot of work, but I didn’t realise there was so much of it until I got the source code! We have the same way of thinking so it makes things really easier. I’m so happy to be working for this project. I started developing stuff for different games a long time ago, but I never imagined myself working on a real one.
When The Indie Stone announced they would be recruiting a new dev I sent my resume in, but the fact they wanted someone full-time made me a little sad. I wanted to work on the game so much. I don’t know why they picked me, perhaps because I’m French and make good coffee, but it was a great day.

How does the process work when working on PZ? Do you balance it with your usual work?
I balance it. Game development is a hobby of mine, so I really like this. It’s not really a problem, and my girlfriend is supporting me in it as well – so that helps a lot.
My job is boring sometimes – I’m a J2EE architect in a big firm. I don’t often see customers in that role but here, the forum is full of people who are so excited about the game. It makes me feel motivated to work on Project Zomboid, and I really care about all the suggestions and criticisms that people make.
Lemmy and the guys are really cool with me, after I had a go on my early tasks he just asked me what I wanted to do. I can also now just go in the whole source code and quickly understand how it all works.
What are the most important tasks you’ve done for RC3? What are you most pleased with?
I haven’t really had a “big task”. I’ve fixed a lot of bugs that annoy people. That’s how I wanted to work – and how TIS wanted me to work. Fixing bugs lets me see a lot of different things, so I can adapt myself quickly on any problem. I’ve also worked on lua things, UI stuff, story dev and other stuff.
What are you working on right now?
I’m currently working on seasons, hypothermia and moon cycles. Next up I think I’m going to adapt my mods to the main game – so that’s farming and camping. All that is in lua, so it’ll takes me longer to do than java stuff, but importantly it’ll be fully moddable.
The next thing I want to do is a better resources management. What I mean by this is that when we release RC3 to the public, we will ‘freeze’ the source code, so we can release smaller updates (like bug fixes and little design tweaks) a lot quicker. I hope this will mean that it won’t take 2 or 3 months each time for an update.

What would you like to bring to Project Zomboid in the future?
So many things! I’m really a zombie hardcore fan (I mean Romero and stuff), so I really want to add more survival things – and maybe work on hunting, electricity and multiplayer. It’s a real problem – when I start thinking about one thing, I just want to add more and more!
What would you like to say to the Project Zomboid community and the army of potential modders out there?
Well, this game is a sandbox. I really want modders to make anything they want, and also to feel free to ask whatever hook, event or java stuff they need in the game for modding. I’ll be really glad to add them. And thanks a lot to the community and The Indie Stone, I’ve only been doing this for a month but already really feel part of the family. Finally, a big thanks to Thuztor. Without him I would not be a part of this team.

And finally a quick picture of the current build – with rain back working! Hurrah! (Ignore the fact it’s not raining on top of the trailer. We’ll fix that…)

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Thursday, October 4, 2012

New Minecraft Snapshot ready for testing!

They released the newest snapshot for minecraft and it's ready to go.  It's looking really good and added some much needed features and a quite a few good fixes as well.  You can see all the information at the link below or read the copy and paste.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/625-12w40a-snapshot-ready-for-testing/

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It's Thursday, and you know what that means - Snapshot time!  Let's not waste a moment, and jump right into this week's offering!


  • Added huts for the witch in swamps
  • Added superflat preset "Redstone Ready" with a 52 layers of sandstone, 3 layers of stone, and 1 layer of bedrock
  • Flatworld configuration now allows you to generate trees, strongholds etc
  • Now pumpkins, tall grass, flowers, trees, mineshafts, dungeons, strongholds, lakes, desert wells, ravines and ores will spawn on superflat maps
  • A number of new NBT tags for items (intended for custom map makers)
  • Better inventory management
  • The pick block action now works on items
  • Pressing the 1-9 hotkeys while hovering over an item will put that item into the inventory bar
  • In creative mode, you can now shift-click items from the hotbar to the survival inventory screen
  • The left-click action will no longer open doors, pull levers, push buttons or open trapdoors. Use the right mouse button!
  • Firespread has been slightly nerfed again to prevent infinitely spreading fires
  • Beacon Texture altered, as well as the beam.
  • Slimes now spawn in Swamps at night.

    Bug fixes:
  • Fixed the wither's starting explosion not being disabled by the mobGriefing gamerule
  • Fixed a few crash bugs related to world generation, map item expansion, and other things
  • Reverted previous lighting changes, which corrected such bugs as:
    The Nether being extremely CPU intensive.
    Map generation taking extremely long.
  • Fixed mob AI considering cobblestone walls as blocks of normal height
  • Fixed a few texture oddities with the witch
  • Fixed entities in water producing glitchy water sound
  • Gaining multiple levels at a time will no longer play the leveling up sound over itself as many times as leveled.
  • Fixed the "A 64 bit Java installation is recommended for 'Far' render distance (you have 32 bit)" message being covered by the bottom 2 buttons
  • Fixed pets teleporting around randomly
  • Fixed being unable to place paintings larger than 1x2 and them popping off if they have been placed before
  • Fixed destroying blocks under you with Efficiency-enchanted gear
  • Fixed potion spawners crashing the game

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Project Zomboid Status Update and Building Editor

Well my fellow Survivalists, Project Zomboid has updated us once again on the goings on about the new and exciting features that are coming in soon.  They are taking their time but I feel this next update is simply going to be the best version of PZ yet. The new building editor looks awesome and it seems like it will help a lot with world generation and will hopefully have less problems with bad placement of items and renders that are in the world.  The new info can be found at the link below or you can just read the copy and paste.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/10/on-the-ongoing-zombification-of-knox-county/


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Greetings travellers. Time for a quick blogpost detailing the most recent zombie shenanigans of the upcoming RC3 build. It’s been a week of many and varied tasks for everyone on the team, so we thought we’d round them up in something of a cover-all blog – and knuckle down into more depth and explanatory videos later on this/next week.
First up is map streaming – which is looking to be entirely amazing, but is also the necessary cause behind the renewed delay to RC3. As we explained last Monday, the memory demands of Project Zomboid had crept up to worrisome levels – had we released in its former state many existing players would’ve had major problems getting it to run. As such some extensive surgery had to be performed. If you haven’t already checked out the results (with a hidden 400MB of memory saved) then you can check out our video here.
With this development Chris is now working on zombie spawning within the streamed world – he’s developing a system that will allow for accurate calculation of whether areas are accessible to zombies or not. In the background, meanwhile, he’s also working on getting rain switched back on – and also helped Andy and Mash with some tools to speed up map production for future updates. This is something that our modding community will be hugely excited to see – and will of course be made available to everyone in due course. We’ll release a more in-depth commentary on it later on – but this is what the new building design tool looks like:

Andy and Mash themselves, meanwhile, are busying themselves with new maps – and are in fact almost good to go with two new cells for Muldraugh. So, that essentially means that after RC3 we’ll be able to triple the size of the current zombie-populated map. One of them requires an increased density of buildings, however, which is where the aforementioned new map design tools are coming in more than useful.
Will and RingoD, meanwhile, have been conjuring up meetings with NPCs to add a little more variety to the current “Hey!”, “Screw you!” confrontations after RC3. When you meet fellow survivors we hope to provide some far more evocative and interesting situations – and we’ve already got a good few hundred variations on central themes in the can. Here’s a quick grab from one of Will’s writing docs.
Finally Romain, the wonderful amazing and (quite probably) beautiful new addition to the PZ team, has been busying himself with some amazing new systems that will add to the realism of Knox County. We won’t spoil anything – but some of this involves two new moodles, the placement of the moon and accurate temperature charts of real world Muldraugh. There’s plenty more besides too.
As ever, apologies for stretching patience once again – but once we nail RC3 and the streaming system we’ve got a hell of a lot of content waiting to fall into the readied code. We hope that the internal creative surge we’ve got going on is at least evident to the world at large, and honestly can’t wait for you to sample it. More updates as they happen.


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