All RFW members with Xfire and Steam Accounts are now required to join the RFW Xfire and Steam Groups:
To join the Xfire group please sign up at the Xfire RFW Clan Page. You will only be able to join If you have an Xfire account.
Members with Steam accounts please check to see if you are already a member Of the RFW Steam community. If you are not you will need to add one of the admins as a freind and ask them for an invite as it is a private group.
Please also add your Xfire and/or Steam accounts details to your forum profile.
Epic Games showed off Unreal Engine 4 at a behind-closed-doors, hush-hush, NDA-restricted session at the Game Developers Conference in March. Now the studio is getting ready to share it with the rest of us. The curtain will be officially lifted at E3 in June. Today, it gets pulled back a bit courtesy of an exclusive interview with Wired, including Unreal Engine 4-generated screens.
Epic has put together a cinematic and playable demo using Unreal 4, and according to Wired, "it's breathtakingly photo-realistic." The 153-second clip features a demon knight in his volcano fortress, and is designed to show off everything Unreal 4 can do easily that devs have been struggling with for years: lens flare, bokeh distortion, dynamic lighting, lava flow, environmental destruction, fire, and more. Here are the first screens from the demo:
"That's free?" Those are the disbelieving words of a friend who just watched gameplay footage of Crytek's upcoming F2P shooter, Warface. Now in closed beta, Warface is already looking sharp thanks to its CryEngine 3-powered visuals. Sure, actual gameplay looks like the modern and near-future online warfare that's been beaten to death over the past five-plus years, but quality of this level for the low, low price of free is still a rarity. See more than six minutes of Warface gameplay for yourself below:
Wolfenstein Turns 20, Bethesda and Id Celebrate with Browser Game
Thanks, Bethesda and id Software, I now feel like I should be walking with a cane. A very cool cane with a gray marble handle sculpted in the shape of a shark and maybe even a hidden sword blade, but a cane nonetheless. Wolfenstein, the 3D first-person shooter that started it all is 20 years old. Twenty! If you'll allow me a moment to get the creak out of my back, I'll stand and applaud. Then I'll quickly sit back down, because I'm feeling old and in celebration of this landmark, Bethesda has created a free browser version of the original Nazi hunting shooter.
Head on over to Wolfenstein's new website, and you'll be walking down nostalgia lane in no time, Luger in hand and the blood-covered bodies of German soldiers at your feet. I enjoyed secret hunting for a few minutes before typing this up, particularly after I changed the horrid default controls. (Were those the originals? The horror! Smart move making them customizable, Beth and id.)
And if you want to go the extra mile, play this fun new director's commentary video from John Carmack as you blast your way through the Nazi fortress:
If you've been mapping out your future of mapping in, your time has arrived. The CS:GO official blog has announced that the latest beta update includes, among other neat new features, the software development kit.
The update is downloadable through Steam, and the SDK's integration with the Steam Workshop will be implemented later down the track to facilitate sharing and rating within the community. I've always turned to the modding community when my online shooters got stale, so I hope some of you will be keen to dive into the construction of whole new gaming experiences. Keen to get your map on? It's suggested that you sign up to the CS:GO SDK mailing list for news and support.
The beta update also includes two new maps, Nuke and Inferno, designed for competitive league play, and a "Classic Casual" mode for those of us who are a little intimidated by the super serious faces (and attitudes, and headshots, and knifings) of the more hardcore players. Here's the full list of tweaks.
Steam's Remote Management Feature Isn't Quite Ready for Prime Time
The Steam mobile app glaringly lacked a key feature: the ability to remotely manage your games library and buy, download and install games to your home computer. Valve aims to fix that with the latest Steam client update, which went into beta last night. But remote management of your Steam library isn't a reality quite yet.
The beta launch didn't go as smoothly as Valve would have liked, with a number of testers reporting widespread problems with the Steam beta client, notably Error Code 51 messages that prevented users from booting games. As of this posting, the remote management feature also isn't working, resulting in a number of beta testers, myself included, searching on the Steam mobile app and online via laptops for remote download and install options for Steam games and finding none.
So yes, you will soon be able to manage your Steam library while away from home, you just can't do it yet. I'll update this post when the Steam beta client is running smoothly.
The creators of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, now reassembled as Vostok Games, have been unable to come to an agreement with the rights holder of the STALKER franchise. This means the sequel that was in the works is "frozen," and the team is moving on.
Vostok Games will instead be making a free-to-play MMOFPS called Survarium. It will be a PC exclusive, set to be released at the end of 2013. While the project sounds intriguing, it's unlikely to fill the hole in the hearts of STALKER's dedicated community, who have had talk of a sequel dangled in front of them for months.
See what the Vostok guys had to say in this developer's diary:
In an interview with Linux enthusiast Michael Larabel, Gabe Newell has spilled the beans about a Linux port of Steam that's already well underway. Cited among the reasons for finally doing this port are Gabe's negative impressions of the upcoming Windows 8.
Valve is currently spending much of their Linux development efforts on a port of Left 4 Dead 2 (seen running natively on Ubuntu Linux above,) which may well launch alongside the native Steam client. Gabe says this is because of the game's "stable" code base.
The port could be released within "months" - which in Valve Time means sometime in 2015
Battlefield Heroes Wants You to Shoot Things on The Moon
Free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes is getting a bunch of new content today, all of it space-themed. Players will now be able to don a space suit and head to the moon, continuing their cartoonish antics amongst lunar craters and crashed rocket ships. New weapons are also on offer, in the form of suitably sci-fi laser-based guns.
For those looking to take a break from the more serious business of Battlefield 3, the lighter fare of Battlefield Heroes might be just what you're looking for. Give it a shot for free by enlisting for some lunar deathmatches at BattlefieldHeroes.com.
A mysterious mud-covered mug shot on Gamspy Bethesda teased yesterday? Corvo, the disgraced protagonist in Arkane's upcoming stealth action-adventure, Dishonored. See Corvo clean up his act, take to the rooftops in a steampunk version of City 17, and get creatively stabby in the debut trailer. Fair warning, though: like any great CGI trailer, this one will fill you with an unwavering compulsion to play Dishonored immediately.
Remember when Bullet Time wasn't in every single action game/movie? John Woo popularized it in film, but the first Max Payne game had the most influential version of the slow-motion shootout in the gaming world. Since then, everything from the FEAR series to Fallout 3 has used some variation on the mechanic. So, now Rockstar has to figure out some way to make it special again. That's where their new video comes in.
Showing off new animations, AI technology, and the upgraded Bullet Time mechanic, the new trailer certainly makes a compelling argument for Rockstar's ability to deliver the goods.
