It's Fortress Fever Month! A lot of Team Fortress action has been going on this last month. The Team Fortress 2 Beta has been released, as has the Fortress Forever modification. We here at Planet Half-Life are of course on top of the ball with three new articles relating just to this very phenomenon: Article:The Fortress Question Review:Team Fortress 2 Review:Fortress Forever
- John "Chief" Phillips
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Universe at War Beta Sega is offering FilePlanet subscribers Beta access for
Universe at War.
Spotlight: SMOD 3.9 Our latest deserving mod is SMOD 3.9, a single-player expansion.
Orange Box Preview It's not easy to keep a Half-Life fan away from the three Orange Box titles while visiting Valve HQ, and that couldn't be more evident than now. Want a peak at what we saw?
You can also expect to see a full-page article on PVK2 in the October issue of PC Gamer UK. Can't wait that long, or don't live in the UK? That's okay, because you can expect a full-length interview with the PVK2 team to be posted shortly here at Planet Half-Life.
If you need more of a media fix, or if you want to download their current release, head on over to the Pirates, Vikings, & Knights II site.
Do keep in mind these are only experimental shots, and as such, the DIPRIP team is looking for some feedback on them. Want to share your opinion on how it's all looking? Then check out their forums. For everything else DIPRIP (including additional in-game shots), diprip.com is the place to go.
You can also expect to see another TF2 class movie before the Orange Box release as well with some strong hints toward the Demoman. Sometime early in the week, you'll also be able to take advantage of the Orange Box Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 gifts if you already own both games. So start a bidding war with your friends to see which lucky ones get the titles!
The guide will retail for $24.99USD/$29.95CAD with an online price of $16.99USD. Both the book and the download will be available on the 10th so as you can dive right into it and get on your way.
Coulton is known for his witty pop songs referencing subjects like science fiction, math and video games as well as his fiercely loyal following online. After quitting his day job as a computer programmer, Jonathan created "Thing a Week" where he wrote one new song every week and posted it to his website which quickly turned into over 500,000 downloads from his website. "I am delighted the Valve design team selected me to help make the surprise single a success. If it's not every geek's dream to be immortalized in a video game, it was mine," said Jonathan.
To learn more about just who Jonathon Coulton is, visit his official website at jonathancoulton.com.
Mr. Zips Goes To Washington[ Comment ] 4:20 PST | John Phillips | Print News | Category: Half-Life 2 - Third Party ContentFriend of Planet Half-Life and CS-Nation site director Shawn "Zips" Zipay has just returned from his own trip to Valve HQ in Bellevue, Washington. He gathered some great information and answered some questions that we've all been wondering on the goings-on at Valve, Source technology, and much more with his article Valve Bits.
While there may not officially be a Counter-Strike 2 in the works, brief glimmers of hope did emerge. If, a Counter-Strike 2 were to be created in the future, the team would like to take the same approach with it as they did with Team Fortress 2. The methods that I speak of deal with creation process of the game, not the art direction. They tried to keep the fundamental gameplay mechanics the same from TF2, but changed just enough that it felt fresh and new. If CS2 ever came to be, this is the approach they would use to create it. Keep things relatively familiar but offer up enough changes, enough additions that it would warrant the title of being called the sequel to the most popular online FPS ever.
Be sure to take a look at the article right here, it's 4 pages are packed full of great information and some great pictures of Valve HQ itself.
Thursday, 4 October, 2007 – Planet Half-Life News
Orange Box Preview[ 8 Comments ] 6:36 PST | John Phillips | Print News | Category: Half-Life 2With the launch of the Orange Box less than a week away and all three games now preloadable, we thought it time to publish just what we think about all three titles, and a little about what they're each about as well.
You essentially pick up where you left off in Episode 1, and now you’re on the run from the collapsing City 17 itself. The biggest change, and perhaps the most attractive selling point of Episode 2 (apart from the fact you kind of need Episode 2 to understand the storyline) is the fact it’s no longer fighting in ruined city streets and underground freeways, but you are now experiencing the great outdoors of Eastern Europe. Beautiful rivers, tall and magnificent trees, and of course the distance view of a city collapsing in on itself, its one giant postcard of destruction!
And what's an article without lots of pretty pictures? Twelve new Planet Half-Life exclusives (nine Episode 2, three Portal) and yes, even another exclusive gameplay video of Episode 2 can be found along with the the preview. Only six more days until, down every street in America, you can hear the gentle sounds of exploding Hunters and Alyx's sarcastic remarks.
Half-life 2 Episode Two Available For Preload[ 4 Comments ] 17:20 PST | Bdn | Print News | Category: Half-Life 2That's right, Half-life 2 Episode two is now available for pre-load, as the release date slowly creeps in make sure you can play the game as soon as they are released by pre-loading now, if you have pre-purchased the orange box, that is.
Once you restart your steam client you can start pre-loading Half-life 2 Episode two, the pre-load comes in at around a hefty 3GB, but you can get into the action as soon as it is released on the 10th.
The mod called Three Month Mod is an attempt to create a fully playable deathmatch mod with features not seen before in other mods in just three months.
Head on over to their brand new Website and join the newly launched forums.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun: What do you think of Fortress Forever?
Robin Walker: I think they did a great job. We swapped emails, we tried to give those guys a bit of help. And hopefully we’ll get them up on into a Steam Friday update.
Charlie Brown: They definitely did a lot of work. A lot of maps ported.
Robin Walker: I know how hard it is to get a bunch of people spread around the Internet to finish anything. Let alone a product that’s good. I think those guys should be really proud of what they’ve managed to pull off. Personally, I hope they build something else now, and hopefully it’s their own. They’ve got a really good team.
Along with the lengthy and very informative interview, the RPS crew have an exclusive developer commentary video and have also written an extensive guide on player classes dubbed The Go Team. You can find the full Robin Walker/Charlie Brown interview right here.
Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:
Team Fortress 2
Added "Very High" texture resolution option
Added "Minimal HUD" option to Options->Multiplayer
Fixed headshots not always registering for crouched players
Fixed player interpolation bug that caused jittery player animation in some cases
Fixed rare crash when players exited water
Fixed server crash related to Spy sappers
Fixed overlapping UI elements in Options->Video->Advanced
Fixed non-English language text overlapping in a few places
Fixed players being able to use spectator points in dustbowl that were not in play
Removed "listdeaths" command that could be abused by clients
The PHL servers are now up-to-date, so join us for some late-night fragging!
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