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JEMC on 07 October 2024
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Welcome to the Monday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

GOG presents the new HypeTrain Digital Publisher Sale, with up to 90% discounts during 14 days: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/20241007_hypetrain_publisher_sale.

Steam has three new deals:

At Humble Bundle we find the new Twin Stick’Em Up Bundle, with up to 7 games to get during 18 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/twin-stick-em-up.

And Fanatical has three new deals:

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

Steam Game Recording gets 4K and ultrawide monitor support in the latest beta update
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/steam-game-recording-gets-4k-and-ultrawide-monitor-support-in-the-latest-beta-update/
Earlier this week, Steam released a new update for its beta branch, which allows opt-in early testing of experimental Steam features. Among the handful of bugfixes, the additions headlining the update include a series of new features for Steam Game Recording, the most notable of which are 4K recording and ultrawide monitor support.
>> Obviously, the article talks in more detail about the changes this update brings.

Epic Boss Tim Sweeney says Unreal Engine 6 will be a 'metaverse' joining Fortnite and other Unreal games, including an upcoming 'persistent universe' in development with Disney
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/epic-boss-tim-sweeney-says-unreal-engine-6-will-be-a-metaverse-joining-fortnite-and-other-unreal-games-including-an-upcoming-persistent-universe-in-development-with-disney/
In an interview with The Verge, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney outlined his big plans for the rest of the decade, and why Epic had to lay off 16% of its workforce last year to make it happen. The top line is that Sweeney still sees promise for a "metaverse" of interoperable assets and marketplaces between Fortnite and other Unreal Engine games/initiatives, like a planned Unreal "persistent universe" owned by Disney.
(...)
But the lofty ambitions remain, with a focus on better linking the Unreal Engine proper with the more approachable Unreal Editor For Fortnite, the evolved form of the Fortnite Creative tools mapmakers have been putting to great effect in all manner of custom modes and maps. "The real power will come when we bring these two worlds together so we have the entire power of our high-end game engine merged with the ease of use that we put together in [Unreal Editor for Fortnite]," said Sweeney. "That's going to take several years. And when that process is complete, that will be Unreal Engine 6."
Sweeney wants developers using Unreal to be able to "build an app once and then deploy it as a standalone game for any platform," and also be able to incorporate their work into Fortnite or any other Unreal game. One of Epic's initiatives along these lines is a planned "persistent universe" owned by Disney but compatible with Fortnite: "We announced that we're working with Disney to build a Disney ecosystem that's theirs, but it fully interoperates with the Fortnite ecosystem.
>> I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds awful.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Song of Wind is a new fan expansion for The Witcher 3 Next-Gen
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/song-of-wind-is-a-new-fan-expansion-for-the-witcher-3-next-gen/
Modder ‘Roi_Jean’ has released a new fan expansion for The Witcher 3 that seems to work with both the vanilla and the next-gen versions. This fan expansion, called Song of Wind, adds two new quests, new dialogues and new game mechanics.
Going into more details, in this mod, Geralt goes on the hunt for Whispering Island, a place that nobody seems to know about. Designed as a new mini ‘expansion’, only the first two quests are currently available.
The modder made the mod using the RedKit as part of CDPR’s modding contest. This is why the expansion only has two quests. And sadly, there is no word yet on whether the modder plans to finish it. Still, this is a cool fan expansion that offers new free content to the game.
Moreover, Song of Wind features new dubbed dialogues for Geralt and the NPCs. Now what’s cool here is that the modder has not used any AI tools. Instead, he just mixed lines that were in the original game differently to make new sentences.
>> The article has a 36 seconds teaser.

Dino Crisis Unreal Engine 5 Remake Demo Available for Download
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/dino-crisis-unreal-engine-5-remake-demo-available-for-download/
Dino Crisis fans, here is something cool for you today. Stefano Cagnani has been working on a fan remake of Dino Crisis in Unreal Engine 5, and has shared a playable demo for it. Since this fan remake comes from one guy, it does not represent the quality of a full-fledged official remake. Still, it can give you an idea of what you can expect from it.
>> There are two videos in the article.

Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, DLC-sized expansion for Fallout: New Vegas, just got a brand new trailer
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/fallout-nuevo-mexico-dlc-sized-expansion-for-fallout-new-vegas-just-got-a-brand-new-trailer/
The modding team behind Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, a new DLC-sized expansion for Fallout: New Vegas, has released a new trailer for it. This trailer focuses on Mexico City which serves as the biggest hub in the game. So, let’s take a look at it.
Fallout: Nuevo Mexico takes place in the year 2255. From the looks of it, players will assume the role of a new prisoner who arrives at Tibbet’s Prison.
The devs claim that players can join several new factions in the game. The mod will also include three special companions, and there will be a new companion system that changes how you build relationships with them. Plus, there will be lots of new activities to try out, and you’ll get to explore different states and locations.
The last time we heard about Fallout: Nuevo Mexico was back in July 2023. And now, over one year later, we still don’t know when the mod will come out. This is a bit disappointing.
>> The new trailer is over 3 minutes long.

One Tekken 8 modder has crowbarred all of Baldur's Gate 3's origin characters into the fighting game
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fighting/one-tekken-8-modder-has-crowbarred-all-of-baldurs-gate-3s-origin-characters-into-the-fighting-game/
Who would win in a fight: Karlach or Kazuya? What about Gale vs. whatever Jack model number they're on now? Thanks to modder D0ct0rSauce on the Tekken 8 Nexus, we don't have to wonder anymore: They've finagled all six of Baldur's Gate 3's Origin characters into Tekken 8 to duke it out in a decidedly less turn based, gentlemanly fashion than we're used to.
Rather than the sizable task of implementing them as all new characters, D0ct0rSauce swapped out some of the alternate skins of Tekken 8's pre-existing characters for models ripped straight out of Baldur's Gate 3. Karlach is Azucena, Shadowheart is Jun, Astarion is Lee, Lae'zel is Reina, Gale is Claudio, and Wyll is Shaheen. According to D0ct0rSauce's descriptions for the mods, they only replace two presets per character, and should leave your custom costumes alone.
D0ct0rSauce shared a nice sizzle reel of the mod in action to the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit. It's as slapstick as you might expect such a mashup to be: Highlights include Lae'zel squaring off with Kazuya, Astarion and Shadowheart air juggling poor Gale, and Lae'zel slamming Wyll through multiple plate glass windows. RIP to the Blade of Frontiers.
>> The article only has some screenshots. You’ll have to go to the subreddit to find the video.

A Quake 2 Remaster dev has rebuilt the game's unique PlayStation port from scratch and released it as a free add-on
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/a-quake-2-remaster-dev-has-rebuilt-the-games-unique-playstation-port-from-scratch-and-released-it-as-a-free-add-on/
A Nightdive developer and longtime Quake 2 modder, Paril, has rebuilt Quake 2's unique PlayStation port in the game's 2023 remaster. Rather than directly porting in the maps, Paril painstakingly recreated each one in the Kex Engine. Quake 2 PSX is now available for download on ModDB.
Back in the good old days of consoles having wildly different chipsets and capabilities from both each other and PCs, games would often be "ported" by having a studio remake the game from scratch, imitating the design (or at least the spirit) of the original on new hardware. This often resulted in unique remixes of canonical games that are fondly remembered in their own right, like Doom on N64 and PSX or PowerSlave on the Sega Saturn.
Quake 2 was no different, and Digital Foundry made a deep dive of its ports and their differences back in 2017. The Quake 2 Remaster by Nightdive actually included the modified Nintendo 64 levels at launch, but HammerHead Studios' PlayStation version was MIA.
According to Paril, the technical difficulties introduced by HammerHead's custom engine meant it was more feasible to recreate the game's levels in the Kex Engine rather than trying to directly use the original map data. Paril has also introduced bug fixes, smarter enemy AI, and even some tweaks to the level design and visuals, making this more of a remaster of PSX Quake than a slavish recreation.
>> There’s a video of the mod in the article.

Duake lets you play Quake as the Doomguy
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/duake-lets-you-play-quake-as-the-doomguy/
"Run through the Quake campaign as Doomguy," reads the Duake description. "Simple as that!" Well there's a little more to it, but sometimes a mod just speaks for itself. In fact, given the long history of mods for both games, I'm surprised this wasn't made sooner.
Duake is the work of a modder with an amazing handle: Magic Nipples. It puts Doomguy and his arsenal of weapons in Quake, and adapts everything for the vertical aiming and movement of that game. As well as this, it makes a whole bunch of changes to the vanilla Quake experience, overhauling the first episode to add a bunch of fancy lighting, coloured water, new props, some extra baddies and a re-jigging of enemy placements. 
There are elements of this that go above and beyond, such as adding two new Doom HUD types and a minimalist HUD based on Doom 64, replacing the nailgun with the rifle, and reworking some of the enemies to have different attacks. It also apparently reworks "the Chthon fight to be much more interesting", though I didn't see that for myself, and has added a bunch of new secrets to the levels. 
Magic Nipples says they're not quite done yet, and expect to release some further updates, but as-is this thing works perfectly well: the only slightly odd aspect is controlling Doomguy with Quake's movement style, which is unavoidable but would probably have John Carmack's temple vein throbbing. The project is also open source on Github.
>> The article has a slightly over minute video.

Age of Empires 2 in first-person? Sure why not
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rts/age-of-empires-2-in-first-person-sure-why-not/
First released in 2021, Overreign is a mod that converts Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition into a first-person experience. Though it's been around for a while it launched in quite a buggy state, but creator Spriteblood kept plugging away and now it's looking much more stable: it came to my attention thanks to a video from YouTuber T90Official, who specialises in AoE2 content, and ably demonstrates just what first-person PvP looks like in a 1999 RTS.
It's one of those mods that somehow works in exactly the way you imagine, with the 2D spritework proving a surprisingly great fit for the new perspective. It works across the game's skirmish mode and lets you assume control of a single unit, from which perspective the AoE2 world is unmistakably familiar but also very very odd: as the buildings go up, it's like watching giant inflatables rise.
"I stopped developing this game in late 2022, everything since then were only some bugfixes and little changes to keep it playable and compatible with the fast-evolving Aoe2 DE," says Spriteblood. "I am amazed that until today there are still people who find and try this. On average, 2-3 games are played per day, which is very nice for a standalone-mod that launched 5 years ago. Thank you all who played it."
There appears to be something funky going on with the mod's pages at moddb, though I was able to download it earlier, and be warned that this thing can be pretty intensive on your hardware. "The mod is great but extremely RAM-heavy," says Yuri Kot. "In late game (with many units) it eats up my 32GB for breakfast and freezes every couple of minutes."
>> You’ll find an over 40 minutes video in the article.

GAMING NEWS

Until Dawn Remake – AMD FSR 3.0 Frame Generation, Ray Tracing & HDR are not working on PC
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/until-dawn-remake-amd-fsr-3-0-frame-generation-ray-tracing-hdr-are-not-working-on-pc/
Sony has just released Until Dawn Remake on PC and it appears that the PC version has numerous issues. While performance can be quite good, especially if you own an RTX GPU, the PC version has numerous features that are not working at all.

The next Halo game will use Unreal Engine 5, and here are its first WIP screenshots
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-next-halo-game-will-use-unreal-engine-5-and-here-are-its-first-wip-screenshots/
Microsoft has announced that the next Halo game will use Unreal Engine 5. MS also shared the first WIP screenshots, which you can find below. Keep in mind that these are early screenshots, so they don’t show the final quality of the game. However, they do give a good idea of what the devs are working towards.
(...)
Speaking of 343 Industries, Microsoft has renamed it to Halo Studios. As its new name implies, Halo Studios will be solely focused on creating new Halo games.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.