Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

[JEMC]

Let’s check the Wednesday gaming news:

SALES/PLAYER COUNTS & DEALS

Kerbal Space Program rockets to its highest concurrent player count on Steam in more than 10 years
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/kerbal-space-program-rockets-to-its-highest-concurrent-player-count-on-steam-in-more-than-10-years/
Maybe it's a coincidence and maybe it's not, but as the Artemis 2 spacecraft comes rolling around the moon like Jimmy Kirk and co. heading off to save the whales, the aging reach-for-the-stars simulator Kerbal Space Program is seeing a major uptick in players on Steam—according to SteamDB, achieving the highest concurrent player count the game has seen since it launched into 1.0 more than a decade ago.
Kerbal Space Program debuted in April 2015 and has remained popular despite its age—you can still reliably find at least a few thousand people playing on Steam at any given moment. Over the past two weeks, though, that number has shot way up: Not enough to put it back among the top 100 most played games on Steam, but it's awfully close.
The obvious question is, well, why? And the answer sure seems to be NASA's Artemis 2, which after years of over-promised, under-delivering vanity projects from self-indulgent billionaires has managed to make space exploration cool again.

Steam has four new deals:

• Skin Deep will be 40% off until the 21st of April: https://store.steampowered.com/app/301280/Skin_Deep/
• Rivals of Aether II will have a 50% discount until the 21st: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2217000/Rivals_of_Aether_II/
• Zoochosis is also going to be 50% off until the 21st: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2458560/Zoochosis/
• And The Testament of Sherlock Holmes wil have a 90% discount until… if you thought the 21st again, you were correct!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/205650/The_Testament_of_Sherlock_Holmes/

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

INTEL Arc Graphics 32.0.101.8629 driver
https://videocardz.com/driver/intel-arc-graphics-32-0-101-8629

HIGHLIGHTS
Introducing Gaming Support for Intel Arc Pro B70, and Intel Arc Pro B65 Discrete GPUs.

Browsing the Steam Workshop's 50 million mods just got better thanks to a redesign that loads faster and works better on mobile and Steam Deck
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/browsing-the-steam-workshops-50-million-mods-just-got-better-thanks-to-a-redesign-that-loads-faster-and-works-better-on-mobile-and-steam-deck/
Last week, Valve rolled out a refresh for the Steam storefront that made the whole thing look quite a bit nicer than it used to. This week, the Steam Workshop is getting a similar treatment: An update to the UI designed to make browsing Workshop content quicker and easier.
"The Steam Workshop remains a heavily used part of the Steam Community: to date, there are over 3,000 games with Workshop enabled with a combined total of over 50 million items uploaded," Valve wrote, explaining what pushed it to make the changes. "Millions of players regularly subscribe to and vote on items. While we've added features and updated the Workshop over the years, we felt it was time to make some bigger improvements to the overall user experience."
The central issue, apparently, is that while "there are dozens of ways to interact with the user interface" while browsing Workshop content, most of them require a full page reload, which seriously slows things down. To alleviate that, Valve has rewritten the page code to enable quicker updates, and has added a "quick view" option so you can check things out without leaving the browsing page. Like the Steam storefront update last week, the Workshop update also delivers an overall embiggening that makes the front page nicer to look at.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Half-Life: Lemings Mod Will Allow Players to Save All Scientists
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/half-life-lemings-mod-will-allow-players-to-save-all-scientists/
Modder ‘TeamClown’ has released a really cool mod for Half Life that lets you save all of the game’s scientists and security guards. This mod will let you experience this classic FPS in a completely different way. As such, I highly recommend trying it.
A couple of days ago, the modder shared the first public version of it. Version 1.0 will let you contains everything from Unforeseen Consequences up to Apprehension, which is literally almost half the game. Throughout it, you will be able to rescue up to 45 NPCs.
So, consider this a demo as it does not cover the entire game. Still, this is one of the coolest mods I’ve seen for the first Half-Life game. After all, it makes major changes to the gameplay and pacing.
Another cool feature is that the Security Guards can now help you. So, the more you rescue, the easier the game will become. Not only that, but Barneys will be able to pick up more weapons, such as the shotgun, MP5, and hand grenades, while scientists can now pick up Glocks.
You can go ahead and download the mod from this link. To play it, you will need Half-Life: Source.
>> The article has an almost 2 minutes video.

These 'hunger system' mods for Crimson Desert have gotten my hopes up for a full survival conversion
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/these-hunger-system-mods-for-crimson-desert-have-gotten-my-hopes-up-for-a-full-survival-conversion/
I'm a bit late getting into Crimson Desert, so for the past few weeks I've been enviously watching wild videos of players flying, grapplehooking, and riding bears all over the place. It looks like a lot of ridiculous fun.
But when I finally started the game, I found my interests quickly turned in a different direction. One of the first things I saw was a guy standing by a waterfall, fishing. Then I saw a huge, beautiful world spread out in front of me. A few minutes later I was chopping down trees and gathering fruit and cooking simple meals.
None of this made me want to swing around on a grappling hook or ride a bear. It made me want to go camping.
I know I'm not alone in seeing the possibilities of Crimson Desert becoming a full-on survival experience. There's a lot there already to support survival systems, including a few Pearl Abyss created but never activated, which are unlocked in this food risk mod that includes "poison, nausea, or debuffs" for eating bad food. Another mod, called Be Hungry, introduces penalties for skipping meals.
This is what I'm looking for. Cooking in Crimson Desert is fun and eating is beneficial, but I'd like it to be critical to survival, too. Plus, when I make one of those gloppy green "mysterious dishes" while improvising recipes, it'd be cool if there was a chance they made me really, really sick if I ate them. I know the exact ingredients I put into them: they would absolutely make Kliff hurl.
>> The article has three screenshots, but none of them are from the mods.

GAMING NEWS

Gothic 1 Remake Gets Official PC Requirements
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/gothic-1-remake-gets-official-pc-requirements/
THQ Nordic has revealed the official PC system requirements for Gothic 1 Remake. So, let’s see what PC system you’ll need in order to run it.

INDUSTRIA 2 Gets Release Date & Official PC Requirements
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/industria-2-gets-release-date-official-pc-requirements/
Bleakmill has announced that INDUSTRIA 2 will be released on April 15th. To celebrate this announcement, the team has also shared a new trailer that you can find below, as well as the game’s official PC system requirements.

Here’s the full prologue sequence for Forza Horizon 6
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/heres-the-prologue-sequence-for-forza-horizon-6/
Microsoft has released a new gameplay video for Forza Horizon 6, which showcases its entire prologue sequence. As in all Forza Horizon games, the prologue lets you drive numerous vehicles in various races.