What happened? And are you all ok?

Gale force winds happened, but me and the family are fine. Will probably spend the next couple weeks fixing shit and cleaning up but nothing too serious. A lot of people are worse off with a lot of buildings missing roofs etc. At least we will have plenty of firewood this winter lol.

I guess a downgraded cyclone in New Zealand doesn't really rate in terms of global news.

Glad to hear that you're fine.

And lol, you won't have cold this winter with all that wood... if you get your roof fixed!

Unfortunately, there are too many bad news everyday, and the Korean ferry takes most of the media attention.

FTL: Advanced Edition transforms the spacefaring rogue-like into a mind control space circus

What’s FTL short for? Because it’s so difficult and its longevity is predicated on repeat playthroughs.

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Guild Wars’ ninth anniversary starts three weeks early because of typo

Typos make fools of us all, whether it’s writing ‘Best retards’ at the bottom of an email or the missing overbar that sent Mariner 1 into an explosive descent over Venus, but in ArenaNet’s case it’s made them the bringer of joy to Guild Wars players.

ArenaNet were planning on kicking off Guild Wars; ninth anniversary celebrations on the 22 April. Due to a typo in their internal schedule the cork was pulled three weeks early on the 2 April.

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Here Be Dragons has you hunt down the monsters of the sea for Queen and country

“Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas,” write Red Zero Games, “Vasco da Gama reached India by sea. However, all great explorers would never have reached their goals if they had to face all sea and land threats without help.

“Someone had to defeat dragons and tritons, beforehand. Someone had to vanquish bloody cults. Someone had to banish supernatural ghost ships. The information about these deeds is missing from the archives, and you can’t find it in any great statesmen’s memoir. The knowledge of the “Avant Armada” was completely erased.”

Too bloody right, it’s about time their great deeds were immortalised in a computer game.

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Garry’s Mod virus filled servers with sound of coughing

Last night a virus propogated itself and spread through the Garry’s Mod’s servers quickly. Very quickly.

Exploiting a weakness in the Source Engine, the virus was able to automatically download to your machine when you connected to an infected server. If an infected machine connected to an uninfected server the code would upload to the server and then download itself onto all the machines connected to it.

Developer Facepunch released a fix this morning.

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Let's talk about Thief's anti-open world

If you play Thief, which you might well do - it’s an occasionally stonking, deeply sensual stealth game - you won’t just be heisting banks and hoisting bags of swag.

No: you’ll need to hike between its missions on foot, through a City that makes a meal of crossing the street. It’s level design at its most obtuse, and at one confused juncture or another it’ll lead you to do precisely what I’m doing now: slump back in your chair and shake your head in wonder and exasperation at this least open of all the open worlds.

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InSynch is a gorgeous stop-motion animated music game out on 24 April

InSynch has you play in time to a composition that will adapt depending on how you play. That itself is a novel concept but on top of that the game is made out of paper and concrete.

Them Games built the set of their game in the real world and then filmed the inSynch’s animations using stop motion. The result is arresting.

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Ubisoft has over 9,000 employees. Possibly becoming the world’s largest gaming company

Kotaku’s Superannuation’s been at it again, this time delving into the data released on Ubisoft’s corporate website. They found that the publisher now employs more than 9,200 people, 7,800 in a production role. That’s a staggeringly large number but it goes some way to explaining how the company is able to put out a yearly Assassin’s Creed release, all while making Watch Dogs, Far Cry, and the rest of their games.

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Tropico 5 challenges you to hold power for 200 years

Tropico 5 is looking back to move the series forwards. Whereas previous games began in 1950, kicking things off at the start of the cold war, you’ll be starting Tropico 5 in 1850, while your island is still under imperial rule.

The next 200 years see you tussle with superpowers, resist corporate control, and eventually arise above all opponents. Of course, you’ll still have to rig an election or two.

You can see how the different eras play out in the new trailer.

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Half-Life VR 1.3 will bring virtual reality to Episode 1

Nathan Andrews has almost finished his work bringing virtual reality to Half-Life 2: Episode 1. His mod does a lot more than just linking the Oculus Rift up to City 17. The game’s HUD has been rebuilt so that appears naturally in the world and the game’s guns can now be aimed and fired with Razer’s Hydra.

You need to see the trailer to grasp quite how cool this all is.

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Child of Light video shows off its painterly fantasy world

Ubisoft’s been making quiet waves about its UbiArt Framework engine, the technology behind its recent Rayman games. The Engine also powers Child of Light, a beautiful fantasy tactical game.

The latest trailer shows off the variety in Child of Light’s world, from classical statues overgrown with leaves and weeds to 18th centure caravans to bulbous, organic hot air balloons.

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Easter of the Vikings

So it’s Easter. Probably. And I honestly can’t think of a better time to go raiding and pillaging up and down the coast of England in a Viking warband, while everyone’s taking some time off, relaxing in their homes. Those Saxons sure are a slovenly lot. But longship prices have skyrocketed in the last millennium and the only chainmail I’ve ever owned was part of a Halloween costume. From when I was 10. 

War of the Vikings has to suffice. That’s not a great misfortune, as War of the Vikings is really rather good. Angry, blood-drenched warriors shouting in Icelandic and Old English while trying to hack each other to death in the mud and the rain. Brilliant, primal stuff. But there’s more to these battles than slaughter. There are grudges, brave charges, tense seconds in a shield wall as enemies rush down a hill - little stories that emerge. 

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Splinter Cell: Echoes comics due this summer

If you can feel the effects of repetitive strain injury kicking in and want to give your gaming implements (hands) a rest then you might want to take a look at Splinter Cell: Echoes, a four issue comic that bridges the gap between Splinter Cell: Conviction and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Though, your hands will need to hold out a little longer, it’s not out till the summer.

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John Smedley on DayZ and H1Z1 similarities: “this is our take on the Zombie Apocalypse”

“Not going to give some politically correct dodgy b.s. answer,” SOE president John Smedley wrote on Reddit. “[H1Z1] is a survival in a Zombie Apocalypse game. So is Day Z. [Bohemia] have made a brilliant game (first I might add). They have a great vision for it and can count myself and most of the people on our team as fans and contributors.”

So, how do they differ? Well, for one, SOE can spawn zombie hordes on servers whenever they’d like.

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Curses ‘N Chaos Revealed By Mercenary Kings Devs

lol. Please tell me that's real.

Oh, and the pic from Ubisoft is... depressing.

Very real, and the pic of all the blue cubicles is from Tron BTW

That's awesome! And a relief .

Btw, AMD has updated it's "Never Settle" games.

And yet... They still can't create a decent game client for the PC.

probably had some interns working on it lol

What’s in the box? Schrodinger’s Cat and a randomly generating platformer

Back in 1935 Erwin Schrodinger killed a hypothesis kitty. He said that if you put a cat in a box with a jar of poison and close the lid that we cannot tell whether it is dead or alive until we open the lid to observe it, so, in that moment, when we can’t tell, it is both alive and dead. (He was using this example to point out the silliness of the binary state but that bit's often forgotten.)

However, he didn’t tell us about the everything else in there, like the Particle Zoo, the collectible quarks, or the randomly generating platformer. Luckily, Italic Pig are doing that for us.

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Epigenesis gains single player and new map

Epigenesis is trundling along in Early Access, this week adding a major feature: single player. The future sport that one last year’s Make Something Unreal contest was, till now, a purely multiplayer affair, which, when the servers were empty, made playing the game a bit of a chore.

Now you can play against up to nine bots.

Plus, there’s a new level out to play against them on.

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Star Citizen footage shows off space walking, ejecting, and a whole lot of dogfighting

We recently saw the first footage of Star Citizen’s dogfighting in action. Chris Roberts was showing off the game at PAX East and, despite a few technical difficulties, it was stellar stuff. Since then Roberts Space Industries have released a half hour feature covering the preparation for the PAX demo including new footage of some of the game’s features they weren’t able to show off.

For instance, you get to see what happens when you eject your vulnerable pilot into the cold black of space.

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Littlewargame is a multiplayer RTS that runs entirely in your browser

Truth be told I should have posted this story about an hour ago but I got sucked into a round of Littlewargame and I couldn’t break away to write. That’s one point to Littlewargame and another demerit on my writer’s scorecard.

The brilliance of Littlewargame is its an RTS of old, much like Warcraft and Dune 2 but it runs entirely in your browser without any sort of download.

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New Black Desert Online Video Shows Impressive Environments Full Of Pop-Up Issues