Paradox: “SteamOS is a great thing for PC gaming,” confirms CK2 and EU4 will run natively

Paradox Interactive has weighed in on the recent announcement of SteamOS, and with a very positive attitude. CEO Fredrik Wester called it a “great thing for PC gaming,” and confirmed that the publisher fully intends to support it going forward. Titles like Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis IV, which already have working Linux versions, will run natively on the new OS.

“We have been developing for SteamOS for quite a while as it’s basically the same as the Linux version Steam runs,” Johan Andersson, Studio Manager of Paradox Development Studio (one of Paradox’s internal dev teams), confirmed. “CK2 & EU4 should run on it natively, as it runs on Linux on Steam, and all our future games will as well. We think SteamOS is great for gamers, as it will give far better performance on the same hardware than Windows does.”

While the publishing side of Paradox hasn’t committed to the same universal support at this point, Wester expressed that the roster of Paradox-published games that run on SteamOS will continue to grow.

“We are actively expanding the number of published games on SteamOS—and as Johan mentioned, [Paradox Development Studio] is fully supporting SteamOS already,” he said. “SteamOS is a great thing for PC gaming; competition means more choices which, in the end, should favor gamers.”

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/26/paradox-steamos-is-a-great-thing-for-pc-gaming-confirms-ck2-and-eu4-will-run-natively/

Double Fine: “We’re rooting” for Valve and SteamOS

Valve’s vision of a Steam Machine in every living room is generating plenty of excitement, not only from gamers, but also developers. Double Fine, for example, is “rooting” for Valve’s success. Double Fine vice president of business development, Justin Bailey, and brand manager Greg Rice, told PC Gamer that the creators of Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, and the upcoming Broken Age are ready for SteamOS, and excited about the prospects of Steam moving into the living room.

Supporting a Linux-based operating system will be easy for the studio. “All of our games are supported on Linux,” says Bailey. “Our proprietary engine, called Buddha, goes to PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android right now.” In fact, Double Fine has sold Linux versions of its games through Humble Bundles and Steam already. The upcoming Broken Age, one of the first Kickstarter success stories, will support Linux when it comes to Steam Early Access in January 2014.

“Ultimately, we want to be on the platforms that our fans want us to be on,” adds Rice. “We’ve seen a lot of success on Linux with things like Humble Bundle and Linux sales on Steam already. So it just seems like we’re in a position to take advantage of it.”

Unsurprisingly, both Bailey and Rice embrace Valve’s rush to the living room. Double Fine games are historically controller-friendly, and SteamOS helps solidify that PC gamers will have controllers as an input option. “With PC games in the past,” says Rice, “it’s been a problem just because you can’t assume everyone has a controller, and you know everyone has a mouse and keyboard, so a lot of [developers] consider it an afterthought. But now, Steam coming to the TV will just make it important enough to figure out how to have good controller controls in their games.”

It’s not just professional interest here, either. Rice is excited by the way SteamOS can change his own gaming habits. “I’ve always wanted a device like this that was someone saying, ‘Here’s the official box that will play the games you can buy on Steam, and it will work with a controller well, and it’s all you need and you can just plug it right into the TV,’” he says. “One of my big bummers right now with the new consoles is that I bought 300 games on XBLA and PSN that aren’t going to work, so knowing that if I buy a game on Steam it will forever work on Steam is pretty awesome.”

“I think that’s a bold strategy,” Bailey adds. “I think we’re rooting for them, that it pays off for them.”

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/27/double-fine-were-rooting-for-valve-and-steamos/

I uploaded a crapload of screens to Steam if anyone is interested
http://steamcommunity.com/id/voxelman/screenshots/?appid=0&sort=newestfirst&browsefilter=myfiles&view=imagewall#scrollTop=50

Valve announces the Steam Controller with touch screen, haptic feedback, more

Valve has revealed its third, planned announcement for the living room and it’s the Steam Controller – a “hackable” controller with dual trackpads, a touch screen, and haptic feedback that works with all past, present, and future games available through the Steam service.

More »

Not what I was expecting lol, I guess it's something that I would have to try myself...

 

Thief 4: Master Thief Edition is a digital download option on PC and available for pre-order

Thief 4: Master Thief Edition is a digital download option on PC available for pre-order, Square Enix has announced.

More »

Second Life gets a graphics and features overhaul

Hot on the heels of its 10th anniversary virtual life simulator Second Life has received a facelift in the form of new graphics and features. This includes streamlined chat tools, better lighting, and improved avatar loading speed. If only real life could be patched like that, eh? Check out the trailer after the break.

More »

Arma 3′s first post-release update is live

The first post-release update for Arma 3, Update 1.02, is now available. It implements several tweaks, fixes and improvements. You can look over the entire changelog through here. Upon logging into the game via Steam, it will auto-update for you.

Hearthstone beta wipe approaches ahead of major update

That time has arrived for Blizzard’s Hearthstone beta. The servers will soon be wiped as a major update comes in to the collectible card game. This is the only planned wipe, unless something goes horribly and catastrophically wrong. Which it probably won’t.

More »

The Evil Within extended gameplay video released

The Evil Within has an extended gameplay video available for you to watch below. In the game, detective Sebastien Castellanos and his partners are called in to investigate a mass murder, when a “mysterious force” slaughters Sebastian’s fellow officers. Knocked unconscious, when he awakens, he finds his world “has been turned upside down.” This is where the video opens.
The Evil Within is in development for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC and is slated for release in 2014.

More »

League of Legends voice chat "not off the table"

27 September 2013 • 12 hours 18 min ago • Story by Jeremy Peel

 

 

Riot are understandably wary of introducing real, human voices to their MOBA. They’ve put a lot of work into washing the toxic sludge from their community, via tribunals and chat bans and such, and they’re hardly about to throw that away by thoughtlessly implementing unrestricted voip.

They do think about it, though.

Read and Comment

Divinity: Original Sin delayed until 2014; more gardening required

27 September 2013 • 13 hours 47 min ago • Story by Jeremy Peel

Easy on those wallet hinges, Kickstarterers - all that extra cash you’re flinging at developers is resulting in some seriously delayed videogames. First Schafer overscoped Broken Age to the point that it’s been split into two, and now Divinity: Original Sin’s stretch goals have seen it burst through the membrane into 2014.

Read and Comment

Edge Of Eternity Is A French J-RPG? It’s Ambitious

By John Walker on September 27th, 2013 at 8:00 pm.

Tweet this

It’s kind of weird that J-RPG has become a genre, rather than meaning it’s actually from Japan. Edge Of Eternity, describing itself as such, despite being developed in France, by indies Midgar Studio. It’s an extremely ambitious project, a young indie studio looking to create a massive original RPG, with orchestrated live music, turn-based combat, and fire coming out of the developers’ heads. But they’re asking for $200,000. Cripes.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

An Alien-Focused XCOM? Firaxis Talks Possibilities

By Nathan Grayson on September 27th, 2013 at 5:00 pm.

Tweet this

I recently had the chance to chat with XCOM: The Enemy Within senior game designer Ananda Gupta, and I was immediately faced with a crushing dilemma. Adam had done his job too well in a previous interview and discussed everything (XCOM-related) ON EARTH. I was stumped. I was about to hand in both my hands and my ability to ask questions to the Intergalactic Journalism Police when it hit me: if Earth’s no longer an option, then the only way out is up. Space! So Gupta and I chatted about aliens and the possibility of an XCOM campaign starring said nefarious extraterrestrials, and it was absolutely wonderful. [Warning - some XCOM: Enemy Unknown spoilers ahead.]

Read the rest of this entry »

 

 

Gamasutra has some developer thoughts on the controler

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/201195/Select_game_developers_used_the_Steam_Controller_Heres_what_they_said.php

Out of all of Valve Software's announcements about bringing Steam to the living room, today's Steam Controller was the only one that anyone could really get their eyes on.

And once you get your eyes on it, you realize immediately that this is a different kind of controller. Weeks ago, select developers were actually able to get their hands on this odd-looking, stickless wonder. And according to developers we've heard from who've actually used the controller, it's different with a purpose.

Dan Tabar is an indie game developer at Planetoid Pioneers studio Data Realms, and he was one of several indie developers who had hands-on demos with the controller at Valve's Bellevue, WA headquarters on Labor Day this year.

What he described was an extremely flexible, mappable controller -- perhaps the most flexible control option this side of a keyboard and mouse setup -- that offers generous tactile feedback.

"[Valve is] really trying to think things through," said Tabar. "They're asking, 'Do we really need thumbsticks? Why are the fingers on the back [of the traditional controller] not doing anything? Why not have paddles there?' The thing I find most exciting is that Valve is just rethinking it. We're totally going to be making Planetoid Pioneers with this controller in mind," he said.

During Valve's demo to him and several other indie developers, he was able to play Gearbox's Borderlands. "It hasn't been optimized, and wasn't actually built for [the Steam Controller]," he said. "Its controls were just mapped onto it. The haptic feedback was going crazy, but I'm sure they'll address that. The controllers we were using were literally fresh off the 3D press."

So far, Tabar has no word on when game developers will be able to get their hands on Steam Controllers so they can start making optimized games with them. But he did explain what he found out about it while there.

He said areas on the trackpad can be configured to have multiple button inputs. For example, the very top edge of a trackpad can be mapped to the keyboard's Shift+W, making your character in a first-person game run.

Tabar said the configuration map for the controller allows you to do "pretty much anything." For example, developers can slice up a pad into quarters, each one representing a different input, or even into eight radial sections, again, each section representing whatever you want, mapping to key combinations, or to the mouse.

The most prominent, and for some developers and players off-putting feature of the controller are those circular trackpads. But developers who we spoke with essentially said to drop your expectations of what a trackpad is capable (or not capable) of.

"These are not like laptop trackpads," Tabar said. "Everyone is like, 'Oh we're replacing thumbsticks with trackpads, oh shit.' [laughs] But this is not at all like a laptop trackpad. It just feels good. It's a challenge to verbally describe it.

"When [your thumb] moves toward the outer zone of the trackpad, you can feel that. [The zones on the trackpad] are independent of each other," he added.

Other notable features of the controller include the shoulder and trigger buttons, and the paddles on the back side. There's also that touch screen in the middle of the controller.

"As a gamer, I don't know if that touch screen is exciting, per se. But as a developer, it's really cool. You can swipe and do gesture motions on the little screen." That screen is a physical button too, offering a tactile "click" for players, an advantage over typical touch screens and pads.

"It doesn't feel like a trackpad"

Chris Remo, designer and writer at The Cave developer Double Fine had a hands-on of the Steam Controller at the San Francisco studio.

Remo played a couple different games: Double Fine's upcoming point-and-click adventure game Broken Age and the already-released platform-adventure game The Cave.

"We just plugged it in, and it worked," he said. "We didn't have special support for it or anything. It worked really, really well. I was really impressed with the mouse imitation. It doesn't feel like a trackpad."

Remo said the controller has a tiny speaker in it that offers audio feedback – a subtle "tick" sound that increases and decreases in speed (he compared it to the Wheel of Fortune wheel's sound), depending on how you use the track pad. If you "fling" your thumb across the trackpad – if it's mapped to the mouse – the ticking increases in speed, and slows down as the virtual momentum of your action slows.

"It sounds like there's actually a mechanical device in there, which really makes it feel mechanical, but not in a clunky way," Remo said. "It just feels really high-tech and precise. … I can't stand trackpads on laptops, and this felt really good to me. There was almost no learning curve as far as accuracy goes."

On Twitter, Ichiro Lambe with AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! developer Dejobaan Games also said the haptic feedback of Valve's new controller was a highlight of the device.

"It feels like you're moving your thumbs over a rough surface, though it's all virtual," Lambe said. "From a tech standpoint, think about something that can click whenever you tell it to... Simple example: you move your finger 1 inch up, and it ticks 10 times...You flick it up, and it starts ticking, like you've spun a wheel."

Remo added that he doesn't really consider the pads to be "trackpads," which, to players and developers, often represent poor feedback. "This is just the opposite of that," he said.

"I don't know if this would necessarily be my first choice for a first-person shooter, because I'm such a mouse-and-keyboard guy normally, but I'd also really like to try it," he said.

Oh and here is a video of Dirt 3 on 3 4K monitors powered by 2 R9 290X GPUs

I don't think I'd be able to play Street Fighter with that thing.

With by the looks of it... Crappy $20 Logitech speakers. xD

Still, I'm jelly, I wan't that set-up, thus I have to play the waiting game for AMD's new cards and 60hz 4k 27" (Hopefully IPS) monitors.
Really not  caring much for the Steam controller, I'll probably give it a whirl, but I love me a keyboard and mouse!

Oh Jeez Oh Man: Mount And Blade II Looks Fantastic

No Mount & Blade 2 hype?

Team Meat’s Tommy Refenes demos the Steam controller, thinks it’s a “great start”

Surgeon Simulator ARG hacked, alien surgeries unlocked

Surgeon Simulator fans have cracked the game’s ARG and while the secret hidden within is no Half-Life 3, it’s still pretty epic. More »

Xi3 teases more information for Piston console

Xi3 has teased that more plans are coming for its Piston console. You know, the one that’s supposedly a “SteamBox.”

More »

Amnesia developer teases next game with mysterious website

With Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs out the door, developer and publisher Frictional Games is ready to tease its next project.

More »

 

Final Fantasy VII music quality improved after fan criticism

28 September 2013 • 13 hours 29 min ago • Story by Julian Benson

Comments1

 

Reddit This

Square Enix garnered a lot of good will earlier this year when they released an updated and improved release of Final Fantasy VII. Well, all improved except for one area. The music quality in the PC release was lower than that of the original Playstation version.

Square Enix have apologised and released an update that replaces all the old files with brand-spanking new, nicely tuned ones.

Read and Comment

This new Shadow Warrior is actually not too bad, nice to see good old fasioned secret areas (and lots of em)