While Valve has yet to confirm Half-Life 3, it has not stopped fans and the gaming community in general from speculating about it, and some going as far as finding “evidence” in various games and trailers released by Valve. However […]
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The gamer-created unofficial Half-Life modification Sven Co-Op has been announced to be going fully official (Steam game official, that is) this week by its makers. What this means for you, the lay person, is that you’ll be seeing this game available inside Steam for free – downloadable and playable – where before today – and for the past 14 years or so – you’d have had to have downloaded it and loaded it yourself attached to the original game. Now it’s all on its own and going big with help from the Steam team!
This modification to the classic person-vs-person shooting game has been rolling out updates for years now, with the newest edition acting as a great jump-off point for those looking to understand the draw. In the newest update’s user manual you’ll find weapons and characters from the human world you’re familiar with, but the monstrous Sven reality as well – Spore launchers and Stukabats and Kingpins, oh my!
Basically this game takes on the skeleton and the brain of the original Half-Life game and takes it to an alternate dimension where monsters roam free. Have a peek at a demonstration of what Sven Co-Op brings the world of Half-Life here courtesy of coopcrowd:
The Valve Corporation have now officially – for real, this time – granted the developers behind Sven Co-Op access to the original game’s engine for the creation of this cooperative game. The game will be one in which players must continue to work together to solve puzzles in both odd locations and time periods aplenty.
• The next version of Sven Co-op will run as a standalone game using a custom build of the Half-Life engine.
• The game will be FREE for all Steam users, including the official Half-Life campaign (for 2+ player co-op play). A Half-Life purchase will not be required.
• Automatic updates will be available using Steam’s content delivery system dubbed SteamPipe. This will allow us to perform more frequent and rapid updates as needed.
• Updates and new features will be added to the Half-Life engine, as well as a series of improvements to Half-Life’s level editor called Hammer.
• Increased Half-Life engine limits to allow for much larger and more detailed worlds.
• Stability, performance, and gameplay improvements for everyone.
You can expect this update to come to Steam SOON. At the moment we’re not clear on an exact date, but we’ll keep you informed without a doubt!
VIA: Sven Co-Op
Sven Co-Op heads free-to-play to Steam after near-15 years of development is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Having developed Sven Co-op for the better part of two decades, the team behind the Half-Life mod has finally been given the keys to Valve Corporation’s candy store. The company has granted the modding group access to the original game’s engine in order to produce a custom edition that’s designed to support co-operative play. In return, the next Sven Co-op, in which players have to work together to survive and solve puzzles in various time periods, will be made available through Steam as a free-to-play title. All we ask is that Daniel “Sven” Fearon uses his new-found access to hunt around for any files entitled Episode Three, and keep all of our flickering hopes alive.
Source: Sven Co-Op
Like other top developers, Valve often gets asked by kids who dream of working in the videogame industry about what they need to do to get in and what the experience is like. The company has responded with Pipeline, a project aimed at high school students that will try to answer those very questions. One curious twist is that Pipeline is also run by high school students who are currently interns at Valve.
While it may seem dismissive of Valve to “merely” assign kids to help educate other kids, I’m sure these interns have been duly screened by the company beforehand. For instance, the Pipeline kids were the ones who made the announcement video below. Besides, these kids should know the best way to reach out to their peers.
Sign up at the Pipeline website to find out when they release more details about it. The bit about Valve testing to see if they can train high school kids to work in the industry is quite interesting. I wonder how the people who currently work in the gaming industry would feel about the possibility of having such competition for work, or even finding themselves working under someone young enough to be their kid. And is paid in virtual hats.
[via The Verge]
Valve is proving its unicorn status amongst game developers once again. This time, by hiring a group of handsome teenagers to work within its secretive walls. Pipeline is the latest experiment from the company famous for resonance cascades, and its focus is prepping high schoolers for a career in game design. The website was created by these interns to answer inquiries teenagers consistently ask Valve; questions pertaining to college choice, areas of study and what it’s like to work on video games. In the team’s self-created clip, video editor Nathaniel says Pipeline is a test to see how a group of younger employees can adapt to the company’s unique organizational structure.
The site’s mainly a FAQ right now, but the plan is to build it around user-submitted queries. Pipeline’s illustrator Melanie promises future video series and interviews covering different aspects of development including art, sound design and filming. If Newell and co.’s newest employees being barely older than Gordon Freeman’s first adventure doesn’t make you jealous, this just might: They probably know more about Half-Life 3 than you.
Filed under: Gaming
Via: NeoGAF
Source: Pipeline
It’s no secret that Valve’s Steam digital gaming service holds gigantic sales throughout the year and discounts even the biggest games by 50% or more. This time around, we’re seeing probably the biggest sale of the year so far, which is Steam’s Summer Getaway Sale that is lasting 11 days throughout this month, with each day having its own set of discounted titles.
Headlining today’s sales is BioShock Infinite at 50% off for only $29.99. This specific deal will only last 24 hours, so the clock is ticking. You should be aware of four different types of Steam deals throughout this next week and a half or so. There are broad, store-wide discounts that older games receive; there are daily deals which last 24 hours; there are flash deals which only last a couple hours; and then there are community deals which are voted on by Steam users.
Obviously, the more broad store-wide deals usually aren’t that great of a deal, and usually deal with games that aren’t very popular. However, it’s the daily deals and flash deals that you’ll want to keep your eyes on. These deals only last a short amount of time, and usually consist of popular games that have deep discounts. Blink once and you’ll miss them.
However, if you’re like me and end up buying all of these cheap games but never play them because you have more important things to do, then we suggest hiding your wallets and implementing some self-control. It’s a hard thing to do when you can get Portal 2 for just a few dollars, but once you buy that first cheap game, it’s like a vicious cycle.
Of course, we’re not therapists and we’re not trying to advise you to be careful out in the crazy world of Steam sales — go crazy for all we care. Just be sure you’ll actually play them when you get them. Don’t end up like us, with a huge list of games that we’ve never played that we’ll never be able to sell again.
Steam’s Summer Getaway Sale underway: Hide your wallets is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Left 4 Dead 2 is the latest game in Valve’s catalog to clamber out of the Steam for Linux beta. Unlike last week’s Half-Life 2 news however, the extra something coming along for the ride isn’t VR headset support — it’s a powerful suite of customization tools. The Extended Mutation System (EMS) gives the already robust modding community additional options for crafting one-off episodes and game type variants. For a glimpse of what EMS enables, play a round of “Holdout.” This new multi-map mode introduces buildable items and the concept of resources to the co-op zombie-slaying calamity. What’s more, Valve said it will add the most popular EMS creations to the official servers. Maybe with this, the world can finally witness our vision of the zombie apocalypse. Yeah, it involves marmosets.
Filed under: Gaming
Via: Left 4 Dead Blog
Source: Steam
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