Hasta La Gadget!

You already know that Half-Life 2 for Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and OS X is excellent, but have you tried it on Linux? Well, yes, technically speaking, you couldn’t actually play that version until this week when it launched on Steam for Linux, but our question stands! Yeah, that’s what we thought. Now that that’s straightened out, we might warn you about the beta nature of HL2‘s Linux launch. Like other Valve titles recently released to Steam for Linux, Half-Life 2 is merely a beta for now. Should you already own a copy for another platform, it’ll show up in your Steam library as available for download like any other crossplatform game. Of course, you’re probably too tied up with Half-Life 2‘s recently added Oculus Rift support on PC to think about a plain old keyboard/mouse experience. And hey, we can’t blame you for that.

Interestingly, Valve’s internal Steambox is powered by Steam’s Linux version; it wouldn’t be hard to imagine Valve scaling up its Linux game library ahead of the retail debut of various Steamboxes (or Steamboxen, if you will). That remains to be seen, of course, as Valve’s made no official announcement regarding that project’s availability.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

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Via: OMG Ubuntu

Source: SteamDB

Gordon Freeman, in your head. Well, that’s the plan, with Oculus now offering official beta support for a headset-based Half-Life 2. There’s a few known issues to iron out already, including an overly-dim UI and issues with the zoom. But even at this early stage, it appears to lack any gameplay deal-breakers we’ve seen elsewhere. As mentioned by Valve’s Joe Ludwig on the Oculus developer forums, however, the current build is a bit rougher around the edges compared to the Team Fortress 2 beta that launched earlier this year. Developers with the necessary Rift hardware can pick up the files on Steam or follow the developments on Oculus’ own forums — but no comments about headcrab hats and wearables, okay?

Filed under: Gaming, Wearables

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Via: Ubergizmo, Oculus3D (Twitter)

Source: Oculus VR developer forums

Non-profit organization Mars One recently began accepting applications for the chance to travel to Mars in order to colonize the red planet, with the only caveat being that you’ll be living there for the rest of your life. That didn’t stop most applicants, though, as thousands of applications have been sent in to Mars One, one of which is from a Valve engineer.

Jeep Barnett, who already has one of the coolest jobs around, has applied to become an astronaut for Mars One where he could be one of the chosen few to be taken to Mars forever. Barnett is a programmer at Valve, the game studio behind the Left 4 Dead, Portal, Half-Life, and Team Fortress series. He wants to quit his Valve gig and go to Mars full-time.

In his application, Barnett says that he’s always been interested in science fiction, and always grew up believing that such things would eventually turn into reality. A trip to Mars would put Barnett in a first-person experience where he would be able to live his childhood fantasy — traveling to another planet.

Frankly, Barnett would go to Mars ASAP if asked, saying that while such a trip would obviously require years of training, he’d be up for the trip by “next week” if needed. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Barnett hates his job at Valve, but going to Mars is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and Barnett doesn’t seem keen on letting it pass him by.

[via Kotaku]

Valve engineer applies to Mars One program is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The way gamers interact with their games has primarily been through controllers, such as gamepads, keyboards and mice, but what if there are more biological ways that we could interact with our games in the future? Well it seems that Valve is currently looking into that as it was revealed by the company’s experimental psychologist, Mark Ambinder, who revealed (via VentureBeat) that the company is currently experimenting with using sweat as a form of biometric feedback in their games.

Ambinder stated that the biometric feedback includes the use of a player’s sweat, calmness and eye motion, which has resulted in a variant of Portal 2 in which the game can be controlled via eye movement, which is apparently a lot quicker than reacting with your hands. The sweat and calmness gauge is also being used to determine within a game of Left 4 Dead, how much time is required to complete an objective.

Of course we don’t expect Valve to be releasing these games anytime soon with their biometric modifications, but it is interesting and awesome that a game company is looking beyond designing a new game in terms of features and story, but how a player interacts with it as well.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX Pre-Order Comes With Limited Edition Artbook, Saints Row 4 Has Us Playing As A Butt-Kicking President With Superpowers,

Valve’s Steam digital distribution gaming platform has added support for gaming subscription plans, allowing gamers the ability to manage their subscription-based games through the gaming service. The new feature offers a simple way to sign up for games and manage payments. The first and only game so far to use the new feature is Darkfall Unholy Wars.

More games will follow in the future, but for now, only Darkfall Unholy Wars is compatible — most likely to just test out the new system before rolling it out for more games. The service will allow you to manage subscriptions of all your Steam-based subscription video games through Steam itself, which is certainly nifty, and should give gamers a bit of flexibility and control.

To sign up for a Steam Subscription Plan, you’ll have to find a subscription-based game in the Steam store, and from there you just select the plan that you want and purchase the plan (rather than just a one-time fee for most games). It seems it’s a lot simpler than buying individual plans for multiple subscription-based games.

You can also cancel subscriptions from your Steam account, and Steam will list all of the subscriptions that you have. From there, you can just select the one you want to cancel and you’ll be all set. That same page will also let you renew subscriptions. Currently, Steam doesn’t offer the chance to gift a subscription plan, but we’re guessing they’ll come out with that sometime in the future.

Gaming subscription trend expands as Valve joins the party is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.