Hasta La Gadget!

Yesterday we announced that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pre-orders had begun, and today Valve has revealed additional information about the upcoming game, such as how pre-purchasing customers will get a 10% discount on the game and will also have access to the beta which will be taking place on the 14^th of August. Valve has also announced that they will be updating the game prior to the beta test taking place on the 14^th of August, so if you’re a hardcore gamer and want to stay ahead of all the changes and whatnot, pop on over to the Counter-Strike blog for the details. The company has also announced that they will be adding support for Mac users, so fret not as Mac users will eventually be able to get in on the Counter-Strike action in the near future. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will be released on the 21^st of August.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pre-orders expected to begin 21st July along with an open beta, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive arriving on PC and Mac August 21st,

ValveTime has dug through the Source Filmmaker code to reveal references to “Source 2,” reportedly a next-generation revamp of Valve’s famous game engine. Given that the three major consoles are all due a refresh, it’s unsurprising to see preparations being made. That said, however, the second (and major) launch title for the original Source was Half Life 2, so we’re gonna be getting a complaint letter ready if we don’t get some more time with Gordon, Alyx and Dog in a beautifully rendered future dystopia.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

Valve reportedly preparing second-generation Source engine, kinda explains the Episode Three delay originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When he’s not trash-talking Windows 8, Valve’s Gabe Newell is pondering next-gen wearable computing interfaces and playing with $70,000 augmented reality headsets, the outspoken exec has revealed. Speaking at the Casual Connect game conference this week, Valve co-founder and ex-Microsoftie Newell presented head-up display lag and issues of input and control for wearables as the next big challenge facing mobile computing, VentureBeat reports.

“The question you have to answer is, “How can I see stuff overlaid in the world when you have things like noise?” You have weird persistence problems” Newell said, asked about the post-touch generation of computing control. “How can I be looking at this group of people and see their names floating above them? That actually turns out to be an interesting problem that’s finally a tractable problem.”

Tractable it may be, but so far it’s not cheap. “I can go into Mike Abrash’s office and put on this $70,000 system, and I can look around the room with the software they’ve written, and they can overlay pretty much anything, regardless of what my head is doing or my eyes are doing. Your eyes are actually troublesome buggers” Newell explains. The second half of the issue, though, is input, which the Valve CEO describes as “open-ended.”

“How can you be robustly interacting with virtual objects when there’s nothing in your hands? Most of the ideas are really stupid because they reduce the amount of information you can express. One of the key things is that a keyboard has a pretty good data rate in terms of how much data you can express and how much intention you can convey … I do think you’ll have bands on your wrists, and you’ll be doing stuff with your hands. Your hands are incredibly expressive. If you look at somebody playing a guitar versus somebody playing a keyboard, there’s a far greater amount of data that you can get through the information that people convey through their hands than we’re currently using. Touch is…it’s nice that it’s mobile. It’s lousy in terms of symbol rate” Gabe Newell, CEO, Valve

Google’s Glass has sidestepped the issues somewhat, not attempting to directly overlay or replace exact objects in the real world with a wearable display, but instead float more straightforward graphics just above the wearer’s eye-line. That removes the precision problem, but means Glass will be less capable of mediating reality – i.e. changing what of the real world the user actually sees – and more about augmenting it with extra data.

As for control, Google has already shown off its side-mounted touchpad on Glass, and a recently published patent application fleshed out some of the other possibilities. They include voice recognition and hand-tracking using cameras, though Google also describes using low-level artificial intelligence to reduce the amount of active navigation Glass users may have to do.

For instance, Glass could recognize – using microphones built into the headset – that the wearer is in a car, Google explains, and thus automatically show maps and a navigation interface. Those same microphones could be used to spot mentions of peoples’ names and call up contextually-relevant information about them, working as an aide-mémoire.

Somewhat more bizarre, though, is research within Valve to use the human tongue as an input method. “It turns out that your tongue is a pretty good way of connecting a mechanical system to your brain” Newell explained. “But it’s really disconcerting to have the person you’re sitting next to going, “Arglearglargle.” “You just Googled me, didn’t you?” I don’t think tongue input is in our futures.”

Valve’s Gabe Newell talks wearable computing, touch and tongues is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Steam for Linux has been in the works for quite a while now, although it was only recently that Valve launched a dedicated blog where the detailed its progress. If you’re wondering what’s with the sudden increase in effort in creating Steam for Linux, well according to Valve’s boss, Gabe Newell, Steam for Linux is considered to be a “hedging strategy” in the event that the upcoming Windows 8 does not take off the way that Microsoft originally intended (think Vista). Speaking at an industry dinner in Seattle last night, Newell was quoted as saying:

“The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don’t realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior […]

We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.”

Whether you agree with Newell’s sentiments on Windows 8 or not, Steam for Windows and Mac is still going strong and the eventual port to Linux is probably going to welcome by many Linux gamers around the world.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Valve documents Steam for Linux via new blog, Steam for Linux Caught on Video [Leak],

Valve’s Steam platform was originally meant for Windows computers, and we’re sure that many Mac users were pleased when Valve finally released it for Mac computers as well. Now in case you were afraid that Valve might be going back on their word on Steam for Linux, fret not as according to Valve’s website, they have set up a blog dedicated to documenting their efforts at porting Steam onto Ubuntu 12.04. This is a move we’re sure that Linux users out there will appreciate as they have generally been somewhat neglected when it comes to gaming as most releases have been created for Windows machines. Valve’s goal is to create a Steam port with full functionality for Linux and optimize Left 4 Dead and port other Valve titles in the future. So, any Linux gamers out there excited about this? If you’d like to keep track of Valve’s progress, you can check out their blog for the details!

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Steam for Linux Caught on Video [Leak], Steam app for Android spotted with non-game categories,