Moretal 2: Portal 2 Authoring Tools Beta release

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

Yesssssss. Now those of us that wished for more Portal 2 faster can start to see some custom levels without resorting to playing through the co-op for the umpteenth time. Also, those of you that wished for harder Portal 2 levels (as it was several notches away from fiendishly hard) can start to see more of what you like, bless your masochistic hearts.

The Authoring Tools themselves look to be similar to the Authoring Tools released alongside (six months later than) Left 4 Dead, which in turn is similar to the Source SDK. Therefore, it has the full suite of various modding tools, such as the ever-so-elegant Hammer Editor, the Model Viewer and other such tools. The main bonus here is that you can actually make levels specifically for Portal 2, instead of resorting to the slightly-hackish methods of porting all of the content to the Alien Swarm SDK, which several enterprising modders figured out.

In related news, this looks to be the break the much-troubled Portal mod Portal: Awakening was waiting for. After several bouts of extreme developer drama, the new lead modder announced that they’ll be porting all of the Awakening content over to the Portal 2 engine, once the SDK is released. So, soon-ish, I assume.

The SDK itself can be accessed in the normal manner in which such materials are accessed, which is the Tools tab in your Steam library.

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Blast from the past: Kokiri Forest

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

I bet that if you showed this article to someone in the past (circa 1998), they’d probably see it as either sacrilege or literally the coolest thing ever created. However, I don’t take stock in the activities of both past-people and errant time travelers, I only care about this custom campaign for Left 4 Dead 2: Kokiri Forest.

To a select few (the several billion people who have played Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, crossed with the significantly less who’ve played Left 4 Dead), this probably seems about as amazing as  Ocarina of Time getting a legitimate re-release on something that isn’t a $250 portable. To the rest, this will probably seem unnecessarily obtuse, broken and un-fun excuse for a custom campaign. Does that seem unnecessarily harsh? Probably, but in this case, it’s entirely justified. Away!

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Windfall: AFF Planetstorm to go retail

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

The main side-effect of the release of the UDK is that absolutely no one wants to release any mod for Unreal Tournament 3 anymore. That means that the only thing UT3 is anymore is merely a competent shooter. Is that a bad thing? I don’t know! To think I bought Unreal Tournament 3 for the mods! Anyway, next on the list of UT3 mods-turned-retail is the space shooter/man shooter Angels Fall First: Planetstorm.

Other than that, not many specifics on AFF Planetstorm’s retail jump besides the fact that it’ll be sold on Steam. There’ll be a boatload of changes from the December 2009 version, including an UI overhaul, new environments and gigantic stomping robots. Besides that, I can only hope that the retail release actually makes the game playable. Despite the effort it must have taken them to produce full bot support for their maps, it’s not terribly fun for anyone–least of all me two years ago–to download a 2GB install then find out that there’s six servers up, none of which have human players in it. Planetstorm is a game that demands 32 player servers, and if the final product can have the quality needed to get people interested in it, then it will succeed.

Then again, it’s harder to find people not playing a game they bought, unless it sucks. I don’t see that being a problem here. The future will tell.

Here’s the article. The announcement of the retailification is the first comment.

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More like overkill: Morrowind Overhaul

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

Way back in the distant past of June 2010, you may remember that my first ever article on this website was a rundown of a Something Awful walkthrough to making Morrowind into a game that is too stunning for its own right. From the screenshots I took of it, I failed to capture the dual senses of “why” and “where can I download this and will you take all of my money.” Actually, I think I captured the first sense fairly well, but the second sense suffered a bit. Coincidentally, the first two comments were one person wishing for a archive with everything, and the second saying that it would never, ever happen. Oh look, it happened.

All of the various enhancement mods have been contained into one easy-to-install but gigantic package (about 1.13GB zipped, 3.34GB unzipped). I say easy-to-install because you run the install program and vvwoop, it’s done, combined with the fact that you don’t need to plumb the dark and occasionally unsavory bits of Internet hell trying to find the right texture for your virtual garments.

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A Different FEAR: Resurrection

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

I’m currently on vacation, but you wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t told you because I never post anyway. I’ve come down from my cloud of laziness to share with you something I’ve never thought would happen: A F.E.A.R. mod. Apparently it’s already happened, at least partially.

F.E.A.R.: Resurrection is a rather ambitious mod that aims to be what the expansions should have been: bigger maps, additional, improved effects,  and a whole mess of new sounds, music and textures. I can’t really tell what the story is supposed to be, but it looks to be more chasing of nigh-unkillable Paxton Fettel with some overlap with the Condemned: Criminal Origins story. I guess I can see that, besides the obvious connection in the fact that they were both developed by the same person. In one game, you’re punching smelly hobos in the face while in the other you’re violently murdering super-soldiers with failing ninja-kicks. That’s the same thing, right? Continue reading →

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