A small Australian software company — backed by almost AUD$2 million in government assistance — is claiming they've developed a new technology which is '100,000 times better' for computer game graphics. It's not clear what exactly is getting multiplied, but they apparently 'make everything out of tiny little atoms instead of flat panels.' They've posted a video to YouTube which shows their new tech, which is apparently running at 20 FPS in software. It's (very) light on the technical details, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but they say an SDK is due in a few months — so stay tuned for more."
John Carmack had this to say about the company's claims: "No chance of a game on current gen systems, but maybe several years from now. Production issues will be challenging."

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/0...0-Times-Better ...

Action role-playing game The Lord of the Rings: War in the North will be released in November, Warner Bros. has announced.

This bloody, limb-loosing game takes a trio of adventures - human, dwarf, elf - on an adventure parallel to that made famous by Tolkein's book and Peter Jackson's films.

You'll head north to the snowy lands of Gunabad and face the forces of arch-villain Agandur, Sauron's "crulest ally", according to the LOTR: War in the North website.

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance dev Snowblind is at the helm, crafting a loot-happy action-RPG that relies heaviliy on co-op, either with AI bots, friends in the same room or friends online.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North was announced in March 2010, and so appears to have had a healthy amount of development time.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...h-release-date ...

By introducing real money auctions for virtual items in Diablo III Blizzard has upped its game in the fight against illegal 'gold farmers'.

For online games such as World of Warcraft where it can take months or even years to forge a strong character, time is money.

Forget monthly subscriptions and microtransactions. There are thousands of gamers out there willing to pay hundreds of pounds – illegally – for a fast-track ride to the top.

Right now you can search the web for high-level accounts and receive the most powerful in-game characters, weaponry and items within minutes of making payment (and maybe pick up a computer virus on the way). Don’t want to spend months reaching the level cap in Warcraft? Not a problem. Rubbish at Final Fantasy XI? Doesn’t matter. You can buy your way through the games.

Although these sales aren’t as prolific as they were four or five years ago, they’re still a problem. Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft was heavily plagued by ‘gold farmers’ in its early days – players who use computer-controlled ‘bot’ characters to harvest virtual currency and rare items before selling them on websites in exchange for real money.

Blizzard has stamped down on illegitimate websites and eBay sellers in recent years, but the problem persists. So if Blizzard can’t beat ‘em, why not join ‘em?

The developer-publisher has announced it is introducing an in-game auction house system in upcoming PC online RPG Diablo III. But not any old auctions – ones that allow players to spend real money on virtual goods.

Users will be able to buy, sell and trade digital items such as swords using real-life currency, with sellers taking the majority of the sum and Blizzard taking a small cut for each transaction. Gamers can still opt to trade using virtual currency or simply exchange items for other items.

“The real money auction house provides players with an easy-to-use, Blizzard-sanctioned way to collect money for items they obtain while playing Diablo III,” says a statement on the Diablo III auction house page.

“It also helps protect players from the scams and theft often associated with questionable third-party sites by providing a secure, completely in-game method for purchasing and obtaining the items they want for their characters.”

Although Diablo III is not the first online game to feature such a system – Sony introduced it to EverQuest II players years ago – with Blizzard adopting the payment model it could have massive implications on the illegal virtual item businesses across the globe.

Gold farmers will still get to play and trade items in-game, players won’t be as tempted to surf dodgy third-party websites and Blizzard takes a small cut of every sale made in-game. Everyone’s a winner. Almost.

Blizzard will still face problems battling those who sell accounts online. Because although the real money auctions are a welcome addition, they only apply to items. There will still be a black market for characters with entire accounts going up for sale. Blizzard may own the rights to every character on their servers (with players simply paying to control them), but keeping an eye on 11m users is a huge strain. There will always be a few that break the system.

Blizzard may never stop gold farming and those who use in-game bots to level up characters quickly. But by embracing this business Blizzard has not only retained a tighter grip on the buying decisions of its players, it’s taken one giant step towards blocking out the black market entirely.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/opini...rt-move/082571 ...

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A new version of OpenTTD has been released.
OpenTTD is a clone of the Microprose game "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", a popular game originally written by Chris Sawyer. It attempts to mimic the original game as closely as possible while extending it with new features.


Quote:
1.1.2-RC1 (2011-07-24)

Change: [NewGRF] Only allow access (via hotkey and menu) to the bounding box visualisation when NewGRF developer tools are enabled (r22675)

Fix: [NewGRF] Disallow accessing variable 1B in network games due to desync reasons (r22682)

Fix: Switching from a red to a white highlight (by switching to another tool) without switching the highlight mode (HT_RECT etc.) did not mark the selection dirty [FS#4670] (r22649)

Fix: [NewGRF] Parameters from NewGRFs were not properly parsed in all cases [FS#4599] (r22648, r22630, r22629, r22628, r22627)

Fix: GetSection() does not return a LockPart [FS#4678] (r22645)

Fix: [NewGRF] Disallow building NewObjects on water tiles owned by another company (r22643)

Fix: [NewGRF] Disable the ´set parameters´ button in the NewGRF GUI, if the GRF specifies to have no parameters and one would not be able to set any parameters anyway (r22642)

Fix: Keep the previous owner of the upper and lower lock parts if they are built on existing water (r22638)

Fix: [NewGRF] Airports should not expose the tile specific random bits of the north tile. Only airport tiles should access those (r22636)

Fix: [NewGRF] Correctly reseed random bits of industries and industry tiles (r22635, r22634)

Fix: [NewGRF] Implement variables 25 and 7F for railtypes (r22633)

Fix: [NewGRF] Additional text in fund industry window is NewGRF supplied and thus should have a default colour (r22631)

Fix: Also initialise _old_vds with newgame settings; TTD savegames do not contain these settings [FS#4622] (r22626)

Fix: Do not zero the orders of disaster vehicles when converting savegames [FS#4642] (r22625)

Fix: When closing an AI company the local player cheated to, we need to cheat him to another company [FS#4654] (r22624, r22623)

Fix: When closing down companies their shares in other companies must be sold even if share trading is disabled at that point of time (r22622)

Fix: When asking the user to confirm an unsafe unpausing, there is no need to execute a command if ´no´ is choosed. This also prevents crashing when clicking unpause while the confirm window is shown (r22621)

Fix: Enforce refit orders to be ´always go to depot´ orders; service-only and stop-in-depot orders make no sense with refitting [FS#4651] (r22620)

Fix: Consider the size of the vehicle sprite for the lineheight in the company GUI. This also makes the widget containing the sprite not skip drawing it, if the bounds of the widget are outside of the drawing area though the sprite actually needs drawing [FS#4662] (r22619)

Fix: When changing difficulty settings over the network, do not just reopen the difficulty window if any game options window is opened; instead invalidate them properly [FS#4653] (r22618, r22617)

Fix: [NewGRF] If callback 33 returns a value out of range, no sound effect shall be played [FS#4656] (r22614)

Fix: Use rotated heightmap sizes for reporting scaling problems [FS#4663] (r22608)

Fix: Do not show cargo accepted/produced in the new station window when no tiles are selected (mouse hovering a window or toolbar) [FS#4647] (r22595, r22593)

Fix: Add active NewGRFs to the list of available ones when selecting the empty preset [FS#4644] (r22594)

Fix: Reading of heightmaps with uncommon BMP formats failed due to uninitialised variables [FS#4645] (r22592)

Fix: PBS order forecasting modified the current order index in case of a goto-nearest-depot order and no depot could be found [FS#4641] (r22589)

Fix: Remove BaseStorageArrays from _changed_storage_arrays on destruction (r22583, r22551)

Fix: Do not increment STL iterators after they have been invalidated (r22582)

Fix: Do not lower the arrow buttons in the NewGRF/AI parameter windows if they are clicked when disabled (r22553, r22499)

Fix: Clear airport persistent storage on construction/removal of airports (r22552)

Fix: Possible crash when opening the airport build window for the first time [FS#4619] (r22538)

Fix: Replace the half small airport structure on the intercontinental airport with some grass [FS#3494] (r22537)

Fix: Documentation omission regarding admin protocol [FS#4632] (r22536)

Fix: [NoAI] Doing rescan_ai in a game with running AIs caused a crash [FS#4631] (r22534)

Fix: Do not create an implicit order if the current order is the first order in the order list and we visit the station of the last entry of the order list (r22532)

Fix: MinGW 64 related compilation issues [FS#4623] (r22522, r22491, r22490, r22489)

Fix: The layout selectors of the airport build GUI did not latch properly (r22497, r22495)

Fix: Callback result for airport layout name ...

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D2X-XL is an OpenGL-port of Descent II.
Supported platforms are Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.


Quote:
updates since last AEP reported release 1.15.239

v1.15.243

Fixed: A bug in secret level handling could cause program crashes


v1.15.242

Fixed: Removed a few bugs that under rare circumstances could cause program crashes


v1.15.241

Fixed: Joystick deadzones weren´t properly set after loading a player profile

Fixed: Fire wasn´t rendered properly when soft particle blending was disabled

Changed: Reverted a collision handling related change that apparently prevented proper sliding of the player ship along walls and around corners

Improved: HUD messages won´t show on screenshots

Improved: HUD and RADAR will not be rendered during the player ship explosion sequence anymore

New: Robots firing fusion guns will have a 3D shockwave effect

New: Mods can now have level specific loading screen background images

New: Mods can now have level specific loading screen background images


v1.15.240

Fixed: The heavy fighter´s shield could be charged to 200% with an energy -> shield converter

Improved: Player ships will not endlessly bounce off walls when being driven against them while having thrust


For the complete changelog, please visit the official site

http://www.descent2.de/ ...

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Dune Legacy is remake of the classic game Dune II – The Building of A Dynasty. You can download builds for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.


Quote:
24.07.2011: Dune Legacy 0.96.2


Add LAN multiplayer mode

Internet multiplayer mode with metaserver (Beta!)

Use scale2x for scaling

Make game scalable ingame (Zoomlevel x1, Zoomlevel x2 and Zoomlevel x3)

Add mentat help

Scroll build list with mouse wheel

Loading maps is more fault tolerant and shows only warnings in most cases

Loading maps now checks for non-standard features (see Section "Features" in the Dune II Format Specification)

Confirm window for game restart and game exit

Added 13 maps by Rippsblack

New options "Structures Degrade On Concrete", "Start with Explored Map" and "Instant Build"

Earthquake ("Window shaking") on large explosions (e.g. death hand explosion)

French translation (incomplete and only a machine translation)

Bugfix: Loading SCENH008.INI of Dune II V1.0 failed

Bugfix: Dune Legacy.log was not used on Windows

Bugfix: Support non-ascii characters in paths and filenames on Windows

Bugfix: Infantry units could not trigger spice blooms

Bugfix: When playing as the Sardaukar, the announcer still says "Harkonnen", e.g. "Harkonnen harvester deployed"

Bugfix: Sardaukar Reinforcements did not work

Refactoring: Drop Visual Studio 6.0 support completely and start using C++0x features

http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-17340.html ...

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Freeciv is an open source project that aims to provide a free Civilization clone (released under the GPL).


Quote:
Welcome to Freeciv 2.3.0-RC1
Thanks again to all our developers, who continue to work so hard.

WHAT´S CHANGED SINCE 2.3.0-beta4

Server / General
Bug fix: server crash and assertion failure associated with civil war. GNA#17439
Bug fix: clients were not always updated when a city was lost (for instance, due to civil war):
The loser´s client, and anyone who shared their vision, could still show the city as owned by the losing player, leading to client crashes. GNA#17990 GNA#17860
The loser´s client could still show units in the city as owned by that player. GNA#18194
Bug fix: the server´s stack could overflow (causing a crash) with large maps, particularly on Windows (where the trouble was observed around 80,000 tiles). GNA#17962
Bug fix: the server could crash with rulesets where gold_upkeep_style=2 due to ending up with a negative gold balance. Previously, if there was not enough gold, at most one unit and one building would be sold per turn. Now, as many units/buildings are sold alternately as necessary to restore a positive balance. (This doesn´t affect the supplied rulesets.) GNA#18221
Bug fix: pillaging a road (or removing it in the editor) under a road-native unit (such as a Big Land unit in the experimental ruleset) could cause a server crash. GNA#16281
Fix a warning loading some old savegames. GNA#18209
Suppress a recently-introduced assertion failure that could show up in some circumstances. GNA#18095
Changes to the ´timeout´ setting now always have immediate effect, as in 2.0.x; previously, changes between non-zero values would not take effect until the next turn. GNA#18079
Allow the ´unitwaittime´ option to be used when ´timeout´ is 0 (disabled). GNA#17975
When global warming or nuclear winter occur, changes between land and water are now restricted to coastlines. Also, city tiles are no longer protected from climate change in certain circumstances. GNA#17953
Bug fix: inaccurate message when trying to accept an alliance pact which is invalid due to the other party´s war. GNA#18066
Bug fix: it was impossible for existing users to log in to servers with authentication enabled running on big-endian machines (such as sparc64). GNA#18170
Bug fix: more accurate reporting of network errors on Windows. GNA#18210
Bug fix: freeciv-modpack didn´t always find the user´s home directory correctly (notably on Windows). GNA#18262
Change path handling to allow scenarios to be downloaded with freeciv-modpack. GNAPATCH#2500
Clean up handling of changing default metaserver URL between versions. GNAPATCH#2764
Fix path handling of the ser and civ scripts to be consistent with the behaviour of the unwrapped binaries. GNA#17461
Apply latest lua-5.1.4 patch (9).
Fix a minor server memory leak. GNAPATCH#2540
Various internal changes which should only affect developers. GNAPATCH#2630 GNA#18091 GNA#17757 GNA#16457 GNAPATCH#2736 GNAPATCH#2772

Clients
Bug fix: the client could make invalid accesses with rulesets with variable city radii (such as the experimental ruleset). GNA#17710
Bug fix: the client could potentially behave as though it had made a successful connection to a server when in fact the connection had failed. GNA#18211
Bug fix: the client could use invalid information about the relationship between cities and tiles leading to an assertion failure. GNA#18005
(Gtk) Bug fix: cancelling the "build city" name dialog by pressing Escape could make it impossible to issue the build order again for some units. GNA#18163
(Gtk) Allocate less space to the minimap when the "Arrange widgets for small displays" option is enabled, since this area had grown since 2.2.x. GNA#17802
(Gtk) Bug fix: scrolling the minimap could cause confusion / corruption with large maps. GNA#17825
(Gtk) Bug fix: when the minimap is detached from the main window, allow it to fill its window vertically as well as horizontally. GNA#18180
(Gtk) The "Build Fortress" and "Build Airbase" entries on the Combat menu did not necessarily build the named bases (depending on the unit/ruleset). Renamed to "Build Type A/B Base". GNA#16566
(Gtk) Bug fix: reinstate the Shift+Ctrl+R shortcut to start a revolution. GNA#18296
(Gtk) Do not display hotkeys twice in some menu entries. GNA#17954
(Gtk) Allow shift-right-click-drag to add units/cities to an existing selection. GNA#18301
(Gtk) Left-click on the overview map now selects a new unit, and shift-left-click adds a unit to the existing selection, as on the main map. Previously, the overview map controls were swapped. GNA#18300
The "Sell Obsolete" button in the Economy report could never be pressed. It has been renamed to "Sell Redundant", and now lets ´redundant´ buildings be sold en masse (redundant buildings are those whose effects are entirely superseded by another, for which you may still be paying upkeep -- for instance, Power Plants are redundant in cities with a Hydro/Nuclear/Solar Plants). In the Gtk client, the "Obsolete" column in the Economy report has been replaced with a ...

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FreeCol is an open source project that aims to provide a free Colonization clone. FreeCol is released under the GPL.


Quote:
FreeCol 0.10.1 released
Monday, 25 July 2011
We have just released FreeCol 0.10.1. It is a stable release that fixes many of the bugs reported after the first release of the 0.10. series. Furthermore, the layout of some reports has been improved, and an alternative Colony Report has been added.

http://www.freecol.org/ ...

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FreeOrion is an open source project that aims to provide a free and platform-independent game in the tradition of the Master of Orion games (released under the GPL).


Quote:
FreeOrion v0.3.16 has been released for Windows and Intel Macs.

Note that if you´re installing on a system that has previously run an older version, you may need to delete your config.xml or may get errors about missing font files. On Macs, you may also need to delete some files for the new version to run.

Changes since the last release include:


Replaced the fullscreen turn progress window that covered the map with progress indicator text in the message window. The map now stays visible between turns, but with order-issuing UI disabled until the next turn starts being playable.
Chat messages are now enetered in the same message window with a more obvious interface for entering text and displaying old messages.
Added an empire / player list window above the chat / message window. When any empire or player is selected, chat messages are sent only to that player.
The server now sends updates several times between turns, including fleet movements before combats, and a full update (as before) at the start of the next turn.
Added an encyclopedia to the in-game interface, showing information about game content like ship parts, techs, species, etc.
Added the option to have observer players in multiplayer games. These players can see the whole universe, but don´t have an empire to control and can´t control when turns are ended.
Added the option to have AI players in multiplayer games.
With the observer option and AI players in the multiplayer lobby, it is now possible to create an AI-only game with only a human observer. This works like an AI test arena, with the AIs playing against eachother and no human player.
Added a "Drop" option in the multiplayer lobby, to allow removing human or AI players from games.
Added "Deep Space" to possible types of systems in universe. These systems have no star, but may still have a planet.
Made map screen zoom centre on the cursor instead of the centre of the screen.
Improved rendering support for graphics cards that don´t support rendering buffers and shaders.
Made system sidepanel resizable and draggable.
Made the UI generally respond better to FreeOrion window resizing. The intro screen generally looks good, but production and research don´t resize properly, yet.
Content updates, including new species.
Tweaked fleet window layout to remove the new fleet drop panel when the window is very small.
Added optional autogenerated effects descriptions to various tooltips and content descriptions. These must be enabled in the options to be seen, since many people complained that the autogenerated text was hard to read.
Translated stringtable updates.
Updated AI scripts.
Reworked autoresolved combat.
Added an "Apply" button on the resolution screen. This seems to work on Windows, but may not on other operating systems.
Changed the tech tree layout code to a custom implementation. There may be some quirks with this new system.
Tweaked layout and rendering of meter bars.
Fixed issues with food distribution to planets.
Made rollover link text colour modifiable in options.
Made SidePanel retain scroll position of planets list between opening and closing the panel or changing system, and when pressing the turn button.
Fixed issue with SidePanel where scrolling up planet panels would cause the system droplist and forward/backward buttons to become unusable.
Fixed sidepanel scrolling problem when expanding and collapsing planet panels.
Tweaked how colonization works, so that ships ordered to colonize, and their fleets, don´t disappear until the turn is ended. Ships ordered to colonize are marked with an indicator. As well, colonization now can´t occur if there are enemy armed ships in the same system.
Various bug fixes and new features within the game content and AI scripting systems.
Made the client respond more promptly to server disconnections, so that players don´t attempt to finish their turn before being made aware of the disconnection.
http://www.freeorion.org/ ...