Slashdot Mirror

BrookHarty writes "There is a large number of users reporting nausea while playing Half-Life 2. There is a thread on the Steam powered forums that talks about the wide spread problem. Some other sites are actively talking about the motion sickness, PlanetHalflife, 3DGPU, usenet group comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action has an active discussion, and gaming IRC network Gamesurge on channel #Halflife2." In related news from people with too much time on their hands, Jacques Chester writes "Folks discussing the visual merits of the Source and Doom 3 engines might want to look at this. The goal is to see what Half-Life levels might look like in Doom 3. An eerie result."

SnprBoB86 writes "Planet HalfLife reports that latest issue of the UK PC Gamer been release with a review of Half-Life 2. The game scored a 96% (the same score as the original Half-Life and 6 points higher than Doom 3). This is just after Valve announced the Steam packages that will be available for purchase and that people who buy Half-Life 2 over Steam will be the first to play the final release of the new Counter-Strike: Source."

Thanks to PlanetWolfenstein for its forum post revealing id Software's CEO Todd Hollenshead has indicated a sequel to Return To Castle Wolfenstein is being created, as his interview on G4TechTV show Pulse included his indication that the sequel is "currently in development by an 'outside studio'." According to the forum post: "There was no mention of the engine it would be on, but i'm guessing the Doom 3 one will be most likely", and rumormongers are pointing to the Splash Damage website, where the UK developer behind Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and contributions to Doom 3's multi-player mode is hiring, since it's "started production of a new full game based on the cutting-edge Doom 3 engine... in a continuation of our successful collaboration with id Software and Activision."

Thanks to Planet Half-Life for reprinting a note from Gabe Newell discussing the latest changes and survey results regarding Valve's Steam 'content delivery system'. He compares the recently mentioned hardware survey to an earlier one, mentioning: "There's lots of interesting info, for example Windows 98/Windows ME users going from 62.8% down to 8.25%." Newell also discusses the code debugging innovations that Steam is now providing: "We've been able to increase the level and speed of our Steam upgrades by direct reporting of client bugs back through Steam. If a Steam client reports a problem, we can replicate it on our machines and jump directly to the line of code in our debugger", before ending by revealing that the much-delayed Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is now available for pre-order via Steam.

Thanks to IGN PC for its article discussing hints from Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games regarding a possible follow-up to seminal RTS Total Annihilation. Apparently, at a recent gaming career day, Taylor, the original designer of TA, informally confirmed "...that Gas Powered Games was working on 'an RTS follow-up to Total Annihilation'", but IGN note "it's not exactly clear yet [from his brief comment] on whether or not the game will be a true sequel... or simply a new RTS in the vein of Total Annihilation." Although Gas Powered Games are currently working on a sequel to Dungeon Siege for Microsoft, their jobs page confirms they're also looking for RTS genre artists, and an earlier GameSpy interview discusses this long-under-wraps strategy title. Taylor also mentioned the publisher of this new title is "a big one... one that doesn't also publish operating systems [like Microsoft]" - it seems Atari own the rights to Total Annihilation 2, and previously asked Korean developers Phantagram to develop a sequel before that deal allegedly fell through, though Taylor's game could still be a sequel in concept only.

An anonymous reader writes "According to a mini-interview with Valve's Gabe Newell at Nerdsahoy.com, Half-Life 2 will use a form of online product activation to prevent more than one install per copy." Newell also allegedly comments on distribution, saying "...our marketing will mostly lean towards [Valve's online 'content delivery system'] Steam as the method of acquiring the game." Update: 09/02 14:34 GMT by S : Unfortunately, many signs point towards this being a fake, fabricated interview.

psyco484 writes "A long-awaited patch (Build_45) to the PC action-RPG Anachronox has finally been released. Thanks to ex-Ion Storm programmer Joey 'Chinaman' Law, Anachronox now runs a lot better. Hope there's still a few fans out there, an excellent game with a good story. Read about it on the PlanetAnachronox forum, which also has a list of mirrors." Whatever you think of the game, adding new features like a Bricks Taxi short-cut service and fixing a heap of bugs, months/years after the Anachronox team got laid off when Ion Storm closed down, shows a lot of dedication.