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DEFCON Released Today
VVrath writes "Independent developers (and bedroom programmers), Introversion are releasing their third game, DEFCON at 6pm GMT today. As the successor to the sleeper hit Uplink and the IGF award winning Darwinia, this is one of the most eagerly awaited indy games of this year. Based on the game of thermonuclear war played in the film WarGames, DEFCON gives you the opportunity to nuke the hell out of your friends (and enemies), with the player who loses the least crowned victorious. With this being Introversion's first game for sale by download only (it's available on Steam as well as through their own website), does this mark the end of indy games being sold in shops?"
This is about a criminal with bad hearing right?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
You can buy it by mail order from the Introversion site aswell, and there is a possibility it'll be in shops at a later date (Darwinia's US retail release was a lng time after game release)
What's the difference?
23 years since Stanislav Petrov decided not to play.
And 23 years since I saw the movie WarGames.
Thanks, Stanislav. Because you chose not to play, we all get to play!
Are they on the DVD version? I know they said they were making them. I emailed introversion and got no reply.
http://skeptobot.blogspot.com/ - A site for the Renaissance man and woman
The only way to win is not to play!
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
haha =D
:D
Someone please mod the parent up
The manual is available on the Steam website - usefully, it also contains information on building your very own fallout shelter, survival kit and fallout suit, and on surviving a nuclear blast if caught out in the open.
Duck and cover, everyone!
Now, to stock up on Jammie Dodgers. Do Jaffa Cakes count as a viable alternative?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Or if you don't mind not having a hard copy its available on steam for $10 pre-launch
Now if there is a nuclear war Jack Thompson has someone to sue for 600 million dollars.
I wish steam would allow you to demo games before purchase. I would assume that since it's supplied by steam, it would be pretty easy manage. It's actually been getting harder to find demos for the last couple of years.
Does it run on the WOPR?
Damn! I was about to order, and now the store is slashdotted (10 AM PST).
You can still buy it through Steam, but I'm sad that I missed my chance for a boxed version.
Mighty inconsiderate of you guys to help slashdot introversion's servers into a smoking wreck, at exactly the same time everyone who pre-ordered is trying to download their damn game...
I own their other two titles, but the site is down and I can't check - does anyone know if there's an OSX version? Or a Linux? Who'd want to have their armageddon interrupted by a blue screen? :)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
On the Amiga: http://amigareviews.classicgaming.gamespy.com/nucl earw.htm
and on the tabletop (for you youngsters, we used to play games using playing surfaces made from compressed paper products that involved actually having people in the same room):
http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/nucwar.htm
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Unfortunately, everyone must have been rushing to try and get a physical copy at the pre-order price, and the webshop's been closed due to the heavy traffic.
Sorry about that download only thing, I bought Uplink a few weeks ago and said "I don't really want the CD, so don't send it unless it'd be a big deal not to." And they never sent it.
I imagine that sparked a huge internal debate with one side finally saying "If they don't want the CDs we work so damn hard for, then FINE! They can't HAVE the CDs!"
Some good one liners from this movie, even though watching it now is pretty comical, here's a fun one:
Mr. Liggett: All right, Lightman. Maybe you can tell us who first suggested the idea of reproduction without sex.
David Lightman: Um, your wife?
Nice
fak3r
fak3r.com
You're a fucking moron.
Yes, there is a downloadable non-steam version, as well as a cd version.
/.ing the server, I'd be downloading it right now.
And if you bastards weren't
there is but you need the back door password to get to the system there the files are.
If you can bring yourself to tolerate steam you can get it cheaper right now... I just took a look and steam has a prelaunch price of $9.95. ... hmmm... save money... or anti-steam sentiments... tough choice! =)
It isn't a tough choice. I don't have the luxury of having a seperate "gaming PC", which means that the rare occasions I install a game on my laptop, I take copy protection somewhat seriously. If the game requires any sort of installation that may compromise the functionality or security of my computer, I cannot install the game, for any price! I have a PC first and foremost for non-gaming, and so if a company wants to sell a product to casual gamers such as myself, they must forgoe any sort of copy protection or DRM that messes with the primary functions of my computer.
I have heard all sorts of horror stories about Steam, and other game protection systems, and I am not going to take a risk for a $5 savings. Either I have 100% control over my computer, or they don't have a sale.
I'm a beta tester. There is no DRM, just an authentication key. Plug it in to the demo, and it becomes the full game. All authentication is done through Introversion's metaserver.
That should get me over until I can get a linux version :)
Defcon seems to reauthenticate on each load and when trying to create a new game - I have gotten successfully authenticated three times now, but I go to get a game started, it rechecks, times out, and deauthenticates me. Demo users can't play multiplayer with other demo users - so right now, that means no multiplayer at all. You're also limited to creating 2-player games, which kinda takes the 'global' out of 'global thermonuclear war'.
Wait on this one until the authentication issues get fixed.
Hence, Steam.
Did you know, you can install the Steam client on another PC? Just download it. Then log into your account, and magically, all your purchases are still there! So on your new PC, you'd download the Steam client, and if you lost all the CDs to your Valve games, you'd just download that, log in, go to "My Games", and click "download" on all the games. Voila, your games are back. (Yes, that includes multi-gigabyte games like Half-Life 2.) The backup option is for those who don't want to download all over again.
Of course, the copy protection is that you must be logged into your steam account to play *OR* disconnect your network cable and play offline mode (both supported options, the latter is for when you're mobile and not connected to the 'net). Naturally, only one person can stay logged into your steam account at any one time, and sharing accounts can lead to trouble. I suppose if you use ZoneAlarm or other egress firewall, you can have Steam in offline mode 99% of the time except for the time you want to grab an update.
In fact, I don't believe Steam installs any sort of crapware - all the games want to link against the Steam DLL, which does the authentication. Granted, the early versions of steam sucked (a quick Google revealed threads from 2004 and 2005 saying such), but no incidences of spyware (that I could see). But it seems to have been resolved now. I haven't opened any ports on my firewall, that's for certain (not that it proves anything), nor has Windows Firewall bugged me about it wanting to open ports. So all traffic is steam-initiated.
I think this Steam as a copy protection system comes from the fact that early versions required you to be connected to play Half-Life 2, and they were completely unreliable, crashed often, were CPU hogs, and so forth. Less nasty than Unbox, since you don't have to run the Steam client when you don't want to. About the worse it does is log into your account, and possible tell Valve you're playing some game.
I mean, I have played all the Silent Hill games, and this has NOTHING on them...
Is it the music choice?
Just to clear up potential confusion, There has been incidents of spyware/badness, but they were unfounded.
Some silly people were digging around some of steams files and found LOTS of their personal data in them. Ended up just being a filesystem issue -- Steam allocated the disk space but didn't zero it, so parts of the file were showing up as deleted data on the disk leading people to find old playlists, text documents, logs, and other scaryness.
This is potentially what the OP was referring to, so hopefully this clears that up.
Steam has it's downsides, but its really exactly what I used to ask for back in the days where we'd all just trade around HL cdkeys from the platinum pack (came with 5 valid cdkeys, one for each game even though it only took one for all 5). It was a lot more convenient to just grab an iso and a friends key than bother with a disk install, I remember wishing valve would let you just do an online transaction to get a cheap cdkey without wasting anything on packaging and other stuff you don't need.
They can't gouge their prices due to their current agreements, but this is the perfect framework for what I wanted. Most threads you'll find of people complaining about steam are usually just people complaining about HalfLife updates. Admittedly, the HL->steam integration is pretty poor and they messed up some stuff in the process. Steam itself is fine, though.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx