Gaming News

Valve have released an update to the Source engine that addresses a few minor bugs, and adds some SourceTV features.

They have also announced a launch date for Half-Life 2: Episode One - this will be available via Steam only from 1st June 2006. Episode One is the first in a trilogy of episodes that will conclude by Christmas of 2007.

iD have released a patch for Quake 3 (and also RTCW and Enemy Territory which use the Q3 engine). The patch fixes an auto-download issue and an exploit.

Anyone still playing Quake 3 can download the patch from our Quake 3 page (it's an incremental update on point release 1.32).

So... What will we be playing over the next 12 months? Well most of them will be showcased at this year's E3 over the next week: Tom's Hardware E3 2006 Coverage

A page has been added to the site to help with our regular Friday night CS sessions with UF.

See the Friday Night is Gaming Night page for details.

Note that clan members will see more if they are logged on!

Thanks to Deebs at FreddysHouse, we've got a TeamSpeak 2 server again. It's by far the best way to chat during a gaming session, is easy to setup and configure, and is good quality.

Visit the TeamSpeak 2 Client Setup page for a download link and server details.

Trebz is holding a LAN event at his house on 3rd-4th June, starting on the Friday night. The should be a mix of DFC members and some members of Trebz' WoW guild.

If any DFC members are interested in going, drop him a message.

Valve today announced that the next installment of Half-Life 2 is available for pre-loading. Here is their press release:

"Half-Life 2: Episode One, the first in series of episodic games from Valve, is now available for pre-purchase and pre-load via Steam. Those who pre-order the game before it is made available on June 1st will save 10% off the $19.95 price."

Using the same stats package that UF use on their server, [DFC]Pup was able to provide a detailed analysis of everyone's performance at the recent LAN. Here are a couple of screenshots of the final standings. No surprise that [DFC]Lynx came out on top of the grenade rankings ;)


1) Final stats table


2) Grenade usage table

On Sunday at about 7 o'clock in the evening, BobLAN Easter 2006 came to an end.

A very successful event and the longest ever hosted by Bob, saw about 20 people (at various times) enjoying a variety of PC, XBOX and Playstation based games over 5 days!

Hit games of the weekend included the old faithful CounterStrike: Source, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Battlefield 1942. New games included Age of Empires 3, Fight Night Round 3, Project Gotham Racer 3 and Guitar Hero (which comes with a toy guitar - used to play along with 35+ songs).

More details to follow in the Forum, once I've had some sleep...

Valve have released an update for CS: Source, just in time for the LAN which began last night.

Highlights are HDR lighting on de_dust and some new player models. Certain bot behaviours have also been modified.

Full details can be found on the Steam News site.

The Telewest speed increase for Halifax has been completed this morning. The new upstream speed is 384Kbps and the downstream speeds are 4Mbps or 10Mbps \o/

The Steam Friends system, which has never really worked or been supported, is to be relaunched. It is currently in beta testing and should be generally available soon.

Other news from Valve is that some of the older maps are to be given a lick of HDR paint. de_dust will be amongst the first.

Due to a power outage at the server hosting location, our first proper match this century has had to be postponed :(

The match will be rescheduled - see the fixture list page for updates.

The friendly against UF is to be played this Friday. There will be two maps, one of our choice and one of theirs, and the choice of CT or T will be decided by knife fight :) The match will last for 48 rounds.

See the Fixture List for further details, and the Servers page for joining info.

We'll be having our usual evening of CS on the UF server tomorrow evening - from 8pm, and on Skype and MSN.

Server details can be found on our Game Servers page.

EA have release version 1.2 of Battlefield 2. This version brings various bugfixes, and new features to the UAV. The patch is a full point release and is 357MB in size.

For download links and more info, visit our Battlefield 2 page.

The broadband upgrade for Telewest customers will be enabled in Halifax from the end of March. This should mean that the next LAN will have the benefit of a 10Mb internet connection :)

The upgrade applies to all existing packages, as follows:

1Mb » 4Mb
2Mb » 10Mb
4Mb » 10Mb

All packages will benefit from an upstream speed of 384Kbps (up from 128Kbps).

Read more on the Telewest site.

There's another CS night this Friday, which will hopefully feature the new map cs_militia. Meet up at 8pm on MSN or Skype as usual.

Update - UF have hinted that they'd be interested in a friendly match sometime. We'd be up for that, so more news to follow on that front.

One of my personal favourites, cs_militia has finally made it to CS:Source. It sports HDR lighting and looks awesome.

There have also been a number of bug fixes, gameplay changes and hostage behaviour changes. Read the full changelog here.

Despite Pup turning up late and pissed, this was a cracking evening's CS. We played on the server of a clan called Ultimate Fun [UF] - the new clan of former KM member Gee. The server was great - decent maps and a friendly bunch of people. The other great thing about the server is the live stats that are available on the UF web site.

The UF server has been added to our Game Servers page, so you can launch the game on the UF server from in-browser.