Gaming News

Steam have released updates to the Steam Client, the Orange Box version of the Source engine, and a major update to TF2. You can read the full details of all these updates on the following Steam News pages:

OB Engine and TF2 Updates
OB Engine and TF2 Updates part 2
Steam Client Updates

These are pretty big updates, so all LAN attendees should try to update before they come.

Valve have implemented a new scheme to prevent unauthorised account usage and account takeovers. Steam Guard works via a whitelist of PCs that you want to allow logons on. To add a new PC, you need to try to logon, which will trigger a verification code being emailed to your address. Only the email account holder can then complete the auth process, and allow logon on the new PC.

Read the full announcement on the Steam News site.

Finally, if you have any problems, you can also read the Steam Guard Support pages.

The Easter gaming weekend has been announced - Thu 21st - Sun 24th April 2011.

Keep up with events via BobLAN page.

Valve announced on Monday that Portal 2 is now available for preorder, with a launch date on all major platforms of April 18th. They've got a lot to live up to, given the quality of the original :)

Read the full announcement on Steam News.

Yet another cracking LAN weekend at Bob's Tardis was had by all. Most of the regulars made it along, and it was good to see some new faces - Bynar and DBoy from MooseKnuckle (who we play L4D2 against) and Al's friend Dee.

Similarly with the gaming - plenty of CS GunGame, L4D2 and Rockband. We also tried some new games - Blur and F1 2010 in the racing genre, and Frontlines - Fuel of War in the tactical FPS genre. The latter was a great game in principle, although it was let down by a major stuttering issue that affected most players at some point. Hopefully it'll have been patched and be a bit more polished next time. Still, you can't complain when you only pay £1.49 for it :)

The food was as per usual - great breakfasts, Asda curries, Kamran curries and pizza from Midnight Express. In a break with tradition, following their recent zero star hygiene rating, we dropped TinTin as our preferred rinky supplier and instead went to the new local Wing Lee. Great decision. For once, we got everything we ordered (even Pup) although none of it was labelled.

So a big thankyou to Bob once again, and a reminder to those who attended to pay up asap. The last thing we need is for BobLAN to take on any more bad debts :)

DFC played their first game of the new Sacrifice campaign last night. It brings together the characters from the original L4D with the map first seen in The Passing in L4D2. The campaign is pretty short, but the final part is tricky until you work out exactly what you have to do.

No doubt it'll feature at the LAN in 3 weeks time :)

l4d.com are hosting some movies based on the game. Some good ones in there, including a very short trailer for the official movie.

View them at l4d.com.

DF-Lynx has published the date for the next LAN weekend - it'll run from Thursday 4th November through to Sunday 7th. There hasn't been that much in the way of new games since Easter, although the recent Steam games Alien Swarm and Dogfighter look fun.

As usual, keep up with events at our BobLAN page.

Valve have released a further set of gameplay and bug fixes to CounterStrike: Source, following the major update a couple of weeks ago. Here's a quote from the Steam News article about the updates:

An update on the Update
The reason for the recent update was to move Counter-Strike Source (CSS) from the older HL2 version of the Source engine to the most recent version. This brings the CSS codebase in-line with our other games. This resolves long standing issues associated with the older engine and allows us to benefit from features and bug fixes in other source games as they come online, such as improved graphic effects and more accurate hit registration.

Read the full article, which lists all the enhancements made in this update.

The DFC site now has a version of the News page optimised for mobile devices. The intention is to add Forum posts and BobLAN updates to the mobile section.

You can try it out by pointing your mobile device at https://www.desertfoxclan.com.

The CS:Source update that has been in beta for the past month went live for all users earlier this week. It is a major overhaul that should breathe new life into this old game.

As well as gameplay and graphical changes, the main addition is the achievements system. There are 144 different achievements, some easy to obtain and some will be very difficult.

The complete list of changes can be found on Steam News. For a list of all the new achievements, have a look at the Global Achievements Stats.

Valve have released details of the beta of a major update to CS Source - the first in many years. Features include 144 achievements, lifetime player stats and summary screens, match stats, improved scoreboard, gameplay additions and the inclusion of many recent Source engine updates.

Given that we do still play CS Source at BobLAN, I'm sure this will be of interest to the clan.

Full details can be found in this Steam News article.

Steam are holding a weekend special for Modern Warfare 2. You can play the multiplayer version of the game for free all weekend, and all players will earn double XP.

Visit steampowered.com for more details.

The first expansion for Left4Dead 2 has been released this week. Here's a quote from the Steam News article...

The first game add-on for Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) brings the original Left 4 Dead Survivors down south for a meeting with the L4D2 cast, while delivering new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay for the PC and Xbox 360.

"The Passing" features 3 new maps, new weekly game modes (Mutations), a new "uncommon common" zombie class (the fallen survivor), melee weapon (golf club), firearm (M-60), support for infected bot play in Versus, 10 new achievements and more!

This is a free update, and no doubt will feature in our next Friday Night session :)

Yet another great LAN party hosted by DF-Lynx, aka Bob. Thanks from all the lads :)

The most played games this time round have to be Forza 3 and CS GunGame. There was a little L4D2 and UT2004. No UT3 or QuakeWorld this time. There was also a game of Battlefield 1942, however with all the problems encountered getting the game to run on Windows 7, 64-bit and widescreen monitors, it has been decided that BF1942 will no longer appear at BobLAN. Hopefully Battlefield 1943 will be out in time for the Autumn LAN :)

The turnout was good too. Thursday and Friday were the busiest days, with Saturday and Sunday relatively quiet. The Wednesday setup night was a success again, with some actual gaming taking place. It was good to see Trebz and Gren back after missing the past couple of LANs, but a shame that Reubs couldn't make it this time. Skonley popped round with his lad on the Saturday for a bit of CS. Neither Eddie nor Kevin put in an appearance.

The complete schedule of activities can be seen on the BobLAN 2010.1 page, along with links to the forum thread and Twitter site.

The first LAN of 2010 is well underway, with some quality gaming all round. Favourites so far have been CS GunGame, Forza 3, L4D2, Lego Rockband and TF2. No signs of any RTS games, UT or QuakeWorld yet.

The diary of events is being recorded on the BobLAN page so future generations can see what they missed :)

Nvidia have released a new set of drivers. Hopefully these 197.13 drivers will prove to be more reliable than the previous version, which got removed from their site due to fan control issues on some GeForce chipsets.

As usual, a download link is available on our Games and Files page.

Nvidia have released a new set of ForceWare drivers, just in time for the BobLAN change freeze. A download link is available on our Games and Files page.

Claimed performance improvements include up to 30% in L4D on a single GPU. No mention of L4D2. This is over the previous WHQL version 196.21.

Update
Nvidia have pulled these drivers and recommend all users roll back to the previous version (Driver rollback help)

Windows 7 allows you to include web sites in your local search, via Federated Search Connectors. DFC now supports Federated Search - simply download the connector and follow the r-click context menu prompts. IE can install it directly.

The result should be a Desert Fox Clan entry in the Favorites list in Windows Explorer, with search results that change as you type in your search query.

All the categories that have previously been included in the site's search feature will work, eg News, Match Reports, Humour etc.

The DFC site has moved hosts. Thanks to }data{ we're now hosted in Europe, meaning quicker response times and the latest PHP and MySQL versions.

If anyone spots any problems with this or the Forums site, please let Mesmer know.