Deer players,
 
Version 3.2 of The Endless Forest has been released.
 
This new version contains new disguises, in preparation of Mardi Gras (5 February). All of these were designed by the players and modelled and textured by students at the Howest school in Kortrijk, Belgium (details on the credits page of the website).
 
The new release also includes a way to use the functions keys as hotkeys for actions (details in the readme file).
And some minor bug fixes.
 
You can download it from the website:
http://Tale-of-Tales.com/TheEndlessForest
 
To celebrate the occasion, the Twin Gods will leave their pedestal and fly through the forest bringing joy and flowers to everyone during a special ABIOGENESIS event on Tuesday, 5 Febrary at 5 pm, Belgian time.
 
See you in the Forest!
Dressed up!

Moddb a terminé de dépouiller les 80 000 votes pour ses Mod of the year awards. Comme leur site est fabuleusement mal foutu (vous aurez plus de chance d'y croiser Shub-Niggurath que d'y lire la liste des gagnants), je vous recopie la liste ici:

   * Les cinq meilleurs jeux indé (pas uniquement des FPS)
         1. BSG: Beyond the red line
         2. Red Alert: A Path Beyond (note: pour gagner l'année prochaine, n'oubliez pas de mettre "Beyond" dans le nom de votre jeu !)
         3. Warsow
         4. World of Padman
         5. Tremulous

   * Les cinq meilleurs mods
         1. Insurgency (HL2)
         2. Project Reality (BF2)
         3. Empires (HL2)
         4. Forgotten Hope 2 (BF2)
         5. Minerva (HL2)

Over on the Battlefield Heroes site a new blog entry was posted today clearing the air about the reported rumors of the game not available for Australians.

   It’s been an exciting week for the Battlefield Heroes™ team as we announced our game to the world on Monday. It’s been great to see such a large amount of interest and passion from the existing Battlefield community as well as people new to the series.

   On Monday, February 4th we will post the first of our regular blog articles, which will gradually give you more detail on the game over the months until launch. Also, look out for in-depth magazine cover stories coming up in the next few weeks in the US, Germany, and the UK.

   One quick ‘rumor squashing’ comment: A few news sites seem to be reporting that Battlefield Heroes™ will not be available in Australia. This is most certainly not the case. Battlefield Heroes™ is available as a free download from the web, and as such would probably be available even if you connect to the internet via a satellite dish from a small unheated hut on the steppes of Uzbekistan.

In SKT's new flash game Samurai Movers (Hikkoshi Bugyo), players have to use the catapult to fling objects in an attempt to place them at the marked locations inside the elder's house.

Left click once to start the catapult swing, then click again to release the object. If the trajectory is correct, the furniture will land right inside the building at the right spot, else the entire house could come crashing down when the angle if off by even a few degrees.

New Battlefield Heroes Info GFW Magazine

The much anticipated Games for Windows Magazine featuring Battlefield Heroes made its way to me today. The feature article is packed with tons of new information and I highly suggest you pick it up to give it a full read. Below are some of the key facts. Our irc channel #BFHeroes is starting to pick up a bit so load up that irc client and join the chat.

Update: After reading through the article again I pulled some more information I missed the first time around.

# Runs on a computer with specs as low as 1Ghz CPU, 512 MB Ram, 64 MB Video Card, 500 MB HDD Space
# "Dolphin Diving" ability does not exist in BFH
# Crouching does not provided added accuracy
# Each team starts with a certain number of lives, fragging an enemy causes them to lose a life. Capping points increases the amount of lives you take for each kill
# The website will be a "social hub" with friends lists, item store, character customization, forums, community news, leaderboards and more. Think of it as a Battlefield Myspace
# Planes are slow moving and take damage from all weapons
# Advertisements will appear on the games login and "community webpages"

General Information:
# Community management team a lot larger than any other Battlefield game
# Game has "telemetry technology" that gives feedback on items people buy and how characters are setup
# Entire game is 3rd person so you can see the customizations your player has. Also allows you to see your player blown into the air. If 1st person is really wanted it can be changed over time.
# Assorted taunts and emotes
# Any abilities you have show at the bottom of the HUD
# No command rose like BF2
# Holding Q opens 6 panels each allows you to select a jeer, wisecrack, or suggestive body language. These can be bought with points just like abilities
# Players have a lot more health
# Weapons less lethal
# Spawn time shorter (5 seconds)
# Firefights last longer giving time to use unlockable abilities
# Vehicles spawn when you arrive at the point (no waiting)
# "Intelligent Spawn System" spawns players close to the action
# Both lone wolf and competitive clan play encouraged
# Cannot switch kits mid match
# Choose abilities before you start a game
# Idea to do a cartoon Battlefield dates back to Battlefield 1942, Lars Gustavsson envisioned something like BFH

Point System:
# Called "metagame" Just a temporary name not official
# You character picks what faction to play for and you fight for territorial position, all your points you gain go into your faction / army's pool. At the end of the week amount of area conquered by each faction is added up and each is awarded "money" depending on the percentage of conquered land.

Customizable Features: (in-game money will get you this)
# Heads, faces, necks, chests, hands, waists, legs, feet

Items:
# Eye patches, badges, hats, boots, helmets, goggles, belts, gloves

Classes:
Solider
# Best at determining an enemy's location
# Has a See-the-Enemy power - outlines nearby opponents even through walls. Lasts 10 seconds, 30 seconds to recharge

Solider Abilities
# Incendiary rounds
# Health boost - Heals all allies around you
# Recharge over time

Commando
# Specializes in stealth, stab kills, sniping
# Few hit points
# Fast moving
# Slips in and out of cover
# Partial cloak
# Weapons do high damage, but not a lot of ammo

Gunner
# Well armed and armored
# Slow moving
# Uses rapid-fire machine guns, rocket launchers, possibly flamethrowers in the future
# Can throw grenades back

General Abilities Information
# Other abilities can combat each other
# Bomb Bouquet (non official name) - throw 15 grenades at a time, basically handheld artillery strike
# Possibility of 15 abilities at launch and 50 in the first year

# Battlefield Heroes Blog: The First Step

Over on the Battlefield Heroes site, DICE has posted the first developer journal titled "The First Step". The entry is written by Battlefield Heroes Senior Producer, Ben Cousins and explains how the concept for the game first began.

Heres some new information from the slide and notes:
# No squads, No commander
# No picking spawn point, Spawn point defence
# Based on BF2142 engine
# Autopatching
If you can figure out what the rest of the notes say let me know in the comments.

Update: Clever forum member robertrageson deciphered some of the notes for us. Take a look at the first image below.

   Hello Heroes,

   I’m Ben Cousins, the Senior Producer of Battlefield Heroes. In the coming months, I’d like to give you some insight into the creation of the game. In most game developer blogs they tend to talk about what the team is doing in the ‘here and now’. For this one, I’d like to be a little bit different and instead take you right back to the beginning of development, so you have more of a sense of how a project like this gets off the ground.

   I’ve been a fan of DICE’s games since I first played a title called Codename Eagle in 1999. At the time I was working as a game tester in London, and many of my lunch breaks and evenings back then were spent playing that game - wing walking on bi-planes, shooting a flamethrower from the seat of a motorcycle and side car and skydiving from Zeppelins. I soon learnt that DICE were based in Stockholm (my fiancée is Swedish), and after seeing the Battlefield series go from strength to strength, I ended up wanting to work for them.

   In January 2007 I started work at DICE, with a fairly broad goal of heading up new, more experimental projects for the studio. After a month or two of settling in, I found myself in the office of Sean Decker, the Battlefield franchise Executive Producer. He began talking about the games industry in South Korea. That market has become well known in the past few years for creating a new way of delivering games, where they are free to download and play, but where a small number of users pay for inexpensive items called ‘micro-transactions’, which provide revenue for the project. EA has a FIFA game over there that is doing very well.

   DICE have always been keen on trying new things in the online gaming area, and this way of delivering games struck us as pretty interesting, so we started wondering if this might also work in the western world. I volunteered to lead the project - the direction I got from Sean at this stage was (if I remember correctly) ‘historical feel’, ‘existing technology’, ‘level up one character?’ and ‘heroic’. I’ve posted a scan of my first page of notes here. A few people at DICE had previously been working on concepts and ideas for this project over the previous months and I met with them and began working through some more notes as I fleshed out the high-concept.

   I then got James Salt involved, who is now the Lead Designer on Battlefield Heroes. He had finished his work as Lead Designer on Battlefield 2142 a few months before and had been mulling over some new concepts since then, so we both pretty eager to get a new project off the ground. We quickly found we agreed on three clear high-level directions for the project:

   1. We wanted to return to the crazy unrealistic feel of Battlefield 1942 and Codename Eagle, games which we had both been fans of.
    2. We wanted to make sure that players could ‘get to the fun’ easier this time - faster, cheaper and easier.
    3. We were committed to ensuring that the gameplay would still feel like a legitimate part of the Battlefield franchise, with the core elements and feel preserved.

   Within a few weeks we had some pretty clear ideas about where to go with the game design, but we had yet to find an art direction… more on that next time.