TressFX performance is currently not that great on nvidia hardware, This is a quick video of the Steam Tomb Raider PC benchmarking tool.
As Expected, The Black Mesa Homepage is being hammered. Even Cloudflare is struggling to cope under the tremendous load of Gamers Worldwide.
Torrent link – http://www.mediafire.com/?ba8kfb4xu4jjvna
Mirror for http://release.blackmesasource.com/pages/download_manager.html#
Update: PlanetPhillip is now back online in a somewhat reduced capacity, good to see you back Phillip. Check out the blog post for the full details.
In what has become a rather sad day for the Half Life community, PlanetPhillip has officially shut down with this message:
PlanetPhillip.Com Has Closed
It may reopen in October
Tuesday 10 July: Just a quick update
NOTHING has been deleted: calm down. I just needed to close the site completely for my own personal reasons. I wouldn’t just delete the site and files. I’m stressed but not stupid. Stay Tuned
Original Notice
I have run the site for over 8 years and invested over 10,000 hours into it. Others have helped me, but it’s mostly my work. Recently, I have become tired. Tired of how every weekend is consumed with the list of tasks related to the site. Tired of dealing with content thieves, idiots and the general hassle that goes with such a comprehensive site. No doubt some will call the closure “melodramatic” but they have no idea of what’s involved.
I may reopen in October and having the summer off may recharge my batteries. At this point I doubt it. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who has helped me and to all my dedicated readers.
Phillip Marlowe – Sunday 08 July 2012
PlanetPhillip.com contains the most comprehensive database of single player maps and mods for the Half-Life series of game on the Internet. In addition the site contains Phillip’s blog, which includes topics such as game ideas and mod stories, commentary on gaming topics, weekly poll questions, interviews with mod authors and more.
Looks like Steams current undergoing maintenance message is due to some dodgy goings on, I just received this message from valvesoftware.com and it does indeed appear steampowered.com has been compromised:
Ever wanted to dominate the servers you play on with guaranteed results, but you were too afraid to cheat because of ban risks? Visit Fkn0wned It’s safe, secure and undetected.
Along with hacks, we’ve also got some general discussion sections, hacking tutorials and tools, porn, free giveaways and much more. This site has been conditioned to meet all your needs in terms of resources so be sure to take a look and tell us what you think.
Thanks again,
the fkn0wned team.
Steam Community Offline Message
Definitely do not visit that site mentioned (url removed)
As of 11/11/11 Gabe Newell has expressed his regret with the hack whilst providing further information that another separate database has indeed been compromised. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information:
Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users,
Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.
We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.
While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.
We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.
We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.
I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Gabe.
It appears Gabe Newell has foreseen an Apple iHome based future and dislikes the direction console gaming is going. In a recent game panel at some WTIA TechNW conference, Gabe looks at the current gaming trends and offers his own insight into the direction gaming as a medium is going. Seattle Times
On the platform side, it’s sort of ominous that the world seems to be moving away from open platforms,” he said.
Platform providers that used to use their role to enable developers “instead view themselves as more rent guys who are essentially driving their partner margins to zero,” he said.
They build a shiny sparkling thing that attracts users and then they control people’s access to those things,” he said.
Upon reading this quote the letters EA followed by BF3 kept appearing in my mind though I’m sure Gabe was referring to physical gaming platforms, or was he?
I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people’s expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,” he said.
If Apple took the Ipod mentality and usability and applied it to a networked home device such as the Apple TV, this may indeed become a possibility for a lot of people who like to keep things simple. For the rest of us whether or not it could become a defacto standard remains to be seen.
I consider Apple to be very closed,” Newell said. “Let’s say you have a book business and you are charging 5 to 7 percent gross margins. You can’t exist in an Apple world because they want 30 percent and they don’t care that you only have 7 percent to play with.
This will and will always be an issue when a corporation like Apple creates a clever defacto monopoly. Market to the people first and foremost, the developers, artists and publishers will have no choice but to use your service.
Steam is built with a very similar business model though in defense Gabe states:
Steam gets a commission if games are sold through Steam, but developers can use its free tools and services and sell their games elsewhere and “we don’t take anything.”
And last of all from the same Seattle Times article – David Bluhms, president and chief executive of game company Z2Live, finally stood up for Cupertino:
I would argue Apple’s system is very open but very proprietary … it’s open with their rules,” he said.
Which makes it about as closed as it gets.
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