Mass A.I. has been getting good enough reception. As you all know, L4D got released, coincidentally during the time I was making my last movie.

Now, coop is very nice, but it does get boring, and as I’ve said before, versus was one of the main reasons I really wanted to get my hands on L4D.

Besides other dissapointments and pleasant surprises, one of the main things that still bothers me is this:

Most versus servers you try to join through matchmaking are laggy as hell! Using the server browser doesn’t seem to do much, and you really can’t consider that when you’re trying to play with friends. Besides that, the dedicated servers you get sent to sometimes are modded with melee stamina-like systems and other things. Mainly that bug/feature that only seems to allow 3 boss infected at a time. Another annoying thing is that survivors joining during a round do not join when they are ready, they forcibly get assigned to a character. This usually translates into the player taking over the bot ingame – while he’s still connecting. It’s tons of fun for the survivors to have to decide whenether to leave the guy there and press on with only three people, or try to hold out the area around him so you get the full survival multiplier at the end of the round. (Update: Okay, the lag isn’t THAT bad as I’d have you think it is these days.)

And in other news, I’m looking for a couple of chaps that would be willing to write articles for this site. Drop me a line at evildaedalus AT gmail DOT com. Mail me, and I’ll set up an account for you to see how well you do. Writing will involve knowledge of what’s going on in the TF2/L4D community, in a largely informal style. I’ll let you know how well you’re doing. If you’re under 16 years old however, please do not apply. Obviously, I won’t be able to give anything in return as the site’s only a month old and has no intention of going commercial.

Last but not least, I promised you a few higher resolution pics from the A.I vid. Okay, some aren’t actually from the vid, they’re just leftovers from recording. If you have a request, leave a comment, and I’ll try to grab a pic of it. If your request doesn’t show up it simply means I can’t do it either due to deleted footage or obsolete demos.

Pointy, Pointy2, Pointy3, Floaty, Lookie, Why sappers have no ammo counter, Armscout, A different version of the bridge scene, Creepy things happen when you mess with r_lod, and finally, a pimpcube.

Oh, and the donation drive went well, we managed to raise a whopping two dollars!

Well, it’s here, and it’s awesome.

Got mirrors up at Vimeo (Nevermind, they sapped it.) and WeGame.

Almost forgot to say: The song is Pendulum – Propane Nightmares.

I’ve put up a request for donations in the video for one reason – hosting fees come right out of my pocket, and right now I’m in a bit of a slump. The google ads don’t seem to be working, and I can’t tell people to click on them, so this will have to do. Remember, every donation goes towards maintaining this site.

Check this space later, I’ll upload a bunch of alternate angle shots of the things you’ve seen in the vid.

Well, the new vid is almost done, I could say you can expect it next weekend. Until then, I’ll be posting more teaser pics. I decided to not use a slight vignette to make the video look all ’shiney’, as it makes certain scenes look way overexposed.

Things are going quite nice on the next video. I thought I’d upload an actual frame from the upcoming video so you can speculate as to what it’s about. Oh, and don’t bother asking me about it, my lips are sealed! But if I had to give a slight hint, I’d safely say it’s something you haven’t seen done before.

Take note, thought, that I’m the only one trying to populate our server, and every day I do that is pretty much a day not used for working on the movie, hint hint.

And in other news, since Manta Engie is on it’s own host now, I can upload this old heavy remix you might remember here for downloads that don’t eventually crap out on you.

TF2 – Who touched my gun?

As most of you know, the L4D demo just went online for the people that preordered it. I’ve been gobbling up every morsel of info about that game up until now, so it figures that I downloaded the demo and played it as soon as Valve unlocked it. I figured a bunch of people won’t be able to play the demo right off the bat due to various reasons, so I’ll describe the first few hours of gameplay. I won’t be talking much about the gameplay, since there’s plenty of videos that show you that.

The first thing you’ll notice when entering the demo – besides the drunken zombies in the background – is a pretty different interface from what you’ve seen so far on Valve style games. You can only find the good ‘ol Steam type window when editing your keys. This is understandable since L4D is released on the consoles, as well on the PC, but it still feels weird if you’ve played every Source engine game up until now. Continue reading »

A higher definition version of the latest video is uploaded here:

And some steam avatar-sized images I made for no reason. Feel free to use them.

Weird things happen when you noclip into the wrong…place.

What you’ve all been waiting for. To everyone that’s been hyped on the steam group, I hope I did not dissapoint.

So, the community site is launched. Go post on the forums, play on the server, use the [MnG] tag, and have fun!

Feel free to comment.

Work on the MnG community forums is done. Register an account and get posting! =P