Rancid co-vocalist/guitarist Lars Frederikson has opened a tattoo parlour in Tokyo. The musician co-owns the Skunx Tattoo Parlour with Tokyo Hiro and Shaw Tanaka. Along with co-owning the venue, Frederikson also occasionally visits the parlour to actively tattoo those with appointments. Currently Skunx Tattoo Parlour as a private studio & by appointment only.
Worms™ Reloaded is now available for Pre-purchase, with bonuses including a 10% discount, 24 hours early access to the game, and exclusive in-game items to enhance your chosen team.
From humble beginnings, the original Worms™ titles took PC gaming to new levels of popularity and mass appeal. Selling in excess of 25 million copies over its 15 year lifespan, Worms™ has taken its wholly unique brand of addictive gameplay, hilarious humour and wild weaponry across almost every console possible, and on Thursday 26th August 2010 it will be returning to the format that made it most successful; the personal computer.
“Worms Reloaded has been a labour of love for the team given the legacy of 2D PC Worms™ titles such as Worms 2, Worms Armageddon etc. It has been almost 10 years since the last 2D game was released on personal computers”, said Martyn Brown, iconic figure in the world of Worms™ and Business Development Director at Team17. “In bringing Worms Reloaded to PC, we’ve reintroduced so much of what gamers loved about the good old days, and it’s fitting that it is also the first Worms game we’ve self-published since the early games. We are very much looking forward to supporting the game through the community on Steam as well as our own Facebook page.”
Indeed, while the most celebrated features of the series are present and correct, Worms™ Reloaded also sports a large amount of new additions to almost every facet of the gameplay experience. Over 60 single-player missions (including new Warzone Campaign and Bodycount Mode), a fully featured landscape creator, 45+ plus weapons spanning the entire Worms™ series and a huge currency based customization system – all wrapped up in HD quality visuals – means that Worms™ Reloaded will be a highly enjoyable experience, whether playing alone or with friends.
Tim Barry will be playing some east coast gigs in October alongside labelmate (and occasional live bandmate) Josh Small en route to The Fest 9 in Gainesville, FL.
It’s that time of the week again! Time, of course, for us to share with the new episode of the Punknews Podcast with you. We took your feedback to heart and hope you’ll find the format of this week’s show more appealing.
On our roundtable discussion this week, I was joined by news editor Adam White, interviews editor Rich Verducci and managing editor Ben Conoley, and we talked about Brokencyde’s response to some nasty rumors, RVIVR’s new EP, the upcoming movie project from Angels and Airwaves, forgetters’ new EP and why Adam can’t stand their name, and The Fest 9 lineup and aesthetic.
This afternoon Corey Peters suddenly yelped and jumped out of his chair claiming that a Creeper had gotten into the new training map he was working on and that it was blocking his ability to get any work done. This was followed a few minutes later by Jon Lippincott claiming he couldn’t finish up his code because he had run out of Iron Ore. Even as I write this I can hear Dave Riller telling a story about how he beat a sheep to death with his bare hands to make a new set of pants and a woolly hat.
It seems, dear friends, that our development team has succumbed to Minecraft addiction.
Minecraft is an amazing little (read: freaking huge) world building sandbox game by Markus Persson, aka Notch…the very same Notch that developed Left4kDead a couple years ago. In Minecraft you carve out your own little empire in the wild, building just about whatever you want while the natural world tries to slaughter you every nightfall. The game’s box-like representation of reality is cute and definitely charming…until a horde of cute box-like skeletons rip your cute little box-like arms from your cute little box-like body in a spray of cute little box-like blood and gore.
Apparently we aren’t the only ones to fall prey to the lures of Minecraft. A number of you in The Community have also discovered the game and, as we have come to expect, you immediately went out and imported it into our game, Team Fortress 2.
Check out this Payload Race map developed by some Minecraft fans:
I have a feeling we’ll be “playtesting” this map once it’s available.
You can check out the latest updates for Minecraft by reading Notch’s Blog.
This afternoon Corey Peters suddenly yelped and jumped out his chair claiming that a Creeper had gotten into the new training map he was working on and that it was blocking his ability to get any work done. This was followed a few minutes later by Jon Lippincott claiming he couldn’t finish up his code because he had run out of Iron Ore. Even as I write this I can hear Dave Riller telling a story about how he beat a sheep to death with his bare hands to make a new set of pants and a woolly hat.
It seems, dear friends, that our development team has succumbed to Minecraft addiction.
Minecraft is an amazing little (read: freaking huge) world building sandbox game by Markus Persson, aka Notch…the very same Notch that developed Left4kDead a couple years ago. In Minecraft you carve out your own little empire in the wild, building just about whatever you want while the natural world tries to slaughter you every nightfall. The game’s box-like representation of reality is cute and definitely charming…until a horde of cute box-like skeletons rip your cute little box-like arms from your cute little box-like body in a spray of cute little box-like blood and gore.
Apparently we aren’t the only ones to fall prey to the lures of Minecraft. A number of you in The Community have also discovered the game and, as we have come to expect, you immediately went out and imported it into our game, Team Fortress 2.
Check out this Payload Race map developed by some Minecraft fans:
I have a feeling we’ll be “playtesting” this map once it’s available.
You can check out the latest updates for Minecraft by reading Notch’s Blog.
The Sound and Fury Festival organizers have provided us with a statement about the incident over the weekend which saw the show to be cancelled. The festival, which had gone on the previous two days without incident, was shut down after an attendee rode a motorcycle into the pit during Backtrack’s set. Apparently security chased the motorcyclist out of the building, but not before he rode through the merch and backstage areas. Many other attendees apparently followed the action outside, where fights began to break out between them and festival security, and a full trash can was thrown at the guards.
Part of the statement includes:
At the end of the day, no one was hurt or arrested and property damage was minimal (one broken window). The staff, venue, security and police were all absolutely incredible to Sound and Fury as a whole. Their actions helped to stop any potential fight that could have broken out, which would have caused unwanted repercussions for all parties involved with the festival (promoters, bands, venue, attendees). We want to apologize to all the kids and bands who made special efforts and traveled so far to be there for the weekend. We were very sorry to see that the weekend ended as it did. It crushed us to see months of work and anticipation get flushed down the drain in less than 20 seconds. Realize that it is just two people putting on this fest and we are held directly liable for anything that happens.
The image above is from our friends at the IP Factory. This Friday they are releasing their Left 4 Dead 2 range of strictly limited high end collectibles. First up is the Tank. Pre-orders go live Friday July 30th.
Today’s update covers quite a few subjects so we thought we should touch on a few of them.
When we did our blog poll on rage quitting we mentioned we would be working on some of the underlying issues. Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t have a more rage or less rage button – well not directly?
We checked some stats, did some testing, checked more stats, and did more testing. We have many more changes we are working on, some ideas failed, some were exploitable, and some were just bad ideas. What we are releasing today is not the sum of our answer to the problem but simply some of the updates that are ready to ship. More are coming.
While we were testing other changes with the Charger, we were bothered that doing the right thing did not give you the best score. New players were often confused by this lack of feedback, so we fixed that.
Charger now receives 300 points for any Survivor that is insta-killed.
Charger now receives 100 points for any Survivor that is insta-incapped by a charge.
Any infected that causes a Survivor to stumble into a “ledge hang” situation will receive 50 points.
Friendly fire is never fun, especially when it really isn’t friendly fire. So in both Versus and Co-op we wanted to remove those times when you receive a friendly fire warning for shooting through an infected.
Bullets that first pass through an infected character before striking a Survivor are now ignored as friendly fire.
Failing at the Tank is miserable experience. We all know the feeling when you are trying to explain to your team – but he was already on fire! So we did some work there.
Tanks go into a stasis when they spawn and leave stasis when the human player takes over.
Tanks do not attack when they are in stasis.
Tanks in stasis are invisible but still show a glow to the infected team.
Tanks in stasis cannot be set on fire.
The updates aren’t over and you should expect to see some more shortly. As for the blog, besides the regular Friday update, next week we will be going into details on the Mutations, why Realism Versus was made permanent and other Mutations have not been. Plus what gets played more – Versus, Co-op, Survival, Single Player, or Scavenge?
Updates to Stargate: Resistance have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Patch Notes 1.1.13.4
Newness:
Introducing gametype King of the Hill! Engage in frenetic battle to maintain control of the Temple on Amarna.
Earth-SGC now fully supports the Team Deathmatch gametype in addition to Conquest.
New Interactive Launcher! The new game launcher delivers patch notes, news, maintenance announcements and more. Its skinnable interface allow players to create their own unique looks.
Objective screens now display information specific to the gametype you are playing.
Performance improvements to graphical materials.
Characters:
Ambient lighting has been adjusted for better visuals, mostly noticeable on the Soldier BDUs.
The unlockable animating Jaffa helmet now has audio to accompany the animation.
Piramess:
Performance enhancements on the Piramess map.
Enhanced environmental ambiance on Piramess.
Some piles of snow will now react to gun fire; shoot the ground to see some flurries!
Security:
Enhanced security around login information.
UI:
The System Lords icon has been updated
Bug Fixes:
SGC Icons will now show up for the Conquest gametype upon login.
Network issues while logging in to servers have been resolved.
A stats display bug which was rarely causing equipment lockout has been addressed.
Console Commands:
All Field of View values have been clamped to be between 65 and 115.
The console command “closemenu” has been disabled to prevent certain exploits from being performed.
Stargate:
The event horizon has been adjusted to not draw over certain particle systems like the Goa’uld Shield or Staff Blasts.
Weapons:
While inside the sniper scope, a player will not be able to change their Field of View settings.
Spraynard are hitting the road starting tonight in support of their new LP for Runner Up Records, Cut & Paste. The band has dates booked in the northeast, midwest and southeast.
Rancid co-vocalist/guitarist Lars Frederikson has opened a tattoo parlour in Tokyo. The musician co-owns the Skunx Tattoo Parlour with Tokyo Hiro and Shaw Tanaka. Along with co-owning the venue, Frederikson also occasionally visits the parlour to actively tattoo those with appointments. Currently Skunx Tattoo Parlour as a private studio & by appointment only. 
It’s that time of the week again! Time, of course, for us to share with the new episode of the Punknews Podcast with you. We took your feedback to heart and hope you’ll find the format of this week’s show more appealing. 
The 
