News

Playback.dem

It’s the April of 2025. Who knows how long we’re able to do any of the stuff you see here.

The global economy is at risk!
Powerful people are making really stupid and/or ill-informed decisions at a whim - but don’t fret.

There’s a blip of sanity on this mad earth. It’s called Frag-Net and we’ve already pulled the pin on the grenade! Let’s blow it all up.

Frag-Net Status Report

New Broadcasts

Wowzas!
Check out all those new broadcast features that have found their way onto the game pages.

They’re now also being tacked onto the end of the page dynamically so that whenever we index more of archived television shows it shows up as soon as we update any other part of the site.

Check out some game pages for broadcast appearances! We will try to push up new database updates every weekend.

New Games Indexed

We are joined by Grand Theft Auto and its sequel GTA2 complete with official downloads.

Also joining us are the Red Alert expansion packs Aftermath, Counterstrike and Yuri’s Revenge for its sequel.

Ray Wise’s performance in Red Alert 2 may have tempted us to waste hundreds of hours fragging each other once again, but the staff of this website excercised self-control! Let’s give them a round of applause.

The mission packs for GTA will come. In due time. We spent too much time looking for since deleted audio clips. Sorry.

Worms 2 Backend Updated

The server’s backend for powering Worms 2 was updated on April 22nd ahead of a new patch for Worms 2 Plus by Carlmundo.

The downtime was of about a minute and it shouldn’t have impacted any in-progress games. If you experience any issues with the new multiplayer service, please let us know and we will fix it pronto.

Game News

Patch: Worms 2 Plus 1.7.0.1

Along with our server-side being updated, we now have a new client for everyone to download on GitHub for Worms 2 Plus v1.7.0.1. Users already on v1.7 can download a single DLL file instead.

The main fix is that complex custom maps no longer crash on-line lobbies. Grab it!

Awards: Shenmue - Most Influential Game

The BAFTA people voted Shenmue as the #1 most influential video game of all time.

Proving once again, that the PlayStation 2 has nuthin’ on the SEGA Dreamcast. Church!

Wishlist: Arkane and Dishonored 3

Arkane loves Dishonored, so much that there was a report on Rock Paper Shotgun about multiple proposals on where to take it next despite there being no actual plan to develop it.

Steam: The Rigs Are Big, Sergey

A very bizarre sight on Steam this month: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

Clearly published to cash-in on its notoriety gained thanks to on-line content creators, this is also being rumored to not be a ‘proper’ page after all, meaning that someone put up the page who may not have the full rights to it.

How spicy. Will you care to dig deep and uncover the truth? Now that sounds like fun to someone out there.

Map: Solomon’s Tower (The Pentagonal Seal) for Arcane Dimensions

Anyone in Quake has heard of Arcane Dimensions. It’s known as the mod that forces Quake engine programmers to speed up level rendering quite a bit.

Now creator and level designer Sock released a new level titled Solomon’s Tower!

More Arcane Dimensions! Go play!!!

Teaser: reTHAWed 4.3

This month we were surprised by the team at 10K Rising, who are known for giving the Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland community reTHAWed.

We got one trailer showing some new customization options, and another trailer showcasing enhancements to create-a-park and photo mode.

You can visit the website for reTHAWed for the 4.3 when it goes live soon.

Console News: Sony Raises PlayStation 5 Prices, Microsoft Follows

In the price report on the web portal for PlayStation it lists an increase of about 25% for Europe, UK, Australia and New Zeland (yes, not the United States which is heavily impacted by tarrifs).

The exception is the stand-alone disc drive which sees a price reduction of 30%.

Then right at the start of this very month, Microsoft announced a $100 price hike in the US for its Xbox Series X.

Makes a domestic-US price increase for the PlayStation 5 seem inevitable. Time will tell!

Review-Rant: AI Generated Version Of Quake II

A server-side version of Quake II released that keeps generating new frames out of previous ones, in respect to user input. As you’d expect with anything related to present day ‘AI generated’ responses, it has barely any concept of state and you can, when shoving your face into a corner, teleport into random locations in the starting level.

Meaning progress and score doesn’t matter - in a medium where it does.

They put out pieces also, talking about how this is totally the future of gaming, despite it simply generating existing stuff.

Previously we thought of it as just a harmless technical experiment to see what we can get away with using primitive 2025 technology, it was also being proclaimed as a showcase of AIs ‘incredible ability to preserve games’ in the same article.

Okay, your got our attention. Tell us: How could this live web-service help preserve games?

No examples were given. But the idea that this husk of a game would replace anything, or be used to represent games is horrifying. It couldn’t.

As with any hype-driven technology, they expect the reader to just make up an uneducated wish and hope for the best. And that’s exactly is why they didn’t say anything.

But okay, we’ll bite. Let’s give some honest, constructive feedback. Here’s an idea that’ll be fun and is probably impossible despite its simple premise:

Create a multiplayer version of “AI” Quake II. Maybe it can hallucinate away the embarassing fixed rate netcode, too! Or, at the very least - (try to at-least hook up a scoreboard. As it currently stands, there’s no game.

Now if you make that work Microsoft, give us a call.

Released: THPSPro 9.3

Yes, the really cool Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 modification THPSPro has seen another release, announced with this 7 minute video of gameplay.

Quick overview of the new things being shown off:

• Level: New Orleans
• Revert Cooldowns
• Manual Spins

You can find the latest up to date information, mirrors on the Nexus page for THPSPro.

It is currently the de-facto way to play 1+2, as it contains more of everything.

We are eager to see how the upcoming release of Pro Skater 3+4 affects THSPro.

Trailer: In Mute Witness Stand

Over on ModDatabase its page for In Mute Witness Stand we have a trailer now available.

But that’s not all, also revealed is a new enemy: The Chatterer.

You will be able to hear him from a distance by his distinctive chatter of teeth.

Also shown off is quite a bit of cartoon violence, complete with blood spewing everywhere. Although low poly, still quite disturbing. What can we say?
War is hell.

Check this WW1-themed co-operative mod out!

Cancelled: Respawn Layoffs Killed New Titanfall

GameSpot reported at the end of the month that an unannounced Titanfall game had been cancelled due to layoff at Respawn affecting roughly 100 developers.

This extraction shooter game would have run on the same modified Source Engine that powered Apex Legends.

Once a money maker for Electronic Arts, Apex Legends was seen as underperforming - along with EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA). Yes - the franchise formerly known as FIFA is underperforming also.

Tech News

Release: DEFACTORY

The first release of DEFACTORY is here!

This is a new piece of software by CYBERDEViL, who’s already blessed us with REWise and REShie.

Much like the above, this tool also lets you rip files from installer software - but this time for the Setup Factory family by Indigo Rose Corporation.

We’ve needed this tool ourselves for our mod archiving and indexing purposes. So obviously we were very excited when it was shown off.

And if you haven’t heard of REWise or REShie, check out their pages. If you’re a serious visitor of Frag-Net you will have one of the listed installers/games yourself, as it was an insanely popular format - and now you can rest confidently knowing that breaking their archives open is of no problem to you.

Many thanks for CYBERDEViL for making this happen! Cheer them on in our Chat or let us know what installer format you want to see pried open next.

Release: AmigaOS 3.2.3

Right at the beginning of the month Hyperion Entertainment released AmigaOS 3.2.2.

If you haven’t upgraded your ROMs yet, now is your reminder. Last release was 2 years ago.

Release: Chroma - Color Blindness Accessibility Tool from UbiSoft

UbiSoft released Chroma, which is a tool that simulates most types of color blindness.

GamesIndustry.biz had some more blurbs from a spokesperson for this neat little tool.

News-Rant: Discord’s Jason Citron Exits Amidst IPO Uncertainty & Legal Turmoil

Jason Citron has done a lot.

He created a platform that gamified social relationships, and normalized people to broadcasting their entire personal lives over unencrypted, insecure channels while allegedly failing to protect children at scale.

But enough of the damn kids - sacrifices will have to be made I guess. The users demand it! Discord needs to succeed. But most users aren’t exactly willing to pay. Can that feat even be accomplished?

As we enter our next phase, I’ve been reflecting on how I can best contribute to Discord’s long-term success […]

Now it’s time for him to step away - at least for the time being. You know - in case Discord suddenly loses a lot of value or something. Which it might, given what they’re about to attempt, which is taking the company public!

Citron said that Discord didn’t have plans to announce about potentially going public, but noted that “as you can imagine, hiring someone like Humam is a step in that direction.”

Who is the new CEO to replace Citron? This time it’s an ex-King (ActiBlizz) guy, who are no doubt used to bad publicity.

It’s always good for the founder to step away first - can always bring him back later and pin the upcoming failures on the last guy. Hu-yuck!

Despite all that uncertainty, we expect to be able to claim Discord will be Skype within the next few years.

Why? Well, why would you go public to begin with? They’ve been failing to monetize their service since the beginning. Game store front? Failed and closed.
Sponsored cryptocurrency integration? Abandoned for now, while users complained the creator Jason Citron was eager. Clearly, they saw themselves as more than a game chat platform.

Like many risky startups, they used venture capital (someone elses money) to grow an unsustainable free service. The bet is that it goes public and certain shareholders will keep it alive with their gambling habit. Even then, they need to continue to innovate, rise and fall - and they ain’t keeping the expenses down with Nitro subscriptions alone - no matter what.

While the frogs have been boiling for a while, they still haven’t fled en-masse or shown much signs of protest. Maybe the Video Quests that roll out in June will divert enough attention away from people and make them realize they’re being gamed for not much in return.

Now, to be absolutely serious for a moment. In this age people are expecting a lot of free stuff, but some of you need to get a reality check.

• This service is not making anyone any money. For years there were talks of being desired to be acquired and still nothing has happened. Maybe certain parties backed out for good reasons.
  
• Close to $1 billion in funding was raised from 2015 to 2023. None of that money is lost. It will be extracted from somewhere. Investors expect a return on their investment. Revenue won’t get them that, only profit (revenue minus expenses).
• The previous hope was that they can increase metrics like user count and revenue to such a degree that a big entity that owned datacenters (such as Microsoft or Amazon) could buy them, and said data center bill (the most expensive bit about their business) would vanish as a result.
  Cool, but you’d still end up realizing that the corporation owning it, while it would cost them little to run this service, is not a charity.

Yet, we hear a lot of complaining. People desperately want things to continue like they have been. It’s like some people fundamentally do not understand how these industries work. Nothing lasts forever.

“This is when enshittification begins.” - some comment on The Verge

As if it already hadn’t… cough. Anyway -

Let’s be responsible adults and suggest something else. This is not new, or unheard of: If you want your communications to be private, and owned by you and your group of friends, use something like Matrix or XMPP. As for clients, start by grabbing Cinny, which would suit you visually.

We don’t think people are willing to put up with intrusive ads in Discord for long, and at some point they’ll end up having to tap user data instead to avoid pissing people off directly. You can see where this goes. Even when we bridge our messaging services, all our data is at risk. Both past and present. Don’t even need a bad actor for that - just a data breach. Remember, nothing is encrypted or encoded on Discord. It’s just another website.
It’s not a protocol, it’s not a standard and it’s not secured or backed by anything unlike the things we proposed above. If you want our advice: Leave.

There just aren’t a lot of appealing options for a commercially run chat service that serves trillions of messages. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

Everyone else is trying to sell you something. Snap!

It’s Over

This Playback.dem is over… thank MasterControlProgram. My head is still spinning from all this news. We need to lay down.

Playback.dem

It’s our Playback for March 2025.

Frag-Net Status Update

Site updates

We’ve been adding more game pages. You’ll also notice some file sections getting added to. Some of those things aren’t quite done. But to make up for it we’ve updated our magazine racks for various games.

Check out a few game pages! It’s like a time machine, dude.

We missed: Map Center’s Quake 3 25th Anniversary Pack

We completely missed this in February on LvlWorld, but there was a 25th Anniversary Pack for Quake III Arena, released by the Map-Center community (who keep blessing us with levels, more on that in Mod News below).

Levels vary in theme. From the classic themes present in the original game, as well as classic community themes. Go check them out, a server ought to be hosting them somewhere! If you know of a server that does, let us know and we’ll add it.

Here’s the complete list of artists who contributed, taken from the readme (nicknames only):

Screens

Look at these sweet screenshots:

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault community now served by 333networks

As of the beginning of March, our friends at 333networks are now serving the Medal of Honor community:

Another great title now joins the list of games supported by 333networks. After a brief development-and-testing period, our friends at xNull trust 333networks to be a highly robust and reliable masterserver service to be adopted for their community. Our passionate team of retrogamers are committed to providing a reliable online experience for legacy games.

We thank the Medal of Honor community for their trust in 333networks and we will remain dedicated to continue providing the best multiplayer support so you can continue to enjoy the game without interruption. We also thank @ldvc and @Todesengel for their (continued) help in making 333networks ready for Medal of Honor Allied Assault, Spearhead and Breakthrough!

Note to server owners: if your server doesn’t appear in the server list after the update, restart your server so it reconnects with the new master server. This should resolve any visibility issues.

Game News

sc2kfix

We’ve not yet talked about this cool project which will breathe new life into your copy of Sim City 2000 Special Edition.

It is called sc2kfix and it doesn’t just make it run on modern versions of Windows but it also fixes longstanding bugs, improves compatibility when run under Wine, as well as introduces the python-esque language Kuroko into the mix, which will allow you to add scripts to modify your game.

You can find instructions on how to get everything configured on their website.

Unreleased 1984 Demo from 1999

The name was MediaX and they tried to develop this title between 1996-1999, as some avid readers of Computer Gaming World might recall from their memory banks - this demo of a game with the license and endorsement of George Orwell’s estate is a 3D, first person adventure game adaptation/sequel of 1984, the book.

The book as you may know, has since its release become the template for many stories about authoritarianism. This is where we tell you about all the games that are obviously inspired by it. If you really want to know what could have been - then check no further than the Internet Archive page for the disc containing a build plus some sources for it.

Hide your Jams

Here’s what wasn’t on your 2025 bingo card: Acclaim is back!

What will this mean for the Turok videogames? Will they try to re-acquire those from Nightdive?
BMX XXX Remastered when?

Get your jokes and references out of your system people.

We’ll be watching this development closely.

Here’s to hoping that the ASSEMblergames disc dump will get some use!

Bloodlines 2 Delayed Yet Again

Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been delayed again. We’ve reported on this before. Let’s see if Paradox can deliver on this very anticipated game.

THPS 3+4, then Bam Margera

Pro Skater fans rejoice, as THPS 3+4 has been announced!

Blues News announcement

What? It doesn’t play like 3 or 4, but instead only has the classic mode with the 2 minute time limit?
Okay, whatever - but considering they’re basing the gameplay on 1+2 - which was practically perfect - How could one complain?

If you’re salty about them being different and not being able to relive the ‘old’ days, don’t:
We actually put pages up for the various THPS games and how to play on-line with the latest patches!

For Pro Skater 3 or Pro Skater 4 respectively you will find that PARTYMAN managed to make those play smooth. Those patches are even available under the MIT License. Sweet!

In related news, Birdman hung out with Bam and was stoked to see how well he’s holding up. Hooked him up with a last minute insert into the game.

We still miss Vicarious Visions. Did you know that they originally had their own version of 3+4 in production?

Kotaku report Video Games Chronicle report

RoboCop - Unfinished Business

Up and coming darling of 80s movie videogame adaptations Teyon Studio dazzled us with a trailer for RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business, which is a follow-up to their beloved game RoboCop: Rogue City.

It’s a stand-alone game that focuses around you taking on the threads inside OmniTower. A tall housing complex that also happens to be infected with crime of the highest caliber.

It’s store-page is live already, but you’ll have to wait until late Summer to play it.

We’re Head Over Heels

Get a load of this: the store page for Head Over Heels: Deluxe went live and we have yet to get it. It’s a certified classic.

Reality Settles In

Are we making too many games? Perhaps we should be smarter about what kind of games we should be making.

Could the problem be that the industry just doesn’t know what to aim for? Like what happens when there’s nowhere to go. Are there any technological challenges left to solve? Surely, but perhaps it’s easier to chase fads in the era of late-stage capitalism. It appears that big developers are clinging onto any safe bets they have, while of course still punishing the talent when things don’t perform.

At least some try to avoid creating such a mess for themselves in the first place..

Considering the controversies of recent years, it seems not surprising to see some pushback: We saw the first videogame developer unions form last year although it’s far from being established. Especially now in with the state of the current economy, we will only see these issues accelerate.

In other news, UbiSoft was being nibbled on and subsequently sold 25% of a new company that will house their biggest franchises to Tencent. That’s rough.

Modding News

Command & Conquer 3: Alien Prophecies

Requires Kane’s Wrath, but Alien Phrophecies is in Early Access now with a full release scheduled later this year.

Get an overview with the original announcement post and see the latest update post to get dazzled by glowing screenshots.

Dawn of the Tiberium Age for Tiberian Sun update

Now check this out, this stand-alone mod just got a big update that took them about half a year to develop. It mixes Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert together in the engine for Tiberian Sun. While it sports an impressive (70 or so) amount of original missions, all the original Tiberian Dawn campaigns are designed for co-operative multiplayer now too. Sweet!

In Mute Witness Stand - Promising Half-Life mod

We have an update post to a mod on our radar titled In Mute Witness Stand. This mod is a co-operative multiplayer horror game in the trenches of the first world war. Very promising!

Map-Center blesses us with Mine Jam - Quake II

Every month there seems to be another jam release by the folks at Map-Center! This time it’s for the re-release version of Quake II.

However, this isn’t your regular Jam of random levels made by different people, it’s a proper expansion pack, with custom textures, cutscenes and everything.

The release announcement has wonderful screenshots of some very tasy areas.

We’ll keep this short since, you should just read the damn announcement.

Speed Devils is back on-line

Got a fix for UbiSoft’s racing title Speed Devils on Dreamcast this month. Sweet! We can all thank Shuouma and flyinghead.

Tech News

GIMP THREE

The world rejoiced when it was graced with GIMP 3.0, followed up with 3.02.

Finally us users have non-destructive editing, and just better interactions with layers in general. It’s been a boon to everyones productivity. Re-evaluate it now if you’re still stuck on Adobe’s PhotoShop.

Also, obscure bugfix to those who work with palettes (which affects games like Quake and even Half-Life with its 256 color per texture restriction): That pesky bug where random black pixels would turn greenish has finally been fixed. A lot of the palettization has been reworked and should result in higher quality results in general.

I myself have used GIMP 2.X’s palettization features for years and couldn’t tell initially that something was off, but we were able to reproduce it quite easily.

Hyperkin Cleans Up

The news is that Hyperkin is reaching out to discuss their wrongdoings, a rare sight of humility in the industry. They do good stuff every once in a while, the folks at Hyperkin. If you ever produce that Mega-Drive handheld? Hook us up with a review copy.

Wine updates, Wine Mono released

We got blessed with two new releases of Wine: 10.3 and 10.4 released. Noteworthy game fix: It fixes the Tiberium in C&C 3 being invisible when playing the Kane’s Wrath addon.

Over at WineHQ you could also read about the new release of Wine’s Mono - Framework Mono.

This was the first release since the big migration, having shifted hands over from Microsoft.

The release post also includes a refresher on what was going on during the time.

All in All

That’s it. We’re done with March 2025.

For the past two weeks, support for a revolutionary new feature coming to Worms 2 was quietly being tested on Frag-Net.

Things appear to be stable, so without further ado, the latest Worms 2 Plus patch is here!

Now you can play on-line without port-forwarding. This means from now on, when you are playing Worms 2 with the latest Plus patch, you no longer have to play with settings in your network router - it’s hassle free!

New in v1.7:

• Revamped online multiplayer!
  • Play via TCP over a Worm2NAT Relay Server (thanks to fkWorm2NAT by Dawid8)
  • No port forwarding required
  • IP addresses are now hidden
  • Multiple computers with the same external IP can now play on the same server and games
• IPX is now used for LAN/VPN games only
• Added 9 terrains from Worms 1/Reinforcements/United (Ported to W:A by CarmineLynx, converted using > W2TerrainConvert by Dawid8)
• Installation automatically sets the recommended resolution for your screen
• Settings app improvements - new option for separate Cavern map resolution
• Improvements for Wine in online games
• Improved the “disabled LAN” image in the menu
• Updated menu text to reflect the purpose of IPX
• Fixed:
  • In-game crash that occurred when you zoomed in during an online game
  • Layout of the game statistics screen for high DPI users (Dawid8)
  • TOOLS level (from W:A) now has it’s background image (Dawid8)
  • Issue with limits of “Amount of fire” and “Override fuse” in Weapon editor
  • Minor typo present on game statistics screen
• Updated cnc-ddraw to v7.1
• Updated C++ Redistributables
• Optimised modules: fkMissions, fkSettings (Dawid8)

We’d like to express our thanks to Carlmundo, Plus contributors, and the Worms 2 community for giving us the opportunity to serve this game with a shiny new backend.

You can go to the game page for up-to-date instructions on how to get playing using the update.

We have been serving as Worms 2’s on-line service since the October 2024 announcement, with a basic master and an IPX proxy.

It joins a range of other games that support us with ability to host matches without accounts or other compromises, as stated in our mission goal.

If you’d like to reach out and see about making your game run on-top the Frag-Net on-line service, talk to us here.

Playback.dem

Welcome to to our Playback for February 2025. Lots of things to digest this time around.

Frag-Net Status Update

IA Quake Mod Pages Updated

We’ve updated our some pages on our Internet Archive gallery. We’ve incorporated some of the missing files that Jason Brownlee found us last year, plus some of our own findings. Here’s the rundown:

Ninja Quake has a brand new version archived (which includes the QuakeWorld port beta), and some various patches for Navy Seals. We also now have the Winterized Map Pack for Fantasy Quake. Plus we uploaded our dump of the Half-Life Mod Database website hl.loess.ru, which has been in a broken state on the web for a while. We scraped the site a few years back when it was still working. Includes v1 and v2 databases.

We’ve also started indexing Quake III Arena mods, of which we count 151 in our current local archive. In size it sits at 34 GB so far. Mod pages for these will go online on the Internet Archive over the course of this year.

Game News

Remembering Viktor Antonov

In what tragically feels like our monthly obituary coloumn, we were all shocked to have learned of the sudden passing of Viktor Antonov.

For those unaware, he was one of the leading visual desingers on games like Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, bringing us such instantly unforgetting locations like City 17.

While a game like Half-Life 2 had 30+ people make it what it was, it’s not an exaggeration that it would not have been the same game without Viktor.

Rest In Peace.

The Sims Re-Releases

Electronic Arts has been drip-feeding us their back-catalogue on Steam starting last year.

This time around it’s actually an updated release of the original and hugely influential The Sims and its sequel!

People were quick to find issues with the releases, but we can assure you they run fine on Linux/SteamOS and they have been quick to release patches for them. So definitely voice your feedback as they seem to be listening!

February 27, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.
February 20, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.
February 12, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.
February 6, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.
February 4, 2025 patch notes are viewable here.

For the best deal (at the time of this writing), you can grab the birthday bundle. Which includes the complete editions of The Sims, The Sims 2 as well as a throwback DLC + License for The Sims 4.

If you feel more like reading, there’s always some Sims reading material over on Don Hopkins his website, who worked on the original game. Or maybe you’re a fan of prototypes and developer tools.

Either way, good time to check out The Sims again. Sadly FreeSO doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. Bummer.

So far, Electronic Arts has handled themselves well this quarter, I wonder what will be next on…

Command & Conquer Extravaganza

What? A bunch of C&C games get Steam Workshop support? Yeah, and then they released the source code for Generals as well as Renegade under the GPL.

We’ve noticed that ever since development of the C&C Remaster began, that there has been a more direct collaboration between the Command & Conquer community and Electronic Arts, which has now developed into something that got updates like the above off the ground. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Thanks to Electronic Arts and the engineers from the Command & Conquer community who have captured their structure successfully!

Team Fortress 2 SDK releases

The community was surprised to find that Valve would open up the game-logic to Team Fortress 2. They generally don’t release the sources for their stand-out multiplayer titles.

So what does the ‘gaming sphere’ have to say, what are the reactions by some in the community? Some people think of this is Valve ‘giving up’ on the game, others see it as the community taking over. Nevertheless, now there’s little in the way of mods like TF2 Classic making it onto Steam.

Personally, having seen Valve update games regardless of age - we’re not pessimistic about the future of Team Fortress 2. Overall the majority of people seem to like this move very much.

Unfortunately, the TF2 source code license is still the same old Source SDK one. This means there are restrictions on what you can do with it and rely heavily on Valve’s consent ultimately unlike with the GPL. This is typical for Valve, they generally don’t make concessions. So don’t try to port it to ZDoom or expect a stern letter from Valve.

That said, they should probably release the game-logic source code for some of their older games. Then people can at least help themselves fix trivial bugs like these. Let’s go!

Dark Messiah Advanced SDK News

Fantastic news for fans of Arkane’s classic fantasy game were shared by KingDavidW on ModDB. The author of the Co-op and RTX projects for Dark Messiah mods reports positively of the partnership between them, Ubisoft and NVIDIA. The resulting project, the Advanced SDK seems to be quite the nifty piece of kit, hopefully enabling you to create new missions with ease.

They were given access to source files of the Xbox 360 version which included bonus missions and alternate levels, and they’ll make them available on PC for the first time.

There’s legitimate hope in the air that a proper source code release is on the table. We’ll keep our eyes peeled.

If this development stuff doesn’t interest you, check out the Dark Messiah Co-op mod to play with something new.

Monolith Gets Shut Down Unexpectedly

Monolith Productions, creators of the Lithtech engine and a bunch of classic games, has been shut down by their parent company Warner Bros. Their recent output has reportedly been stellar, which makes this news surprising if it wasn’t for the countless other cases in this industry just like it.

While Monolith has not necessarilary been the same group of people that brought us games like Blood, Shogo, No One Lives Forever, AvP 2, and the surprise-hit F.E.A.R., it’s still a tremendous shame, and a testiment to the legacy of the studio. It breaks our heart to see another classic developer succumb to the late-stage scammy market, but Caleb and Cate will always remain legends!

With projects like NBlood, Raze, we have open source Blood covered, but Monolith’s famous LithTech engine is in dire need of an open source revolution. There are a few projects that are seemingly actively being worked on.

Land safe on your feet, fellow colleagues of Monolith!

“I live… AGAIN!”

Map-Center Quake Retrojam 3 is OUT NOW

There’s a new map pack for us all to enjoy!

This is the third Retrojam by the community over at Map-Center, and this time around they have supplied us with 15 maps (and their sources!) plus start map.

You can find the official download over at ModDB or over at Quaddicted

If you haven’t played the previous entries, you can find MC Retrojam #2 and MC Retrojam #1 there as well.

New Atari Jaguar Releases

You heard that right, if you own a Atari Jaguar you can enjoy some new physical releases!

We’ve got a reprint of Atari Karts (1995), plus 2 new games by developer PhoBoz named SpideX and Wormhole 2000 which are arcade-style space shooters.

These are being put out by Songbird Productions, part of a seemingly growing industry in developing new products for legacy console hardware. By no means are developers limited to the PC, mobile, and console platforms these days - we encourage you to look around outside of Steam and the usual marketplaces because there’s various cottage industries springing up, offering alternative ways of interacting with videogames.

You can find plenty of games for alternative and console platforms on itch.io as well. Take a look around and see if anything inspires you.

“I buy independent Mega-Drive games! Feed me Mega-Drive games!” - eukara

Sonic Unleashed Recomp

A popular new way of porting console games to the likes of PC (and of course other platforms) is called static recompilation and it’s been used for some Nintendo 64 games the past two years (thanks to a certain Wiseguy), but this time around we were surprised by a port of an Xbox 360 game: Sonic Unleashed led by Skyth.

The project in question is titled UnleashedRecomp and you have to supply your own game disc as well the console iself to be able to get the files off.

It comes with mod support, quality of life improvements, performance enhancing features, as well as native Steam Deck support out of the box.

Is this a sign of things to come? Will that era of videogames get a second life on the PC? It sure seems like that’s where we may be heading, thanks to people involved in projects like this and the entire technology-chain that makes feats like this possible.

Tech News

Steam Forbids Forced In-Game Ads

Valve has taken a renewed stance against a various type of in-game advertising, as the updated SteamWorks documentation now show.

Not Supported

• Developers should not utilize paid advertising as a business model in their game, such as requiring players to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play, or gating gameplay behind advertising. If your game’s business model relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to remove those elements before shipping on Steam. Some options you could consider include switching to a single purchase “paid app,” or making your game free to play with optional upgrades sold via Microtransactions or Downloadable Content (DLC).
• Developers should not use advertising as a way to provide value to players, such as giving players a reward for watching or engaging with advertising in their game.
• Developers should not charge other developers for access to Steam features. These include sale pages, bundles, store pages, franchise pages, etc.

Of course Valve doesn’t want developers to step around their demands for a 30% cut per product, so this is kind of to be expected. I guess this works out in everyones favor! Except for the shovelware developers, of course.

Our Steam Deck Battery Goes Pillow Mode

We can tell you about how we’ve prevented a Steam Deck battery from exploding if that’s news to you, but it may also act as a PSA.

The gist is:

If you don’t mind the louder noise, we recommend that you turn off updated fan controls in your settings.

The aging Steam Deck has been getting hotter. This seems to be a flaw with the updated fan controls. Some suspect it may be because it assumes you have a newer model of Steam Deck these days. It’s difficult for us to pin-point and that’s not the scope of this news post.

The fact is - people complained about the Deck, a miniatured x86 PC, to be not as quiet as say the Switch. Okay, Valve has made that happen - but the increased temperature inside the unit also wears down the battery quite a lot.

We have one Deck that had completely ballooned now due said heat, plus another one seemingly on the way. Sorry PC Gamer but it didn’t work out in the end.

How do you know if your Steam Deck is bulging? Check if the shell piece on the back is still flat. Once the battery pillows up, it’ll generally start trying to push the back-shell off.

Keep your Deck in your Dock all the time? The Dock will actually start pinching the screen on the bottom. Check for lines and other such marks at the bottom of the screen.

If you discover your Steam Deck to be bulging, you need to get a heat-gun alongside a small screwdriver set. We have some in the office, but you may have to go to iFixit and help yourself there.

Let the Steam Deck discharge safely. We recommend playing a really long video. You’ll also need to enable battery storage mode so the unit only turns on with a USB-C cable, to prevent accidental power-ons.

You also need a heat gun, or a substitute. You have to heat up the Deck frequently in order to get the glued-in battery off.

Yes, the battery size will keep increasing when heated up - up to the size of a small fist.

Be careful, first generation Deck has two ribbon cables glued to the skin of the battery. This was addressed with the later model - but if you do have it, just don’t cut into it.

Once that is done, you can technically put it back together. If you play docked all the time - you don’t even need a replacement battery right away.

Permanently removing the battery means turning the updated fan controls off permanently. If you don’t, we’ve observed very frequent overheating without the battery, even in older games such as Team Fortress 2.

Once we did that, things were stable. And no longer did that particular Deck have to worry about growing in size ever again.

Over & out

And that’s it! That’s all we had to talk about for this month.

The past year we’re seeing more and more people become disillusioned with the game industry - and have started taking matters into their own hands. Some are trying to change things from within, some are taking things outside of the industry or joining forces with the free-software community to build games collaboratively.

There’s some amazing projects being built, and we can’t wait to feature whatever the community puts out next.

See you next month!

This is our first Playback for 2025. We will cover some entries from December as well. We had stuff to do, folks!

Game News

How should we cover general gaming news anymore? That is the question we’ve been asking ourselves these days. We don’t want to solely be a source of biting commentary on the sad state of the games industry or report on nonsensical fads and funny money from WallStreet making us ANGRY!!! - either. That said, here’s some interesting stuff we bothered to note that we feel like highlighting.

Grand Theft Auto 3 - Dreamcast

Rockstar Games graced us with Grand Theft Auto 2 on the Dreamcast, and that kept us entertained for… checks watch …a while. Now we get a taste of what the sequel is like on SEGA’s latest home console.

Great conversion! Nothing more needs to be said, but we’re not the only ones who think so! People are all over it!

EARTH INVASION ’99

A new free game was released by Shp and Nacchan titled Earth Invasion 99, which is comparable to the Earth Defense Force series of games. It is powered by FTEQW, which puts a smile on everyones face.

Unvanquished 0.55.2 Released

In time for Christmas, we were graced with a new release of Unvanquished 0.55. Thanks to Sweet, bots can now fly jetpacks.

Fortress Forever v3.0.0-alpha4

Check out the updated Source 2013 branch of Fortress Forever, featuring the awesome viewmodel animation overhaul by Raptor Dan!

Help them squash bugs or feed them suggestions by reporting issues on their GitHub

Household Death Updated

You heard that right: Classic Half-Life multiplayer mod ‘Household Death’ got an update out of nowhere.

Half-Life - Dreamcast

No, we haven’t suddenly become a Dreamcast site, although that is very tempting at this point - there are actually fascinating new bits of information that have come to light regarding Half-Life’s development on the Dreamcast. Those extend to the development of Blue Shift, which was of course also released on PC. See! Managed to get that in.

3DO Interactive Core In Development

Totally unexpected, there is a new core for the MiSTer platform in development for a console that gets Marco all excited: The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. A video of the core in action can be seen on YouTube: srg320 - 3DO FPGA WIP

ScummVM 2.9.0 Released

New games supported! 15 in fact! Check it:

• The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik
• Backyard Basketball
• Castle Master
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Meeting Sea Rat
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Sea Rat’s Birthday
• Mask Show
• Moonbase Commander
• Orion Burger
• Rise of the Dragon
• The Space Bar
• Thimbleweed Park
• Total Eclipse
• Total Eclipse 2
• Unrest
• Wait for it! Issue 3. Song for a Hare

You can read the full release announcement of ScummVM 2.9.0 for more information.

Over & out

Let us know if we forgot something. We’re out for now.