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!