A quiet little post made on Steam forums has revealed that behind the scenes of Steam, Sega have been working on improving the way some of their old Dreamcast classic games play on the PC.

The post was made after a user noticed what looked like some new achievements on their game, with Sega representative ‘kehittäjä’ making the post on the Sonic Adventure DX forums to be read by all.

“You may have noticed some new things crop up in our existing Dreamcast collection on Steam, such as achievements.” said kehittäjä. “Currently this content isn’t accessible but it’s part of an initiative from SEGA over the next few months which is going to improve the player experience for these titles.”

Among other things the games will get some slight tweaks and some optimisation to help them continue to run well on newer computers and hardware. There isn’t an exact date for when we can expect these changes to be finalised and the achievements unlockable, but it’s always good to see a company taking care of a loved back catalog for their players.

The SteamDB group have unearthed something fairly interesting in the coding for Steam’s latest big Beta update. Seems that Valve are already beginning to build in places for apps for game play things such as demos and DLC as well as other types of media such as music and TV.

Valve had already revealed the news of Steam Music earlier on, with a beta client for the new app being sent to testers in February. There has also been film released via Steam already, the Dota 2 documentary Free-To-Play as well as award-winning film Indie Game: The Movie although both are still stored into the game library at present.

This capability to fit apps into Steam’s architecture suggests that as well as trying to conquer the traditional part of the console market with their Steam Box console and Steam Controller (now delayed until 2015) Valve might be planning to offer a complete package of media to rival that of the Xbox’s upon the Steam Box’s launch.

It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.

It’s a new month and so Valve have posted a new message, listing the latest games to have made it through their Greenlight process. Just like last month’s Greenlight post around 50 games are listed as having made it through the process since then.

The games in the list include 2D Viking game Jotun, where you fight your way through the levels of Viking purgatory to prove yourself worthy of Valhalla; an RTS game called Deep Space Settlement that has been 3 years in development already and Run or Die, an endless runner game which involves an ion cannon. These are just 3 of the games in the list.

Check out the list below, maybe you’ll find something to interest you.

Greenlight List Aug 1st: [x]

Today, future sports FPS indie game Epigenesis sees its full release on Steam, selling its glimpse of a world where those teams who can win a futuristic high-speed ball game rule supreme. It’s multiplayer and apparently quite good.

The game is a five-a-side and takes place on servers full of other players who you need to work with to score, which you do by getting it through the enemy goal hoop. Standing in your way though are the other team, the tops of seven tall buildings, panels that you use to get across and between the buildings? A very long fall. Even if the fall just means you respawn up top at your team’s spawn point. To aid in this you are equipped with a jump-pack and a non-lethal laser that knocks back rather than stuns.

Those of you who listen to our radio shows might find the game’s name familiar, and that’s because we’ve had the game’s developers, Dead Shark Triple Punch onto the Indie Game Show with Digmbot and PredictedCyborg before now. Calle Boström joined us and talked about the game, its concept, mechanics, the origin of the studio’s name and what happens when 9 players hit a tenth when the gravity mechanics aren’t quite fully programmed in yet (they land on the background scenery).

The game is currently selling for a launch price of 15% off, so if you want to get this game now while the sale lasts would be a very good time.

To celebrate the launch of the game, we have a bunch of keys for the game to give away! To win one, all you need to do is share this article on Twitter by retweeting it from the station Twitter post that links to it. Good luck!

DayZ continues to grow and evolve as the game slowly works from early access into a more final form. Players are used to change logs coming out that seem filled with arcane lines which hold no meaning to those not well versed in DayZ’s apocalyptic survival horror world. Another such log was just released, and once you parse through the dev speak and extremely specific fixes, there are a few nice tidbits included. While I’ve included the full log, as well as a link to the official forum thread below, here are the highlights:

• Bug Fixes have been implemented for the face-palm gesture, preventing players from standing up from prone while using it.
• Cows, rabbits and wild boars have undergone a visual improvement.
• Players can now take Makarov pistols straight from the ground into their hands.
• New aimed animations with rifles.
• Players can now walk while surrendered.

And perhaps the most important changes:

• The village of Turovo has been added
• You can now force feed players zucchini
• Boonie hats now act as storage for fishing hooks

As you can see, a lot of DayZ development is incremental in nature. However, as someone who plays the game a lot, take my word that these are fantastic changes.

The full change log follows below. Let me know what changes you are most excited about!

Known issues:

• Player can in rare circumstances enter a state in which they cannot attack and must relog
• Character may temporarily enter a frozen state when throwing (resolved a few seconds)
• Melee targeting is off in some situations
• Players can in some circumstances experience slight desync with server
• Dynamic server events are temporarily disabled
• Backpacks rearrange after reconnection
• Players restrained while unconscious remained restrained until reconnection (after awaking)
• Persistent items & storage are disabled server side pending hot fix to stable branch

New:

• Actions: cans can be opened with SKS bayonet and sickle
• Actions: added playerDrinkCan action to config
• Actions: added Melee class to SurvivorBase
• Animations: New default aimed animations with rifle
• Animations: Player now can walk while surrender
• Animations: Transitions for surrender/restrained player
• Animations: Crouched zombie animation set
• Animations: Reload for CZ527
• Animations: Hand poses added for matchbox, Injection Vial, Hacksaw
• Animations: Drinking from can
• Character: New female face models
• Character: New male face models
• Engine: Ragdoll support for Zombies & Players
• Engine: Initial implementation of navmesh for zombie pathfinding
• Items: Boonie hat fishing hook storage
• Items: Chemlights
• Items: AK101
• Items: CR 527
• Items: Makarov
• Items PM 73 RAK
• Items: Medium Civilian Tent
• Items: Paramedic clothes (jacket and pants)
• Items: Military Boots now store knives
• Items: Red, Black, Polka dotted, Olive and Camo bandana added
• Items: Untied Red, Black, Polka dotted, Olive and Camo bandana added
• Recipes : Red, Black, Polka dotted, Olive and Camo as a bandage
• Recipes: Red, Black, Polka dotted, Olive and Camo bandanas can be untied and tied to mask
• Server: Persistent item support (disabled for this update)
• Server: Simulation changes to support increased server performance
• Server: Persistent storage support (disabled for this update)
• Server: Dynamic loot respawning
• World: Turovo village added

Fixed:

• Actions: Player is not able to fill a ruined canteen from well.
• Actions: When player opens ruined canned food there is low amount of food left.
• Actions: Player is not able to pour water from a ruined canteen.
• Actions: Player can no long empty magazine attached to a weapon
• Actions: No access to catch rain action during ongoing action
• Actions: Fishing actions displayed while using different items than rod
• Actions: Added missing part to improvised bag/backpack crafting messages in action menu
• Actions: Zucchini can be force fed
• Actions: Added new drink from well animation to blue well
• Actions: Unable to use actions while swimming or while on ladder
• Actions: Player can take Makarov into hands straight from ground
• Actions: Player can take PM73 RAK into hands  straight from ground
• Actions: Removing item on which consume action was called, not item which was swapped to hands during consume action
• Animals: Visual improvement of cow, rabbit and wildboar
• Animations: Gestures related bugs fixed (Facepalm, Cut throat, Silence)
• Animations: Crouch moves with bow
• Animations: Prone moves with pistol
• Animations: Fixed multiple issues with vaulting
• Animations: Zucchini handheld position
• Animations: SoundEdge(footstep sounds) set correctly for kneel run with rifle
• Animations: Face-palm doesn’t make the player stand up from prone anymore
• Animations: Sitting tweaked(changing weapons keeps player in kneel, instead of making them stand….)
• Engine: Adjustment to Night time lighting levels
• Items: Dimmed fireplace light so it not interfere with HDR
• Items: Tweaked shotguns dispersions and recoils
• Items: Tweaked pistols dispersions
• Items: Tweaked rifles, carbines and SMGs dispersions
• Items: Tweaked attachments (optics, buttstocks, handguards, compensators, bipod) dispersions
• Items: Wooden sticks can be held in hands
• Items: CR527 shadow glitch fixed
• Items: Set chemlight to last 60 minutes
• Items: Lowered light intensity for chemlights and flare
• Items: Removed buttstock as default spawned attachment for MP5
• Item: Binoculars size reduced
• Items: Added other chemlight color material variants
• Modifiers: Removed vomit message from blinded modifier
• Recipes: Player can paint CR 527 black, green and camo
• Recipes: Player can’t tear clothing into rags while there are things in it
• Recipes: Ruined cans opening tweaked

The original forum post can be viewed here.