ARMA 3 may be the premiere hardcore military simulator on the market, but things just got a bit more interesting in Bohemia’s love letter to modern war fighting. Now available by selecting the game’s Development Build in Steam, the new Zeus mode looks set to change the way the huge armies of ARMA engage each other on the battlefield.

The concept of Zeus mode will be familiar to anyone who has ever played a Real Time Strategy Game like Starcraft. The player in Zeus mode is granted a free flying  view of one of ARMA 3’s massive maps. They can move around the map, zooming in and out, panning the camera and getting up close and personal with individual units with ease, while also easily surveying the entire map with a few clicks of the mouse. While in this mode, Zeus players are able to place enemy squads, animals, NPCs, vehicles, waypoints and more for the players on the ground. Even if this were the extent of Zeus mode, it would be a worthy addition to the multiplayer component of the game.

Fortunately, Bohemia has gone much, much further in implementing Zeus. The tools available to the Zeus player extend far beyond simply placing waypoints and summoning squads of Anti-Tank infantry from thin air to harass unsuspecting convoys. The player in command of this mode is able to sculpt a living story for players on the ground, through objectives he can place and change on a whim, ambushes along the road and easy improvisation, that has been made available through the tools that Bohemia Interactive provides. The player isn’t locked into one side of the conflict either. Able to interact with any of the myriad forces and factions deployable across and ARMA battleground, they can provide swift and varied reactions from multiple allies or potential threats in any given scenario as they create and morph it around players on the ground. In essence, Zeus mode turns the player in command into the GM in a DnD game, albeit in a hardcore military sim, with a lot less dice rolling, but the comparison is strong as the Zeus player guides those on foot through a custom built story that’s never the same in any given play session.

The sheer depth that Zeus brings to the game has yet to be fully explored, but developer Bohemia showed off some of the functionality in a large scale battle during a live stream. The results were impressive. Maneuvering squads of AI in support of opposition or heroic forces, morphing objectives and waypoints on the fly were all demonstrated. While the developers did of course demonstrate the most basic capabilities of the mode, they were also quick to stress that this tool was conceptualized as a way for players to experience an interactive story on the battlefield, likening it to player created campaigns on the scale of other military shooters – with, I hope, less Michael bay style explosions. Theres a laundry list of things Bohemia plans to add to Zeus mode, including loading AI into other vehicles, making helicopters fly on there own (currently the Zeus player has to drag them airborne) and several balance fixes, but the basic start of the mode is very promising. It remains to be seen what can fully be done with this tool, but if the demonstrations are anything to go by, the most in depth military shooter on the market just got even more intense.

Want to see Zeus mode in action? Check out the video below:

Good news my fellow Starbound brethren! The latest hotfix patch has solved the case of the mysterious vanishing ship lockers and fuel hatches, and we know that it works thanks to a quick test done by our own Digmbot (who backed up his saves anyway and tried the hotfix on a save he intentionally messed with).

Among many other bug fixes, the fact that this hotfix has stopped ships becoming unplayable by removing one of its most important (and irreplaceable) elements means that it should finally be safe to update your Starbound game to the Enraged Koala beta and begin reaping the rewards of Valentine’s Day themed items, tameable dogs and a microphone voice by Smooth McGroove. Strangely even though the hotfix notes say that ship lockers and fuel hatches that had been erased could not be restored using this hotfix, Digmbot was able to get back his after applying the new patch and opening the game he’d had his locker and hatch erased from so in a few cases it might be possible to get them back still. Don’t hold your breath though.

We would still suggest backing up your ship and worlds, just in case something else unforeseen happens and the folders you need to make copies of are highlighted in the image below (once again, information provided by Digmbot).

Hotfix patch notes are here.

RIP WhatsApp? That’s the first thought that came to my mind when reports hit that Facebook had apparently negotiated to buy the cross-platform messaging service to incorporate it into Facebook’s own software portfolio.

That’s right, according to a release from Facebook today, the social network everyone loves to hate is buying out WhatsApp for a total sum of USD$19 billion. This apparently breaks down as $4bn cash and $12bn-worth of Facebook stock to be distributed among WhatsApp’s staff; plus, perhaps interestingly, a further $3bn in restricted stock. The reason this restricted stock is interesting is because it requires the staff members to remain at Facebook for four years before it vests, allowing them to monetize the stock; those who leave beforehand forfeit their share. In other words, everyone who works for the company now is getting has a huge incentive to stay on.

For some, Facebook’s offer of restricted stock shows the company is interested in the talent that worked on the service in addition to the platform itself – which could be seen as an investment in sustaining WhatsApp’s future as the most popular cross-platform mobile messenger, ensuring it will be kept going for the foreseeable future through the guidance of its original staff. This has done little to alleviate concerns by others that the merger will result in dilution – Facebook itself is already fairly splintered as it is, with its purchase of Instagram last year, as well as several home-grown apps for Facebook itself – which makes it difficult enough already for people to understand what Facebook means when it talks of “Monthly Active Users”. And when Facebook already has its own private messaging system, email and the Facebook Messenger client, will they really spend a lot of focus on another chat platform that connects users to each other through their phone’s data allowance?

A look at Facebook’s own rationale for the deal seems to suggest that the main purpose of doing the deal was a numbers game, bringing WhatsApp’s large, active user base into Facebook itself:

WhatsApp has built a leading and rapidly growing real-time mobile messaging service, with:

– Over 450 million people using the service each month;

– 70% of those people active on a given day;

– Messaging volume approaching the entire global telecom SMS volume; and

– Continued strong growth, currently adding more than 1 million new registered users per day.

However, perhaps Facebook DOES have an incentive to care about keeping WhatsApp alive and keeping its users rosy – money. Unlike Instagram, which has never monetised itself, WhatsApp has been a profitable enterprise that makes its money simply from being used – the service as of late charges users yearly subscriptions to utilise the entire app, at a cost of 69p (99¢) per year. Times 70% of 450 million users, and well… let’s just say, that’s a LOT of money potentially being raked in every year.

Time will tell what befalls WhatsApp in the future. Until then, cast me as a doubter. I wouldn’t be alone either – latest reports indicate Wall Street investors have sent Facebook’s shares down 5% in after hours trading following the news. Then again, similar losses also happened when Facebook bought Instagram and a number of other services, so perhaps we can take the stock broker’s opinions with a pinch of salt. With many people seeing Facebook’s own stock as toxic even before such deals, any news has the potential to be bad news to those risking their money to play the game – so perhaps we should give it time to see whether the deal will be a winner or a loser.

After a trademark dispute with broadcaster and British pay-TV Provider BSkyB – which owns the “Sky” trademark for TV services in the UK – Microsoft announced in January it would re-brand its cloud storage service, SkyDrive, to the new name OneDrive in order to erase confusion. However, despite this announcement, the name “SkyDrive” has remained top of most of the service’s access points – until now.

It appears Microsoft are finally acting on their claim; and starting today, all SkyDrive services are gradually being updated. So far, the website, mobile and desktop apps have all been updated to use the new OneDrive branding. Ironically, Windows 8 and 8.1 itself, as well as the recent Office Releases – which both incorporate the service for online file storage and retrieval – have yet to be updated and continue to refer to the service as “SkyDrive”, but we’re sure this will be corrected soon enough.

With the rebranding, Microsoft have apparently also seen fit to launch a new referral system to reward users for referring others to OneDrive, which echoes a similar system by another popular cloud storage platform, Dropbox. For each referral that subsequently joins OneDrive, Microsoft are offering a free 500MB increase to the referrer’s available storage, up to a maximum of 10 referrals. Another 3GB storage can be unlocked for free for accounts which utilise the OneDrive app on an iOS, Android or Windows Phone-powered smart phone. With the most recent update to the Android app, all three platform’s apps now offer an option to upload photos taken on the phone directly to OneDrive – and if you opt in, the extra 3GB storage will be added to your account.

Gaming development is like most types of business, in that you are always competing with other companies offering similar products to yours for a bigger slice of the current market share. Techniques, technologies and prototypes therefore are usually jealously guarded, which makes the decision reached by the developers of the games Star Citizen and Kingdom Come all the more rare, unusual and frankly quite inspiring in a few ways.

The two companies have entered into an unofficial partnership which sees them sharing information about certain tricks they’ve learned with the game engine (CryEngine) both games share, mutually benefiting both companies in the long run by leading to improved versions of both Star Citizen and Kingdom Come.

The move was detailed in a recent blog post by Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts highlighting not only the other game and its Kickstarter but the bond between the two companies as they trade information back and forth.

Kingdom Come doesn’t just look like a great game, though: it looks like something we on the Star Citizen team could learn from. The characters and outfits I saw working in-engine in the trailer impressed me so much that I contacted the team to talk about what was going on under the hood. Star Citizen doesn’t need peasants and knights… but it does need a robust character creation system for the persistent universe. And that technology is exactly what Warhorse is building for the CryEngine.

 

The good news is: the team at Warhorse isn’t just an incredible talented group of people… they’re also kindred spirits who are willing to share the work they’ve done! We will be sharing with them the tricks for working with CryEngine we’ve learned over the last 18 months and they will be letting us in on the secrets and the tech behind what they’re doing! I’ve always said that independent developers should stick together, and the potential good for both games that can come from this unofficial partnership is proof positive!

This lack of paranoia and suspicion is refreshing to see! Let’s hope both games benefit from this exchange of tips and tricks.

Blog post is here.