The next update to Minecraft seems to be about to bring in a few tweaks to the video options of the game.

Mojang dev Dinnerbone has been tweeting about some of them, mentioning mainly the new options for clouds: off/fast/fancy as well as the option to turn on or off entity shadows. The graphics button for fast/fancy will now control some of the particles too; namely the transparency of leaves and rain particles.

These updates separate the clouds and shadows from the rest of the graphical options which at the moment are all tied together. This will help less powerful computers run the game without having to disable absolutely everything graphics-wise.

For the next pre, I’ve changed some video options around. Clouds is now “on/fast/fancy” and there’s a new option for entity shadows “on/off”

— Nathan Adams (@Dinnerbone) October 28, 2014

Those of us worried about how Microsoft will handle Minecraft now that the bigger company has acquired the indie studio might be able to breathe a little easier when they hear this news. At the very least, Microsoft are not considering making a ‘Minecraft 2′ to attempt to milk the game’s popularity to death. They also are interested in consulting the community for what we want to see.

On an IGN podcast, Microsoft Studios’ Phil Spencer said “I don’t know if Minecraft 2, if that’s the thing that makes the most sense… We need to meet the needs and the desires of the community before we get permission to go off and do something else.”

He has also said that the direction the game will take will be in part dictated by the game’s strong community, but warns that it won’t mean everything they do will meet with a 100% approval rating from the community “because I don’t know if there is any topic where 100% of people agree”. But he assures us that their first job will always be to go out and meet the needs of the community first and think of ways to grow the game that will sit favorably with the players.

Microsoft bought Mojang for around $2.5 billion, and this meant that Notch and other founders were to leave the small company behind. In Notch’s case it was to keep his sanity as he had found himself becoming a symbol of something and had never intended to be that at all.

Currently Evolve is delayed until early in 2015, but the Alpha for both Xbox and PC is fast approaching for those who pre-ordered the game as well as a few who will be chosen from registering for it on the website before October 31st.

With that in mind Turtle Beach have released the specs they recommend for playing the game and to be honest, they’re not too bad.

MINIMUM SPECS

• CPU: Intel Pentium D 3GHz or higher
• AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 6400 2.4 GHz or higher
• RAM: 4GB
• GPU: AMD Radeon 5770 or higher
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or higher
• HDD: 15GB Install OS: Windows 7 64-bit

RECOMMENDED SPECS

• CPU: Intel Core i7 920 2.67GHz or higher
• AMD A8-3870 3GHz or higher
• RAM: 6GB RAM
• GPU: AMD Radeon R9 280 or higher
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or higher
• HDD: 15GB Install OS: Windows 7 64-bit

The space taken up by the install isn’t really too high given that previous big games have sometimes exceeded 60GB of space. It goes without saying though that this is an Alpha – expect change even if none ever comes.

Ultra Street Fighter IV is soon to receive a free update that will alter every character’s moveset.

It’s called the Omega Mode and it tweaks each character’s moves either by altering them or giving them new moves entirely. The update was detailed in a blogpost on Capcom Unity where developer Tomoaki Ayano breaks it down for a number of the characters.

It seems each change to the movesets is a reference to some part of the franchise before, for example Ryu’s new moves harken back to the old Street Fighter games, grappler Zangief will have more ways to get close and personal with opponents and so on.

There will also be some more new stuff added, mostly in the form of new rules. It’ll be a new edition selectable in the character select screen. The new addition brings the total amount to a whopping six. It’ll be entirely unique, and so won’t include the new features for Ultra such as Red Focus or Ultra Combo Double.

You can read the full blogpost here: [x]

The last thing we heard of 3D Realms was earlier this year when they became involved in a lawsuit with Interceptor after Gearbox tried to stop the two studios from releasing a Duke Nukem game they’d announced (as Gearbox owned the rights to make new games featuring the Duke then). Then 3D Realms was acquired by Interceptor and that was it for them, game over…

… Until now when it seems Interceptor have reformatted the studio along with some of its original team. As if to celebrate a triumphant (hopefully) return, 3D Realms are offering a massive anthology of their old games – 32 in total.

If you want to get it, hurry though. The price of $19.99 is only up for a short while longer, after which it’ll revert to $39.99. Given that there’s a custom launcher, a soundtrack with 9 remastered 3D Realms and Apogee tracks and controller support that’s not too bad a deal.

The games included are as follows:

• Arctic Adventure
• Bio Menace
• Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold
• Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy
• Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons
• Math Rescue
• Monster Bash
• Mystic Towers
• Paganitzu
• Monuments of Mars
• Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure
• Crystal Caves
• Death Rally
• Alien Carnage
• Hocus Pocus
• Major Stryker
• Blake Stone: Planet Strike
• Realms of Chaos
• Pharaoh’s Tomb
• Word Rescue
• Secret Agent
• Raptor: Call of the Shadows
• Terminal Velocity
• Wacky Wheels
• Stargunner
• Shadow Warrior
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Rise of the Triad: Dark War
• Duke Nukem
• Duke Nukem 2
• Duke Nukem 3D
• Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project