So it’s been a little too long since our last instalment of In Development. Let’s rectify that, shall we?

This 1 year anniversary release builds right off of the 1.08 released back in August. National Guard zombies, animated medical items, and more await!

The once Source mod, now Greenlit game “No More Room in Hell” has just recently released version 1.08.

Changes in this version include the FN FAL weapon, the highly demanded suicides by gun shots, two new official objective maps, two community maps, difficulty levels and new player spawning.

Many moons ago, you might remember an article we posted about how Valve had given the Black Mesa team (now known as the Crowbar Collective) the opportunity to sell their mod as a full retail product. Despite announcing that a Source SDK 2013 version of Black Mesa would also be available for free, the announcement was met with mixed criticism. There was an overwhelming amount of support for the team, but there were a number of people who were concerned with what ‘ethical’ implications this choice to go retail might have. Should community made content that has always been available for free suddenly be given the chance to be monetized?

Welcome to the first part of Indie Focus: Kentucky Route Zero.  We intend the Indie Focus series to be an ongoing discussion between LambdaGeneration writers about the indie releases on Steam that intrigue us, and that perhaps warrant more coverage than just a single review.

In this first edition, editors ThePerson5 and Ingsoc, and guest writer Boff, discuss the first act of Kentucky Route Zero, a recently released point-and-click adventure developed by Cardboard Computer.  The full game is due to be released in five separate acts; so far, two have been released. Please keep in mind that there will be major spoilers in this article, so be warned if you haven’t played the game yet.

Update: According to Deniz Sezen on the Black Mesa forums, the rumors about Black Mesa being ported to Source 2 are false: “Just to dispel a large rumor (and I know I’ll be viewed as the grinch that stole christmas): We are NOT on Source 2. It wouldn’t make sense for a company to license tech they haven’t proven yet with a released title to a mod team. Our [visual] however, WILL be improved. Don’t get me wrong though, we’d love a Source 2 license but our fans would be waiting another 9 years if we had to port again.”

Can’t say I didn’t warn ya.

Since I am sure many of you will have mixed feelings about the news mentioned in the title, I just want to make it clear right out of the gate that an updated Black Mesa will still be available for free and will be supported!!! Now, onto the details…

Have you ever heard anyone say that ‘such-and-such a mod’ is totally under recognized? There are plenty of talented designers out there, but what is really unfortunate is that many of them get completely unnoticed. Whether it be due to a lack of enough media to show, improper advertising, or simply just getting buried in the forums before anyone had a chance to check it out. In order for designers and developers to truly improve their craft, they need enough people to actually play their mods and give them some proper feedback. Let’s try and mend that, shall we?

We’re living in a world where you can’t trust to almost anyone.

The bad thing is – if you can’t trust to your publisher or a developer even if NDA means nothing to them.

Today (or I’d say yesterday) a screenshot of email, which was sent to publishers and developers by Valve, was leaked by a Russian developer via Steam Greenlight – a system that uses the community’s help to pick some new games to be released on Steam.

Most of you can say ‘No, it can’t be true. It’s a fake’, but unfortunately – no. No it’s not.

This is, probably, the biggest leak, related to Steam that I have ever witnessed (but I’m pretty sure that I have forgotten something).

Hello and welcome to the freshly relaunched LambdaGeneration.com! I am Darren “Daz” Weekes and I love talking about level design in games, so much so in fact that I’ve been doing it on my youtube channel for over a year now focusing on the Half-Life and Quake series of games. My videos aim to entertain and perhaps educate people on the design process behind game levels, so if you’ve ever had an urge to design your own level for a Half-Life title then hopefully I can provide that first stepping stone into the nebulous space that is game design. That’s quite enough about me because today I have something quite special to share with you…

Two years in development, a jump from the Portal 2 branch of Source to Alien Swarm, and six months of voting by eager fans, this total conversion mod has been given the Greenlight from Valve to go on Steam!

Infra is a self described “gun free exploration game” where your goal isn’t to fight off monsters or some shadowy organization hellbent on world domination. No, you take on the role of a pencil-pushing, structural analyst fighting the war on poor construction…..whilst being trapped beneath a city with a collapsing infrastructure. As you attempt to stay alive, you will explore through the city’s underbelly and solve puzzles that will force you to make a choice: will you restore the city’s structural integrity, or ensure your own survival?