Make Something Unreal - Phase 4 winners

Winners of the last phase of Make Something Unreal are announced. This is the last phase and it concludes 2 years long contest. Here are the categories and the winners.

Best Art in a Game Mod

Airborn by Steffen Unger

Airborn is an action adventure total conversion for Unreal Tournament 3 in a fantastic world on flying islands eons after the world has collapsed from overexploitation.

Best Graphics in a Map

The Haunted Lost Temple by The Haunted Team

This version of TH-Temple is specialized version of the Lost Temple only
available for the MSU contest.

Best Machinima

The Plan by John Beswick

A little animated short about a toy with a plan. 

Best Vehicle Set

Angels Fall First: PlanetStorm Mod by AFF Team

A huge collection of futuristic vehicles are available to pilot in this hybrid
FPS/RTS mod that has 11 unique vehicles from huge space destroyer ships,
versatile space fighters, tanks, and more.

Best Use of Physics

Project Swing by Scott and Aaron Ash

Project Swing is a physics oriented vehicle gametype. Players use a
scavenger-like vehicle equipped with grappling hooks that attach to enemies
(primary fire) and strategically placed grapple points (alt fire) around the
map.

Best FPS Mod
The Ball by Toltec Studios

The Ball offers an adventure that puts you in the boots of an explorer who
gets stuck in a cavern and bumps onto an ancient complex holding a mysterious
ball. While making your way through the internal workings of ancient ziggurats,
golden cities, and huge caverns, your only companion is a giant gold and
metal-shelled ball.

Best non-FPS Mod
The Haunted by Michael Hegemann

The Haunted is a fast paced third-person horror-action game which can be
played in singleplayer against AI monsters or in multiplayer, where one player
is the haunted and the other players control and spawn the enemies.

Best Level for a Mod
Hazard: The Journey of Life by Alexander Bruce

A philosophical single player first person environmental puzzle art game
that will change the way you think about the life. This very non-standard game
was selected as a finalist in the Sense Of Wonder 2009 Experimental Gameplay
project at the Tokyo Game Show.

So these are the winners only of this contest. There are many other entries you should check out if you got bored with standard UT3. This content was always an opportunity and showcase for many modders. Again, I wish Epic or somebody else would make a DVD ISO of all winners (including 2nd, 3rd and 4th place) for all phases so we can get it in one go. I hate getting them down separately from different sites...

Anyway, this should consume another sizeable chunk of your free time. Go and have fun.

Protoss in Wings Of Liberty

There were some questions posted on Battle.Net forum about availability of Protoss missions in upcoming Wings of Liberty game. As usual, there is a number of replies to original post but the most interesting one is from Blizzard RTS community team. Here is his reply:

I won't go into details, since we don't give out information on the campaign of StarCraft 2, but I can confirm that there will be a Protoss mini-campaign that lets you control Protoss units. This part of the campaign mode is of course way shorter than the Terran part, but it is very fun to have a very different playstyle to add even more variety to the game. I am sure every Protoss fan will love this part of the Campaign! 

That being said, the Protoss mini-campaign will not prepare you for the multiplayer as Protoss, you won't be using all units or getting to know buildings and upgrades. In general, even for Terran, it is not the objective of the singleplayer to show how to play the game effectively, it is to tell a story and do a lot of fun things, that would not be possible in multiplayer. The Challenges, mini-missions, that ask you to complete a very specific task, are more suited to give players the opportunity to learn how to use the units and how to play the game.

All we have to do now is wait until Wings Of Liberty is released. I just hope we won't have to wait until Legacy of the Void is released to see any of the Zerg campains, even a mini one.

Blizzard, be nice a add a mini Zerg campain in WOL please.

Happy New Year 2010!

If you read my other blog you know I was away during Christmas break. Now I'm back and slowly catching up with news and events in gaming arena.

It does not seem much was happening in these 10 days.

Here are things I would like to see in this year (it is already 10:25 AM, Jan 1 2010 in Auckland)

• Starcraft II (more than first game)
• Diablo III
• Gran Turismo 5 
• Little Big Planet map packs (if not LBP 2)
• more tables for Zen Pinball
• more games supporting DirectX 11

That's all for now, have a very Happy New Year!