Just found out about this new map generator for Alien Swarm called TileGen. It's basically a random map generator except several conditions like the objectives have been set.
The difference compared to using Hammer is that Hammer produces set maps like those found in the campaign Jacob's Rest. Also, Hammer is used for many other games that use the Source Engine including L4D2 and TF2.
Doesn't feel as good to use it but it's much simpler.
BTO is taking quite a bit of my attention now, ever since they started the Arena feature.
BTO is an entertaining browser game which I don't think I will play very long simply because the game allows newbies no chance of success in older servers, so all servers will never get re-energized by new blood. As a result, this is how it goes:
1) New server is opened.
2) Players join, both experienced players from older servers and newbies who clicked on the BTO ads like I did.
3) 1 month later, everyone who first joined have big wealthy corporations and anyone who joins now have no possibility of catching up.
4) Players eventually get tired of seeing the same names everyday and go to a new server or quit the game.
Pretty lame but damn it's successful. I couldn't believe how much money people are spending on this game until last week. That was when this thing called Bell Labs was about to be opened.
However before it could open, it required a certain amount of items which cost a certain amount of gold which, when converted to USD, costs US$100,000 per server. There were 20 servers. In less than 2 weeks, 3 servers completed the process, ie at least 300k USD were spent. 3 out of 20, the other 17 were mostly about 40% there.
Then let's look at their costs. It's made in China and all their mods and admins are from China, proven by the fact that they cannot see pictures hosted by most websites including Imageshack. One million US dollars for the company would be a huge fortune.
I thought it unbelievable, but since I'm in the strongest guild in my server I've read conversations where players admit they buy gold. When I checked their stuff, I could tell that some spend a lot.
Holy shit! S$48 iPad ripoff that can run on solar power! Of course it might lag if you type too quickly on MSWord on it but... solar power! Since it's Linux-based, it should be also very versatile and for S$48 it sounds like an incredible deal to me. Of course the price will be inflated dramatically the moment it enters the borders of Singapore but it obviously won't get more expensive than the iPad. Now I wonder what it can actually do.
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