GPG is still learning how to make full use of Steam's functionalities, and as a result, the way the system is setup now, the server listing depends on your steam download region.

If you go on the Steam properties screen, on the "downloads" tab you will see the location of the steam content servers. Those servers also give you their own list of SupCom2 servers. It means that you only see the games being hosted by people that use that steam server. While this is a temporary problem, because GPG is already trying to fix it, there's a temporary solution, and that is, ask your friends to change their "download region" to the same location that you have. Or we could all change to a common location. I'm currently using United kingdom during the day (when all the US players are asleep and there's 20 to 30 games being hosted in the EU. At night, i change over to US - New York. This allowed me to play with Tomb and other US players.

I will try to keep you posted as this situation develops. In the meantime, i recommend everyone to discuss and agree in a common location so we minimize any issues with finding games.

Rumours say Steam is coming to the Mac. Some "fake" adds can be found here, and with steam leaving behind the clunky IE to follow the sprightly young webkit platform, the rumours can be true!
Should we care? Unless you intend to run your Steam on a Mac....No. But the Artwork is damn good. Check it here and let us know your favourite!

Before you watch the video below i must warn you. It shows Portal's new ending. Yup, that's right, Portal has a slightly diferent ending sequence now. I suppose you have to unlock the "Transmission Received" achievement in order to unlock this new sequence. It completely changes the perspective on the history, where technically we had no proof we would have survived the ending. It's never too much to give you another heads up, the following video will most likely ruin the final of your Portal experience. Don't watch it if you haven't played the game yet. At least once.

Valve is working on the last (or is it?) class update. The engineer is going to get new toys. But that's not really new, is it?
The Team Fortress 2 blog recently got a new article about the Engie update and a weapon which won't make the cut - the repair node. Brandon Reinhart from Valve talks about how they tested it, the idea behind it and why it failed. The downsides of it and why it would make the engineer less friendly are also explained on the post. Valve does constant gameplay tests and they got some big surprises when they tested the repair node, pretty much like they get with every tweak and update they attempt and release - there's always a surprise around the corner. Like Reinhart says, "with no false modesty, I think we've mastered the art of rapidly making things that aren't fun".

The Engineer will surely be a really hard class to balance with new toys, and with the node discarded, I can't wait to see what else Valve has up its sleeve.

You can read the full story on the TeamFortress blog.

We all had our regular headaches thanks to Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance "weird" path-finding technology. Chris Taylor wanted to make sure they would fix that for the sequel and so he did. Using new technology developed by GPG based on the "Crowd Continuum" research by the University of Washington. Supreme Commander 2 uses what they call "Flowfield" path-finding system. Units no longer get stuck on each others, making them easy targets, and delaying their movement. The simply flow across whatever the player throws in their way. Army coming in the other direction? no problem. Experimental? No problem either. Big weird obstacle on the map? haha, just go around, just like you were crossing a perfectly flat desert with nothing on your way.

Yesterday portal received a surprise update with something no one understood at first. So a big chunk of the community went to play the game after finding there was also a new update. But. how deep the rabbit hole goes? much deeper... a lot deeper!



So there's a radio right at the beginning of the game, right on the first room. Now it has a green light. People grab it, carry it around and notice it makes strange broadcast interference noises in certain places. - Locate and place all 26 of these mystery radios to unlock the mysterious achievement.
Not long after that smart people start yanking .wav files out of game content folders and run them through steganography programs and that produces 26 weird cryptic image files in a numbered sequence.

Then, some dude runs the number string through an md5 hash translator and gets a landline number and the internet traces it to Kirkland, WA (near Valve HQ)

People find out its not a phone/fax line but a data line hosting a BBS and telnet it,
Use a clue from one of the files to figure out the BBS user/password login info,
and end up with a bunch of weird ASCII artwork. You can check that artwork if you CLICK HERE.

So, people get to work on the ASCII and an ingame screenshot may very well have been found by turning one of the ASCII artworks sideways! See that HERE.

Then threads start speculating about another image on that ASCII artwork. Apparently there's some weird looking droids on the ASCII too. HERE they are.

Some believe they are connected, whilest other dispute it, claiming it shows the skeleton of a chicken and therefor they are not connected, while other conspiracy theorists speculate that this may be Combine Super Soldiers.

If they are or not, we don't know yet. In the meantime another ASCII collection shows up and HERE IT IS.

That's what we know so far. If you know anything else, let us know.

2 years have passed and with Supreme Commander 2 around the corner, and like everything else, clans evolve.

So, with the release of Supreme Commander 2, we will focus competitively only on Supreme Commander 2. Our Supreme Commander / Forged Alliance division will not be disbanded but we will no longer support it as an active part of the clan.

We will not kick any members from that division but we won't recruit new ones for it. Also, there will be no official events on those games, and activity will not count for the clan promotions / Demotions system.

Recruitment already began for Supreme Commander 2 and our standards of keeping the clan as a close knit group of friends will not change. We will only recruit and keep those who understand what The Last Exile stands for and respect that.

We also want to remind you about a small update to our rules. We tried to make them simpler and less confusing. Also, they now are accessible through their own button on the navigation bar up top. Feel free to share your opinions on them with us. The Clan History tab was also updated with a new nice little image design.

After reading all the hateful comments towards the demo today, I loaded up the second mission. Obviously I was playing on hard as I wanted to test out the AI as well. Still with the taste of foot in my mouth, which stemmed from mission one yesterday, I eagerly and fearfully awaited the game to load up, only to be presented with the horrendous voice acting again! Smashing the escape key on my keyboard until noticing that it is not possible to skip, I got myself some coffee.

Twenty minutes later, I had a warm, satisfactory feeling seeing the hostile ACU explode, thereby nuking my entire base. I left the game knowing that I can safely buy it... and not because the demo is excellent. Not even because the demo is good. In fact, I am deeply disappointed by the demo and hope it does not ruin Supreme Commander 2's sales.

Notice the difference between this and the demo?

Supreme Commander 2 is not the demo!

Good that we have established that. Regardless of this demo being an incredible stupid move by Square Enix or not, the game will differ from the demo. And it will differ in important aspects. I will not play the campaign, I never intended to, but after having played mission number two, I know I will buy and play Supreme Commander 2.

The economy was a lot more sophisticated than I suspected after playing the first mission. I really got into managing my economy as fast as possible while microing my units and making sure that there was constant unit production. It is perfectly balanced: You don't gain so much money that you can just mass produce everything but you still have to care about what to spend your resources on. [...]

Please go read the full thing, he says a lot more about the demo, interesting stuff! Click here and I'll take you there!