shane

Well since the winner did not claim her prize for the $25 gift certificate, we are going to make next Saturday's worth $50. Visit http://twtaway.com/f908c5 and click the "Enter Contest" button and tweet the contest. You are then entered to win, but be sure to follow UrgentFury on twitter to claim your prize! For those that entered this past Saturday's contest, we have already entered you in to win. But you can tweet the contest again.

The winner did not claim the prize, so now we add it to next saturday's contest.

Ok 1 hour left... get your entry in!!!! http://twtaway.com/oue3yx

Only 7 Hours to go... who is going to win it?

We're back with the latest installment of Zipline, the official Zipper Interactive podcast! This time around we chat with two of our software engineers, Chris Oje and David Johnson. We dive into what goes into the bits and bytes that allow our games to run, suggestions for budding programmers who might like to work in the industry one day, and answer a few questions about SOCOM 4 and MAG. Enjoy! Zipline Podcast, Episode 23 35.4MB | 38m:38s Subscribe to Zipline on iTunes You can discuss this episode by clicking this link. More...

We're back with the latest installment of Zipline, the official Zipper Interactive podcast! This time around we chat with two of our software engineers, Chris Oje and David Johnson. We dive into what goes into the bits and bytes that allow our games to run, suggestions for budding programmers who might like to work in the industry one day, and answer a few questions about SOCOM 4 and MAG. Enjoy! Zipline Podcast, Episode 23 35.4MB | 38m:38s Subscribe to Zipline on iTunes You can discuss this episode by clicking this link. More...

UTV Ignition Entertainment today announced Blacklight: Tango Down will be coming to the Playstation Network for 15 USD. The game has been available on PC and Xbox 360 since this summer. You can expect the downloadable First Person Shooter on October 26th. Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

Has it really been a year since the release of Uncharted 2? Developer Naughty Dog should know better than anyone, and it also knows how to reward fans of the game — specifically its multiplayer component. That’s why this Saturday, from 12:01 a.m. PDT through 11:59 p.m. PDT, the developer is offering players special perks and the ability to play with the folks who made the game. During the 24-hour period, players won’t encounter a cash cap in matches and will receive 5x XP (take that, wimpy double- or triple-XP weekends of other games!). Also, they’ll get the new first anniversary Nathan Drake multiplayer skin (pictured above) to keep — it can be used after the “celebration” is over, but has to be grabbed during the Saturday event. Finally, more than 30 members of the development team, including Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells, will be online during the play period to team up with (or against). NDI marketing manager Arne Meyer and designer Robert Cogburn are vowing to play for 24 hours straight, after which we’re guessing they’ll hit a local pub for a little hair of the dog. Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

Get three months of hosting for free when you set up a new hosting account and pay for 1, 2 or 3 years of hosting. Use the promotion code “spooky”. This offer is good for new hosting accounts only. This offer expires on 11/15/10. Visit www.urgentfury.net. Ask us how you can transfer your current cpanel account from Hostgator, Lunar Pages and other hosts for free. Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

That makes you number 4, so you have a 25% chance of winning

Yah i see there are a couple of others... looks like someone is going to win after all

Ohh well twitter is free to sign up, but looks like no one wants a $25 gift certificate

Just like other Ladder systems, all members are required to register to play... we are the process of fixing the login issue for exsisting members. New members can register and sign in with no issues.

All you have to do is hit the Enter Contest button and then hit tweet and you are entered, on Saturday a winner will be drawn randomly by the system...

Xbox 360 space marine shooter Halo: Reach gets its first map pack on Nov. 30, according to Microsoft. The Noble Map Pack will include three new maps and new Achievements worth an extra 250 Gamescore points. It will cost 800 Microsoft Points, or about $10. Here’s a run down from Microsoft of the three maps, Tempest, Anchor 9 and Breakpoint: Tempest – “Though we may never fully understand these devices, it is not our nature to leave ancient stones unturned.” This abandoned shoreline facility bends both sea and sky to an unnatural purpose, but the ground itself has quickly become another all too familiar battlefield. Though the two opposing symmetrical bases may never reveal their ancient purpose, both now offer makeshift shelter and access to strategic routes perfectly suited for small and large scale skirmishes alike. Tempest supports 8 – 16 players and offers a variety of modes including Free for All, Team Slayer, Team Objective and Big Team Battle. Tempest also provides players with a huge Forge palette, allowing them to create new custom map variants that can be shared with the community-at-large. Anchor 9 – “Orbital dockyards provide rapid refueling and repairs for a variety of UNSC vessels.” Within the confines of this low orbit dry-dock, UNSC craft undergo rapid repair and rearmament in support of the enduring war effort. But for the small squads of infantry who now fight over the mirrored interior hallways and open central hangar bay, this platform no longer provides any safe harbor – whether the close quarters combat is occurring inside or out of its artificial gravitational field. Anchor 9 allows 2-8 players to face off in game variants including Free for All, Team Slayer and Team Objective. Breakpoint – “ONI officials believe the data buried within this artifact is key to our survival.” Atop this icy precipice, the Invasion continues. These modular archaeological labs were never intended to withstand such a large scale onslaught of Covenant military power, but the information being extracted here may prove vital to humanity’s survival. In response to the imminent Covenant threat, UNSC ground and air assets have been deployed to bolster entrenched Spartan countermeasures. This dig site must yield salvation, or it will become a grave. Breakpoint offers multiplayer mayhem for 8-16 players, and supports the Invasion and Big Team Battle game variants. Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

Starting next week PS3 owners will be the first Netflix customer to be able to stream their movies with 5.1-channel surround sound. The improved audio will come via the use of Dolby Digital Plus, according to Netflix which plans to add more device support over time. “Netflix is committed to delivering an unparalleled experience to its members who watch TV shows and movies streamed instantly over the Internet,” said Greg Peters, Netflix vice president of product development. “Netflix required an audio solution that could efficiently deliver an outstanding surround sound experience for a wide range of consumer devices. Dolby Digital Plus proved to be the best solution to meet our needs and the needs of our device partners.” The new sound for PS3 owners will come via a new built-in app for Netflix that will be found on the Playstation 3′s cross media bar under a new Netflix icon in the video category starting on Monday. PS3 owners will just need to sign-in with their PlayStation Network accounts, though a Netflix account will still be required. Other improvements to the service, according to Sony, include: A new user interface, including the recently added search functionality, will deliver a much richer and faster browsing experience, making it easier to find the specific titles you’re looking for or to discover new content. Some movies and TV shows will be viewable in 1080i resolution, offering an enhanced visual experience as more consumers adopt HDTVs. The amount of time to start playback will be improved. An increasing number of movies and TV shows will be viewable with subtitles or alternate audio tracks. Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

Zombie bears. Desperate people who need rescuing. The great weapon of Holy Water. A flaming horse called War. A plague of violent weirdness is coming to Rockstar’s hit western Red Dead Redemption. The forthcoming Undead Nightmare is infested with it. The zombie-filled fall expansion to Red Dead Redemption, which will be available for download on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 26, is a grander project than any of the previous additions to Rockstar’s game. It is the biggest bundle of downloadable content since the company’s Grand Theft Auto IV episodic expansions last year. While Undead Nightmare is not as huge — or as expensive — as those GTA extras, I recently saw firsthand at Rockstar’s New York office how impressively deep and transformative this new helping of horror is. Undead Nightmare is a standalone menu option, a separate sliver of Red Dead Redemption that public relations representatives for the game told me occurs during the “homestead” portion of the base game. They won’t say if it “counts,” if it is “real.” Then again, players of the original Red Dead Redemption will recall that game had at least one hint about the supernatural in its otherwise-realistic setting. John Marston is the hero in Undead Nightmare. In a cut-scene I was shown, he encounters Redemption’s creepy gravedigger Seth who is playing cards with an even creepier and nearly motionless zombie named Moses. Marston, still voice-acted by the same guy who did him in Redemption, as are the other returning characters, is incredulous: “I’ve seen husbands eating wives, mothers eating sons!” He wants to know what’s up. After some chatter, Marston got on his horse. It was a zombie horse. I was warned that the rotting steeds are loyal but harder to control. This one was, sometimes steering with a half-mind of its own but exercising more endurance. Zombie horses can be found in the wilds of Undead Nightmare and broken in, but I was more delighted to learn of an alternate way to obtain one. If your normal horse dies in the expansion and you make Marston whistle, the zombie version of his dead horse trots over. The conversation with Seth had opened one of Undead Nightmare’s new elements, five zombie-polluted graveyards. Each is cleansed with a combination of torching coffins, shooting zombies and fighting a zombie leader of some sort. Undead Nightmare looks different from Red Dead Redemption. The color palette is tinged with sickened greens and the skies above its familiar terrain are darkened. Zombies and zombie animals are everywhere. As I rode Marston west on his zombie horse I was distracted by what I thought was one of the new “random events,” the zombie versions of the robberies, hunts, and suicides that populated Redemption’s west. I never got a chance to find out because I was set upon by zombie animals. Wolves, I think they were. Like zombie people, they were harder to kill then their properly-born counterparts. The military has established safe zones in Undead Nightmare. In these few places, you need not worry about zombies. Elsewhere, they shamble and march. Towns are taken over. I rode into one where the hordes of undead had forced its surviving citizens to the roof. When reaching such towns, a town safety meter appears atop your TV, shifting toward the positive as you kill zombies or head to the roofs and help arm the survivors. Cleared towns become save points, though they can be overrun again. You won’t be able to save in the wilderness in Undead Nightmare. There be zombies. Human zombies groan through Undead Nightmare in four types: standard Undead, nimble Bolters, bulky Bruisers and projectile-vomiting Retchers. In Red Dead Redemption there were outlaws to hunt. In Undead Nightmare, there are missing people to rescue. Rockstar let me send Marston toward an icon on the mini-map which represented a big house overrun by the recently un-deceased. The missing person was in the house, anxious for me to clear the zombies and let him on my horse. In this fight, I tested some of Marston’s new weapons. Zombies don’t shoot guns, but they attack in packs. Against them, the new blunderbuss is a one-shot kill. Holy water is essentially a tossed grenade of zombie-frying potency. Zombie bait is another throwable item with a stink that attracts zombie. Toss bait. Let them gather. Bless them with holy water. Zombie problem solved. Rescued people must be brought back to safe zones. Undead Nightmare has quests and more “stranger” missions, the latter of which were the intriguing adventures spurred by odd people who popped up in various parts of the Redemption world. Undead has new outfits and hunting challenges as well as the promise of mythical creatures, such as the Four Horses of The Apocalypse: War, Death, Famine and Pestilence, each with special abilities. The score is new, composed by the musicians behind the music of the original game. Mysteriously, the game also features a “new location,” the Rockstar reps told me, though they were cagey about where on the map it would appear. I wasn’t able to try the game’s new multiplayer mode, which was described to me as a variation of a “horde” mode. Two to four players team up to fight waves of increasingly tougher zombie hordes, racing toward lighting strikes that deposit ammo and rushing against the clock to rack up a high score. Rockstar’s Undead Nightmare will run about five hours in single-player and cost $10. It is the first expansion to Red Dead Redemption to primarily offer content for solo players. It will require players to own a copy of Red Dead Redemption, and it will be out just before Halloween. Other game creators have done the zombie thing before. Undead Nightmare is Rockstar’s first stab at it. What I saw was eerie and violent and not as tonally jarring as I suspected. As I controlled John Marston in Red Dead Redemption, through his eyes I saw many peculiar characters, many strange things. On a zombie horse, I would be ready to see more, whether it is real or whether it is just a nightmare. Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

Check this out http://twtaway.com/oue3yx

LOL

Click on More, the video is at the bottom of the blog post

A swag-laden collector’s edition for EA’s Dead Space 2 briefly appeared on Amazon.com yesterday before being taken down, but not before this attractive image found its way onto the internet proper. Is that a replica Plasma Cutter I see? Along with a large and lovely box, the Dead Space 2 Collector’s Edition that briefly appeared on Amazon yesterday also features some sort of exclusive downloadable content, a copy of the Dead Space 2 soundtrack, and what appears to be some sort of animation cell. It doesn’t seem like anyone was fast enough to grab a price off of the listing. We’re sure to find out more once EA officially acknowledges the collector’s edition’s existence. Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

You’ll see husbands eating wives, mothers eating children, and one very pissed-off John Marston in the official trailer for Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare. Take a moment to soak up the sheer horror of the undead invasion of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption. Now that’s good eating! Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

The first round of invitations to the Crysis 2 closed multiplayer beta test are going out, indicating that this first session is a strictly Xbox 360 affair. Back in June EA told customers the first round of multiplayer beta tokens would be offered to folks who signed up at the game’s community site. Now those invites are going out, but PlayStation 3 and PC players need not apply. No, for this early round of tech testing requires an Xbox 360 and an Xbox Live gold account. Reader JollyClogger sends along this image of the invitation. Sadly Jolly no longer owns an Xbox 360, so he won’t be participating in this initial phase. Hopefully developer Crytek and EA will expand to include other platforms as the testing progresses. Score: 0 (0 votes cast) Urgent Fury Command: More...

Though I cannot play it online here in MN (crappy internet) I did pick it up today and will toy with it this week. Hey Tool that is a nifty little Gamers Card you got in your sig

Our Developer Profile series introduces you to the many faces of Zipper Interactive. From designers to artists to programmers to audio engineers to producers, you’ll meet the creative minds that make Zipper what it is (and maybe learn a few surprises along the way). This week we meet up with Software Engineer Chris Oje. Forum-goers may know him as zpr_WhiteTiger, but everyone will have a chance to get to know him better on this week's episode of Zipline as he'll be one of our featured guests. Job Title: Software Engineer (Gameplay) Years at Zipper:2 Years in the Industry: 10 Favorite Zipper Game: MAG! Favorite Non-Zipper Game: I don’t have a single all time favorite and it’s impossible to list everything, so here are some of my most memorable games: Legend of Zelda, Super Metroid, Quake 2, Asheron’s Call, GTA3 (+ sequels). Pretty much most RPGs, open world sandbox games, and some shooters are where I spend all my gaming time. Motto: That’s what she said. What is it that you do specifically, and can you walk us through your typical day? I primarily work on gameplay features such as the weapons, animations, characters, skills, etc. I create the logic that tells the game what to do, solve problems that come up when things don’t work correctly, add data driven support so the artists and designers can easily iterate on their work, etc. I work very closely with the artists and designers to make the game come alive. When I’m tasked with implementing a feature, my first stop is to go talk to the designers to get on the same page and make sure I know exactly what they are looking for. Then I will go talk to the artists and make sure they know exactly what is needed and then agree on how it should be created. At this point, I will start coding, building, testing, and iterating. Some tasks can take ten minutes, some can take a day or two, and some features can even take over a month to complete.My typical day begins with checking email, looking at any open bugs, attending a morning meeting, and just generally getting up to speed on the day. From there I’ll lock myself in my office, blast some music, and do work. Work consists primarily of writing code, but there can be a lot of downtime waiting for builds and other processes to finish. That’s when I like to browse the forums and look for any issues that I can respond to or bring up with the team, and if I have enough time, I’ll even jump in-game and make sure everything is going smoothly. Throughout the day I will have people come by and ask questions about something or I’ll go corner someone and ask them questions. Occasionally I’ll have a meeting to attend, a playtest to participate in, and sometimes QA will find a bug or a crash that I’ll go investigate. During lunch or after work, I try to squeeze in a few games of basketball or some kung fu training. How did you get into the industry? I grew up playing video games starting with the Atari 2600, the NES, an old monochrome Macintosh, and so on. I always enjoyed tinkering with computers and gadgets but had no real focus until high school when I took a programming class at a local community college. I enjoyed the class so much that I knew I was destined to be a programmer. The rest of my school and college career was spent working to achieve that goal. A few months before graduating college, my professor’s husband started hiring for a new game division at his company. She recommended me and I got the job. I started working on all kinds of random projects like a couple of Half-Life and Quake 3 mods and some software to run the GameCube development kits. It wasn’t long before I found out how brutal the games industry can be and was laid off, and the company went out of business shortly thereafter – the first of many layoffs and studio closures I’ve had to endure. From there I’ve worked at a number of other studios on all kinds of things like children’s games, adver-games, casual games, to finally landing at Zipper making PS3 games. It’s taken a lot of hard work, dedication, and sacrifice to make it in the industry, but I enjoy my job so much that it’s all been worth it. What are some other games or projects that you’ve worked on in the past? I started my video game career designing ridiculous Super Mario 3 levels on paper and later making terrible Duke Nukem 3D mods and levels. My first shipped game came packaged in boxes of Cocoa Puffs and I worked on a bunch of other children’s action/adventure games (which my kids love playing). I also worked on a few casual games that were typically done as a form of a corporate advertisement. After all of that, I finally broke into console games as the lead gameplay programmer on Destroy All Humans 3. What’s your proudest moment? My proudest moment is ongoing – watching my three boys grow up. They make me proud every day. Is there anything you’d like to say to the fans? You guys are the greatest gaming community I’ve been involved with. The passion and dedication you guys have inspire me to do all I can to make MAG the best game it can be. As a huge fan of the game myself, working the past nine months or so on MAG updates has been a blast! Don't forget to click this link and leave your questions to Chris for this week's Zipline podcast! More...