Ritualistic

Radox a Member of our forums created a Mod for the SIN Single-Player. The Mod fixes smaller issues, adds new Features such as

• Shotgun shells max capacity doubled to 100.
• Energy ammo max capacity increased to 300. Also, pulse ammo packs provide 50 ammo, while small packs (plasma), provide 20.
• Added enemies and ammo to the Munt Phoenix level to make it more fun
• Changed the sounds of some of the weapons with more realistic, powerful ones
• Tweaked Thrall (the endgame boss) to be more deadly

And much more!

You need to apply the patch 1.11, before installing the mod, details can be found at this forum thread.

Grab the Mod installer and get ready for a new SIN experience.
 

If you haven't picked up SiN Episodes Emergence yet — you sad, sorry sack, you! — GoGamer has it on their Madness sale for a mere $3.90, not quite enough to keep Ritual from going casual, yet enough to get you to enjoy some great gaming.
 

Aeon has developed a Secrets of SiN Emergence FAQ which details all the in-game secrets, easter eggs, in-jokes and the like with a heavy amount of screenshots for you to find them in game for yourself. A lot of effort has been put it together, so be sure to check it out.

After doing so, leave some feedback for Aeon in this forum thread.
 

Spitting in the face of the fact that the number of blogs is supposed to be going down this year, Sarkie, who also runs the League of Shadows in his spare time, has put up a weblog for his in-development SiN Episodes multiplayer mod, also known as USEMP. It'll allegedly be filled with screenshots, sample code, feature requests, and the occasional emo rant (followed by obligatory cutting), so keep your eyes on it. We will, too, of course, so expect it to be plugged every now and then.

In directly related news, Sarkie has also just added SiN's ever so delightful death messages to the mod, so that whenever somebody is gibbed, blown up, mowed down, or killed in another gratutious manner oh-so-despised by the mainstream media, the rest of the server is alerted via a potentially humorous line of text. And directly related to that, the Sarkster is looking for suggestions for these very lines of text, so if you've got suggestions, please leave them in the comments. Currently, the mod sports the Magnum, the Scattergun, the assault rifle, the chaingun, as well as a rocket launcher, so keep that in mind when thinking up new death messages. If you need (s)inspiration, check out the latest featured pic.
 

GameIndustry.biz has a lengthy interview with former Ritual CEO Steve Nix and while it's mainly about his new gig as director of business development at id Software, it wraps up with two questions about Ritual - covering the acquisition by MumboJumbo, and the SiN Episodes series. Here's a slice on Ritual's newfound casualness:

So after I left, Ritual hadn't even been contemplating an acquisition by those guys. They said, "What's our best opportunity now?" It really happened very quickly after I left and I haven't really talked to those guys a lot, so they didn't really consult me on the acquisition. It helps that United Developers [MumboJumbo's parent -ed] is on the third floor of a three-story building and Ritual is on the second floor. [laughs] So it was able to work. I know for those guys, they were interested in getting off of the project to project treadmill and focus on having fun and making games. [...] There was a lot of interest in casual games even before that with the Weekend Games projects that Brian "Squirrel" Eiserloh was running, so there was a lot of interest in casual games at Ritual, so the move doesn't really surprise me.

Click here to read the rest.
 

Those of you craving more information about Sarkie's and former Ritual QA Oscar winner Michael Russell's upcoming multiplayer mod for SiN Episodes should head over to Michael's blog straight away and check out the informative FAQ posted there. Here's a snippet:

Q: What will be required?

Alphas and betas will require that a person own both "SiN Episodes" and "Half-Life 2: Deathmatch." The final release should only require "SiN Episodes" if all goes well.

Q: What will the initial release contain?

Vanilla deathmatch, the three weapons, off-hand grenades, one map.

Michael also guesstimates that we may see the alpha emerge (haha) before the end of March, though he cautions that this estimate may turn out to be "piss poor." Click here to read the rest.
 

Sarkie said not to post on this, but honestly, if I listened to him, I still wouldn't know what it's like to be part of a police line-up. Anyway, it seems the Sarkster and Ritual's former QA supermodel Michael Russell are working on a multiplayer mod for SiN Episodes: Emergence, as Michael's blog has been oozing with references to a project called USEMP. What's USEMP you ask? Well, I'll let this teaser shot of Blade t-posing his way around a multiplayer map do the talking. Those of you not suffering from mad cow may remember that a few months ago, Sarkie posted a thread in our forums saying he had gotten barebones multiplayer working in the game. Looks like the two of them have been making progress since - we'll see if we can get any more information out of them.
 

Michael Russell has posted the sixth and final part of his feature about prepping SiN Episodes for the German market.

You may have noticed that in the final game, there were a couple of physics items based off of the destruction of an object, but not much related to the movement of an object by a weapon. Well, there's a simple explanation for that. In the USK version, physics forces caused by all weapons (friendly and enemy) were reduced by 50%.

The full article is avaliable at Michael's Blog.
 

Ah yes, colon overload. The fifth part of Ritual's former federal QA agent Michael Bauer Russell's USK report is here (or rather, on Michael's blog), illuminating the wonderous ways of how SinTEK's unfortunate jetpack soldiers were treated in the German version of SiN Episodes: Emergence. Hot fiery jetpack death is unfortunately not at the top of zee Germans' List of Volksenjoyment, so Ritual had to make some adjustments here for Poland's sake. Anyway, obligatory slice:

The jetpack grunts have many different types of death animations. The server tells the client, "Hey, this dude is dead," the client randomly picks one of the animations, and plays it. I think everyone remembers the classic twirl-around-screaming-pack-explode-fall-with-a-crunch animation from the last trailer before release. Well, that animation is what directly led to this change.

It's yet another interesting read about how the game had to be adapted to suit the needs of the Fatherland. Click here to read the rest. Also, I know this actually went up the other day, but in a decidedly un-German manner, I was too busy basking in the non-glory of my birthday to notice. The sixth and final part of the series may or may not go up this weekend, so keep your eyes peeled.
 

The big Steam Winter Update mentioned right below this item has been released and can be downloaded by (re-)starting your Steam client. It seems that because of the extensive changes, the SiN Episodes skin no longer works with this version of Steam, so you'll have to live with a slightly less sexy application from now on. :|
 

Two SiN Episodes-related updates in one day? What's the world come to?! Anywho, it looks like Steam will be getting a major overhaul next week, with Valve Software rolling out a host of new features, including the long-awaited guest passes and a re-worked client application. Here's a rundown of the changes and additions:

• Guest Passes
  Guest Passes allow owners of certain Steam games (purchased either via Steam or at retail) to let their friends play games for free, for a limited time trial. The first game to take advantage of this new feature will be Day of Defeat: Source.
• Background Client Updates
  Since the Steam client was first released, it has always kept itself up to date -- but now it'll do so without making you wait during startup. Instead, it will acquire new updates in the background and then (once they're downloaded) ask if you'd like to restart and apply them. Steam will also let you know what's new whenever a new update is ready to apply.
• New User Interface
  Steam's got a new coat of paint. We've stripped away all the non-essentials and created a new streamlined appearance, available in five different colors.
• Favorites
  Steam's catalog of games has grown quite a bit over the past year or so. The new Favorites feature in the My Games tab of Steam allows for quick access to your favorite Steam games and additional functionality for personalizing your Steam library of content.

Head on over to Shacknews to read the full announcement.
 

In what is Steam's equivalent of a post-holidays sales event, SiN Episodes: Emergence is currently available for the low, low price of just $9.95. This offer is valid until January 18, when the game returns to its regular semi-low price of $14.95. As before, the package comes with the original SiN and SinCTF multiplayer, SiN Episodes Arena Mode, and SiN Episodes: Emergence itself. Rumor also has it that Levelord randomly drops by your house if you have the game, but only if you live in the DFW area and provide an ample supply of vodka and/or are Russian. Thanks Sarkie.
 

As noted in our SiN Episodes editing forum, Senast has released a beta of his up and coming SiN Episodes Arena Mode map Submerge. Set in an underwater science facility, it's all kinds of funky looking and even has curved hallways, which may, in fact, be a first for the Source engine. Despite that, it seems that it doesn't cause the engine to spontaneously combust, so head on over to the original thread for some tasty screenshots, while you can grab the beta of the map here on FileFront.
 

Out of the way, here comes part 4 of the on-going series covering the Germanification of SiN Episodes: Emergence (otherwise known as localization). Anyway, former Ritual QA deus ex machina Michael Russell discusses asploding bodies in this one, otherwise known as gibs (and pronounced "jibs", you fools!). Here's a clip:

Now, we had limited gibs on human enemies in “SiN Episodes” for the US release. Regular humans could only lose their heads, and even then, only if the killing shot was a headshot. You could not do post-mortem gibbing on corpses because we were already at the ragdoll processor limits. Elites had their models swapped out for a “gibbed” model upon death by the client-side ragdoll processor.

Click here to read the definitely not exploding rest of the article. And for the lazy ones, here are part 1, part 2, and part 3 of the series.
 

Speaking to 1UP, ex-Ritual co-owner and Director of Things That Make Us Go Tom "ParadoX" Mustaine dropped a few cotton balls of information about his work on SiN Episodes: Emergence and the second episode in the series. Tom also mentions that the recent departures of him, Steve Nix, and other members of the Tribe were "coincidental" and not a sign of any kind of ritualistic apocalypse. Ready your taste buds, because here's a delicious nugget about the financial success of the first SiN Episodes installment:

After putting one and a half years into building the foundation and first episode many suspected that it had failed to live up to expectations. True, it may not have been a spectacular success, but Mustaine explained that it did meet the studio's internal projections, though they were rather conservative. But he did express a feeling that the world hadn't been quite as ready for episodic content and digital delivery as they had banked on it being. The problems of being able to sell in stores also came up with him adding "we would have been better off selling it at $35 than $19. At 19 bucks it went straight to the shit bin in many places."

Holy s-bomb, badman! Now before you get all excited, this doesn't answer the million dollar question about the future of the series, but it's definitely worth checking out. Thanks Raveness for the heads-up.