The DOH! Network Trackmania server has been pretty busy since I started it up last week. That is until I tried adding the black levels. The black levels are the five hardest tracks in the game and when I added those everybody quit playing. I pulled those back out of the track rotation and the server is back to business as usual. I am working on a stats page so you can see who's playing. You can check out the rough draft by clicking here. Download the complete Trackmania Nations game for free from the official Trackmania website or from steampowered.com.
I think I may have finally been able to destroy the third party prizes fullfilment house that was the reason I changed from working on movie sites to tv sites because of. They sent an email saying our app was permitting people to log into other people's accounts and redeem their points but it turns out this third party recognizes people solely on the unique identifier in the browser URL. So people wanting to share a new sweepstakes on one of those websites that list all the sweepstakes going on are actually giving people access to their accounts. From those links you can enter the third party site and redeem another person's points for free stuff and have it shipped to your house without ever interacting with our registration system. Nice!
I have a Trackmania Nations Forever server running now if you want to do some racing. I'm still trying to figure out how to get it to work with qStats so it will show up on the games page so stay tuned for that. Download Trackmania Nations Forever for free from SteamPowered.com.
id Software is looking for beta testers for the new free Quake Live coming out later this year. You can sign up to be a beta tester on the official Quake Live website. I was all excited and sent the link out to a bunch of people but then I just saw this image over on IGN. I knew it was going to be on the Quake 3 engine but I thought it was going to be a modified Quake 3 engine so it looked a little nicer but this guy in green looks like a user created model. I mean geez! The guy doesn't even have a butt. Not to say I look at guys butts but what the heck is up with that? It looks exactly like the Quake 3 I first played in 1999 when the game was originally released. Wish I could have gotten in on the Battlefield Heroes beta. Either one being released would be cool if I were to be going to a LAN in the next couple of weeks.
DOH! I totally missed the Steam new update. This weekend you can play Team Fortress 2 for free. Get all the info you need to start playing over on SteamPowered.com. Now's my chance to see if the DOH! Network Team Fortress 2 server I set up a while ago worked or not. I blame almost missing the free weekend on the fact that Steam always pops up with news as I'm shutting down my computer.
Also available on Steam is Track Mania Nations Forever. This is the free racing game that was released like a year or two ago but now with more content. Click here to get Track Mania Nations Forever.
You can pick up Half-Life 2: Deathmatch for almost free over on SteamPowered.com. We had a blast with HL2 DM at the last DOH! Network LAN and now you can pick it up for only $4.99. Click here to buy it now. nVidia videocard users may be able to get HL2 DM free by clicking here. ATI videocard users clicking here. I already have HL2 DM so I can't verify if it works or not.
UPDATE on Track Mania Nations United: Track Mania Nations United is totally different from the original Track Mania Nations. New tracks, new dirt track features and a new GUI make this one to download if you liked the original.
UPDATE on Team Fortress 2: I was at 80% when the free weekend ended so no Team Fortress 2 for me.
DOH! It's too bad Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom is closing down at the end of this month. I was checking out the location of my new cube at work the other day and stumbled upon the motherload of VMK cards. Ok, maybe it's not the motherload but there were about 15 boxes full of trading cards for all kinds of VMK items from the space suits and furnishings for your room to limited edition Mickey Mouse Club shirts and golden mouse ears. They are probably all the left overs from the kiosk at Disneyland.
Click here to see some pics of the VMK loot!
