Epic Games’ Gears forum received a post from company VP Mark Rein a few minutes before 1AM today. In that post Mark makes mention of a title update for the Gears sequel that they hope to release in January. The laundry list of issues being addressed include the ability to wield an invisible shield, infinite lancer ammo, melee through walls, and more.

Hit the jump for Mark’s post in its entirety.

A brief status report on the next Gears2 title update

First of all I hope all of you had a safe and happy holiday season.

As I mentioned before the break we’ve been working on a major title update for Gears of War 2. This update will address bugs and exploits as well as add some new achievements related to downloadable content. We don’t have an exact date for it but all indicators are it will go live within January. If that changes we’ll let you know.

We’re fixing a whole bunch of online exploits. For example we’ve fixed the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously plus many more.

We’re also making several small changes to improve the overall online gameplay experience. A few of the ones that might interest you are; increased penalties for quitting matches early, adding additional spawn protection against planted grenades and chainsaw attacks, and adding the ability to see the Submission flag carrier destination by using Tac/Com.

We know you folks love achievements so on the achievement side we’re adding achievement progress numbers to the War Journal, increasing the frequency of in-game Achievement progression notifications and adding some new Achievements for DLC.

This is just a very small list of some of the things that will be in the next title update but one more item which has been talked about a lot in our forums deserves a special call out…

About that shotgun…

We fixed the client side hit detection on the shotgun so that in a high-latency (i.e. “laggy”) match, the shotgun will be more reliable. We’ve also fixed another bug whereby shotgun and boomshot rounds could strike the ground when firing from the hip.

So there’s a brief status report on the next title update. At some point I expect we’ll post a more detailed list but I assure you we’re working hard to get this out the door and once it’s done we’ll start working on the next update. We’ll try to do a better job keeping you informed of our progress on future updates and we’ll try to be a little more active in the forums once this update is released.

Source: gearsforums.epicgames.com

By now you have likely heard that the highly anticipated Gears of War 2 will not be making its way to your PC. Assuming that you wanted to play it there in the first place, the news may have come as a disappointment to you.

Personally, I don’t play very many games on my PC, with the exception of an obscure MMO called World of Warcraft that you may or may not have heard of. Regardless, according to the PC Gaming Alliance, which I had the opportunity to speak to at the past GDC, the PC gaming population is alive and growing. Epic Games VP, Mark Rein, is a member of this alliance which also includes representatives from NVIDIA, Dell, Intel, Gateway, and others.

That said, I decided to reach out to Mark and ask him personally about his company’s decision to not release Gears 2 on the PC. Specifically, I reiterated the statements made in a recent interview, by his lead designer (CliffyB if you live under a rock), where he had cited piracy concerns as the reason for the focus on the 360.

Here’s the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know BitTorrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.

Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

I asked Mark to respond to the statements made by his designer, stating “Your lead designer has been quoted saying that piracy is the main concern”, to which he responded:

The reason we decided not to develop Gears 2 for PC was so that we could focus our resources on making Gears 2 the best possible Xbox 360 game it could be rather than splitting them across multiple platforms like we did with the first one. I think Gears 2 will be a better game for it and that this was the right decision.

Mark’s response makes no mention of piracy as a deterrent in the game’s creation for the PC, and by not doing so it almost directly contradicts it as the motive. Taking Mark at his word, it is still hard pill to swallow for PC gamers.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with Cliff’s savvy consumer analogy, you can hardly disagree that piracy adversely effects the bottom line of digitally distributed media creators. Some may argue both points as rubbish, and it would be their right to do so, but I can understand the logic behind both.

Finally, I asked Mark about the piracy concern in general on PC’s and if he and the PCGA had any plans to deal with the concern in the future, to which he responded:

“This issue is something we’re looking at as a group …”

He then added that I would be better served contacting the group’s Intel representative for further insight into their plans, which I fully intend to do. There was a time not long ago when piracy was a major concern for consoles, but due to technology advances, that has become less of a mainstream problem. Here’s to hoping a solution is arrived upon for the PC sooner rather than later.

After being nominated as some of the people in videogaming that need to “shut the fuck up“, Cliff Bleszinski and Mark Rein take it to the ring to decide which of the two of them wins the right to shut up more. Using the photo upload tools in EA’s new game Facebreaker, I was able to poorly reconstruct these two mammoths of mutilating machismo and let them do their thing. Video follows.

Mark came out swinging and really had Cliffy on the ropes, but the Blaznats is no bitch and came back with a vengeance. Too bad there’s a time limit — we’ll have to wait until the game releases in September to see what would happen if they weren’t confined to mere 90-second slap fights.

P.S. Does anyone else get the overwhelming urge to barf all over the place whenever they are subjected to EA Trax, or is that just me?

Even though the Xbox 360 version of UT3 is getting a split screen mode and new maps, the lack of mod support has left a bitter taste in some people’s mouths. However, fear not! Mark Rein hasn’t closed the door on mod support for the 360 just yet.

In a recent interview he explained:

“We’re still trying. We’re working with Microsoft to try to figure out how to support it, but regardless of what happens, mods will play a part somewhere along the line. We’ll make sure we get a fair share of mods working. We’ll figure that out.”

Hopefully with collaboration, Epic will be able to work out where to go with this. Mod support would certainly open up a whole new world of content, good and bad.

Source: Computer and Video Games

In an epic interview with GamaSutra’s Brandon Sheffield and Christian Nutt, Epic Game’s VP and key creator of the Unreal Engine Mark Rein went into detail about Unreal Tournament 3 and other official UE3 licensee titles.

Among other useful niblets of information, Mr. Rein highlights the importance of Sony consoles this holiday season, stating, “I think Sony’s going to have a good Christmas this year. Games like Unreal Tournament 3 will hopefully get out the door.”

Coming from PC roots, Mark realizes that user generated content plays host to some of the most memorable experiences ever created. When asked about the difference between the Unreal Tournament 3 map system and Little Big Planet, he went on to say:

CN: I bet they’re going to police LittleBigPlanet and other stuff.

MR: Well, LittleBigPlanet is more of an example of rearranging chairs on the deck, right?

CN: It’s pretty robust.

MR: This is the real thing. You can’t import your own models in LittleBigPlanet. You can’t write script code in LittleBigPlanet.

That’s all well and good, but what about the problems with the PS3’s development cycle? Brandon Sheffield went on to ask:

BS: Do you think Unreal Engine 3 running on the PS3 now is going to help people surmount the difficulties they’ve been having?
MR: I think that’s generally how it works. That’s part of the reason why we build a game — to prove out the technology, and iron all the kinks out of it and make it good. As I’ve said before, a year after the Xbox 360 was on the market, we had a really good game — Gears of War — and that kind of became version 1.0 of Unreal Engine 3 for the Xbox 360. That became a roadmap. It was well-optimized, and licensees could go look at that code. We released it so they could say, “If I want to do at least what Epic’s doing with Unreal Engine 3 and get that kind of framerate and performance and visual look or move some of those levers up and down to be different, I can do that.”

I think it’s the same thing with Unreal Tournament [3 on PS3] so absolutely. I think now, people can see, “Okay, they’ve got the engine running with this much content.” Everybody’s mileage varies, because not everybody’s making the same game. But, “They have the engine running with this many characters, explosions, and vehicles, and the level’s this size, and if I follow that idea, I can get that kind of performance, and if I do less of this, I can do more of that. If I do more of this, I can do less than that.” So, absolutely, I think we’re at that kind of version 1.0 on PlayStation 3 a year after the PlayStation 3 shipped, the same way we were with Xbox 360 a year after the Xbox 360 shipped. That was a pretty predictable thing, and was what we expected that was going to occur and what we’ve been telling people.

In addition to all of this, Mark Rein went on to comment about the relevancy of the Blu-ray player in the PS3:

CN: The 40-gig PS3 has been out in Europe for a little while now, and the numbers shot way up.

MR: Well, good for Sony. When I said they were going to have a good Christmas, I didn’t necessarily mean because of our game. They’ve got a lot going for them right now. It’s a great Blu-ray player. They’re going to push that really hard.
BS: I got Phil Harrison to admit that the PS2 was not the best DVD player in the past, but the PS3 is a great Blu-ray player.

MR: And a great DVD player, too. They did a really good job on that. It really feels like it was designed for that kind of thing.

CN: They do that multimedia thing…

MR: But it can confuse people.

Mark Rein has always been an outspoken character, rivaled only by Cliffy B in terms of press coverage. It’s refreshing to see this level of candor, given the frequent stonewalling we get from most developers. This may be indicative of the fact that Epic Games is an independent company, and most development teams seem to enjoy the financial umbrella provided by larger companies such as EA or Activision.

While we hope this will be a prelude of things to come such that all developers will want to express their opinions without an army of PR and marketing agents at their side, we won’t hold our breath.

via GamaSutra

Ok, who farted?

“The next Gears of War update is coming along nicely”, said Epic VP Mark Rein on the official Gears of War forum. He added that while a release timeframe has yet to be set Epic wanted to make every effort to let the fans of the game know that significant progress was being made to the many aspects of the game including but not limited to the roadie run … new achievements have been added to the Annex and Hidden Fronts DLC as well.“The title update is free and that’s what contains the achievements. However some of the achievements are tied to things relating to playing the maps in the Hidden Fronts map pack which currently costs money but will be made free in a few months.” It should also be noted that Epic plans on making full use of the new Microsoft guidelines which will allow developers to add 250 extra gamerpoints via downloadable content.

The Hidden Fronts map pack containing four new multi-player maps are on Xbox Live Marketplace right now and can be yours for a measly 800 Microsoft points … well worth the investment.

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