With a lot of new tweaks in place, including listed cooldown times for all the items and abilities, a couple more heroes, and some creep-blocking issues, DotA Allstars 6.39 (not AI) and DotA 6.39b (not AI) are available for download.  You can download the beta version here.  DotA 6.38b with AI version 1.93 is also now available for download here.  The changelog is as follows:

6.39b Changelog
===============
* Fixed a very serious Mac bug
* Shallow Grave cooldown from 300/150/75 to 300/200/100
* Fixed Lycan’s icon on scoreboard
* Fixed a bug with the last nerf to shadow word (it wasn’t actually nerfedas i said it was in the code, thx malle)
* Changed Infernal HP from 900/1400/1900 to 900/1200/1500
* Allowed swaphero to be used after the -rd draft
* If you don’t pick a hero in -rd, one will be randomed for you (for the same gold cost)

Please note: If you downloaded the 6.39b that was up for an hour the other day, please make sure to delete it.
Delete any 6.39b you may have, as duplicate copies may cause you issues. Download a fresh copy from getdota.com

 

6.39 Changelog
===============

* Listed all the cooldowns for items and abilities
* Added -rd (-randomdraft, similar to the style of play in a few inhouse leagues)
* Added two new Scourge heroes
* Added new functionality to replay files for leagues to more easily calculate and process game data
* Added -showdeny/-hidedeny
* Added new host commands “-weather snow”, “-weather rain” and for everyone “-weather off” (if it is turned off, it can’t be turned on again, to prevent spam and abuses)
* -ma now shows hero level next to the name
* Improved first middle Scourge tower area
* Added a new endgame scoreboard to replace the inaccurate one that Warcraft 3 generates
* Improved death text presentation
* Added floating text to show you all the gold you get (including bonuses, not just the 100) from hero kills as well as tower kills. Please note that there has been no change to the gold you get, it is just being displayed as an added effect now.
* Improved some ward vision areas for the Scourge team (thx Wedge[p])
* Sentinel and Scourge hero kills now share the gold with the team instead of it being lost
* Rewrote a lot of internals coding to allow for cleaner AI version implementation (in near future, the bot capability will be part of the regular map, useable in the every release)
* Added Snowman after Roshan (just a temp for the season)
* Added hero icons to the multiboard
* Fixed the creep blocking issues on the left Sent side
* Added an observer scoreboard display for better information when watching live games
* Improved AI on the siege units. They spawn every 7 waves now instead of every 6

* Reduced Overpower and Enrage cooldowns
* Reduced Time Lapse mana cost at higher levels
* Paralyzing Casks now does a little more damage to creeps
* Upgraded ghouls now have a bigger model like the treants do when upgraded
* Alchemist movement speed from 290 to 300
* Increased Spirit Bear’s Base Attack Time from 1.75/1.6/1.45/1.3 to 1.75/1.65/1.55/1.45
* Improved AOE on Aftershock by 30
* Chaos damage now does 40% damage to fortified (down from 50%)
* You now have more time to repick (120 from 60)
* Added -disablehelp support for sprout
* Unstable Concoction now deals damage
* Added Lucifer to Aghanim’s Scepter
* Increased Troll Warlord’s movement speed by 5
* Reduced mana cost and slightly increase AOE on Shadowraze
* Lowered Warlock’s movement speed by 10
* Gnoll Assassin creep is slightly stronger and give a little more bounty as well
* Improved Lightning Storm a bit
* Undid small part of the previous Dark Ritual nerf (was nerfed from 45 second cooldown to 60/55/50/45 before, and now to 55/50/45/40)
* Improved Kraken Shell leveling slightly
* Cannot use Aphotic Shield on Doomed hero anymore
* Nerfed Shadow Word casting range, increase cooldown and lowered damage per second
* Shukuchi deals more damage per level
* Geminate Attack level 4 cooldown down from 4 seconds to 3.5 seconds
* Fixed a graphical glitch with the spawn direction of Elune’s Arrow
* Reduced Strygwyr’s Thirst HP detection from 50% to 40%
* Improved the Liberated Souls with Ignis Fatuus Scepter Upgrade
* Increased Rain of Chaos cooldown
* Lowered Viper’s base damage a little
* Spin Web regeneration now improves with levels
* Lowered Neutral Taskmaster’s HP/Armor/Movespeed

* Implemented hero descriptions by Deathknight6034(Bloodseeker,Ryali,DK), Aconite_Vyper(Sniper), KingReaper(Lancer), Volcove(Keeper of the Light), Bowstaff(Omniknight), SteveGarbage(Furion), theAlice(Panda,Vol’Jin), prawnstar(Antimage), skipperme(Chen), redrooster(Fletcher), Tikiboi(Raigor). Good job guys.
* Fixed Decrepify tooltip
* Reworked status buff placements on Shadow Word, Mjolnir and Fatal Bonds icon to display properly on Illusions
* Fixed a big exploit reported by UKI-TZAR
* Storm Seeker no longer draws Roshan out
* Fixed typo on Bristleback damage autospray (did not buff him, just a typo fix)
* Fixed Mjolnir tooltip
* New animation for Bottle (thx Ro-Coco)
* Fixed last 2 towers not giving gold to team
* Necromancer now properly grows in size
* Fixed the initial delay on Luna’s Eclipse
* Fixed Clinkz’s Windwalk buff tooltip
* Cannot repick if you don’t have full hp and mana (to prevent some abuses)
* Changed Elune’s Arrow animation
* Fixed a bug with spiderlings’ poison reducing attack speed instead of movement speed (thx ZerielDRK)
* Fixed a few bugs on level 4 abilities with Witchcraft
* Fixed POTM endgame icon
* Many other countless tooltip fixes and improvements
Big thanks to all the beta testers that stayed up late with me to get this out for New Years day

Second up is a clash of Mario and the Matrix, for what is so properly called Super Mario: Reloaded.  In the original Matrix sequel, Neo is bombarded with a plethora of Agent Smiths. However, in this japery, it is not Neo, but rather Mario, who is besieged by Agent-like Luigis. Very funny. Very cute.

Thirdly, we have the highly esteemed trailer for Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii (codenamed Revolution). This is an incredible look at some in-game action of an awesome game for a next-gen console. This is by far the most successful franchise since the beginning of the gaming epoch. And with much pride, I present to you the official trailer:

Fourth is a cam recording of a guy doing 1up tricks on the New Super Mario Bros. The description is thus: “Remember how you can get inifinite 1ups in the classic Super Mario Bros.? Nintendo apparently kept this little trick in New Super Mario Bros.” It’s a neat little video, but the quality is a tad shabby.

Now get ready for an interesting spin-off of Night at the Roxbury. This film features the a lot of dancing by Mario, and some serious head-swinging!

Finally, what Mario compilation would be complete without the blind-folded pianist? This medley of well-played Mario tunes on the piano, in my humble opinion, completes this list!

A 22-man team has been working on a project to revamp the Nintendo 64 hit with Valve’s Source Engine, and has decided to spread the Holiday cheer by releasing a public Beta version that is a testimony to their progess.  To run this Beta, which has “already garnered much attention over the years for the level of detail in its stage design and weaponry,” you will need a source-based game.  “All information, including known bugs, can be found on the developer Wiki. Here are some suggestions, via the mod’s main website, on how to stabilize the game”:

• Check for and download latest video card drivers
• A server with 10 people seems to work better
• Have the Base SDK installed
• Download the mod again on another mirror and reinstall the mod.
• Turn HDR off
• Turn shadow detail on low

A patch is to be expected, but there is no word on when development will begin.

DigitalBattle has the word that the fan remake of the legendary N64 classic The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time in 2D has made progress.  The news come from a thread at SomethingAwful forums, which states:

Daniel Barras, an old friend of mine, has announced that Release Candidate 1 of OoT2D will be released soon. He’s waiting on his laptop to be airmailed to him (and he probably needs to put a couple finishing touches on it).

The game is basically the 2D translation of Ocarina of Time for N64. It will include everything from the original game, and i BELEIVE he was intentionally coding in the glitches found in 1.0 gold cart, but i’m unsure if this will still be a feature. It will also include a special dungeon and 3 extra items (i think it’s armor, boots, and another sword. The only thing i can say for sure is the armor).

Regardless of whether this project to remake the classic Zelda game is real or not, the screens still look great.  Check them the screenshots below:

Fed up with being bated into watching Flash videos, only to discover that it’s just a viral marketing ploy, or a means for the creator to express his vested interests?  If not, then check out this flash video, which thankfully waits till the end to prattle off its pacifistic propaganda.  Decent production and delivery through the Flash format, the only thing that upsets me is the blunt ultimate message.  There’s no need to be so direct and frank; it really does sacrifice a lot of the artistic integrity.  Allowing for many aesthetic and moral interpretations is much better than forcefully imploring one’s audience to a moral/political cause, in my humble opinion.  I’m not saying that I disagree with the sentiments of the video, but rather I disagree with the way that they are finally imparted.  With that single objection aside, I do rather like the Mario animation, and I think that, overall, it is a flash video well worth watching.

Mario: Back to the Start

What could be cuter than integrating a Pokemon into the skin of a Nintendo DS?  Nothing.  And nothing could be farther from reality.  Too bad.  Here’s the fan-created concept:

As I wage war after war, battle after battle,
Herding zealots, goons, no, carriers like cattle.

Your turrets will fail you.
Firebats will get the flu;
Your marines will sneeze achoo,
For you’re too busy at the loo,

Thinking, “Julie only does 20 actions per minute,
So even if she has a DT I’ll easily pin it.”

But there you’re wrong, my friend.
For very soon you’ll meet your Starcraft career’s end.
I’ll play so ferociously you won’t have time to mend;
I’ll have 12 gateways and you’ll only weakly defend.

If you consider the effort I put into this piece,
You’ll fly away like flocks of geese.

For my determination knows no bounds.
I’ll even chase after you like hounds.
I’ll reduce your hatcheries to mounds.
Oh yes, trust me, I will not cease to pound.

Until that fateful moment, full of shine,
Victory! is finally mine.

Credit to Julie Geng for this brilliant work.

Yet another DotA (Defense of the Ancients) map has been released! This time, it’s version 6.29, which claims to fix a lot of things. You can download it HERE. The change-log is as follows:

6.29 Changelog:
===============

* Added -shuffleplayers(-sp, rearranges the players)
* Added -csboardon/-csboardoff to toggle a board that displays -cs stats
* Some improvements to the way Abaddon’s abilities work.
* Fixed various voodoo restoration bugs
* Fixed a few phase bugs
* More Netherswap abuse fixes, can no longer swap from an unpathable area.
* Improved all randoming code (was very inefficient in -dm -ar and caused some
lag)
* Fixed a bug with Freezing Field and caster units.
* Fixed some issues with sprout sometimes pushing the hero out.
* Chaos Bolt does some random damage now.
* Fixed Tormented Soul’s Lighting Storm lvl 4 mana cost.
* Fixed a typo on lvl 3 scepter death ward
* Restored original V hotkey for mana void.
* Fixed a bug with Crippling Fear that did not cause the target to miss.
* Fixed some counter helix bugs against song of the siren.
* Fixed a bug with neutral wolves requiring food (thx m-hehl)
* Fixed a few bugs with berserker call including moving cycloned units
* Brain Sap no longer has a short channel requirement/bug.
* Fixed a minor bug with VS base hp, adjusted str to make it same as usual.
* Lone Druid, Nevermore, Morphling and Mercurial Attribute Bonus now show up
as a +bonus
* Searing arrows mana cost increased by 3.
* Slight improvement to the Void’s model movement animation on timewalk
* Fixed Berserker’s Call exploit on roshan.
* Added buff icons to direct vengeance as well as Haunt.
* Changed how Death Ward works a bit. (This may not be a permanent change, its
still under debate)
* Redid a lot of nightstalker code to fix some old perm night effect bugs.
* Fixed PA to properly autorefresh (hopefully!)

Thanks again to the beta testers who are active.

**This was released before the new sent heroes could be finished because of
the wide spread axe-roshan abuse. They will be included next version.

They have a changelist:

– The Cinematic Modification adds Hires-Textures to all human characters, some non-human characters, nearly all items, walls and vehicles (and the vending mashine of course).

- It replaces the original HL2 music with a more classic score in the style of large Hollywood productions, that fits to the specific game-situations. Moreorchestral, more ambient, with unique themes for combines and Alyx.

-The additional Insane Hires Props are previous unreleased Hirestextures for nearly all props in the game, even little items like binders, computerparts, doorlocks and so on. The huge amount of details will give your HL2 virtually the look of a render-intro, but be warned: The amount of new textures will tax your hardware to the limit. Better don’t use this pack withoutdated DirectX8 cards. Don’t even think about it, unless you are using a 256+ MB card.

You can get it from halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Fakefactory_Cinematic_Insane_Hires;54352 .

You can read more about Sony’s unappreciated street marketing at Kotaku.