Relicnews: the definitive source for all things Relic

There’s a write up of IGN’s spin with Chaos Rising over at the UK IGN site.

Whereas Dawn of War II allowed players to develop characters from level one to level twenty, Chaos Rising will up the level cap to level thirty providing new items, characters and abilities while adding the newest chapter in the Blood Ravens saga. Players that have their customized soldiers will be able to bring their stats and abilities that they chose forward into the expansion pack if they don’t choose to re-spec their warriors, taking advantage of larger redesigned skill trees. However, all gear acquired from the first game has been lost, forcing your soldiers to reacquire new equipment in the field and as rewards for their missions. For example, Thaddeus had a new lightning claw that provided significant melee damage, and players could pickup meltaguns to destroy vehicles. Fortunately, the number of items that you can acquire in missions has also grown, and players will discover that the supplies your troops acquire are now unique to particular units as well, being assigned instantly to those squads when you pick them up.

They outline a lot of the details of how the influence of Chaos will affect your characters as well. Be warned, there’s quite a few spoilers in this article.

Looks like someone is running a petition to get Relic’s upcoming console-only game, Space Marine, onto the PC. They’re at 386 signatures at the moment.

You can go here if you’re interested in signing it.

Thanks Bluesnews.

Looks like the 2.601 Hotfix was released today for the Company of Heroes product.

v2.601
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where mines could be used to destroy newly spawned enemy tanks and prevent further respawn
- Fixed a couple of issues to make COH easier to mod


To further explain the changes that we made to support modding, we added a SCAR query so that modders could find out what products a player owns, allowing them to know if players have access to Tales of Valor units etc. Secondly, some modders that were working on adding new factions for the game found that they were locked out by one of our in-game product checks. We have changed this check so that modders can add new factions to the game.

Surprise! You have a patch!

Edit: Patch Mirror at Worthplaying

Still haven’t picked up any of the Dawn of War games yet? They’re currently half off on Steam for a limited time.

Dawn of War 2 is running for 19.99 US. Now would be a good time to pick it up especially since the Last Stand was just released.

Steam Powered

Over the last week or so, the Dawn of War 2 site’s been releasing info about the new patch that’s out on October 14th.

It started with the two new maps.

Then came three features about the Last Stand Heroes, the first being the Space Marine Captain, followed by the Ork Mekboy and finally the Eldar Farseer.

Today they posted the patch release notes.

Finally, there’s the Final Wave contest! Be the first to complete the Final Wave in the last stand and post it online and you can win a prize!

Someguy
Edit: There is also a short video from Relic designers, Blake Gilroy and Chris Becker, talking about The Last Stand.

Edit 2: The Last Stand is now live on Steam

In the coming patch that’s to add Last Stand, there are also a couple of new maps.

Quest’s Heresy (2 Player)

Designed by Stefan Haines, Quest’s Heresy is a 2P map set deep in the Calderis Desert. This imperial mining facility is relatively new but has been exposed to the harsh open desert environment.

and

Hydris Chasm (4 player)

Hydris Chasm is a 4P map designed by Clint Tasker. Originally it was intended to be a jungle map that had multiple water elements including waterfalls and rivers. The artists had other plans though and decided to stretch the jungle tileset to the max, creating a volcanic theme that doesn’t exist on any other multiplayer map. Needless to say after seeing the final result Clint had no issue with this change in style.

Check out the link for pictures of the maps.

I’m still dealing with a bit of Homeworld nostalgia. It seems that those that worked on Homeworld are still feeling it as well. The story concept for Homeworld’s credited to Dave “The Smoking Dog” Williams. You might say his contribution to the “Stone Soup” was the pot.

…it seems like only yesterday me and Rob Cunningham were poring over spaceship drawings in his warehouse-loft over Hastings Street trying to figure out what the thread was that tied it all together while junkies howled and gibbered in the alley beneath us and we contemplated endless galactic suns.

Check out his website for more.