Lots of news this morning relating to one of my most recent favourite games:

First up if you haven’t had the pleasure of playing Left 4 Dead (L4D) yet, today is your lucky day! Today is “Freaky Free Friday” and for the next 24hours you can download and play L4D via Steam. I highly recommend it, lots of fun! My Steam ID is skitau, feel free add me to your Friends list so we can join up for some Zombie killing action!

Secondly if you do decide to purchase L4D or have been waiting for a sale on L4D to snap it up, your in luck! This weekend L4D is on sale at 40% the normaly price bringing it down to US$23.99, awesome!

Last but not least, once you’ve dedicated your entire weekend to zombie smashing you’ll no doubt have high numbers of kills/pounces/snags/booms against your name. Valve have also released an extended stats page for L4D so you can see the numbers in all their glory! Check out my stats page here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/skitau/stats/L4D

“Stole the set of Steak Knifes” Skit

It’s been a while since I wrote a Life blog entry, as apposed to all the techno babble I’m constantly spewing forth. Hold onto to your mouse, this’ll be a long one…

Home Life
A few things have changed at home. We moved from a one bedroom unit to a three bedroom house, a month before the wedding too! Having a heap of space is great, not to mention the huge shed out the back. :) Plenty of space for the bikes and my new toy. Speaking of which, finally got rid of the 4Runner last year to be replaced by a complete change of pace with a MX5. My Excuse? Honeymoon car. ;)

Married Life
So back in October last year I finally tied the knot with my high school sweetheart, much to the long awaited joy of friends and family. Proposed on Cable Beach in Broome WA during a mid year holiday. Wedding was perfect (except for the cold and windy weather…) and had the reception in the local Speed Boat Club where Nay spent most of her childhood. Honeymoon was spent down in the South West. Started with a few nights just out of Margaret River in a secluded chalet at Forest Rise Eco Retreat, beautiful rammed earth chalets literally surrounded by bush. Was a perfect way to start the honeymoon, including a very enjoyable wine tour with Bush Tucker Tours. Next stop was Denmark, no not the place in Europe the little town on the south coast of WA. Absolutely wonderful place, we were lucky to have a fantastic view of the bay from our Bungalow! Spent about a week roaming around the area, checking out the Tree Top Walk, Whale World, The Gloucester Tree, Pentland Animal Farm, Dinosaur World, Denmark Maze, Bartholomews Meadery. Can’t wait to visit Denmark again, this time perhaps spending a little more time looking at Real Estate. :D The last few nights of the Honeymoon were spent back in Margaret River, staying right in the middle of town at the Margaret River Hotel. In a few days we managed to go on a Canoe Tour with Bush Tucker Tours (Can’t recommend them enough), take the new toy for a spin down Caves Road, visit Lake Cave and Mammoth Cave and most importantly stock up on wine before heading home. More photos in the gallery, just click the thumbnail below.

Honeymoon Photo Gallery

Working Life
Sadly last month saw the end of my dream job. For nearly the past two years I had been working at Perth’s major game company Interzone as their IT Manager. I’d never thought I’d have the opportunity to work in the Games Industry, let alone on my door step! Not only that, I was working the most talented people in WA in game development and working with three of my high school buddies! It was an awesome ride but I had to make the hard decision of leaving, the company and many new friends. Their first product, Interzone Futebol, is currently in an Australian Closed Beta be sure to head over to http://www.interzonefutebol.com.au to sign up and join in the fun. It’s a great game, I hope it gets the chance to be released to the world.

Australian Closed Beta

That’s about it for now, I’ll try not to leave it so long till the next ‘life’ post. Stay cool people, back to the job hunt for me.

Nick Lowe, VP of Interzone Australia, has published a Perth Games Industry survey. The aim is to collect information from those in the Perth Industry or those people interested into getting into the industry.

Survey can be found here: http://survey.letsmakegames.org/

The information gathered by this survey will be used to produce a Perth games industry profile document, which will summarise general characteristics and capabilities of the local industry. We want to facilitate organic and sustainable growth to help ensure a long-term future for game developers in Perth, and a clear objective assessment of the local industry is an important part of making this happen.

We want to hear from you if: you are in the industry, want to get into the industry, or even if you have left the industry. We will greatly appreciate if you could take the time to complete this survey.

Initial results will be presented at the IGDA Perth meeting tonight(!) and put a more detailed report available in a few weeks.

The updated 3.0.8 patch notes released today have an interesting, yet significant, change to mining. Miners will now only hit the node once to get all the ore and associated loot. digg story

So I entered a few competitions PALGN a while back, one of those entries paid off. :) I scored myself a copy of Nitro Bike for the Wii. w00t!