Garena supports computer games like Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne, Quake 4, Counterstrike 1.6 and Source, Starcraft, Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Each user has to register an account with the Garena service to use the software program. The software itself is divided into various rooms for the games which can be joined by the user. Each room is further divided into chat rooms of a maximum of 255 players each who can use community features like chat, private messaging or buddy-lists.

Games are started from these individual rooms by selecting the executable of the computer game on first start. Garena will remember the settings from then on and start the game automatically from then on.

Games can then be created and joined normally in the computer game that has been started (which is usually network play). Garena offers game leagues, clan creation, tournaments, a ladder and a client that is available in many different languages. The two main benefits of Garena are the community features and the network play (which removes the game key requirement for some games).

Related posts

• WOW Addons Updater (4)
• Game Key Revealer (10)
• EA De-Authorization Management Tool (0)
• Display Time In Games (2)
• Best free (and open-source) FPS games (15)

Companies seem to cling to those schemes although it has been proven that they are not helping fight software piracy. Games are usually available without copy protection on the Internet before or soon after they are released. This essentially means that someone downloading those games does not have to cope with installation limits and other copy protection schemes like CD checks while the people who bought the game do.

It was common in the past that customers had to call the game company or publisher if they reached their installation limit in order to have it reset so that they could install the game again.

EA, a company that made and is making heavy use of such copy protection schemes, has released a portable tool for Windows systems called EA De-Authorization Management Tool which will automatically scan a computer system for selected EA games and notify the user about the number of authorizations available.

The computer software program will recognize many of the latest games that have been released by EA. Among them Crysis Warhead, Read Alert 3, Fifa Manager 09, Fifa Soccer 09 and Mass Effect. A website will be loaded after the scan informing the user about the results of the scan.

The results will include links to de-authorization tools for supported EA games if they have been found on the computer system. Downloading those tools will then make it possible to free up a slot so that the game can be installed again.

Related posts

• Spore DRM Protests To Take Effect (4)
• EA to use newest Securom in upcoming games (10)
• Remove the Advertising in Games like Battlefield 2142 (0)
• Game Key Revealer (10)
• EA backpedals on new Securom Protection (0)

AssaultCube

AssaultCube is a quite simple 3D FPS available for Linux, OS X and Windows, which just reached version 1.0 about a week ago. The graphics are not very advanced, but a benefit of this is that it’s easier to run a server and that it can run on nearly any machine.

The best aspect of AssaultCube is the online play; there’s always a few busy servers available where one can play capture the flag, deathmatches or variations on those modes. AssaultCube is limited to seven weapons: sniper rifle, assault rifle, handgun, grenades, knives, shotgun and submachine guns.

Maps can be created for AssaultCube quite easily.

Sauerbraten

Sauerbraten is an FPS built on the same engine on which AssaultCube is built but has much more sophisticated graphics and is built in a fantasy world as opposed to a real one.

In Sauerbraten, weapons include crossbows, guns and rocketlaunchers. This is definitely a more interesting variety than AssaultCube! Once again, CTF and deathmatch are popular game modes.

The game notably lacks a crouch mechanism and struggles to run at higher resolutions on my MacBook Pro. However, it is an amazing open-source game with many fantastic maps.

Once again, Sauerbraten is orientated towards online pay but the CPU games are much better than AssaultCube’s.

Interestingly, the game can also be played as a 3rd person shooter!

Nexuiz

Nexuiz is an FPS with quite fictional weapons, like electricity guns etc. The game clearly belongs in the realms of fantasy, being set on a space station where one must shoot aliens.

I find the game difficult to play. Movement is far too fast compared to Cube engine games and it really does require quick reflexives.

The game isn’t smooth either. Before a game starts, there’s a text-only screen telling me what is loading etc. and the menu at the start looks terrible, especially at my screen resolution.

It’s still a fantastic game to play, however.

AssaultCube

Sauerbraten

Nexuiz

Needless to say there’s scores of other good games, these are just my favourite free (as in beer and freedom) shooters.

Related posts

• Run an airline, train, road and shipping firm with OpenTTD (3)
• Zero Punctuation (2)
• Weekend Game Naac (5)
• Weekend Fun Tails Gear (1)
• Weekend Fun Punishment 1 and 2 (0)

Maybe once or twice in a year I come upon something that is so fascinating that I have to applaud. Meet Emily is one of those situations. Some of you who follow this tech sector more closely might have seen the video already, for those who have not read on.

I do not want to spoil the fun and would like to ask you to view the video below and hear what the interview is all about, a description of the technology. Once that is done scroll down to read the rest of the article.

It’s impressive is not it? The interview did look a bit unreal but not enough to convince me that Emily was in fact not a real person but a computer model. Here is another video making use of the facial motion technology of Image Metrics.

That’s fascinating in my opinion. Many game publishers have been among the first to become clients of Image Metrics but you also find television and movie makers as well as advertisement companies amongst them.

Related posts

• Zombie City Tactics (0)
• Ultrastar – Singstar like game for your PC (10)
• The Silent Japanese Game Show (1)
• Sudoku Portable (0)
• Playstation 3 in the news (4)

Game Key Revealer supports more than 500 popular computer games from well known publishers like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, THQ and Lucasarts. The game key of games like The Sims 2, Call of Duty, Crysis or Far Cry can be revealed if the game is installed on the system.

That’s another handy application which might serve well if you cannot read the game key printed on the CD case or do not have the CD case at all anymore, only the game CD. Game Key Revealer is fully portable and can be executed from any location on the computer.

Once started the user is presented with a huge Find Games button which crawls the computer for game keys. Every game key that is discovered during the process is listed in the main pane of the application. The list can be saved or printed after the scan.

Supported operating systems are Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 / 2007.

Related posts

• Windows Vista Game Explorer Editor (4)
• EA De-Authorization Management Tool (0)
• Computer Games Community Garena (1)
• Best free (and open-source) FPS games (15)
• Zip Repair (3)