Hello everyone! I know I am a bit late with this since the beta was released some days ago already, but I have a good reason why I couldn't post this earlier. You will learn about my busy week in near future; for now let's just say that this was my computer on the day the beta was released:

Lovely condition, isn't it?

This day is not for talking about the destiny of my computer, however, but about the upcoming Xfire version which is still available as a beta for you to test. The full Xfire update installer has already been created by now, so your beta reports will not get to influence the official 1.113 version, but you can still install it to take a sneak peek of what will come next week.

New in Xfire 1.113 beta

• Support for Windows Live messenger (aka MSN)
  
• Advanced option to disable scanning for new games on startup
  
• Video broadcasting feature completely redone
  
• Community favorite servers will now appear in the client on Servers tab
  
• New video uploading dialog

Many people were asking whether Xfire will support other instant messengers than AIM and what will be the next one. Now the next step in multiple IM networks has been taken with an introduction of Windows Live Messenger support; you can use your Windows Live account and chat with your MSN buddies using Xfire client, so you no longer have to miss a chat even when playing games!

As with the AIM accounts, these are controlled in the "Manage Instant Messenger Accounts (ALPHA)" found from Tools menu. Since this is a completely new addition to an ALPHA feature, it is far from complete and does have some problems, you can read more about the problems on the Beta Forums.

The feature update on this beta that has most significance to me personally is the new advanced option to disable game detection on startup. This is an advanced option because by disabling the automatic detection many people could easily forget it and then wonder why Xfire will not detect any new games they install. If you decide to go to the advanced options...

I was just looking at our events calendar, just to discover there really wasn't a lot in there. But I just so happen to know that we have some cool stuff going on.


Before presenting what's currently going on, just let me sort of a language issue of sorts.

In Europe, there's a sport that many of us call "Football" (Fussball, Fotboll, and so on). This is not the same as what we refer to as "American football", in which you have a lot of heavily armored guys playing a game of rugby. No, what we call "football" in Europe is actually what you Americans refer to as "soccer".

So, now that we've settled that, let's move straight on to the first event of the week.


August 7th - August 17th
Football Superstars Play 2 Win

If you like football, you'll love Football Superstars.

You know, since it's a game about football.

Also, you can win some pretty cool stuff if you play it while we are running this event, like a real football table (the kind with small dudes that spin on a stick and kick a ball), a match shirt and loads of virtual items.



Foooooootball!




August 11th
Wolf Team Live Chat

Did you ever get the idea of creating an FPS where you play either as a werewolf, or as a soldier, and set out to kill each other? You can drop that idea, since Wolf Team already did it. And guess what? We have some Wolf Team loving here on Xfire right now. Tomorrow, parts of the Wolf Team, eeerm, Team(?) will be chatting live on Xfire. And pretty much all you need to do to join the chat is to join the Wolf Team community here on Xfire.

And, if you miss the live chat tomorrow, there are plenty of other Wolf Team things going on this week. You can check it all out by joining the community!



Wolf team team?




Check out the Age of Conan community too, or you'll be missing out on awesomeness!





Dear diary:

Today was my birthday. I just spent some time with some friends to celebrate. It was fun. Now I'm going to bed. Have a nice...

Were you pondering on what would be the subject this Friday on my weekly blog post? Well, I know for sure that at least one person was thinking hard on what I would write today. And that person was me...

I've been working at Physics department in University of Joensuu this week. It's very exciting work but due to the schedule it's a bit tiring too. Of course since what I do includes some high technology equipment and top class laboratory environments, I am not really allowed to disclose what I am exactly doing there, but one word will cover it: science. (this always reminds me of Jonathan Coulton's song Still Alive, the ending song of Portal, "I'm doing science and I'm still alive"

Anyway, from physics to computers! Today's Xfire tip will be about the saved usernames and passwords in the Xfire client. Sometimes you might mistype your username to the program and it will remember that; whenever you face the login screen and see the username list, your typo will haunt you. Sometimes it can be even so bad that you mistakenly type in your password to the username field and it gets saved. So it's good to know how to clear the list, in case you ever need to.

While there are plenty of settings you can change in Xfire itself, there are lots of other things saved in your personal preferences than those available in user interface. The local settings are stored in a file XfireUser.ini, located in your Windows user account's application data folder. This file also stores the usernames and passwords (if selected) of the login screen, so in the event you want to clear the list, this is the file to edit.

Note: Make sure Xfire is not running when editing any of Xfire's files

You can access it by typing in %appdata%\Xfire\XfireUser.ini to Windows Run box or the Open dialog of your text editor (such as Notepad).


When the file is open, locate [CachedLogin] from it. Look at the screenshot below to see what kind of data it has:


All the data there is encrypted to prevent malicious programs from...

July 27th - August 2nd


01. World of Warcraft
02. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer
03. Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer
04. Counter-Strike: Source
05. Warcraft III - The Frozen Throne
06. Battlefield 2
07. Guild Wars
08. Call of Duty: World at War Multiplayer
09. Silkroad Online
10. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
11. Eve Online (+1)
12. Team Fortress 2 (-1)
13. MapleStory (+2)
14. Combat Arms (-1)
15. Metin 2 (+2)
16. Left 4 Dead (-2)
17. The Lord of the Rings Online (-1)
18. Call of Duty Multiplayer (+1)
19. San Andreas Multiplayer (+5)
20. Counter-Strike 1.6

Compared to the last edition of the Xfire charts, where we had pretty much absolutely nothing at all happen, this time we have quite a lot of stuff going on!


Metin 2 and MapleStory seem to be doing really well at the moment. Another two slots gained this week for each of them. I heard something about some sort of celebration in MapleStory, that could possibly cause the increased amount of players, but I won't swear that it's true. Perhaps someone knows a bit more about that?

In contrast to Metin 2 and MapleStory, Left 4 Dead seems to be doing pretty poorly. I guess it's not a game to count out just yet, but it'll be interesting to see what will happen.

Combat Arms dropped a little this week, but I think we might get to see a considerable jump up, either next week or the week after. I heard that they just rolled out a pretty big content update (at least here in Europe). And content updates tend to make things happen here on the charts.

San Andreas Multiplayer had a sudden increase in play time too, and from what I could see just now, it seems to be continuing. We might even get to see San Andreas go up another notch or two for next week.

And by the way, you should really check out the contest we're running right now in Sudden Attack.
The prizes are some of the most awesome ones ever to be offered in one of our contests, and since...

Haiyaaaa! Judo Chop!

Aha! I caught you by surprise there, didn't I?
I guess you could call it a sudden attack from my side, which in some way manages to lead us in to the theme for this weeks schedule.





Sudden attack. That is!
If you haven't been totally isolated for the last two weeks, you should already have seen me write something about our Sudden attack contest. So, I guess I don't need to tell you about the several THOUSAND dollars worth of prizes that we're handing out? Or the fact that this is one of the most popular games in Asia? Or, that it's free?

Yeah, I won't tell you about that, since you should already know that. Buuuut, just in case you missed any of it, head over to the Sudden attack page to find out all about it, including what prizes we are giving away. It's time to start hurrying though, the contest only runs until Friday!



July 28th - August 7th
Sudden Attack Play 2 Win

You all know what I said up above. Go-go sign up!




Man. Talk about awesome prizes.



Check out the Age of Conan community too, or you'll be missing out on awesomeness!





Dear diary:

I just got a new watch! (Yaaay!). I like wristwatches. They have a purpose, and there are plenty of models that look really nice. The one I got now is a fairly cheap Seiko Diver, but it's going to be my everyday watch, so I didn't want to get one that's too expensive. I bet pretty much all of you are using your cellphones instead of a proper watch, and I understand that.

But, perhaps soon, you will also understand the beauty of a nice watch. I hope so.

Do have a nice time until next time!

Hans

July 20th - July 26th


01. World of Warcraft
02. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer
03. Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer
04. Counter-Strike: Source
05. Warcraft III - The Frozen Throne
06. Battlefield 2
07. Guild Wars
08. Call of Duty: World at War Multiplayer
09. Silkroad Online
10. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
11. Team Fortress 2
12. Eve Online
13. Combat Arms
14. Left 4 Dead (+1)
15. MapleStory (-1)
16. The Lord of the Rings Online
17. Metin 2 (+1)
18. Battlefield Heroes (-1)
19. Call of Duty Multiplayer (+1)
20. Counter-Strike 1.6 (+1)

I'm sorry about the subject of this blog post. This really isn't very exciting at all. As you can see, barely anything happened this week. And out of the stuff that happened, nothing was truly ground breaking in my eyes.

Battlefield Heroes, Metin 2, MapleStory and Left 4 Dead account for most of what happened this week. And that really doesn't make for a great thriller.

But you know, this is good in a way. It means that people play the games they like, and don't mess around too much with other stuff.
I guess that basically sucks for people who sell games, but whatever. As long as people are happy, I guess it's good.

Since there really isn't too much else to talk about, you should really check out the contest we're running right now in Sudden Attack.
The prizes are some of the most awesome ones ever to be offered in one of our contests, and since the game is free, what's there really to lose? Go check it out now!

I'll be back tomorrow with a more thorough description of what's happening here on Xfire in the weeks to come. I hope you tune in then!


Hans

As I mentioned in my previous post, there has been a major update to the Xfire site. While the graphical presentation has not changed very much, there are still some very significant differences. And as always, theblog is the place where you get to first know all of it!

As the post title hints, the changes this time are mostly around "Communities", the new name for the feature previously known as Xfire Clans & Guilds.

Quick changelog:

• Xfire Clans & Guilds is now Xfire Communities
  
• Three different types of communities: Core, Unlimited and Official
  
• New style for community rosters
  
• New style for recent community forum posts
  
• Online and in-game member counts are now displayed for unlimited communities
  
• New way to count community gameplay hours, supporting unlimited communities too
  
• Two new community types: Group and Club
  
• Maximum number of community games increased from 10 to 30
  
• Big images are automatically resized on blogs and forums
  
• New embeddable video player
  
• Fixed bugs in XML feeds
  
• New Spotlight feature on Home page. The miniprofile box was moved to the bottom of the page.
  
• Link to the official Xfire blog 'theblog' is now in the page footer on every page

Impressive list, isn't it?

Before taking a closer look into the changes, I'll remind you first of an important thing:
If you see missing images or other weird things on the website, refresh the page (usually F5) to make sure your browser is not loading old content from cache.


Since the biggest changes in this update were related in Xfire Clans & Guilds, now Communities, it's natural to start with that one. The new http://www.xfire.com/communities/ page looks like this:


You can also see the new image resizing code in effect here. Click the the original link to see it fully. If you cannot see the image above, then take my previous advice and press F5 to reload the page and the new image resizing script.

The image shows how the page is laid out. The list of communities you are in are listed first, as earlier....

Not any three weeks can go without an update to Xfire (there's an exception to every rule, though). And since it's been three weeks since 1.111 was released, it is only natural that now we are going on release number 112.

As you could read from the Xfire 1.112 beta release post, this latest version has bug fixes for many problems reported by Xfire users in the past few weeks, including:

• Logging into AIM accounts with special characters didn't work (invalid username/password error)
  
• Some Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 games complained about insufficient memory when Xfire was running
  
• Improvements to Internet Explorer 8 compatibility in some systems

Even though the release notes do not mention anything about the internal technical changes, according to the beta release notes there have been many kinds of internal changes in how video recording and broadcasting features work.


There were some problems with the update procedure last night when the 1.112 went live. If you are one of those people who keep their Xfire running 24/7 and you managed to log in soon after the servers were restarted, you might still be running the older Xfire 1.111. You can double check your Xfire version from the Help menu, selecting About Xfire.
If it says you are on Xfire 1.111, simply logging off and back on will trigger the update.

As always, some people had problems in downloading the update. This seems to be common with dial-up users where the updater download gets interrupted midway. In case you cannot get the update downloaded or have problems installing it, you can always try downloading the full installer and installing on top of the old Xfire version.


According to topics in Technical Support forum, there are still problems with logging in to AIM accounts that seem to be unrelated to the issue fixed in this release. Xfire team is still looking into fixing them, but some people have found out that synchronizing their computer's clock with Internet time server actually let them log into AIM using Xfire. This...

Finally, the pretty insane Sudden Attack contest is going live. it's the one I was talking about last week, where we're giving away like 20 million US dollars worth of stuff.


Ah. Sorry, my fault. I added a few zero's too much when I calculated that. I think it's more like $4000 dollars. But still, that's no small sum! From a prize standpoint, it's one of the coolest Play2Win's we've ever done. From a game standpoint, it's certainly nothing to frown at. This is some serious stuff!

Here's a funny picture (thanks Joonas for the link!)



Now, let's move on to what's going on this week!



July 27th
Xfire Release 1.112

This should be just hours away, and in case you want to know what might get to be included in the release, you should check out Joonas' post. Perhaps they have even added some more stuff than what was in the beta?


Doobi-doo, Xfire, I love you!




July 28th - August 7th
Sudden Attack Play 2 Win

This'll just turn out to be a repetition of what I said in the start of this post. But, I guess it can't be stressed enough. We are giving away some really serious prizes in this contest. Like really, hardcore buttkick, awesome stuff. A computer worth $2000, for example. Some high-end graphics cards, and other random stuff that everyone would like to have.




Man. Talk about awesome prizes.



By the way. Did you check out the Age of Conan community here on Xfire? If not, you should. It's awesome!





Dear diary:

I worked at another festival this weekend. It was nice, even though it was raining a lot. I had an interview with a pretty big Swedish artist called Plura which turned out nicely. I have two more weeks (including this one) before the current temp position I have ends, and if I don't find a job, I will have a lot of time to work with Xfire stuff! Perhaps it could be a good thing?

Hans

Hello, it's Joonas once again writing here. First my apologies to everyone who expected another workshop post with lots of helpful information this Friday too. I am not going to post one because I got something special this week.

OverClocked ReMix, unofficial game music arrangement community, has released their 14th album at July 18th 2009, over a year after making it was started in March 2008. The latest album is named Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption and contains 46 arrangements from 36 artists on three CD's to recreate the story of Square Enix's game Final Fantasy IV.



As with every project from OC ReMix, this album is also completely free. It is created entirely by fans of video games, for fans of video games. You can either download individual tracks directly, or get the full torrent with all of the content.

This is lots of good video game inspired music for free and completely legal. For one I really want to support all the great music artists who show their talents and spend their time to produce great quality music to bring back the good memories of legendary video games and give those songs out as free downloads for everyone. The best way to show your support for this kind of action is simply spreading the word, downloading the torrent and seeding it, and just enjoying the music!

If you have not heard of OverClocked ReMix before and became interested thanks to this album, you might want to check their main site where you can find all the 14 albums released so far plus almost 2000 individual video game music remixes, all free to download!

When we talk about games and weigh how good they are, the usual factors include graphics, gameplay and story. One thing is usually left away in the reviews, though, the thing that brings in the mood for the game, the one that unites the graphical storytelling with the actual story atmosphere and affects gameplay. It's the music in the game. Therefore, since Xfire is all about gaming, this kind of opportunity to get video...