We know how much you all love the extra little treats we give you during the month and this month is no exception!

I was going to make you wait till the end of the post but I’m not that mean.

The Killzone 3 Public Beta has been running for some time and has seen some great feedback from those Plus members lucky enough to have been sent a voucher code. A big thank you to everyone who has taken part so far!

If you are not yet on the Killzone 3 Beta – I would like to bring you some good news!

For a limited amount of time, you will be able to download the Beta straight from the PlayStation Plus section of the PS Store. We will not be sending emails or voucher codes for this; it will simply be available for you to download straight to your console.

Please note that to take part you will need to have an active PlayStation Plus subscription and will need to be a resident in a country in which we operate an EU PlayStation Store – See http://eu.playstation.com for full details.

And here are a few other little treats to keep you going till December.

Today you will be receiving an exclusive 20% day one discount on the awesome Red Faction: Guerrilla. This title is new to the Store today but you guys are the only ones that get this discount and the ability to try the full game for 1 hour before you buy it, so make the most of it.

Speaking of discounts there are two more in this mid month publish that you may enjoy. Get your hands on Crazy Taxi at a Plus exclusive 20% off and you also get buy one get one free on the minis titles ‘Monsters (probably) Stole My Princess‘ and ‘Who’s That Flying?!’

If you’re a fan of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II then you’re in luck as we have managed to get you a dynamic theme based on the title and totally exclusive to you guys.

Last but not least, if you own PlayTV then there is an upgrade launching today called ‘Live Chat Upgrade’. This will be available to buy on the Store from today and Plus members get another day one discount with an exclusive 25% off. This upgrade gives you some really cool social networking features including: Chat TV, Recommend TV, Community Favourites and a Premium Programme Guide with great search features. Check out all the new features here: eu.playstation.com/playtv.

If you liked these treats then just wait and see what festive treats we will have ready for you next month!

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It’s that time of the week again… how time flies. Yes, another Store ‘Heads-Up’date (™ pending) is here and I am here along with it to let you know what we have for you.

There’s a good selection of new games for both platforms this week, as well as a wealth of DLC for various titles (not least the PS3 Exclusive Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Copernicus missions).

I don’t have much to talk about this week – there have been a couple more PSone submissions that I’m sure you’ll all be very pleased with once they’re ready to go (don’t ask me which, you know I can’t tell you!)

I’ll be around for comments of course as usual, so enjoy your content and talk to you soon!
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Hello everyone,

Episode 33 of FirstPlay goes live on the PlayStation Network this Wednesday, and we’ve got plenty of gaming goodness to brighten up your dreary November days, including another chance for you to grab the exclusive Premiere Manager demo, and get your hands on our Blacklight: Tango Down theme. We’ve also got an electrifying preview of mega-sequel Infamous 2, as well as reviews of Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, Shaun White’s Skateboarding, The Sims 3, and The X-Factor, (that’s the game, rather than a detailed analysis of Katie’s questionable talents) along with our verdict on The Losers on Blu-ray.

Over in the Network Highlights section, we’re serving up another helping of our Castlevania boss-guide, checking out the bestest hand-stitched LittleBigPlanet levels, chatting to industry legend Atsushi Inaba about the making of Vanquish, and reviewing the exploits of our favourite bonfire-dodger, with Sonic The Hedgehog: Episode 1.

We’re also going super-hero crazy with new screenshots from Batman: Arkham City, DC Universe Online, Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Fate Of Two Worlds, and we’re uploading ourselves to the internets (no, not in that way) with Tron: Evolution.

You can download episode 33 of FirstPlay for 99p, or better still go for a 90-day subscription for £8.99.

If you have any feedback for us, or want to make any suggestions, then please get in touch! You can find us on Facebook, on Twitter @firstplay_uk, on email FirstPlay@futurenet.com, or the interweb official EU forums.

See the Future of PS3. First.

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Hello again readers! This is Ana (the producer) from FluffyLogic. We’re the developer of Eat Them!. We’re here every couple of weeks to chat about the development of the game in our developer diary. If you missed the first part of the diary then click here for part one.

So where are we? Well we have obviously done a fair amount of the game, since we demoed it at E3. Prior to this point we had spent a lot of time getting the basic structures of the game in place. We use Sony’s 3D engine PhyreEngine as the basis – it’s a great engine and it gives us the important nuts and bolts of a game system, which frees us up to focus on making special graphical effects and gameplay. One of these is the cartoon -shader effect which we have spent a fair amount of time developing and refining. We are using it to create the game’s distinctive visual style. This was a time consuming process that involved our main graphics programmer and a couple of artists working together, trying to get the art tools into the PlayStation 3 and looking good. The basic system takes the 3D models of the landscape and the monsters and draws a black line around them, as if they are flat on the page like a comic drawing. What makes it a complex process is that it’s not a flat drawing, it’s a 3D world that moves constantly, so our graphics tools have to draw this look on the fly.

Thankfully, we’ve managed to get this just as we wanted it – it’s got a great comic style, but still keeps a sense of 3D movement, it’s fun looking, but still powerful enough to render out the action we want to happen. We’ve also been busy building editors that allow designers to add and tweak things like monster body-parts and missions. In Eat Them! the player can build their own monster, so each pair of legs, the torso, head, backpack, left arm and right arm are created as separate objects, each with their own stats, graphics and sound effects (if needed). It’s much better from a development point of view if the designers can add and edit this sort of information without needing to get a programmer involved each time. We don’t like to let them out of their cages too much as it’s hard work getting them back in by nightfall.

That, and it also frees up their time to work on other stuff. Here’s what that looks like:

Eat Them! Level Editor

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Hey all! My name is Stewart ‘Stu’ Jones and I’m the CG Supervisor here at Relentless Software down here in sunny Brighton, UK… Well, I say ‘sunny’, but right now it’s grey and rainy outside. Boo!

Anyway, with the festive season and Blue Toad Murder Files first birthday approaching we wanted to have an extra ‘Christmas Present’ in the shape of a theme to hand out with our game. Please have a read to hear what we’ve done!

The idea of a Blue Toad Christmas Theme was discussed; we’re all big fans of Christmas! As a result a brief was created in which we needed to take the village of Little Riddle and add some festive spirit to the design… Oh, and any reference to an advent calendar would be appreciated too!

We decided that the background should stay the same throughout; however, we wanted to use the iconic detective’s magnifying glass to show a different image each day during December leading up to Christmas Eve. Having the number of images in the theme limited to 24 which spookily coincides with the number of windows in a traditional advent calendar seemed like a good omen!

At first we had an actual advent calendar displayed over the whole screen, but in practice this obscured the XMB and no one could easily navigate the options… Fail! In the end we decided to keep the magnifying glass and the images in one location, and simply have the opening doors of the advent calendar appear at the side. In turn this cleaned up the theme, and kept the XMB options readable and usable.

With everything in place we had to make the theme more festive. Dom Clubb, one of our Lead Artists, came on board to help me out by painting the background image with a covering of snow. He also added holly to the magnifying glass and generally made everything look pretty!

From there we styled the icons to match the theme, deliberately not changing them to avoid any confusion to the player.

With the theme almost complete, I felt that I wanted to add an extra ‘something’ each day. I’m not going to spoil the surprise today though, you’ll have to wait and see the theme in action! After that the art was complete, and all that was left to do was get our images to change out during the days of December. Luckily, this only required some editing to some scripts. From there we did some testing, created some store icons and packaged it up ready for release.

That’s it! All ready for Santa to make it a Little Riddle Christmas for families all over the globe! The theme is released on November 24, so be sure to grab it before December and you can watch the changes all the way until Christmas Eve! The theme comes free with Episodes 1-6 of Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle or it can be purchased individually for £1.19 or €1.49.

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