While not exactly about playing games (this is more for the making of games) the launch of Unity 3, the third iteration of the free-to-use game engine, has me excited. Of all the game-making tools out there, Unity is the one I’ve spent the most time with, and it was actually responsible for the RPS game, RockPaperShotgunity, which we cobbled together last year. Also, I totally made some big spheres move about making booming noises. I am The Creator. People who know stuff are more excited about the unified editor, the post-processing and shader improvements, the occlusion culling, deferred rendering, and other tech stuff. Full What’s New list here, although some of that is for the paid-for Pro version, which I think is limited to a month demo, something like that.

Never made a game before? Spong In A Posty! Although that’s probably a bit out of date for Unity 3. Maybe it’s time to do another one.

When Minecraft Players Are Also Trekkies, Insanity Goes To Warp Speed

A Minecraft player with great ambition and loads of spare time is building a 1:1 replica model of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s massive flagship vessel, the Enterprise D—and he needs some help getting it done.

Patient Minecraft fan “halnicholas” has finished preliminary work on the Enterprise’s frame. It’s lacking in warp nacelles, deck details, paneling, sonic showers, cups of Earl Gray… well, lots. But the grunt work has been done to get this “fucking enormous” Minecraft creation ready for space dock. Its creator has put the word out for volunteers, saying he “needs help building out the decks.”

If you know your Minecraft material crafting and your Enterprise D blueprints, please, help this brave man seek out new life and new civilizations on his PC. Boldly go where no Minecraft player has gone before!

*cue Jerry Goldsmith music*

Building Megaobjects in Minecraft [YouTube via Reddit]

As part of the QuakeCon festivities, id’s John Carmack revealed something that should excite the modding community: source code. Authors can now access source code for both Splash Damage’s multiplayer-focused Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and 2001′s series reboot, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, through id’s FTP, which we’ve linked below.

Both games’ sources are made available through the GNU General Public License agreement, which states that the code is available for both free and commercial use, so long as the individual using the code credits id Software and doesn’t try to claim it as their own. If you want to tinker with either game, check out the convenient Big Download link below. Happy modding!

In an announcement perhaps meant to obliterate the definition of “Valve Time,” the publisher announced that Alien Swarm has been rebuilt in Source Engine and will be released — for free, no less — tomorrow, Monday, July 19. The team that originally built the mod for UT2004 has since been hired on by Valve for work on the Left 4 Dead series and Portal 2, but luckily found enough time to move their game over to Valve’s game engine between bouts of working on those other two games.

If you’re so inclined, you can pre-load Alien Swarm starting right now before it goes live tomorrow. Oh! And when it does go live, Valve will also release the full SDK for the game, allowing users to get a more thorough look at what makes the game tick. Us? We’re just excited to blast swarms of aliens with the totally insane looking flamethrower seen above. Hit the break for a trailer of the game in action.

[Thanks, Morey]

Google has “secretly” invested an undisclosed amount of money (estimated to be between $100 million and $200 million) in virtual Ville creator Zynga Games, TechCrunch claims. Why would one highly profitable company dump such a large amount of duckets into another successful company’s coffers? TechCrunch believes that it’s part of a strategy to partner with Zynga Games in the forthcoming launch of something called “Google Games.”

The service is said to use Google logins and will presumably run the Zynga titles popularized by Facebook, albeit with a different payment system (allegedly Google Checkout rather than PayPal). Though these claims are still unsubstantiated — neither Google nor Zynga have officially confirmed the report — a recent Google job listing for a “Project Management Leader, games” seems to lend the idea some credence.

The fund, “established as a serious alternative to the traditional publisher funding model,” invests in games by small teams, in order to allow those teams to remain independent of publishers. “World of Goo cost $120K to develop,” the application page notes. “Braid cost $180K. That’s about the right size project for Indie Fund right now, and it necessitates doing things on the cheap.” So, if your game concept is a realistic first-person shooter with MMO elements, get right out of there.

We’re hard-pressed to call a book full of concept art for Alien Breed: Impact created by clearly talented artists “kinda nasty,” but, well, part of it features images of gross bugs and stuff. More to the point: gross alien bug things.

If you’re into this kinda thing, we’ve dropped the whole set of images into the gallery below.

Portal 2 is coming to the PS3! That big bombshell was announced during Sony’s press conference today and along with that announcement came this new teaser above. That mean robot bitch is still alive and she wants to play again, in the name of science of course.

Portal 2 will be out in 2011 for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC and Mac.

Let’s not spoil anything. Instead, let’s just say that Square Enix’s CGI work for Deus Ex: Human Revolution is really paying off. You should watch the trailer above right now. And then watch it again.

Now that you’ve done that, we’ve got some actual news: It looks like Deus Ex: Human Revolution has been confirmed for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The game will be released in 2011, and is now available for pre-order from the usual suspects.

To celebrate Steam’s arrival on Mac, Valve went ahead and did what Valve does best: create a sweet promotion that will raise awareness of its games and client, earning them big bucks in the long run. They have all sorts of fancy charts and graphs to prove this works, I’m sure.

Starting now and lasting until May 24, Portal is free on Steam. That goes for Windows and Mac, so there’s no reason not to queue up the download right this second. Since I already own this phenomenal game, I can’t say whether or not massive demand has the servers struggling to keep up. Let’s hope not!

[Update: If you're unable to play Portal on Mac Steam, close it and run this in Safari: steam://run/52003 . This will open Steam bypassing the beta check.]

[Thanks, sicPOS, @Jcapote]