DarkStar | Gaming & Ventrilo A hop, skip, and jump into the life of DarkStar gamers.

New Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D 2) Movies

Left 4 Dead 2 appears to be coming along well in it’s development cycle. IGN has posted another movie showing footage of the game.

DarkStar Ventrilo Forums Alive

We finally re-launched our forums at http://universe.darkstarllc.com/. More skinning is still on the way, but we would appreciate people heading over there, re-registering, and start chatting! More great things to come there, including information on our upcoming game nights! So chat away! Also be sure to follow us on twitter @ventrilo.

Sam Raimi Directs World of Warcraft Movie

Blizzard has confirmed that Sam Raimi will indeed direct the new Warcraft film. We were waiting until Blizzard confirmed this to post — but it does look like the news is official, and exciting at that! Sam Raimi directed movies such as the Evil Dead, Spider-Man, and Drag Me To Hell. Charles Roven who produced the Dark Knight and 12 Monkeys has also signed on board, along with Alex Gartner.

Very little has been said about the upcoming film, which was originally geared towards a 2009 release that obviously will not happen now. The movie takes place one year before WoW begins. Further details about the film have yet to be announced at this time.

Ventrilo Rocks Nascar at Gateway International

On Saturday night, Ventrilo rocked the Nascar showcase at Gateway International Raceway just outside of St. Louis, MO. After 200 laps and many cautions later The Ventrilo #15 car by Germain Racing placed 6th overall, driven by top-placing rookie Michael Arnette. Four of the DarkStar team members were at the race, and were able to snap some pictures. From trucks with jet engines on the back, to a modified KC-135 airplane that flew over before the race started, it was a heck of a night. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment. Bear in mind, most of these pictures were from when the race wasn’t happening — we took some pictures of the cars when they were driving, but the iPhone camera doesn’t handle motion too well.

The sponsorship of Nascar by Ventirlo should continue to further the exposure of the Ventrilo product and offer national name recognition to those who may have not heard of the product before. Brian at Ventrilo was the grand master of the race, announcing “Gentlemen start your engines!” to all of the racers.

Call of Duty WaW Patch 1.5 for PC

Patch 1.5 for Call of Duty: World at War was released today for PC. The patch includes various fixes, and four new multiplayer maps, one for zombie mode. An updated version of the mod tools was also released. One can see the full patch notes on Shacknews.

WoW Armory for the iPhone

Blizzard (http://www.blizzard.com) has released their iPhone application for the World of Warcraft Armory. Features include the ability to search and view any character, item, guild, or arena team in World of Warcraft, the ability to access your in-game calendar of events, view achievements, plan out talent trees for your characters, and more. For more information on this amazing iPhone application, please see the Blizzard World of Warcraft Armory iPhone page.

WoW iPhone Armory App

Ventrilo sponsors No. 15 Camry at Gateway

Mooresville, N.C. – July 15, 2009 – Ventrilo, a product of Flagship Industries and the premier group voice communications program used in internet-based tournaments and multiplayer games, announced last week that they will be the presenting sponsor for the Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 presented by Ventrilo at Gateway International Raceway on July 18, 2009.  To complement the presenting race sponsorship, Ventrilo is proud to announce the sponsorship of Germain Racing’s No. 15 Ventrilo Camry which will be driven by Michael Annett in Saturday night’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race. This will be the second time Ventrilo has been on board the No. 15 Ventrilo Camry this season; the first was at Daytona International Speedway (Daytona Beach, FL) on July 3, 2009.

“As a long time race fan, I’m excited to expand our continuing partnership with Germain Racing,” said Brian Knapp, president, Flagship Industries.  “This is the perfect avenue to expand awareness of the Ventrilo brand beyond the traditional user in the online computer gaming industry.”

This spring, Ventrilo embarked on a growing NASCAR sponsorship program. The St. Louis area-based company announced sponsorship of Germain Racing’s No. 30 Ventrilo Tundra driven by Todd Bodine for three NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races – Kansas Speedway (Kansas City, KS), Bristol Motor Speedway (Bristol, TN) and Gateway International Raceway. Since the announcement in April, Ventrilo has added sponsorship of the No. 30 Ventrilo Tundra at O’Reilly Raceway Park (Indianapolis , IN), the No. 15 Ventrilo Camry at Daytona and presenting sponsorship of the NASCAR Nationwide Series at Gateway to the company’s expanding sponsorship program.

“Watching Brian Knapp grow more and more excited about the branding opportunities available to Ventrilo with Germain Racing has been a great pleasure.  We kicked off our relationship with Ventrilo in the Truck Series at Kansas Speedway, and we enjoyed giving them a great race at Daytona with the No. 15 Ventrilo Camry.  Everyone at Germain Racing is looking forward to running the Ventrilo Camry at Gateway, a track where our team has a strong record of success,” said Mike Hillman Sr., general manager of Germain Racing and crew chief for Iowa-native Michael Annett and the No. 15 Ventrilo Camry.

Ventrilo Camry driver Michael Annett is in his rookie year driving in NASCAR’s second-highest division. Annett has earned wins in the ARCA RE/MAX Series and has enjoyed some very strong runs in the No. 15 Camry this season.

“It was a great opportunity to have Ventrilo as a sponsor on the hood of our No. 15 Toyota Camry at Daytona, and I’m looking forward to having their support this weekend at Gateway as well,” said Annett. “As a competitor in the Nationwide Series, it’s always exciting to have the involvement of a new sponsor in our division, both on our No. 15 Ventrilo Camry and as a presenting sponsor of the race. With the Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 presented by Ventrilo being a non-companion Nationwide Series event, this should really give Ventrilo and our No. 15 Germain Racing team a chance to shine.”

Look for the No. 15 Ventrilo Camry at Gateway International Raceway on Saturday night, July 18, 2009. Tune in to ESPN 2 at 9:30 PM Eastern to see the action.

Ventrilo will next be on track with Germain Racing’s No. 30 Ventrilo Tundra on Friday night, July 24^th at O’Reilly Raceway Park, followed by Bristol Motor Speedway on August 19th and Gateway International Raceway on September 12th.

About Germain Racing:

Germain Racing is located in Mooresville, N.C. The race team debuted in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in 2004 and has collected 18 wins, six pole awards and one championship in four full-time seasons of Camping World Truck Series competition, along with four consecutive top-five points finishes. In 2008, Germain Racing added a full-time NNS team to its ranks, earning an eighth-place points finish in the team’s first full-time season in NNS. To put your company’s marketing efforts into high-gear, visit www.germainracing.com to learn about becoming a Germain Racing sponsor.

About Flagship Industries:

Flagship Industries Inc, located in Maryville, Illinois, was founded in 2003 to pursue the development and marketing of the Ventrilo product line which was originally started in the spring of 1999. Due to its superior sound quality, reliability, scalability, user interface and ever evolving feature set, Ventrilo has become the preferred group communications tool. Ventrilo 3.0.0 is the next evolutionary step of Voice over IP (VoIP) group communications software. Ventrilo is also the industry standard by which all others measure themselves as they attempt to imitate its features. More information can be found at www.ventrilo.com.

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3D Rendering of the Ventrilo No.15 Camry by Germain Racing. Click the image for larger version.

3d Rendering of Ventrilo No. 15 Car

Tweet from WoW

For the sake of the twitter craze, and jumping on that bandwagon – - @rgabostyle has created TweetCraft, a twitter client  that’s built right into World of Warcraft through a game-addon. Features include the ability to tweet in-game, and auto-tweeting of achievements. Even allows uploading of screen shots. The add-on is certainly very useful for those WoW tweeters, and we recommend you check it out at http://tweetcraft.codeplex.com/.

Intro Video:

Blizzcon, Starcraft, and Ventrilo

Blizzcon is nearly a month away.

That time of year is almost upon all Blizzard fans once again — Blizzcon; the event of events, held in the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA, down the street from Disney Land. Blizzcon has grown by epic proportions since the first event was held in 2005, even requiring a new ticket system to be developed for 2009 to ensure that fans are able to purchase tickets at all (I’m sure everyone remembers the horrible process of attempting to get tickets the year before). Stretching through four full halls (increased from three in 2008), Blizzcon will surely succeed in continuing to spread excitement through Blizzard fans — but how will it do it this time around? Certainly a lot of speculation is up in the air at the moment given that no major World of Warcraft expansions are pending. The big focus last year was obviously Diablo III, but there was still a lot to be seen for the then-upcoming Lich King expansion. Will we see a major announcement of a new IP title? Time will tell I suppose — but if this year proves to be anything like the last few, waves will be made.

Starcraft II @ Blizzcon

Starcraft II was playable (in limited form, for limited time) at last year’s Blizzcon. With an additional ~10 months of development time, we should see a more playable form of the game for Blizzcon attendees. The one thing I’m interested to see is if Ventrilo will get more use in Starcraft 2 multiplayer than the first title. The addition of the observer spots on top of the eight player limit also brings in added functionality that makes using Ventrilo more practical for announcing play-by-play to a group of listeners.

Ventrilo Servers and Starcraft II

Ventrilo servers were not a big part of the original Starcraft, perhaps because it didn’t really exist in a very useful, functional form until after most players had been playing for quite a while.  But with it’s popularity in the competitive E-Sports market, I do think it will carry over to Starcraft II now that most gamers are very familiar with the application. Perhaps a Ventrilo server will become a necessary (or frequent) addition to the 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 team player’s tool box on Battle.Net. This was useful in Warcraft 3 games when players were grouped already — it is common to see the more active groups having their own Ventrilo Server to ensure communication is top-notch in-game.  Given the fact that Starcraft II will be successful (admit it — anything Blizzard touches turns to gold) — it should drive additional demand for these types of services.

Goody bag

The details of the goody bag are generally kept secret until the day of the event. It has been announced though that the in-game pet given to all Blizzcon attendees (as well as Pay-Per-View viewers) will be “Grunty the Murloc Marine (See picture).” If it is anything like last year, the goody bag will be worth the price of admission by itself. Last year’s included everything from a giant Frostmourne blow-up sword, beach balls, comic books, to QQ NOOB tissues. Last year’s attendees also received a Polar Bear World of Warcraft Mount, and a free invitation to the upcoming Starcraft 2 beta.

Connecting to more than one Ventrilo server

To connect to two servers at the same time, just type -m at the end of the Ventrilo shortcut. To do this, right click on the Ventrilo shortcut, select properties, and at the end of the ‘Target’ box, add -m.

The text should look something like this:

"C:Program FilesVentriloVentrilo.exe" -m

This will let you open up more than one copy of the program. You’ll probably want to set up two Ventrilo profiles so you can use different Push-To-Talk hotkeys.