After an exciting Open Bar-event and a top Giro 'd Italia-stage to Zoncolan, relax by reading this week's Weekly News.

More covers revealed
The German and Scandinavian editions of the PCM 07/8 cover have been revealed. The German one looks quite a lot like the French one (which I find a little sad), but it does have the German language ;) The Scandinavian is very different and focuses on the CSC-rider, Carlos Sastre, during a mountan stage. Oh, and notice Floyd Landis in the background -- is it good to have a doped rider on the front cover of a cycling game? :P

Click the screenshots to view them in full size.



Create the icon for PCM 2007
The betas still use the old PCM 2006 logo, and now you have the opportunity to create an icon which will represent the 2007 game - both the demo and the final version. The original forum thread about this "contest" is in French, so I don't know the exact details. But you can read all about it here: http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=52148 .
You can also view the icons which have been made until now.

Good luck!

Beta testing continues
With under a month to the release, the 6th and 7th beta was released during this week. And a few days ago the Alpha version was released. Weird thing is that a beta is supposed to be released _after_ an Alpha version, but oh well - doesn't matter much. Fact is that this Alpha version really proves that Cyanide has focused a lot on stabilizating the game and adding the last few things which missed - it now seems quite close to the gold version.

All the translation have also been handed in, and the available languages of the game will be: English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian ... and even Japanese. I haven't tested if those languages are actually available, but you can choose them ;)

New 3D-objects for PCM 2006
Actually, this is pretty old news, but I simply hadn't noticed it before now. Miya, a Japanese member of the Cyanide forum, has worked on changing some of the 3D-models of the game. This has resulted in a director car being changed into a helicopter which follows the peloton, the helmet being changed into a cap (perfekt for historic databases), and more.

To see the helicopter in action, you can download this video: http://rapidshare.com/files/33520314/heli_testS.rar.html

I've also decided to upload the coloured edition of the helicopter. Download it here: http://www.pcmdaily.com/downloads.php?cat_id=8&download_id=155
And place it in CM_Meshes/Cars/Director.

We will follow his work closely.

More PSP-screenshots
InsideGamer, a Dutch website, has released some more screenshots of the PSP-version at their website. For those who are not used to PSP-graphics, the screenshots might not look too good, but personally, I think they are acceptable for a PSP-game.

You can see the new screenshots in our PSP Screenshot Section: http://www.pcmdaily.com/photogallery.php?album_id=7

PPDB delayed?
In the special edition of the Mid-Week News, I said that the PPDB was supposed to be released on that particular day or the following day. That hasn't happened, though, and no new date has been given. Some of the problems PPDB has run into is that they don't have any 2007-editions of the Grand Tours, f.e. the Giro, Tour de France, etc..

Open Bar ended with a scandale
After having answered questions for about an hour, the entire Open Bar section was suddenly deleted by a not yet known guy. Some of the answers had been saved by Aroda, but the - until then - succesful event edged out after "the attack".

We at PCM.daily are currently considering organizing a similar event.

Banner implented
As I "warned you" last week I would implent a advertisement banner at the top. I also mentioned that it could cause some problems while the "surgery" progressed - and it did. For several minutes, you couldn't even access the site - and for even more minutes, the top bar was pretty messed up. The "surgery" was completed without further complications, though ;)

Now, I just hope you will click the banner once a day. If you do that we will eventually reach our goal - to be able to buy fast, reliable web-space. I have also decided to let you guys know what our goal is - and what we have reached so far. Tihis "feature" have been implented in the Donation-panel below the "Users Online"-panel.