More thoughts soon … if I can get it working.
Archive for the 'Tech' CategoryPage 4 of 17
Finally, the studio is asking that Epic be forced to surrender all profits garnered by Gears of War as a result of misconduct.
And the reason,
“That advantage was nowhere more evident than at E3 2006, where Gears of War was awarded ‘Best Game in Show’ and garnered nothing but laudatory press,” the suit reads. “By contrast, Silicon Knights–one of the only other developers to publicly display a playable demonstration of its game–saw Too Human roundly criticized in the videogame press for its technical problems and generally unpolished appearance. The damage to Silicon Knights caused by Epic’s misconduct was manifest, because E3 attendees were able to compare Too Human with another game running ostensibly the same game engine, Gears of War, with vastly superior results.”
So it all comes back to E3 2006 again. First they blamed the press now they blame the engine. I seem to remember another Unreal Engine 3 game called Rainbow Six: Vegas coming out in late 2006 and being very successful. Funny that.
This game has been in and out of development for 8 years. Something tells me they have bigger issues internally than they care to admit.
Yes it’s true Sony had a complete turn around from year and pulled out the best press conference of the big three at E3 this week. They provided fresh details on some of their well known titles (Killzone 2, GT5, MGS4) as well as making a few interesting new announcements that might shake things up a bit (UT3 and Haze timed exclusivity, Echochrome anyone?).
This left Microsoft a close second due to their focus solely on their 2007 line up. While they do have the best line up of games this year (Bioshock, Mass Effect, Halo 3, PGR4) the press event didn’t announce enough new stuff to get people genuinely excited about 2008. They do have Fable 2 and Too Human amongst other things waiting in the wings so it seemed strange to leave them out. The only thing that genuinely surprised me was the Resident Evil 5 trailer. Oh and that guy who came on to tell us about ScreenIt and Madden MUST GO NOW. He reminds me of a too slick used car salesman who has been on way too many marketing courses.
As for Nintendo. Well I hope all those ALPHA MOMS enjoy Wii Fit. I can see as each year goes by Nintendo moving further and further away from what their competitors are doing. Almost makes me wonder if they need to come to E3 any more.
Those of us who live across the pond kind of rely on the internet to watch UFC in it’s original unedited form. This leaves us using either the shady underground world of Bit Torrent or the legal UFC On Demand. UFC On Demand is usually a bad experience as it is but this weekend was a joke. By the time it got to the main event look at what kind of picture I was left with:
Fantastic quality UFC! This was not the only problem during the show. There was also an issue when they show the camera angles that are directed through the cage. Every time it happens the framerate drops through the floor and you can’t see punches, elbows or whatever connecting (a big problem in a Sean Sherk fight). Probably something to do with the encoding of the video and the super low bit rate they use.
Has anyone in Zuffa actually looked at this horrible service? My guess is they just outsourced it on the cheap and forgot about it (like their crappy DVDs). Up the bit rate, fix your lazy encoding issues, support Firefox and don’t trip over the cables in the video production van!
Online guides and reviews are now available to find out best pda . Also free of cost pda software and pda games download are available from internet. As computer industry is facing tough price competition; like other accessories computer printer also saw a gradual decline in their prices; even book printers are now available for small book publishers and self publishers with in their means. The computer projector is also getting common after this major turn in the computer market.
Awaiting the release of Forza 2 on Friday (stupid timing Microsoft) I got some time to play Tomb Raider Anniversary over the weekend and what a nice suprise that was. I’m only about half way through the PC version but already it’s clear this is the best Tomb Raider since the original. The focus on RAIDING TOMBS rather than SHOOTING GOONS makes this re-imaging feel closer to the original concept of the series than any other. The platforming elements are fluid and flexible making all the areas really fun to explore.
The one part it does fall down on is in combat which, as noted, is not what the series does well. You get to shoot your way through a plethora of endangered species such as Snow Leopards and Gorillas and it still feels as hokey as ever. While I applaud the lack of humans to kill and the severely reduced occurrences of combat I’d still like to see more done to get rid of it or change it completely. It’s only there to fill the gaps between the platforming sections with more action orientated play anyway.
Either way I believe this is well worth picking up especially with it coming out at a lower price. There are plenty of unlockables and extras to keep you coming back and the graphics look remarkably good for a PS2 game.
I have been spending some time recently working on a project that has been bouncing around my head now for a few years now. It’s a very focused application in terms of what it achieves with the main aim being usability. It’s written in .NET 3.0 making it my first foray into the world of C# and WPF. And the WPF is the key reason this project is even happening at all. It’s seriously giving me unmatched flexibility when it comes to UI design, allowing concepts that appear complex in other applications to become very clear if presented well.
No planned release date yet but I am writing this post because this time I’m confident of completion unlike previous attempts on the idea. If you’re interested in testing at the alpha stage please drop me an email or leave a comment. More details soon.
I have been using the new graphics card for a few days now so it’s as good a time as any to post a few thoughts up.
It’s a big bastard that’s for sure. It’s two PCI slots wide, hangs over my motherboard and is heavy as hell. If you have got room for it then it’s a nice snug fit but those with smaller cases might want to wait for the lower powered cards to come out. With that said it’s nowhere near as loud as I had been led to believe even with that large heat sink. In my case I barely notice the difference when idle to my old GeForce 7900 GT, it’s only in games when the fan kicks in but if you have the volume up your not going to notice. The fan/heat-pipe kicks a tremendous amount of heat out the back of the system and is probably the most effective I have owned.
Most importantly of all though are the drivers and their stability. Using the latest catalyst drivers for Vista 32-bit has been a dream compared to the Nvidia hell I have been in for the last few months. Stalker runs great, HL2 Lost Coast looks amazing (both maxed out) and Aero performance is smooth and glitch free.
The Lost Planet DX10 demo is out there somewhere so I need to give that a try and I am definitely looking forward to playing many of the PC games I have missed over the last couple of months. Crysis looks amazing and I really feel that will be the big test for this card.
This card can also pump out full 1080p HD over HDMI with audio. That is huge. The 2400 and 2600 cards due out next month are going to be perfect media center cards for this reason alone and with the drop in CPU prices I feel a dedicated TV box coming on.
So in short - it’s nice to have you back ATI, it was a long time coming but at least you can write and maintain decent drivers.
This message has been the bane of existance for many Windows Vista users who use the Nvidia GeForce 7900GT as their graphics card.
And usually before getting this message we are greeted to a nice screen of scrambled diagonal lines! Interestingly enough it seems to be only effecting those of who use AMD processors. There are a ton of threads all over the Nvidia forums and various other forums all discussing the exact same problem.
I’ve had enough of Nvidia. Which is why a brand spanking new ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT just arrived on my doorstep. I look forward to installing it tonight.
This one slipped under the radar. Recently the Amarok team had success at porting their awesome KDE based media player over to Windows. It’s far from stable yet but this is a very promising first step that will give many current iTunes users something to look forward to rather than sparsely released, poorly written updates.
Major Nelson just announced the downloadable tracks for Guitar Hero 2 on Xbox 360. Lets break down the cost.
500 points for 3 tracks. Thats £1.42 per song. They are re-releases of Guitar Hero 1 tracks which featured 47 playable songs. So they value the song library alone of the original Guitar Hero at £66.58!! I paid £50 for Guitar Hero on PS2 with a guitar and the rest of the game. Bullshit! No deal Activision.
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