Natalled

Earlier this year both Microsoft and Sony presented what they called the “Future of gaming” class of controllers, but whats really going on here.
To answer that we have to look at their technologies and then derive intent from that.
It’s two seemingly very different control schemes, but are they, one uses a time-of-flight (TOF) camera to sense it’s surroundings and most notably the depth of it, the other one uses a high res camera to sense it’s surroundings that while it can’t measure depth it can track certain objects on the z axis reasonably well, however it is augmented by a glowing ping pong ball on a stick for “sub pixel 3d tracking”, it also has buttons which are useful at times.
Both systems also have an array of microphones which makes it easier to track and filter out voices. Read more »

Sony E3 Keynote 09

Jack Tretton claims that over 364 new games will be released this year on the various playstation platforms, over 100 of them are PS2 titles

“uncharted 2: among thieves” was demoed, looks good with lots of stuff breaking and lots of dynamic environments, it will definitely be fun to play.

MAG, impressive demo where they showed a 256 player battle in realtime.

Next Kaz Hirai introduced the PSP GO, or “the worst kept secret at this e3″ as he himself called it, it will have 16gb of internal memory plus expandability, it’s 40% lighter a feat possible trough the fact that it lacks a UMD drive and will cost $250 or €250 (with added euroscrew).
Comes October 1 in america.
And because of this all new released are no also digitally available Read more »

Nintendo E3 keynote 09

A new super mario bros is coming this holiday, no not the 3d crap Nintendo has been producing but rather something that looks a bit like the original super mario bros, but infinitely better graphics and 4 player co-op, looks pretty sweet.

Wii fit plus, is basically just some new software for wii fit, new exercises and games, you can now also choose to focus on a specific area of your body, great but does all of the above count as a specific area, and it’s still pretty flimsy, especially seeing as one of the mini games lets you play something that looks a lot like what mario does, which includes jumping.
Wii Motion plus was also shown but it’s basically the same as last year though it does seem like fun.
Redsteel2 was announced that it will require Wii motion plus. Read more »

Microsoft E3 keynote 09

It starts with a musical act care of Beatles rockband, looks like the characters have been avatarized a bit compared to previous installments and given that it was a full 20 minutes for this game I’m thinking it’s a clear drive towards the older generation like my parents.

The new previously revealed skateboard controller, looks ok, but I doubt it will be that revolutionary, especially compared to the other “controller” they revealed.

They showed a part of Modern warfare2, nice as always, but now it comes with epic ice climbing and snowmobile action + you get a nifty little motion sensor to attach on your gun.
Microsoft got some exclusive dlc maps for it too, timed exclusives that is, they probably paid a lot for them too.

FFXIII demo, looks totally ok, like any other FF, it’s coming spring 2010. Read more »

E3 2009 preshow predictions

You know I was hoping I would have this ready for e3 on my new site thegeekstate.com but sadly it’s not done yet, the ideas I have for it is pretty great, but the underlying code is not even mature enough to display even a simple article let alone edit it. So I have to do it here, but don’t worry it will probably all be transferred there once it’s done and there will be articles on pretty much every (read: important) game and gadget coming out of it once it starts coming on line, so without further delays here are some my predictions and opinions on the e3 press conferences in chronological order.

Microsoft Monday, 10:30am PDT
Halo 3: ODST will be a big thing this year, and I suspect they will also display some other expected titles like Alan wake and splinter cell.
Avatars are gonna big the cool new thing (though they have been out for a year), but they are gonna make a play for the casual market, they will ultimately fail at it, but they will try.
Gears of War 3: will be teased, seriously did you ever doubt it would be, it’s their second strongest ip after halo, sure they are gonna milk that cow.
A lot of generic games, a lot of them multi platform, but they are gonna claim a few timed exclusives and DLC, not that DLC ever matters, it didn’t for GTA4 since most people including me didn’t finish it. Read more »

E3 08

It’s time for E3 in just a few short days, so let’s speculate on a few things that’s been rumored.

Sony (PS3, PSP)
Fisrt the SKUs, in order to break even or actually make money they have to change SKUs, there are two currently, the 40GB and the 80GB versions, booth of these will be replaced by the holiday season, the first one, the one to be announced at E3 will be a replacement for the cheaper 40GB variant, it will have an upgraded HDD, perhaps even more than 80GB, also it will be bundled with the DS3.

The 80GB one will come in October with a huge HDD and other stuff, seriously, they will need to add something else to the console for the higher cost to be worth it as this one will loose the PS2 BC chips (Seriously they are expensive to make), I am thinking integrated PlayTV and stuff like that, either way until that one comes

But until that one comes the ps3 will stay at the current price level, so they are not lying when they say that their not planning a price drop, we actually they are, they have price drops planned for the next few years planned, but certain insider trading rules say that they have to lie and deny until they do it, so I’m not surprised. Read more »

Diablo time

Another day another blizzard teaser update.
This is the third day of the teasers and yet another new rune has appeared on that ice field image.
Now I would have written this like on Monday when I first was sure about what would happen, but I wanted to be extra double sure by having at least one or two predicted data points, and that came today.

The reveal this weekend is going to be Diablo3, and here is why.
1. we have 5-6 days to the reveal this weekend, but only 5 days of possible runes (Monday-Friday).
2. these five runes form a pentagram, they could also form a circle but now that the third rune appeared in the predicted place I am pretty sure it’s a pentagram, and for the record the next rune will be at the to and the fifth at the bottom right.
3. there is no other ip they could release right about now, that and Diablo3 is long overdue. Read more »

Mythbusting the PS3

Today a want to rant a little(a lot) about the next gen(or should they now be called the current gen) console war and the whopping piles of stinking turds of bullshit surrounding them.
IT all started about 2 years ago at E3 where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo revealed their next gen consoles, and ever since that day where my whole class of game developers just stood there drooling i have kept a close eye on these systems, i have analyzed almost every aspect and a few that actually doesn’t exist yet.

So here is what i found out

Xbox 360
In terms of power and graphics capabilities the 360 is pretty decent i guess, but the rest of the base console is a bit underpowered and you need a bunch of add ons to get a reasonable level of functionality out of it.
Well one to each own, if you don’t need all that stuff then you don’t need to get it, which makes this console average in price,but i claim that you do and that makes it the most expensive one, the monthly subscription is probably the worst of all of this.
Well i guess i can’t really expect anything less from Microsoft.

Wii
I have to admit that it is a bit fun and i do admire what they where able to do with so little.
I actually played one just yesterday and it’s a neat little fun toy, but that’s about it, it is little more than a glorified high tech toy.
At least the other ones have other real uses like a media player or, well, stuff.
The thing is while the others have large untapped usages to be revealed in the future, the Wii is pretty much done and that is truly sad, cause it was fun while it lasted.

Play Station 3
It wouldn’t be a stretch to see why i chose this to be my next console, It’s not really because it’s powerful, because it is, it really does have a vast untapped resource developers are just now starting to get a grip on.
No it’s everything, it’s the cell, the blue ray drive, the wifi, the HDD, the (free) on line services, the link to the PSP, the backwards compatibility to the ps1 and 2, the sixaxis controller, the future proofing and the way Sony thinks.

Now what do i hear about the PS3, nothing but constant complaining about the mistakes Sony make with it, so let’s do some debunking.

Myth #1 :Lack of force feedback (vibration) in the controller makes it suck
Now if you call that force feedback then you need to get back on your medication, yes it’s nice to get a haptic clue about what is happening, but the vibration in the dualshock2 controller is way to crude to be of any real use.
With that said, i hope they do get some good force feedback in the PS4 controller and not just vibration.

Myth #2 :Lack of HD cables sucks too
This one is simple, HD cables are standard equipment you can get everywhere and not everybody have hdmi capable tv sets.
So why make it more expensive then it need to be, just get one if you need it when you buy the ps3 and your done.

Myth #3 :Sony underestimated the Wii
No i don’t think so, the Wii and the PS3 really don’t overlap significantly in any target group, they are two different machines produced by two different companies using two completely different philosophies.
They didn’t underestimate the Wii, they underestimated the publics overestimation of the Wii.
But most importantly they don’t care, and they know exactly why they don’t have to.

Myth #4 :No “must have” games at launch
Well sort of true, but then again did you all forget the xbox 360 launch, the only good game there was Project Gotham racing 3 and it was a bit average.
The truth is that no console gets any really good game at launch, no they don’t start appearing until about a year after the launch.
This is simply a direct function of time, not the platform or corporate structure, only time, so just wait till next Christmas and we will see who’s laughing now.
Now he PS3 actually had a pretty decent set of launch titles, mostly because of the delays, but that’s a different story.

Myth #5 :Blue-Ray
This complaint actually boggles my mind, i heard some people claim that only a handful of videophile elites actually needs Blue-ray and that the PS3 would be better without it.
Now this is wrong in so many ways, just ask the guys who made phantasmagoria or the early games that where made for the cd-rom format, they would tell you this, “if there is space, we can and must fill it”.
Already today some PS2 game use 2 or more DVD discs, it’s mostly video but let’s just presume they want to increase the quality of the video to maybe just 720P, now that would take a whole lot of space and pretty soon we are looking at multiple blue-ray discs.
Another thing the PS3 excel at that takes up lot’s of space is mega texturing, where single texture maps can take as much as 1GB or more for each level.
So you see there is lot’s of usage for it, but not perhaps right today, unless your a videophile that is.

Myth #6 :The 360 is more powerful than the PS3
Now this is like comparing apples with grapes, the PS3 is a radically different system than the 3 core PPC that lies within the 360, it uses 7 SPUs that while they don’t do some stuff as fast as one 360 ppc with normal software, two of them will outperform a 360 core hands down with pure fp-math, and to boot there are 7 of them + the main PPC core.
There are also some other differences, for one at 25Gb/s the memory bandwidth is more than the double to the cell than to the 360 cores, and where normal multi core processors have to share that bandwidth, the cell does not have to share, it can just pass around the data internally at 300Gb/s.
But when we are speaking about raw power it’s like this, the PS3 has about 2Tflop of processing power and the 360 about half of that.
What about the memory then, the 360 has access to more memory, well this is true and not true at the same time, both systems has the same amount of memory, but the PS3 has 256MB for the cpu and the same amount for the GPU, however when you look at it, the gpu and the cpus in the 360 has to share a band with of 22Gb/s while the ps3 has 20Gb/s for the gpu and 25Gb/s for the cpu.

Interesting numbers indeed and it’s all in how you use it, but it’s clear that the PS3 is more powerful, just wait for a well optimized version of the same game comes out on both platforms, like Oblivion, but better.

Myth #7 :The PS3 is the most expensive console
yes it’s expensive, up to $900 in Europe, but it’s not the most expensive one if you count all the stuff you actually need to get.
Now is it worth it, yes it is, it’s actually cheap considering what you get, now if they only sold a kit to convert it into a desktop and they would rule the world, o, wait, that’s right, it’s free for download.

Myth #8 :The European PS3 can’t play PS2 games
This used to be true since it does not have a PS2 chip in it, but ever since firmware 1.60 they have included an software emulator for the PS2 and judging from the advancements in firmware 1.70 they are pretty soon able to be equal if not better then a real PS2.
Well it would be nice to have forced hardware antialiasing at 1080p in GT4.

Well that’s all for now, now all i have to do is to go out there and get one, i will of cause take pictures of the ceremonial unpacking of this expensive (but l33t) tech product.

68..69… and 70

Yea that’s right it took me 3 weeks to make my little firebug a mighty lvl 70.
But that’s not really what i what to rant about, you see i have a little secret, i use windows, and like it, and it’s not because i think it’s the best one, no far from it, windows sucks and the other ones are better.

But here is the catch, they suck even more, even if they are better in some areas.
Linux for instance, great kernel, but it’s designed by geeks for geeks and that makes it slightly complicated to operate, not to mention the lack of unity throughout the system.
Now the mac on the other hand is designed by apple zombies for morons, it has a ui designed for looks rather than sanity, a security policy that is based on the fact they only have like 1% of all systems, and yea, their followers are nuts.

Now don’t get me wrong but, the whole issue about Microsoft stealing ideas from mac os is just wrong, take the whole gadget/widget debacle, wasn’t it apple that stole those from Microsoft, i can distinctly remember those tiny win 3.11 apps you got from computer magazines, and although it wasn’t as integrated as the widgets, they did about the same things, this just proves two things i have been saying all along, 1. creativity is all about knowing what to steal and combine 2. computer software is all about evolution, revolution is no more, that is why it was renamed to something i do in the morning.
I am pretty sure Apple will steal stuff from Vista in Mac OS 11, that fancy 3d version of alt+tab is in jeopardy, so is the Aeroglass theme in some respects.

Now about vista, i wouldn’t recommend it, but i will probably get it for myself (legally even) when i upgrade my computron, The ui looks nice not at all that GGCC (Garish Gloss Coated Crap) stuff apple drops from time to time, it has few of those “lifestyle” applications, just moviemaker, i know it’s cheesy but surprisingly even i can find a use for it.
And even though it’s far from perfect (i am still waiting for IE8 and see if it is any good as IE7 was a bust) i would consider upgrading, but not until just after the first large “whooopsie” upgrade.

Ok, on to other issues, i am finally getting ready to add another OpenGL tutorial, it will be about shadow depth maps, it will be sweet, i am also working on a new game with a “unique” style, if it works out i might pitch it to Sony.

Feel da burn

A crusade you say, it’s on fire you say, might it be The Burning Crusade perhaps.
It sure is, that’s right, a few weeks ago i got my brand spankingly new beta key from Blizzard themselves – and no, it’s not a coincidence, there is a reason for it that i can’t say just right now.
So now that only 2 months remain until the release i figure it’s about time to do some kind of review like thingy, or an analysis of sorts if you may.

Graphics
WoW has always had low end graphics, in fact since WC3 all blizzard games had this and i understand their reasons, BC is no exception, but there are a few differences compared to WoW.
1. the artists have learned how to work within the limit’s of the engine, as such the ugliest areas are better than the best looking in WoW, and thats without sacrificing performance.
2. The sky in outland is now not just not a blurry collection of colors, it looks even better than most games, and i sure hope that they will adapt the skies in azeroth to this level of quality.
3. trees look better, earlier most trees are sort of a hexagonal shapes with fins (it’s a graphical term, look it up), but they have leaned that this is not that good looking, so more and more trees have a more adapted look that fit’s the technology they use.
4. the terrain, now it still has the same drawbacks, but they have learned to use it now, some areas in hellfire peninsula actually looks like it has sort of semi collapsed, just take a look at some screenes.

More screenies at the end
now i haven’t seen it all just yet, cause blizzard has blocked it off, but it is looking promising.

Quests
New for BC is that you can and should quest all the way up to 70, blizzard has said now for a while on the beta forums is that if you should never need to grind monsters just to unlock more quests, there are plenty of them at 3 or more quest hubs for every area, there are a lot of them out there, massive amounts really, and some are even fun too.
There is a horde quest (i am guessing that the alliance has a similar one) where you get to go on a bombing run with no risk to yourself and take out a few guns and mobs by throwing bombs at them from a windrider, fun indeed, so fun that they made it repeatable.

Each quest now has 20% more story and atmosphere in them (not like the dry lvl60 quests at LHC), blizzard really made an effort to make it fun.

New races
Now i like the new races, they both have more then 64% more personality than any other.
The dranei start area quests fit’s right in with the story, i didn’t even realize that i was doing specific quests, i just went there as if i was a dranei shaman who just crashed in a part of the tempest keep doing whatever one does then, it was just sweet.
Now the dranei city Exodar is a wonderous place, it just looks stunning, if this is how a part of tempest keep looks, i just wonder how tempest keep would look.

Blood elves on the other hand are much more interesting, blizzard has really gotten the right feel for them, they are arrogant, thirsty for magic (they use it for everything, even cleaning and storing books) and somewhat proud of themselves, they really fit in with the horde.

Leveling and items
Now 600.000 exp may seem like a lot, it’s like going from lvl57 to lvl60, in BC that is what you have to gather to go from 60 to 61, but it will take you less time than that since each quest(in the beginning of outland) gives anywhere between 7k-10k of exp, and every monster gives over 1000 exp(with rested) each, it’s not really anything to worry about, you won’t even really notice it’s over 3 times the normal leveling requirement.
Items are pretty good to, my warriors main hand is now a dagger i got for doing a small little quest it has like 48 dps and lot’s(over 20) of stamina and strength on it (i have even gotten a 3,5k execute crit with it once), i have a beginner shield that it way better than my previous epic shield and i sold my blue AV reward polearm since i got a 63 dps 2H sword with like 33 strength and 22 stamina, for killing a few boars (ok hulking hell boars).

Now every new outland item is a lot better than before, some may will not like it since they will soon get greens that is way better than their epics, but i think it’s good, it sort of levels the playing field a little, it’s not fair if people that has a full epic set can run trough it without opposition – especially when each area has pvp objectives – while us regular players have a hard time even killing the most low level mobs in the game(that gives exp).

the rest
I have to say one thing about the music, it’s friggin great, it’s so good that i am even considering getting the collectors edition just for the music, it’s new, it’s fresh with a slight diablo taste (which is not out of line since a lot of WoW is actually taken from diablo, like the paladin, warrior and mage).
All in all the game is in a good state even now, it looks good, plays well and sounds great.

a few tips
If your a mele class stock up on food(best you can find)
all other need lot’s of rune cloth to level their first aid to 330(you need to get the first aid book first though).
Blacksmiths need to gather materials to make things like thorium leggings and such to level their blacksmithing (though you need to visit the trainer in hellfire peninsula first), in fact all professions need to stock up on mats for the cheapest high level stuff they can make.
Hellfire peninsula is full of demons and your weapons just won’t cut it for a while so get a demon slayer enchant on your weapons, coincidently my gnome mage will be selling said enchants on dunemaul(EU) around xmas or so.

So happy hunting people(in two months that is).

zangarmarsh, it’s blueish

the path to blades edge mountains

the cave to blades edge mountains

from here on i can only say one thing wow

OMG

ZOMG

WTF

is this even wow

O, come on this can’t be wow

well apparently it is

it’s a sunny day in Nagrand

Hemmet Nesingwary FTW