Release date September 6!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Computer Reads Manual, Plays Civ
Computer Reads Manual, Plays Civ: "
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab report that they have boosted the effectiveness of a game-playing AI by enabling it to read the manual: “When the researchers augmented a machine-learning system so that it could use a player’s manual to guide the development of a game-playing strategy, its rate of victory jumped from 46 percent to 79 percent.”
What’s most amazing about this is that despite the trial and error nature of this kind of machine learning, the ability to correlate text instructions with events in the game do seem to have a significant impact on the system’s capacity to learn how to play, as the article explains: “The researchers also tested a more-sophisticated machine-learning algorithm that eschewed textual input but used additional techniques to improve its performance. Even that algorithm won only 62 percent of its games.” So, you know, RTFM is sound advice, even if you are a machine.
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Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Gratuitous Tank Battles Announced
Gratuitous Tank Battles Announced: "Independent developer Positech Games announces Gratuitous Tank Battles, an upcoming alternate-reality RTS/Tower Defense hybrid to follow Gratuitous Space Battles. The concept behind this is that the..."
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'Only' 999 more days left for XP security updates
'Only' 999 more days left for XP security updates: "Yesterday marked an interesting milestone for Windows XP. In 1,000 days (or 999 as of today), Microsoft will stop providing security updates for the OS. XP's extended support period ends on April 8, 2014, and Redmond is using the countdown milestone as an excuse to trumpet the..."
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Cryptex flash drive uses combination lock sleeve, brings a whole new meaning to hardware encryption
Cryptex flash drive uses combination lock sleeve, brings a whole new meaning to hardware encryption: "
256-bit AES not doing it for ya? Now you can replace that dedicated-processor encryption with actual mechanical hardware, thanks to the Cryptex flash drive and its five-wheel combination lock sleeve. Modeled in AutoCAD and constructed using various glistening metals, the Cryptex's five-digit combination will keep prying eyes far from you sensitive files -- and, well, it just looks insanely awesome. Like many shiny objects that seem too good to be true, it's barely more than a concept at this point, so you'll have to settle for the digital version for now.
Cryptex flash drive uses combination lock sleeve, brings a whole new meaning to hardware encryption originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The fanless spinning heatsink: more efficient and immune to dust
The fanless spinning heatsink: more efficient and immune to dust: "
There’s a fundamental flaw with fan-and-heatsink cooling systems: no matter how hard the fan blows, a boundary layer of motionless, highly-insulating air remains on the heatsink. You can increase the size of the heatsink and you can blow more air, but ultimately the boundary layer prevents the system from being efficient; it’s simply a physical limitation of fan-and-heatsink cooling systems in specific, and every kind of air-cooled heat exchanger in general, including air conditioning and refrigeration units.
But what if you did away with the fan? What if the heatsink itself rotated? Well, believe it or not, rotating the heat exchanger obliterates the boundary layer, removes the need for a fan, and it’s so efficient that it can operate at low and very quiet speeds. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Air Bearing Heat Exchanger [PDF]. Developed by Jeff Koplow, a researcher at the US government’s Sandia National Laboratories, the new heatsink (which has also been dubbed the “Sandia Cooler”) basically resembles a big, metal fan. The cooler consists of a static metal baseplate, which is connected to the CPU, GPU, or other hot object, and a finned, rotating heat exchanger that are cushioned by a thin (0.001-inch) layer of air. As the metal blades spin, centrifugal force kicks up the air and throws it up and outwards, much like an impeller, creating a cooling effect.
This new technique is so efficient that if these heat exchangers can find windespread adoption in computers and air conditioning units, Koplow estimates that the total US electricity consumption could drop by 7%. Furthermore, if you’re a computer geek, there’s another big advantage of the Air Bearing Heat Exchanger: it’s intrinsically immune to the build up of dust and detritus. The Sandia Cooler may also be the technology that smashes down the “Thermal Brick Wall” that is preventing computer chips from moving beyond 3GHz.
So when can you get your hands on one? Koplow is now working on a design that can be mass-produced — and hopefully he’ll soon be able to bring this awesome piece of technology to market.
Read more at New Scientist or read the research paper
Sunday, July 10, 2011
APB Reloaded: What a load
So I took the time to download and try "APB Reloaded," free to play and allegedly in "open beta." Found out there's a reason for it. If they took money for this game, it'd probably be illegal.
This game's performance is ass on a platter. Oh, don't get me wrong, it looks nice, the ideas are good, and it'd have some real potential if taking more than 3 steps in any direction didn't reduce your framerate to 2 FPS or lower. It's plain to see why the first game company that tried to actually launch this game went belly up - this is unplayable. And my system is no slouch - I've got an 8800 GTX, quad core processor and 3 gigs of ram (windows XP, not 7).
Everyone involved with this endeavor should be ashamed of themselves. I cannot remember a gaming experience as frustrating as this. Ever. I've previously reviewed games that were terminally broken or downright awful, but they've got nothing on this. Forget APB. Play Saint's Row multiplayer. Yes, even with the framerate issues and the awful controls, it's millions of light years better than APB. I'm not even sure I want to go back and check on this one in 6 months because I'm downright insulted they'd even entertain the notion that this horrendous pile of fecal matter is in any way ready for public consumption.
To add insult to injury, the game installs its stupid third party "live" software on your computer in order to play, and pathetically, it requires you to install punkbuster as well. What does it say about your dev house when you have to rely on a decade-plus old third party memory scanner to police your client? Get. That. Shit. Off. My. PC. And burn in hell.
F. F. F. F Minus. Minus minus. Suspension. Expulsion. Permanent record. Juvenile hall. Summary execution. F.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Minecraft 1.7 pistons = Punchcard Memory
Since redstone current can be transmitted one meter through solid blocks and no meters through transparent, all of a sudden, punchcard memory in minecraft is possible. Add this to the APU and display modules shown by previous minecraft pioneers... and having a computer in minecraft is all that much closer.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Report: Serious gamers spend more time on PC than consoles
From the "Duh" department...
Report: Serious gamers spend more time on PC than consoles: "During March and May, research firm Newzoo surveyed over 20,000 gamers from a range of countries. The results have been tabulated in an official report available only to paying customers, but some detail have been released in a series of infographs. The data is sorted..."
Friday, July 01, 2011
Really Bad Day at Black Rock
Really Bad Day at Black Rock: "Eurogamer has a report that Disney has closed the doors on Pure and Split/Second developer Black Rock Studios. This was originally a rumor, but they have since confirmed the news. In May it was..."
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Age of Conan Now Free-to-Play
Age of Conan Now Free-to-Play: "Funcom announces that Age of Conan has made the promised transition to a free-to-play business model. A new Age of Conan: Unchained launch trailer celebrates the news, and here's word: Players now..."
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
Review: Duke Nukem Forever
Great gobs of unpleasant avian sinus drainage! It's a review! Do we do that on this site? I forget!
After 15 years, Duke Nukem Forever has finally come out. All the vaporware jokes, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth... the king is back. But is he still the king?
Alright, you've probably read a lot of other reviews that tell you Duke Nukem Forever isn't a good game. Some even say it's a bad game. Myself, I'm not so sure. And I definitely don't agree with the reasons other pundits put forward when they call DNF a bad game. They want to talk about the dated references, the sexism, all that rot.
Well, I'm here to tell you DNF is not a bad game. It's not a GREAT game. It's hard to even call it a good game. Maybe that's why everybody badmouths it so harshly, because Duke Nukem 3D left some impossibly huge shoes to fill. Duke3D(dot ee ecks ee) was an absolute revolution in the first person shooter genre. The first FPS game that let you have multiple floors in the same 2 dimensional space (later referred to as "2.5d" because it used chicanery in a 2D plane to create the effect), the best multiplayer of the late 90s, and of course the shocking, edgy content - it all created a perfect storm that made Duke3D the staple of just about every LAN party and gaming rig I ever saw.
DNF could have been that again. The problem is not that its conventions are too dated, the problem is developers tried to shoehorn in too many "contemporary" conventions and paradigms. For example,
- Duke3D let you carry one of every weapon in the game
- DNF lets you carry two weapons.
- D3D let you carry huge amounts of ammo
- DNF lets you carry very restricted amounts of ammo, but boss fights and other heavy conflict areas usually have an inexhaustible ammo crate you can return to multiple times
- D3D largely consisted of open, free roaming levels that had you hunt keycards to find the exit
- DNF largely consists of highly detailed rooms and hallways, each with one entrance and one exit
- D3D let you shoot, reload or sidestep while sprinting, and there was no limit to sprint distance.
- DNF does not let you do any of that while sprinting, and your sprinting is limited by a fatigue mechanic.
Starting to see the pattern here? What hobbles DNF and makes parts of it irritating are not dated old 90s paradigms... it's the adoption of the bad "quasi-realistic" modern gaming mechanics that everybody gripes about today! I remember late nights with friends playing deathmatch, sprintstrafing in circles firing unbelievable numbers of rockets at each other until someone got lucky. Can't do that in DNF.
A particular sticking point for me as well is the way the alien-stolen "chicks" are handled. Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling "sexist" here or anything, but consider another difference here between D3D and DNF - In D3D, the stolen chicks in alien pods were largely scenery. Usually there were ways around them, so you didn't have to kill them even though they would beg you to do so... but if you did kill them, the game penalized you in the form of health loss or by spawning extra enemies. DNF however turns all that on its head - the girls do NOT beg for death (in fact they beg not to be DUMPED), they are placed in bottlenecks in the levels so you HAVE to kill them to get past, and if you leave them alive for too long they will die anyway and you will be punished by additional enemy spawns. That whole part just didn't sit well with me.
And don't even get me started on the load times.
It's not ALL bad though. The "gimmick" portions of the game are mostly enjoyable - the "Duke gets shrunk" portions I found particularly entertaining, less so the strip club scavenger hunt. I liked the driving portions, but maybe I'm the only one who did. I thought the ego mechanic was a nice innovation, where you raise your max health by interacting with objects (though I could have done without the blinding red splatter whenever you get wounded). And I have to tell you, it felt to me like the final boss of the game almost came halfway to redeeming the single player campaign. It was the first part of DNF that felt like the Duke I remember.
So that's basically the story - Duke Nukem Forever isn't as good as Duke 3D felt back in the 90s, but I can name several recent games that are worse - such as Homefront, Turning Point: FOL, Call of Juarez 2... At this point though, that it even came out at all is something of a triumph.
Grade: C+.
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Monday, June 27, 2011
Minecraft: Back in the office, and some words on 1.7 and 1.8!
Looks like Minecraft's "Adventure" mode is pushed back to 1.8. 1.7 will have pistons and some bug fixes. The 11/11/11 release date also likely to be pushed back.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
There Ain’t No Drama Like Spaceship Drama Cause Spaceship Drama Don’t Stop
From Brokentoys.org:
There Ain’t No Drama Like Spaceship Drama Cause Spaceship Drama Don’t Stop: "
This week in Eve:
Incarna shipped! You can now walk in your spaceship. No one else can see you walk in your spaceship but yep you’re walking. So there you go.The in-game clothing store also shipped. You can now spend $60 on a monocle. To be fair, it’s a really nice monocle and I think monocles cost about $60 in real life. Oh wait, sorry, I meant $6. So there you go.
Most players responded with “What was CCP thinking?” This being Eve, someone promptly leaked exactly what CCP was thinking. (hint: pretty much exactly what you think they were thinking)The Eve player base responded with the calm demeanor you’d expect by, um, literally rioting. The devs responded with, uh, yeah.
If you do not buy a $60 monocle A LOSER IS YOU. So there you go.People have been shocked by the price range in the NeX store, but you should remember that we are talking about clothes. Look at the clothes you are currently wearing in real life. Do you have any specific brands? Did you choose it because it was better quality than a no-name brand? Assume for a short while that you are wearing a pair of $1,000 jeans from some exclusive Japanese boutique shop. Why would you want to wear a pair of $1,000 jeans when you can get perfectly similar jeans for under $50? What do other people think about you when they see you wearing them? For some you will look like the sad culmination of vainness while others will admire you and think you are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Whichever it is, it is clear that by wearing clothes you are expressing yourself and that the price is one of the many dimensions that clothes possess to do that in addition to style and fit. You don’t need to buy expensive clothes. In fact you don’t need to buy any clothes. Whatever you choose to do reflects what you are and what you want others to think you are.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Saints Row: The Third Trailer
Saints Row: The Third Trailer: "GameTrailers has a new trailer from Saints Row: The Third, with a walkthrough of open world gameplay in the sandbox action game sequel. This includes beating on random pedestrians, hitting homeless..."
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Star Wars Galaxies Ending in December
Star Wars Galaxies Ending in December: "The Star Wars Galaxies Website announces SOE's Star Wars MMORPG will be ending on December 15, 2011, which clarifies how it would operate alongside BioWare's upcoming Star Wars The Old Republic..."
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Team Fortress 2 now Free to Play
Great googily moogily, they did it. Team Fortress is now free to download and play off steam, having been switched to a "freemium" model. That is, you can play for free, but spending money in the store gets you extra stuff. FAQ here.
Details at Teamfortress.com
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Study contends that video games decrease violent crime
Study contends that video games decrease violent crime: "For years, decades even, we've been told that violent video games are bad, mmmkay. The violent ones are supposed to be particularly insidious because they desensitize folks to brutality and encourage them to act out virtual fantasies in the real world. What if violent video games actually decreased..."
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Wednesday, June 22, 2011
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