Meny
Kategorier
Annons
Annons
Tags
Activision Battle.net Beta Blizzard Design Diablo Diablo 3 Download DRM Duke Nukem E3 EA Emulator Film Google Guitar Hero inFamous Innovation Konst Mario Microsoft MMO NES Nintendo Nintendo DS Playstation PS3 PSN PSP Recension Retro Roligt RPG Sony Spore Star Craft Star Craft 2 Trailer TV Utveckling Video Warcraft Wii World of Warcraft Zelda-
Nedräkningar
-
No dates present
Annons
Monthly Archives: February 2009
Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond, MMO from NASA.
Massive Multiplayer On-line (MMO) games have become more and more popular, ever evolving since it’s original form the MUD (multi-user dungeon). The latest news in this genre is a new game from NASA titled “Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond“, a game described as a “first person exploration” game with both solo and team play available. Set in the year 2035 the technology used will be as realistic as possible using much of NASAs current technology but also some still in development. The game is developed by the company Virtual Heroes and they use the Unreal Engine 3 as a basis for the on-line world.
“Whether players are youngsters, college students or adults, people who play this game are going to actually learn about space exploration science and have a lot of fun while doing it” [source]
- Henegan, CEO of Virtual Heroes
The use of on-line worlds to achieve real world goals (in this case make people in general more interested in science and space exploration) is not entierly new. Other games from Virtual Heroes include “American Army” which is intended as a recruitment base for the American Army or “Zero Hour: American Medic” for disaster management.
[ad]
Posted in Nyheter
Tagged American Army, Mars and Beyond, MMO, NASA, Unreal Engine, Virtual Heroes
Leave a comment
Wine, Windows, Warcraft
I’ve tried different configurations of my home PC and I’ve had WinXP, Vista and multiple versions of Ubuntu and this would be my evaluation of the different setups:
Setup:
Hardware: 2 year old DELL computer, 2 GB RAM, 3 GHz Intel Dual Core and first Nivida 7300 LE 256 Mb and later Nvidia 8600 GT 512 Mb.
Warcraft: In all tests Warcraft have been run in windowed mode with, to start with, the most basic graphics settings.
Software: All operating systems and 3rd party programs are installed “out of the box” with no tuning of the system except upgrade drivers and such to the latest version.
[ad]
WinXP:
None of the other setups rendered WoW as smoothly as XP did, if you want the best performance nothing beats playing WoW in native Windows XP environment. Graphic card upgrade did make high end graphics setting run smoother, but only made a real difference in spell casting intense raids etc. Framerate was always high, 60ish fps.
Vista:
Amazingly poor performance in relation to WinXP (aero was turned on, might have effected performance). Still bug free and decent frame rates though but did require a graphics card upgrade to run smoothly. With the lesser graphics card I had a framerate of 16 fps (!!) and after the upgrade it’s usually between 45 and 60 fps. Oddly I experience slower load times in Vista than in any other setup and the loading screen sometimes stays on for minutes before I can start playing. This also happens during game play when zoneing to another area.
Ubuntu 8.10 with Wine:
“out of the box” same performance as Vista, however some in my opinion grave drawbacks. First of all the framerate tends to go down very fast even with the better graphics card. While open areas have up to 80 fps (not even seen that in Win!) the crowded areas and instances skip down to 20ish fps. The bad framerate is not what bothers alone, it’s a combination of bad framerate and that Warcraft does not support hardware cursors in OpenGL mode. This makes the mouse feel “laggish” and in intense moments (when clicking the right button might be extra important) makes playing with the mouse very frustrating. I found myself trying to bind as much as possible to key bindings but honestly some actions are better performed with a mouse than a key binding (“onmouseover casting” just to take an example).
Conclusion:
If you want to play Warcraft and use Ubuntu I recommend using a dual boot even if the only thing you will use the Windows part for is playing games!
What is needed?
In my opinion we need to make game developers start to support a Linux platform like Wine and develop games to run smoothly with it, just like games say “DirectX compatible” it should read “Wine compatible”. There are optimizations that really needs to be done from game developers rather than from Wine. Where is a lobby group for this and how do I sign up to it?
Note:
If you want to try and run Warcraft in Wine here is an excellent guide that I followed when I installed it: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=579378
[ad]
Street Fighter II HD Remix in Europe!
Finally Street Figher II HD Remix have been scheduled for Europe PSN! I’ve been waiting for this for a long time and this will be the first game I buy through PSN. I’ve downloaded many demos and free addons before and I hope that purchase and download will be just as easy as before.
For those who missed it the HD Remix edition is a complete remake of all the old graphics to fit the HD format. Everything was remade while trying as best as possible to remain true to the old look and feel. The above picture shows it just as I remember it in my mind, if I saw an actual screenshot of what it really looked like back in the days on arcade machines I would probably be dissapointed.
Perfect to relive some old arcade moments and also on the way is Street Figher IV which I will pre-order!
Posted in Nyheter, Retro
Tagged Arcade, PS3, PSN, Retro, Street Fighter, Street Fighter II HD Remix
Leave a comment
Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers
Killing zombies in a Bikini feels quite different if you are using a Wii remote or not…
|
Title
|
Platform
|
Avg. Ratio
|
|
 |
Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad Publisher: D3 Number of P/Reviews: 12 |
Xbox 360 | 22.5% |
 |
Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers Publisher: D3 Number of P/Reviews: 11 |
Wii | 69.5% |
Taken from gamerankings.com 17th feb 2009, search for Onechanbara.
Star Craft 2: soon™ says Blizzard
Well we’ve heard it before and we will hear it again from Blizzard who have become notoriously known for their use of the word “soon”. This time they promise us we are getting close to seeing Star Craft 2. Lead developer Dustin Browder said “Hang in there. We’re in the final stretch. “, at least he avoided the word “soon” (source). Recently news of an upcoming beta floated around so we sure are getting close at least!
Blizzard is well known for making #1 hit games, scarping any project that does not meassure up to their standard. All this waiting is often worth and lets hope Star Craft 2 will not be an exception to that rule
Playstation Home: Downloading
I tried Playstation Home yesterday and I must say it was a big dissapointment… and that with no expectations to speak of to begin with! I’ve read other reviews of the virtual world and none of them have been very positive but decided to try it out for myself anyway.
I started the download of Playstation Home, the download was only 77 Mb which made me wonder how they could fit a virtual world into that small a download. The download could, like some patches, not be done in the background so I had to wait for the download to complete. After a few minutes wait I could log into Playstation Home, or so I thought, instead I got a barrage of questions to ask and again wait while it reserved some 3 Gb worth of discs pace (couldn’t it have done that during the “installation”… and why was the download only 77 Mb if it needed 3 Gb in the end?).
Finally it’s time for me to choose what my avatar will look like… only problem is, it only downloaded the standard outfit and to choose something else it needs to download more content in the background! While not a pure “downloading” dialog the creation of the avatar is kind of slugish since many options are downloaded as you pick them. Why not include all the avatar clothes and designs in the original download? Even if I don’t pick them I’m sure to run into other people that have so my system will end up needing them in the end anyway.
See More PlayStation Home Screenshot at IGN.com
When I got my avatar done I finally get to enter the world. I see a moderately decorated room with a nice ocean view. With just a quick glance of the room I eagerly set off to explore the rest of the world… but guess what? That isn’t downloaded yet. When I try and exit it says that the market square outside is not installed and asks if I want to install it. Sigh. Yes please.
After the download an installation I exit my room and I come to a square populated by lots of other avatars, though some are only “ghosts” (maybe my system didn’t download their textures yet?). I make a quick tour and decide to go hang out in the arcade. When I reach it again it asks if I want do download that content, fed up with the question I answer no and head over to the cinema.
Inside the cinema (yes, it needed to be downloaded but you would probably have guessed as much by now) I walk around and look at the posters of what is playing at the moment. I decide to enter a room with a trailer for a movie. The movie of course needs to be downloaded so again, I get to sit and watch that downloading meter, this time on a “huge” movie screen.
See More PlayStation Home Screenshot at IGN.com
When the download is complete I get to see a surprisingly short trailer that just keeps looping. Furthermore I get to see it very small in the center of the screen just to show of how nicely they decorated the cinema. There is a “zoom” feature but unfortunately it does not zoom the video to full screen and still use some 25% of the screen to show the cinema.
This is where I gave up. The Playstation Home is only in beta but to be able to enjoy it they really ought to work more on pre-loading information seamlessly as you go along.
Happy Valentines with Star Craft 2
Blizzard wishes happy Valentines with a few Star Craft 2 wallpapers! Enjoy!