Unlimited Detail

Now here's an interesting technology demonstration. Ever since Carmack revolutionized realtime 3D graphics by pre-computing light sources with BSP (not to mention the many other techniques he and others have developed to make polygons look more shiny and nice), that's the sort of system most people have gone with. There are other systems, like voxels and raytracing (as mentioned in the video), but for various reasons they fell out of popularity. Mostly because polygons have been the best way to represent a world in a first-person-shooter game.

Now this may finally be changing:



I would still like to know what sort of lighting and physics systems are compatible with their tech (and/or maybe new ones may be invented as a result), but it's still a nice tech demo.

The second video on this page is also fairly informative.

What Not To Do To The Guys Who Have Made You Billions Of Dollars

I haven't given up on the game industry yet, but it's really looking like it's going to be impossible for me to work for any studio that works under a large publisher.

EA have pulled nonsensical stunt after nonsensical stunt in the past, but seem to have calmed down recently. Ubisoft won't let any of their legitimate customers play their single player games without automated online supervision. And now Activision...

I mean really, let me get this straight: "The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company." (bold emphasis thanks to Dave Taylor)

Billions of dollars. The "insubordinate" dudes made Activision BILLIONS of dollars. There are plenty of other rumors flying around that make the situation even worse (like Activision witholding royalties from the guys who stayed), but forget all that. Let's look at the fact that ACTIVISION FIRED GUYS WHO ARE WORTH BILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR "INSUBORDIATION".

It doesn't matter how well you do your job. It doesn't matter how much direct cash you are responsible for your publisher earning. You can be a huge success as a game developer and still get creamed by your publisher because someone doesn't like your "attitude". THEY MADE CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 AND THEY WERE FIRED.

What I want to know is: why should I ever work for Activision? Why should I let myself be put into a position where I can be fired for doing an awesome job but I didn't kiss quite enough ass? Even EA and Ubisoft are not this foolish.

Oh, and if this turns out to be true: "But what really blows my mind is how Activision treats the people they expect to stay behind. If what I've read online is true, they've retroactively changed how the royalty stream works so instead of the stream coming 6 months after the game is out (1 quarter to make profit and 1 quarter to ensure you stick around) so that they pay out the royalty over 2 years. With the bonuses getting incrementally bigger, so the largest are at the end.

This is their idea to get the team to stay. Basically holding the bonuses / royalty payments for ransom."

Then I might well engage in an actual boycott. It's not like I'll be hurting the guys who make the game. I'll only be hurting the guys who collect the money and hoard it and punish those who make the game. So much for Starcraft II...

Ubisoft DRM

I was quietly ignoring the whole Ubisort DRM scandal. After all:

1) I made my views on the Bioshock 2 DRM pretty clear and the new Ubisoft DRM is quite worse. So duh.

2) I still haven't gotten around to playing Assasin's Creed 1, so I'm not interested in AC2 at this point.

But then Ubisoft's online servers massively fail on launch day, locking many players out of their single player game. And then someone came up with this illustration which sums everything up rather nicely:

Portal 2!

The announcement itself has gotten around now, so you've probably heard about it elsewhere already. Valve hasn't quite stopped teasing us yet, and Game Informer is going to be very informative.

I'd just like to say that as for a certain aspect of the sequel I suggested it two years ago. No need to thank me. :)

Also ME WANT GAME NOW.

Radio Madness In Portal

Yesterday, Valve updated the PC version of Portal with a multi-layered unexpected surprise.

Layer 1: The first layer of this surprise is that every single test chamber has at least one radio somewhere. These radios are different to the original radios because they start off with a red light. If you grab a radio and take it to an invisible hotspot near by it will start picking up a mysterious transmission and the light will turn green. If you find all the radios and listen to all of the transmissions, you get an achievement. I've currently got 24 of 26 (EDIT: I ended up following a Youtube walkthrough. The ones I missed were a second one in the beginning of chamber 15 and the one in the hidey-hole near the five piston-pillars room in the escape sequence. I am mildly disappointed that there are none to be found in the GLaDOS chamber.).

There's at least one in every test chamber, (EDIT: two in chamber 15), chamber 18 has three radios, and there are at least 4 (EDIT: 5) after you escape the test chambers (including the one in the fire pit).

Layer 2: A few of the messages are Morse Code (which spell out understandable but nonsensical phrases such as "LOL"), but the most interesting ones are actually Slow Scan TV images. These images contain numbers and letters and photos of objects.

Layer 2a: Several of the images are of objects found in Half Life 2 or Portal.

Layer 3: Putting the numbers and letters together in the proper order forms a md5 hash of a telephone number.

Layer 4: The telephone number is an old-school BBS which, if you connect to it properly, will send you back a bunch of ASCII text images and partially-scrambled messages that seem to be from Cave Johnson (the founder of Aperture Science). There is a mention of "GLaDOS version 3.11" which many believe to be a hint that there is going to be a major announcement on the 11th during GDC, possibly something about Portal 2 and/or HL2 Ep3.

There's several very long discussions going on the in the Valve forums, and there's already been a wiki set up. This is so fun!

Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku

I was just commenting to my brother the other day about how the Disgaea remakes on the portable systems are nice, and the rumors of Disgaea 4 are nice, but I'd really like to see another non-Disgaea game by Nippon Ichi. After all, Soul Nomad and the World Eaters is a sublimely deep tactical RPG of the Ogre Battle variety (direct control over the movements and formations of small groups of characters, but no control over individuals in combat).

And then I saw this video on Joystiq: a trailer for a game which, among other things, contains a hilariously huge variety of different weapons and skills you can give to your hero.



As others have said, "First day purchase!"

The Food Debate

Yet another TF2 video: