Thrik

Oh boy, the fact that the back of the central dude's helmet looks like Master Chief is something I just can't un-see.

Bit of a funny one, that video. In many cases it looks absolutely stunning, basically the HD version of Mario Galaxy's aesthetic I've been gagging for. But in some cases like at 0:41 it looks really shit, possibly as a result of this not-quite-either approach to whether it's a 2D or 3D game they're going for. Hopefully this is just a matter of polish being needed and the end result will be more consistently pretty. I've no doubt Nintendo will have come up with some insane gameplay fun as a result of this gameplay concept. Watching that though, I realised that what I want even more is a sweet-ass Mario Kart. The gameplay shown at E3 looked like it was going for a more realistic aesthetic compared to this, but I'd like to see more of the bubbly colourfulness of 3D World applied to that game too — at least during the Mario & pals stages.

Valve released a huge update for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (the latest one) about a week ago, and 7 of the 8 maps it added were created by members of my forum and playtested to perfection on our server — they dutifully ensured that each one had an easter egg for the forum in it. :tup: One of the guys who created two of them also had one of his maps appear in an earlier update for the game several months ago and did a write-up of the experience: Operation: Payback, First Hand Turns out he's received $18,000 so far from the first one, which isn't a bad bit of cash for someone doing it for the sheer fun of it. It's great to see Valve giving back to the community like this and actively getting involved in promoting great maps. Of course Valve gets plenty out of it too, but it takes me back to the great HL1 modding scene and the way that Valve had such a good relationship with the community.

Some legitimately wonderful electronica-folk-chill-whatever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E38AWaW_y4U

Remo said that it 'just worked' with Broken Age without any additional tweaking. Remember that this is a PC pad, so games that don't support it will invariably be built around keyboards and mice. The beauty of this pad is that it's designed specifically to perfectly emulate those devices without any developer intervention, so any key can be rebound to any button. And if this becomes a significant platform the same way Steam did, developers will surely be fully supporting it.

This is a PC controller designed for PC games. Who cares if it doesn't support games originally designed for console pads? If this thing is comfortable then it's a total non-issue. As for the comfort level, well that's just a question mark right now. Remo says it feels great due to the feedback, and I'd like to think that Valve — a company that exudes pure quality and is probably the single biggest bastion of excellent PC gaming in my opinion — has put its years of planning and research to good use.

Sure, but those are for final renders. During production renders are done much more roughly and quickly, and we're probably at a point now where what could be done as a 'quick render' in ~10 seconds a decade ago can now be done in a fraction of that. You won't be doing this stuff at 60 or even 30 frames per second, but perhaps enough to be manageable. I personally see real-time rendering as a starting point of a production. Things could be broadly fleshed out that way, and then (similarly to how Source Film Maker works) more sophisticated and time-consuming rendering could be applied to the captured footage — density of physics and particle simulations dramatically increased, camera effects applied, extra elements added, etc. It'd be a quick way of blocking out scenes. Again though, I can't see this applying very much to blockbuster movies. There's just too much involved and most of it would end up being done manually anyway. I can see huge potential for this in the bucketloads of low-end CGI stuff that's made though. Again, TV shows and straight-to-TV movies. The important part is getting the currently disparate worlds of game and film production to somewhat integrate beyond sometimes using the same modelling tools.

Well, if there's one company I trust to revolutionise something as entrenched as how game controllers are interacted with it's Valve. And I mean true revolution, not a gimmick that'll disappear after a few years. There are some genuinely marvellous ideas going on here, and I doubt they'll be tripped up by something as fundamental as ergonomics. This is definitely a big blow for Microsoft, though. Both Sony and Valve are going to be sporting controllers that basically put the fidelity of keyboard-and-mouse gaming on the sofa in front of a huge TV — exactly the kind of scenario where even the most seasoned PC gamer has to admit defeat and go with a pad — whereas playing Microsoft games is going to seem downright primitive if they can't approximate a similar kind of accuracy using a Kinect-controller tandem. There's going to be this whole comeback of genres previously unsuccessful on consoles precisely because of shitty controls, and even the ones that are successful like shooters and racers will feel better — and Microsoft won't be in on it. They'd better think fast.

Clickable touchscreen. So obvious yet so amazing.

OH MY GOOOOOD!!!!! It's a controller.

Only an hour to go until Half-Life 3. Here is a favourite HL3-related image of mine while we wait.

It definitely looks game-like to me, but that footage is indeed from a game (Star Wars 1313) so that's no surprise. I can't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to render film-quality visuals in real time should you have the hardware required and a game engine that can actually make use of it rather than being limited in the same that PC games have been by consoles for many years. It doesn't surprise me that the film industry is starting to make use of real-time stuff. Lots of stuff in films is already simulation, for example things involving huge amounts of physics, explosions, and water. Isn't it just a matter of technique whether you run those simulations in real time using a game engine or do it separately in some dedicated application? The end result is the same, but there are clear workflow benefits to being able to literally go into a game 'set' and start smashing things up. There will be lots of hurdles to figure out once they go past simple dialogue and movement, though. To handle set-piece scenes in films you'd need a very flexible game engine and a lot of scripting, and at that point you're coming very close to being better off just doing it the traditional way as scripting is a pain in the ass compared to just hand-animating a scene. As you guys already pointed out though, this is great stuff for made-for-TV films and CGI TV shows and stuff. The quality of the animation in those tends to be questionable at best anyway, so if a flexible game engine could liberate those low-paid artists from only having time to put out relatively shitty-looking stuff it'd only be a good thing.

Hahaha, oh god.

It's predictable but these were clearly designated as Steam announcements, so I'm not really sure I expected anything other than 'software, hardware , peripheral' which is clearly the case. Anyone expecting HL3 or something is clearly nuts considering all evidence so far is it's not even out of pre-production.

Urge to replay Half-Life 2: 100%

God damn, Spotify's 'Discover' feature is a bottomless chasm of obscure greatness. Have some Australian indie hip-hop (so much better than you're imagining).

Not for this forum but the sentiment is the same.

For some reason I always end up putting a grey/white beard on any character I can in any game and making them as muscular as possible. I clearly have fantasies of being some old ass kicker.

Yeah, that's what I thought. The remake is very authentic to my memories of the game, my brain even remembered it being more vibrant and smooth like the remake is. Of course, I know from spending just a few seconds with the original that it's a huge improvement over the blur-o-matic GameCube version and has basically turned the game into the timeless piece it deserves to be. Now, if only similar love were applied to things like Grim Fandango and Banjo-Kazooie...

Holy shit. I'm a couple of minutes in and I already know I'm buying a Wii U and this at some point.

It'd be hilarious if pedestrians are now persistent and remember you. Imagine what it'd be like after 50 hours of play and practically everyone has seen you being an asshole at some point or other.

Oh, I see. I thought UDK was the name of Unreal Engine's development suite/kit/whatever (I guess it is for UE3), which is what I really meant.

Good hip-hop, mate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF6XY6_8MD0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AJ8hbwb0KQ

Heh, bloody hell.