SiN

Darwinia certainly is a great game. It is innovative I think, but not in a way that's immediately obvious. The gameplay is definitely back-to-the-basics C&C meets Syndicate. A good thing in my opinion, as I enjoyed those games way more than I do modern RTSs. And unlike most modern RTSs, the combat actually feels very vicerial. It's the most intense combat I've seen in an RTS since the days of old-skool C&C. The storyline is very nicely done too ... I know it doesn't seem like much, but Introversion really put alot of effort into making this completely coherent universe. The darwinians themselves are pretty awesome too ... the well done story means you really care about them. Other than that, there are a few things here and there that make it interesting ... most notably, the fact that there really isn't a gameover state to the game at all ... it's possible to screw up bad enough that it's not possible to finish the level, but never explicitly lose. The fact that the game still stays intense and gripping despite there not being a gameover-state is *very* good game design. Also, the save-game system is completely transparent, which is a big plus in my books. So yeah, there's lots to love about Darwinia, and it isn't terribly expensive (I imported and it still cost less than a retail game) so it's definitely worth a shot. It'll take a while to get into it, but you really need to play the game to understand why it's so great. SiN

I think he was more worried about the readers having "a phobia of lengthy answers". Which sounds about right, judging by the attention span of most of the internet. Cracking interview though. Worth checking out the interview Eurogamer did with Gabe Newell too ... here and here. SiN

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6152771.html Read the comments ... I love how people *completely* missed Tim's sense of humour. Reading the comments on Gamespot is like watching a car crash ... horrific, but you just can't help but continue to watch. SiN

Tarrifs were charged on consoles imported to the EU. Sony wanted to get around that by classifying the PS2 as a computer. They won the case, however it's of no relevance now since "as from January 1st [2004] both games consoles and computers will be zero-rated for customs tariffs when they are imported into the EU" (source) http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=pub&aid=2342 No, it actually means they'd like to have the brand perception that Apple has, which I guarantee you, every company in the world would kill for. Now if everyone stopped being a cynic for one moment, they'd see that the PS3 is actually kinda interesting. I've never owned a Sony home console before and I'm not gonna start now, but the stuff Kutaragi is saying, if they pull it off, will be revolutionary IMO. So in other words, Sony are breaking the old Nintendo strategy of selling consoles. This means they should have no problem at all with the homebrew community. The first-parties don't like homebrew because it means people buy less games, which means they get less royalties. If Sony intend not to make royalties it opens up *huge* possibilities. The PS3 could be retro heaven, with all sorts of emulators ported to it. It could be your media center, your console, and hell, even something to casually surf the net on. Now will it replace PCs as we know it? Certainly not. But for alot of people (ie: casual pc users) $600 for a full media center/basic computer/console will be well worth it. What bothers me though is that if this has been the plan all along, why didn't they talk about this at E3? Why haven't we seen this Cell OS? Why haven't they shown us the software that'll come bundled with the PS3? I have a feeling that while their idea is good, it's going to fail at execution. The PS3 just feels like an *extremely* unfocused product, which can't be good seeing as the 360 and Wii are perhaps the most focused consoles Microsoft/Nintendo have put out. Like I said before, time will tell, but while I wrote the PS3 off completely at E3, things are looking slightly more interesting now. If they deliver the goods, this will be a very interesting console generation indeed. SiN

Which is why the PS3 can be output to computer screens, and you can plug in a keyboard/mouse via USB. But again, if they pull through with this Linux stuff, none of the above will be true. It won't be half-assed, because it'll be Firefox and Thunderbird on an operating system that has been around for ages. Uhhh, AFAIR those are estimates from independent sources. And besides by just looking at the technology under the PS3's hood, it's *very* obvious that Sony will be making a bigger loss than Microsoft, despite the higher price-point. Oh, and it does. Official Linux kit from Sony and everything. It just happens to be rather shit. Which is exactly why I said "time will tell" ... I won't believe it until I see it. SiN

Looks pretty good to me. The graphics are great ... bright and vibrant like Sonic is supposed to be. The animation was alright too, but that's something that can definitely be tweaked/polished up before the game goes gold. I dunno what the complaints over the camera are for ... it could do with a bit of zooming out, and there were some bits (the spiral) where they didn't quite show you enough of what was up ahead (in the case of the spiral, I think that was on purpose), but other than that it looks fine to me. My main problem is the one that Tommy Gun brought up ... it really doesn't look like the game needs much human interaction at all. I'm guessing this is an early level though, so maybe the later levels heat up. SiN

To be fair, the PS3 is actually quite cheap. Considering the amount of new tech inside there, with the Cell processor, BluRay-ROM and a very high end nVidia video card, $600 is quite a low price. It costs far more than that to manufacture (not to mention the R&D), and they'll be making a far bigger loss than the $126 Microsoft do on each 360. However, everything is relative, so in comparison to the 360, it certainly is very expensive. However, for the tech in the box, yeah, the price is a bargain. Apparently, you will be able to. The PS3 supports dual monitors, and for the rest of your list, they say Linux is going to come pre-installed, which potentially means all of the above will be possible. I'm not convinced though. I'm not convinced that after being against homebrew scene for years now, that they're just going to open their system and allow anyone to do anything with it. It just doesn't make sense. Time will tell though ... SiN

I was all looking forward to watching this live ... now I'm just frustrated that half-an-hour in, it still hasn't started. SiN

I'm next-to-positive it does, seeing as the GBA was region-free too. SiN

Me and My Katamari! SiN

I dunno what you lot are on about, looks awesome to me! SiN

AFAIK, only for the indoor stuff, the outdoor world uses more conventional lighting Nah, DEIW only had real-time lighting on characters/entities, but the geometry itself was statically lit. But was slow as hell. No it didn't. I made a couple of doom3 maps, and never saw any sort of lightmapping going on. I guess you may be talking about those spotlights that were all over the coridoors, but those were just textures, not anything that was done using lightmaps and such. There's something to be said about doing something, and doing it right. The D3 engine was more-or-less complete a good 2 years before the game was done ... Carmack spent the rest of the time pretty much tweaking/optimizing it to work on a 1.5ghz system. Like elmuerte says, UE3 has quite the crapload of features, but my fear is that unlike the D3 engine, these won't be "properly" implemented (jack of all trades, master of none, anyone?) so you'll need to turn them off if you want to play the game. Which entirely defeats the purpose. Yeah the D3 engine doesn't feature a billion different types of shader effects, but what it does have works very, very well. I'm willing to bet if you put UE3 and D3 on a mid-end system, D3 would actually look better. (Also, lets keep in mind D3 is released and already 2 years old, whereas UE3 hasn't even been released yet ... who knows what id have working now?) SiN

It's the most special engine of them all. From a purely technical point of view, it's the only truly "next-gen" 3D engines. The Source engine doesn't do much thats new at all. It's using BSPs, lightmaps, and a couple of other fancy (but very current-gen) effects, with the havok engine hooked up to it, and with some great facial expression stuff. Apart from the facial expressions, there's nothing here we haven't seen before ... it's the game (HL2) that makes Source special, not the technical details behind the engine itself. The UT engine, I'm not very sure about. It does alot of things, but to my mind, I haven't seen a UT-based game that's blown me away ... not like the facial expression in Source or the real-time lighting in Doom3. The UT3 screens are looking quite great, but again, it looks like it's just using a bunch of current-gen effects and cranking them up to "MAX". The Doom3 engine on the other hand, has it's real-time lighting, which is genuinely a step forward. That's one less thing that needs to be done at compile time, lightmapping. That opens up a bunch of new doors in terms of what can be done with gameplay, and is a step towards the ultimate goal of having completely dynamic maps. It's an engine built to last, so in the years to come, you'll see more games use the D3 engine, with many, many more lights at once. Remember that the Q3 engine started off at a similar slow pace, but has gone on to be licensed up until this year. SiN

Heh, well there's a difference here. Carmack designs an engine, and id software designs a game to best take advantage of the engine. In a sense, Carmack lays the primary design work for each game. When Carmack wanted to do Q3A he designed a very stripped down low-latency engine. The curved surfaces were about the only major bit of fancyness the engine had ... otherwise it was a very minamalstic engine. For his next engine, he really wanted to play around with the idea of real-time lighting, but at the time, it wasn't viable to have more than a couple of them around. Thus, Doom3 was born, as the team knew that the engine would work best with something moody and dark. IMO, that's definitely worthy of being an important person in gaming. SiN

The concept was pretty much his. He wanted to make a game that was purely multiplayer, pure action to the point where even the single-player was essentially a multiplayer game in disguise. I recall reading that there were people on his own team that didn't quite get what he wanted to do! So sure, he wasn't the Lead Designer or anything like that, but the concept was all his. Also, do keep in mind that he was very much involved in Wolf3D & Doom, which I'm sure you'll agree are iconic games ... when id software was smaller, he wasn't *just* a programmer. Errr, I'm written engines before ... does that mean nvidia listen to me? Difference is of course Carmack has been leading the pack for quite some time. One of the first games to come out with a 3dfx patch was Quake. The first game that was developed to require a 3D card was Q3A. The theory behind all FPS maps today (Binary Space Partitioning) was Carmacks/Abrashs. The first game to try real-time lighting was Doom3. Modding was non-existant up until Quake1 and even then, other engine developers didn't bother with adding mod support. Yes as programmer, but isn't this thread mainly about game developers? Yes, and Carmack is a game developer. Look, if you believe that Carmack simply codes engines, and does nothing else, you're out of your mind. In game development, every member of the team makes a difference. All id software games wouldnt have been the same without the engine behind it, and the design decisions Carmack made on his engines greatly defined how the game would turn out, and of course, what direction other games would take too. SiN

In recent years Carmack designed exactly one game : Quake 3 Arena. THAT'S what happens when you let Carmack design a game ... it creates a revolution. Q3A was the first arena based DM game, and the first game that was a purely multiplayer affair. Carmack is reponsible for much of what GPU's have become today, and the likes of nVidia and ATi come to him for answers on what should be done with graphics next. Disappointingly, the Doom3 engine didn't take off quite as well as his previous engines (which in effect, allowed some of the greatest games to be created) but he is certainly still a huge force in the gaming industry SiN

I think it's a great move! Right, so everyone was expecting R* to come out with some sort of violent "steet" game, and they've turned around and made something completely different! Isn't this what we've all wanted? A game thats fresh, innovative and relatively cheap to play? Listening to the way Houser is talking about this game very much reminds me of how he talked about GTA when it was in development ... very passionately. I mean, the reason GTA is such an amazing series is that the boys at R* are genuinely enthusiastic about the subject matter. It seems that they're pretty passionate about table tennis too, so the same level of love will be put into this game ... I can only see that as being a good thing. The other thing is that I'd really like to see more games like this. Spaff (seems) rather cynically when he says ... ... but I say it's kinda neat that they're taking a small concept and puting a well sized team on it. When the gameplay is simple there leaves alot of room for polishing ... yeah, that means fancy graphics, sound, etc, but it also means the gameplay will be very refined. I can only see this as a good thing, and a throwback to the old days, where games were simple but polished. It's quite the anti-GTA game, don't you think? SiN

It works wonderfully. WASD = Direction pad Mouselook = Stylus on touchpad Trigger = Fire The great thing is though, the ABXY buttons can be used instead of the direction pad, which works out great! I know, because I'm left handed. SiN

Worms DS/PSP won't be wifi unfortunately. Team17 started development on them *way* before Sony & Nintendo had their act together with the whole online thing. They just couldn't afford to implement it at such a late stage in development. Hunters is looking great, but I don't think I'll be getting it on release ... Me & My Katamari is coming out two days later, and I couldn't possibly have *that* much gaming bliss at once! SiN

Lumines ( :tup:) Electroplankton ( :tup:) Mario & Luigi : Partners in Time ( :tmeh:) I also bought a Dreamcast so its been alot of Rez ( :tup:) Ikaruga ( :tup:) And just got Darwinia, which seems a bit right now, but I'm hoping it'll get soon. So yeah, lots of good gaming this season! SiN

My thoughts exactly! The last RTS I played and really enjoyed would be Red Alert 1 & 2. I absolutely loved Westwood's RTSs because of their simplicity. I even thougth Warcraft 3 was rubbish. I've tried a couple of more modern RTSs, but they just don't do it for me. The only relatively complex RTS that I've enjoyed was Shogun: Total War ... but even that wasn't overly complex, and it was really the atmosphere that I enjoyed about it. Can't stand Medival or Rome. I'm definitly going to pick up Advance Wars DS when I get the chance. Also, I'm glad you brought this up, because I've actually been concepting a strategy game that goes "back-to-the-basics" but does so in a rather innovative way. I'm currently finishing up work on a puzzle game, but I'm really itching to start coding this RTS I've got in mind. I'll be sure to keep you guys updated. SiN

Well, the DS isn't exactly small right now, is it? TBH though, I don't think that's a big issue. If the next gen GB ended up being the size of the PSP, I wouldn't mind. I think with this much power, we kinda have to expect handhelds to be small enough to carry well in a bag, and just small enough to fit in a pocket. Which is what the current-gen handhelds do. I wouldn't mind if the next-gen handhelds did the same. Speaking of size, I can't wait for the inevitable Nintendo DS SP. I've already told a friend that I'd sell him my DS when a smaller one comes out. SiN

Uhhh, I'm confused ... who was that directed at, Jake? 'Cos I said Meaning Meteos wouldn't work without a touchscreen. I do think it'd work just fine without the second screen though. SiN

I think the best way to describe the second screen is "nice, but not necessary". Jake mentions Metroid, which is pretty much the only game I can come up with myself. The other games don't really NEED the second screen like the need the touch screen ... apart from Metroid, of the games I have (WarioWare, Meteos, Yoshi) all have put the 2nd screen to pretty good use, but could easily be redesigned to use only one screen. On the other hand, none of those games would work without a touch screen. (except WarioWare I guess). I think one bigger screen would be far more useful than 2 smaller ones. Which is another thing I see happening with the next-gen GB. SiN

About the future of the Nintendo handhelds. Here's my prediction: First off, I don't think there will be a sequel to the DS. Infact, I don't even think there'll be another system that'll play DS games. Ie: I don't see any of that backwards compatibility stuff that happens on the Gameboy happening with the DS ... it's just way to weird a system! I think the GBA2 will take the best of both the GBA and the DS. It'll definitly have great 3D graphics because that's what the market expects, but still have a solid 2D system too. I think Nintendo will (correctly) stick to their guns and make it cartridge based ... by the time it gets made, 512meg cartridges would probably be practical in terms of cost and size. I think it'll also have a touch screen. Of all the things on the DS, the touch screen is definitly it's strongest feature, so taking that, and combining it with a traditional GB makes sense. That's my prediction anyway ... a GBA with 3D gfx and a touch screen. I look forward to having people bump this and laugh at me when the Game Boy Touch! GBA2 specs get released. SiN