Half Life 2 Episode 1 Playing Stats

Valve has been collecting data of how people have been playing the game. You can see the results Here.

The results are as you would probably expect. More deaths on higher difficulty levels further into the game. And there is a gradual decline of how far people played into the game, but this includes all games not just the first time through. And it seems that the average length of time to complete the game is five hours. The only slightly interesting thing is that most of the people that stopped playing their games, stopped playing them when they hit the carpark section with the antlions.

Marks

Just got my marks through and I got an average mark of 53%. I failed my Security module (of all things) and that seems to be because I waffled on the test and didn't talk about the case study as much as I should have. The case studies we got this year where light on details so I did ignore them. Still I have been told that this doesn't mean I will need to resit it or that I have failed the year. I was expecting to do a lot better this year than I have, but looking at my marks overall on the course they have slowly been dropping. Don't know wither that is because more had been expected of us each year or because I have become worn down by the university's various procedures.

New Clerks II Trailer

I killed a spider today and there is a new Clerks II Trailer.

Silly White House

Apparently The White House told the Swedish government the shutdown The Pirate Bay or suffer trade sanctions for not respecting US copyright.

Now all this is going to do is promote awareness of torrent portals so more people pirate copyrighted material. The big corporations had their chance to do something about piracy when it was all confined to Napster, but they made a mistake and now they are competing against illegal distribution for consumers.

I hope America sees sense to not declare another war. To go with The War on Drugs, The War on Terror and The War on Iraq etc. I actually find Americas use of language on these occasions to be quite interesting because they all use the same phrases.

Anyway if the US government really wants to help the movie and record industry they need to tell them to suck it up and be innovative with their distribution model. There will always be piracy and at the moment I believe it is the convenience factor that wins a lot of people over and not the fact that it is free. If for example when Madonna's new album is released consumers could go to a website pay a fee and then just download the album in whatever format or bitrate they wanted. That would be one up on the torrent portals for convenience, availability and giving customers what they want, how they want it. There is also Open Source DRM as a possibility, but I don't want to make this post any bigger and that is a big question-mark as it doesn't currently exist.

The Humor Archives

Just found This site and it's got some gems on there.

Firstly The Magic Roundabout which looks ridicules, the picture is a little old and clearly in Britain so I had a look for it. And Here it is at Swindon.

Then the guy trying to Cancel His AOL Account. Now you get put through to grumpy Indians who don't help and just want to get you off the line as fast as possible.

Random YouTube Vdeo

Where the Hell is Matt?

He did a shorter video before, but then Some Company sponsored him to do another and he did.

Random Fact

During World War 2 every German concentration camp kept records on all their victims by use of an IBM punch-card system.

Marks

University said this year's marks would be available today where possible online and I thought this meant that maybe two or three of my modules wouldn't have marks attached to them yet. As it is none of my modules have marks attached to them. It might actually be days or weeks before I actually know how I did.

I seem to be experiencing blind confidence in my performance this year. Not sure if that is a good thing or not.

Geometry Wars - 8 Achievements in 1 Game

I currently have eight Achievements on Geometry Wars and have been trying for weeks now to get the last two, but just now I had a game where I got all my current achievements in just one game.



And this is my problem. I seem to have peaked it doesn't look like I will ever get those last two. Maybe if I had a widescreen TV I would be able to see more of the screen.

Pop Up HG

Ok so I found this funny, but first a bit of background. In Japan there is a comedian names Razor Ramon who's real name is Masaki Sumitani, but who plays a character called Hard Gay who appears in a slot on a Japanese Saturday variety show. He runs around Tokyo terrifying poor unsuspecting public, but also helping them and enforcing good moral values (see Fathers Day Episode).

So anyway a few months ago I seen the TOMY episode (Part 1, Part 2) where Hard Gay gets TOMY to make a Hard Gay version of Pop Up Pirate. From the episode TOMY makes a limited edition version, but it seems now that demand has been so high for the HG version that they have caved in. And this-morning I seen This (yes they export internationally) which is a little pricey, but is the first version of Pop Up Pirate with Sound Effects.

Open Day Invite

I got an Open Day invite to a Blitz Games open day. Which I didn't think I would get in because the cutoff day for being confirmed was today and I hadn't hared anything. So that's good news.

It's not for a while and I am not sure what kind of NDA they might want me to agree to or wither they will simply ask for me not to talk about some stuff, but I will let you know how it goes.

Hot Day

Today has indeed been a hot day. I have been threatening for years to get air conditioning, but this heat only lasts for about three weeks of the year so it isn't worth it right now. Once global warming has taken more of an effect, then I might reconsider.

Just been reading about how Japan's high speed internet is being Attacked by Crows, of all things. Turns out that fibber optic cables make for good nests.

And according to Peer Schneider at IGN It's Pickling Time for Mario64 which made me laugh.

Preorder the PS3 Today

Play.com is taking PS3 Preorders for the bargain* price of £549.99 including delivery. How the hell they are going to make a profit selling it a such a low price* and including delivery is beyond me.

Games are selling for £49.99 each which isn't so much of a bargain, but at least the console is so cheap*.

*I am being very, very sarcastic.

Sony Podcasts

Download it Here. To say it is bad is an understatement. Sony's podcast is just press releases read to background music. If I had to describe it in one word, that would be wooden.

Bill Gates Stepping Down

You can watched the announcement Here and honestly I think this is a good move for Bill and a good move for Microsoft because it allows Bill to concentrate on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And Microsoft will stop being Bill Gate's company, which it isn't now anyway.

GTA IV's Graphics Engine

Don't feel like blogging about much right now and to be honest there isn't much to blog, but I just read that GTA IV will use the same graphics engine as Rockstar's Table Tennis.

First Rejection Email

I just got my first job application rejection email through today YAY!

First Rejection Email

I just got my first job application rejection email through today YAY!

Free Virgin Mobile SIM

Virgin are doing this thing where Virgin to Virgin texts are free until the 30th of September, but I know there are always people out there looking to move phone operator so here is a link to Virgin's Free SIM Card Offer. Just fillout the form and they will send you one for free.

More PS3 Rumours and 360 Lineup

The mighty Cell processor in the PS3 might drop from 3.2GHz to 2.2GHz and the power supply might have to be external like the 360's all because of a supposed overheating issue.

In other news sales of the 360 seem to be levelling off much sooner than expected and to my mind that is because of the lackluster lineup. I bought it for Oblivion, but that is also available for PC, I bought Rockstar's Table Tennis, but that was because I wanted to celibate finishing uni a little and that was the only game under £30. And Arcade has only had one new arcade in the past month despite Microsoft saying they wanted five to six titles a month.

Coming out for the 360 next week is nothing.
The week after Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires which doesn't interest me.
The week after that Call of Duty 2 (GOTY Edition) which I would buy if it wasn't so expensive.
And the week after that Chromehounds is released, which I want, but it is going to have to get a good report for me to shedout that kind of cash. Over G Fighters is also released that week, but that just looks a bit pants.

Still we got Gear of War, Dead Rising and Mass Effect to look forward to this year, and they have all of which have received positive press from those that have played them.

Submitted Level Design

So I ended up submitting a level design to Blitz Games. Not sure if it will get me in to an open day placement, but my design is of sound conceptual design. Apparently I should hear something by the 19th. Will keep you posted.

Transformers Site

The Official Transformers 2007 Movie site has been Launched and judging by the website this doesn't look like a kiddie film.

Ratatouille Trailer

Ratatouille is Pixar's next film after Cars and the Trailer looks great.

360 Dashboard Update

It's 3.11MB and available now.
A complete list of all 125 changes and additions can be found Here.

Land of The Fragrantly Violating

The San Fransisco Chronicle Writes that the US government has written a new set of polices for supposed Terrorist detainees. One of the things that has been written out of this new policy over the old one is the prevention of "humiliating and degrading treatment". It is believed that by allowing this kind of treatment better information will be gained from detainees.

There is much agreement that information gained from torture victims is unreliable. Many of the people in Guantanamo Bay are there because their names came up during torture sessions. This has to stop.

Halo 3 Beyond The Trailer

IGN has a very good Mini-Documentory about all the suttle clues and hints that Bungie has putout over the years for the final instalment of the game. And I had no idea fans where this analytical. Especially not for fans such an run and gun action game.

Half Life 2 Episode One (Completed)

I loved this game. It brings Half Life back to the slow-paced exploration and puzzle solving of the original. The story doesn't progress much, has few ok bosses, no new weapons, no new bad-guys and no new environments, but the dialogue from Alex is great. The character of Alyx feels so much more human this-time around and her personality as an NPC really shines through, which although done well in many RPGs is a first for an FPS.

I am now going through the commentary just now and I spotted this:



It is an omission by the developers saying that during development they realised players didn't like Alex telling them to hurry up all the time. Which is exactly why I hated Half Life 2 so much. If it wasn't Alex or another NPC telling you to hurry up all the time. The buggy in a way even felt as if it was doing the same because that just raced you through load screen after load screen. It destroyed the wonderful slow pacing of the original.

I did think that after completing the game I was going think it was too short, but it is much longer that Blue Shift and possibly longer than (although it has been a while since I last played it) Opposing Forces so ye it's worth a purchase certainly. And so far the commentary has been good, although it doesn't pause the gameplay at all.

4/5

EDIT: There are two new types of enemies. A flying thing which you are introduced to, but won't be able to fight until episode two, a new type of Zombie called a Zombine, which isn't anything to get excited about and additionally you actually get to fight the Stalkers, which technically aren't new.

Blitz Games Open Day

I just got an email from Blitz Games telling me that I am being considered for a chance to look around their offices (and from then on maybe the chance of a job), but first they want to see some evidence of work by the 9th. With that is an email address to send work to and details of what they want to see from the different professions they are interested in.

I certainly cannot for-fill the 2D Art, 3D Art, Audio or Animation requirements, but under the Programmer requirement they want to see a simple arcade game with a special effect. Although I could probably produce something brilliant by the end of the month after conducting some serious study, I do not believe this is doable by the 9th. No, not even with the power of .Net as 3D is completely new to me, although I will be looking at 3D now that uni is over, I just want expecting this to be on the cards so soon.
Under the Designer requirement they want level designs. I have designed many games in my little black design books and a few games that run on my final year project. My lecturers where even visibly impressed when I told them of the improvements I had made in my games as I had progressed from one to another, but I haven't ever produced such a document before. Although considering the sheer number of games that I have played over the years and my knowledge and ideas of gametheory I could probably bang something out by then.

So tomorrow I am either going to be designing a level for Barbie's Horse Adventure or going to crack-open the 3D programming stuff again and give it a fair old go. It doesn't however seem like Blitz they are interested in hiring a diversity of people and this makes me question if they are the kind of company I want to work for as their hiring strategy seems more about fitting pegs into wholes. They have probably ended up highering like this both because of the number of applications they recieve and the fact that most people are only in the industry for five years. Still this identifies two cultural issues with the company. They struggle to keep people and don't look to higher people with other skills that they could use.

Need texture, you draw? Draw now. Hmmm good texture.

Random Calculation

I was just wondering how many XBox 360s Microsoft could put inside a standard cargo container. After doing the maths and if they use one of the big 40f ones I think they could get just over 3800 units in one.

Got the hang of it

When aiming a shot I was holding down the left analogue stick instead of just tapping it enough to place my shot. This didn't mean I was hitting balls off the table, but my character was moving off position with each shot.

It's all over

Last test done and as long as I don't have any re-sits, the next time I go back uni will be to get my diploma.

Bought Rockstar's Table Tennis for the 360 as it is the only game under £30 and I like it, but it's hard. I thought the Lost Planet demo was hard until I realised that I had missed a few conveniently placed mech suites (I blame the size of my screen). So I am hoping that if I read the manual and play a few games then I could get over that learning curve and actually win a game.

XBox Live Camera and UNO

Looks like some of the Microsoft guys have been playing with the camera. [Video]

Random Geometry Wars 2 Idea

Been thinking of what Bizarre Creations could do with a sequel to improve the game and other than adding new enemies, a story arc (which could be bad) and bosses (which would be bad). For the gameplay I have two ideas.

One consolidate the lives and bombs to be the same unit measurement. So using a bomb is still preferable to dieing, but they are both the same thing. This will mean that when you loose the game you won't have any remaining bombs because bombs and lives are the same thing (this was done very will in F-zero X).

And secondly adding a system where if the player presses the bomb button at the very moment of death their life is saved, a bomb effect happens and they get bonus points. There has been a few occasions where things have gotten so close that it is hard to tell wither I have died or hit the bomb button first, so I think it would be cool to be rewarded for such skill.

Still no official word on a sequel, but I don't think they can ignore the success of the first game or the potential demand for a second.

Sorted

I just ran it through 10,000 games and the final score was:

Test Player: 0
Computer: 8603
Draws: 1397

Not sure if I will use this as a testbed for other types of AI now as I have had to sacrifice extensibility to get to this stage, but at least I have a good Tic Tac Toe AI if I ever need one again.

Found It

So I added a logging function to my test player and this is the output that causes the AI to loose that came out:

Record 1 (0,1)
Record 2 (1,1)
Record 3 (1,0)
Record 4 (1,2)
Record 5 (0,0)
Record 6 (2,0)
Record 7 (0,2)

Which looks like this (player is X, AI is O):



As you can see the AI does not make a strong move on turn four and this poor decision results in the AI loosing.

Tic Tac Toe 2 and Automated Testing

Just over one year ago I had the idea of creating a Tic Tac Toe program that I add modulate AI to and tryout different types of AI, but the whole thing fell-apart because the code got too complicated, but I started work on this project again from scratch earlier this week and have gotten it working with just one AI system.

I thought I had created a perfect rule based AI system. So to test that theory I created a function that would take the place of a player and randomly place markers onto the grid. It does this for 1,000 games which takes about 9 seconds on my 2.24GHz P4, but look at this:



Looking at the results at the bottom of the window it appears that my rule based AI isn't perfect at all. There is almost a 2% chance of a player winning by randomly clicking. No idea at the mo what sequence of play causes the AI to loose and thats kind of exciting because I can't find it. So I am going to have to put somekind of logging function together to find what is causing the AI to loose.

The top left button on there runs 1,000 game simulations in nine seconds, but if I stop the code from updating the graphical display then it can run 10,000 games in just five seconds. Just goes to show that automated testing is well worth while. Every application that I have built of late has had automated testing and it has always been worth the few minuets that has taken to add.

PS3 Price Again

I was just thinking and I don't believe that I have ever spent more than £400 on anything before, with my own money.

XBox 360 Dashboard Update

Monday should bring the much anticipated dashboard update that will allow background downloading of Marketplace content. So while waiting for the latest video or demo to download there will be no need to star at a progress bar anymore. My personal favourite improvement however is persistent music, so if you are playing an album in visualisation mode then choose to play an arcade game, starting the game will not stop the music.

IGN has some Videos of some of the other improvements.

Edit: The update wasn't released on Monday.

Final Year Project

Just being looking trough a few old posts on forums that I have done and found this one in replay to someone who was thinking about doing a final year project on Voice Over IP and was asking for suggestions. The replies he was getting was about creating micro controllers for robots which I thought sounded sucky, so I posted this:

I am just finishing my final year project. Spent the whole year messing around with a way of creating games with voice recognition. Did it all in VB.Net too.

VOIP sounds good. When you choose what platform to develop with, just use the best tool for the job. Don't purposefully make life difficult for yourself because of your universities skills alignment. So what if all the lecturers hate Microsoft and love C++. You do what you think is best, for your project. You can even white a whole section of your final report slating C++ and say why C# is so much better if you like, as you need to state why you chose to develop with whatever you did over what you didn't.

I think the best projects have been the ones that are scalable where little success is good, but more success is better. That way the project scales well depending on the time you have. And if you find you can do something cool while researching or developing then your project can be adapted quickly.

Best bit of advice I can give however is to tell you to do a little bit of footwork before September. Get a very basic proof of concept working. Then you will know if VOIP is what you want to do or not. And you won't wast time understanding the very basics of your project's underlying technologies.

P.S. Also remember that when you go for job interviews having a cool final year project that you can talk about could help get you the job.

Looking at what people have done this year the only bad projects seem to have involved websites because none of those to my knowledge have ended working correctly.

I had to demo my project yesterday and I think it went well. Still want to create a website with some of my applications on as a live portfolio. And I now have permission to put my project up on there as long as I credit my supervisors and the university. So that should be cool.

Job Hunting

So after the 31st this month I will be starting my big job-hunting project that will result in me having a job. This is great as I will have an income and the opportunity to leave home, but I don't know what kind of job I want to do.

I keep considering programming as it is one of my core skills, but I don't know wither that would be fun as a job or not. I want something that I can do for two years, and puts me in good stead for the future. I did have a look at Microsoft, but at the mo they only seem to be looking for administrative people and have some of the strangest requirements on their jobs.

My Geometry Wars High Score

I was listening to a few Developer Casts while playing Geometry Wars and out of three games got fairly close to my high score, then just now I got 2,058,080 POINTS!

There is no way I am going to be getting anywhere near that score again anytime soon, but that puts me 2512th place in the world. My Previous High Score was 1,264,325 so I have improved some since then, but 2 MILLION?! I didn't know I had it in me.

Gears of War The Race to E3

For some strange reason the MTV special that followed Epic for six weeks before E3 looking at the stress of development before the big event. Isn't available outside the US. So the only way to get it is thought This Torrent file.

If you are on of those people that hate BitTorrent because it is so slow, then you need Bitlord which fixes a few things.

The special is only twenty minuets long. And I think that says it all because it needed to be longer and needed to spend less time flicking around to cover all six weeks.

Computer Graphics Assignment

My class's Computer Graphics Assignments has been Posted On The Web. Mine can be found Here. I got 83% for it and that is well above the class average (not sure if uni would like me posting that).

A lot of the images are unfinished, but this isn't an art course, marks where mainly given for the techniques used to produce the image. Mine has a vase in the bottom left hand corner that uses lath, texture, phong and scaling.

It has been an interesting module and one of the things I want to do now is have a go at creating a 3D software renderer by altering the pixel colours on a bitmap surface.

Random Fact

The emergency services number in Japan for the police is 110. And for fire & ambulance services the number is 119.

Freeboarding

I hadn't hared of Freeboarding before and there isn't a Wikipedia page of it yet, so I guess it is something new.

So the day started out with looking at videos marked with the tag Leicester on YouTube. Then I found This. Different kind of Skateboard design I thought so I went looking and found This is how we roll and How I Roll.

Looks like it will be popular in America where they have a lot of nice long straight roads, but then I Googled and found http://www.freeboard.com which seems to be the place that started this and ye it looks like a lot of fun.

US Lead Invasion of the World

• Where should America Attack Next?
  
  
• What They Do When They Get There

Unethical Video Posting

Star Wars Kid's psychiatric bill is NOTHING comapired to what This Guy will have to endure for playing World of Warcraft with his pants down.

Sony's Early Adopters

1UP as a Piece quoting the European Sony CEO as saying:

"We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn't have games,"

And I believe him too. Even when everybody knowing how much more affordable the Wii is and knowing there is nothing to play on the PS3. On launch-day there will be a sea of Sony loving Zombies waiting outside all the electrical shops in the world, successfully recreating scenes from Dawn of the Dead.

Not that I can't completely rule-out the idea of me buying a PS3 and there are a few games I wouldn't mind playing on the PS2, but £425!!!

Supreme Commander Trailer

Fragland has the first (as far as I am aware) moving footage of the game Here. Supreme Commander is Total Annihilation 2, but under a slightly different name (probably for legal reasons) you still have a big robot to build buildings and stuff, but the scale is massive. It even has Full Scale Nukes that can destroy hundreds of units in one blast.

Kevin Smith Interview

Creator behind Clerks 2 spends Time Answering the IGN Mailbag.

Windows Vista Minimum System Requirements

Computer manufacturers are being told by Microsoft that they can put a Vista compatibility sticker on their machines to better communicate to customers wither the machine will run Vista or not. There are two stickers 'Capable' and 'Premium', but from the looks of these specs it seems like most people won't need to upgrade to run the new version of Windows unlike previous launches.

Capable
800MHZ CPU
512MB RAM
DirectX 9 Capable Graphics Card

Premium
1GHZ CPU
1GB RAM
128MB Graphics Card RAM
Graphics card that supports Vista's new graphics driver model.

Yes you read the last line correctly Microsoft is now controlling the unified driver for all ATI, Nvidia and other branded cards. Not that a card needs to support the Microsoft driver, but I think compatibility will be much better with it.

So Cheap!

Wow the PS3 will probably launch in the UK priced at £425, that is such a bargain I will probably buy two. That's after I have saved up enough money of course. Might require selling a kidney or two, I can live without two kidneys right?! I will see what the Sony rep says, maybe he can offer me a finance deal or a good price for my soul.

If you hadn't noticed I am being sarcastic, they should call this thing the PS3DO.

Something Amazing

I was just in the kitchen and noticed something very strange about the digital clock on the oven. Unlike most digital clocks, when the oven clock in the kitchen reaches midnight, instead of doing the normal 00:00 thing does a 24:00 thing. Then at one minuet past does the 00:01 thing that all digital clocks do. I will try and take a picture because it just looked odd.

Something Made Me Laugh

For such a crappy day I wasn't expecting so much good stuff in the news.

• A Party Celebrating a decade of Sony VAIO, had a Blue-Ray movie on display (the first pictured laptop is a cake), but then somebody did something terrible and pressed the eject button on the drive to see what the Blue-Ray disk looked like, but out popped a DVD!
  
  [EDIT] The journalist that did the above article was just BSing because a few other journalists that went to the event said so.
  
  
• A Video of the line at the Nintendo booth. OMG!
  
  
• This is a graph showing all the launch prices for a load of consoles. And ye the PS3 isn't expensive next to the Neo Geo and 3DO. Who both of those failed to shift units and 3DO went under because of the high price of the consoles.

Hard Day

I had a horrible day.

Test Went Well

I think my test went well today, except for the fact it's a Saturday. Realised I left my student ID card on my desk at the end of a test I had earlier in the week. That annoys me because I have had that thing for four years and I loose it when I need it for tests and when there is only three weeks left. It has probably been handed in so I can go pick it up, but being a Saturday uni is mostly closed so that will happen next week now.

Mac Ads Again

I am actually surprised that all the webcomics are missing the biggest angle on the new Mac ads. Even my beloved Ctrl+Alt+Del missed it. Anyway here is what should of happened:

Mac: Hi I am a Mac
PC: And I am a PC

Mac: I am SO much cooler than you PC, I spent all last night playing Civilisation 3
PC: O' ye, played Civ 4 yet?

Mac: No what's that?
PC: It's the much improved sequel to Civ 3, and it came out like last year!

Mac: No sorry, not with you
PC: Guild Wars? Lara Croft Tomb Raider Legend? Star Wars Empire At War? The Elder Scrolls Oblivion? Age of Empires 3? The Sims 2? ANY CSI game? ANY Grand Theft Auto?
Mac: Now I got The Sims 1 AND! got Age of Empires 2!

PC: How are you for multiplayer?
Mac: Lame
PC: I thought so

Tests

So this month I have tests for all the modules that I have been studying all year, but for some strange reason my Security Management Modal has it's test tomorrow (yes a Saturday) at 9am. I am sure University in their infinite wisdom did this for our benefit, but the reason why seems to escape me.

The funniest thing about the test tomorrow is that the case study is a telecoms company / ISP / Mobile phone provider who is buying up international companies who do similar business and who is getting concerned about it's security. I find this funny because my 2005 research report was all about a potential terrorist treat against the internet and I spent long hours pondering internet takedown, analysing the terrorist's motives and core competencies (what they are already good at). So I already am familiar with the situation discussed in the case study. Incidentally in case you are interested the conclusion for my report was that the most effective attack would be to suicide bomb a big ISP's server cluster causing complete disruption to all the ISP's customers and so touching an entire country trough loss of service (assuming the ISP has a very centralised service and they hasn't considered a centralised outage already). Anyway off bed, you don't need to wish me luck, computing security just happens to be one of my fortays.

High Price of PS3 and Disk Space

It is believed that the high price of the PS3 is going to be because of the Blu-ray Drive. Sony says that next generation games will need the space and it is the most requested feature from developers. Then Microsoft says that DVD will be adequate and not until the end of this generation before games begin to require more than 9GB of space.

I think both points here are valid and correct as Sony is looking at this from a Japanese perspective and Microsoft is looking at this from a western perspective. Most Japanese games will have ok game graphics and then very high quality pre-rendered cinematics which require a lot of space on disk. Western games have abandoned this formula because game graphics are now good enough that a transition from realtime to pre-rendered isn't necessary and most western games use very little pre-rendered sequences making western games very space efficient. So I think Microsoft was right to stick with DVD, but I wonder if in five years time wither Japanese developers will also abandon pre-rendered sequences.

Wii Virtual Console

IGN has a Video of the virtual console in action. I think the menu will be changed, but it's nice to see it working. No idea why this wasn't in the Nintendo Conference.

Nintendo Insurance Corp

I think Nintendo could make a big killing selling specialised insurance to Wii owners. With all that swinging and hitting with the controller something is going to break. Insurance quotes would consist of sending Nintendo a few digital images of your play area and the price of some of the times you want to insure in that so an accurate quote could be given. This would either be an excellent new moneymaking scheme for Nintendo or under the sheer number of claims bankrupt them. Either way gamers would benefit. Not sure if covering personal injury as well would be such a good idea because those claims are expensive.

Microsoft E3 Conference

Loads of new informations and it looks like 360 is going to be incredibly well established by the time PS3 arrives.

Attachment rate is 4.5 games and 3 accessories per console in the US. Although Peter didn't say wither that included Arcade titles or not, but if the 4.5 number is retail games then that is very impressive for a console.

Namco, Konami, Midway and Sega are supplying a steady stream of retro titles for Arcade.

Lumines will appear on Arcade also (yes the PSP puzzle game with the music), but because of an agreement with Warner-Brothers will also feature HD music videos as part of the game.

By this holiday, 360 will have over 160 games.

For Forza Motorsport 2 Microsoft will be delivering a wireless force feedback steering wheel.

A wireless headset will also be coming this year, as well as the already announced camera and the HD-Drive (which looks nice).

GTA4 will be launched first on XBox360 and will have exclusive episodic content from Marketplace.

Microsoft seems to be trying to make a distinction that PC games are Windows games. This will actually help them sell more copies of windows as it is something Apple cannot compete with Microsoft on (I have no idea why, maybe Jobs doesn't like games very much).

Bill Gates says that before the competition hits the market 360 will be up by 10 million units sold.

Live!, Achievements and gamer profiles are coming to Windows Vista.

Vista will now have built in desktop blade for gamer profile, friends management and game achievements.

Marketplace is coming to windows mobile to promote mobile games. The potential for actually buying a game for 360 and then have it instantly available for mobile as well. Again gamer profiles and messaging is supported by the mobile platform.

Nintendo E3 Conference

Just finished watching the Nintendo conference and it was great. It started with Miyamoto conducting an orchestra with the Wii remote and ended with a four player Wii tennis game.
Wii really looks like it has a fun and intuitive controller. Nintendo will have 27 games on the show floor for people to play so expect plenty of write-ups about it.

An interesting thing that was mentioned was that the console is never turned off. There is 'on' and 'standby' which doesn't use much power, but will allow background downloading and interaction of content like with an Animal Crossing village. So while you are away friends can visit your village and leave messages and stuff.

Halo3 Trailer

Marketplace is impossible so the best place to get the trailer actually appears to be from Bungie.

I didn't like the first two, but for some strange reason I am actually looking forward to this.

UNO Downloading

It's taking it's time.

MGS4 Trailer and Wii Controler Being Used

MGS4 trailer was a little disturbing and not just because of the cum that splatters on the screen at the very end.

Seen the Wii controller being used in Red Steel and where at the Warhawk guy in the Sony demo controlled his plain in a chaotic messy way, even failing to land his plain properly. The Wii controller seems ultra sensitive although I do believe that it will increase the number of gamers suffering from Muscular Skeletal Disorders as that thing does not look comfortable for long periods of play.

Sony Press Conferance

Finally finished watching the press conference and two things. The console is too expensive and $100 for an extra 40GB!! WTF?!

Worst of all is Nintendo's position, they where so careful to make sure nobody copied their controller and then Sony comes along and updates their fifteen year old design, gives it wireless and the exact same capabilities as the Wii controller.

I think the poor looking graphics an a lot of the games is due to developer not pushing the console hard enough because it does look like it can do some nice looking stuff, but OMG Nintendo, their unique selling feature is now not so unique anymore, would suck to be them right now.

PS3 Graphics

It's difficult to tell from the videos as to what the PS3 is capable of, but the graphics from the trailers come in two categories. Either they are so good that I can't tell wither they are in-game or pre-rendered as in the case with Assassin's Creed or they look exactly like an XBox game running on a 360 with poor graphics, but a nice sharp resolution as in Bladestorm.

If you watch the Bladestorm trailer you will realise that it is short and poorly encoded. This is the state of most of the PS3 trailer so far and I believe this is deliberate on Sony's part.

Would link to a few more, but I have an IT Service test at twelve and I want to get there early.

Marketplace Server Broke

Looks like the Marketplace servers are broke as they won't let me download anything now. Don't know how Microsoft is going to fair tomorrow, but things don't look good.

E360 Content

I can hear some faint groaning coming down my cable from the Marketplace servers.

Sunscreen / Suncream

I like looking tanned, at the mo my skin is untanned. I want to look as good as I can for as long as I can. I know that the sun will make my skin look older than I am as I get older, so I wear Sunscreen.

And while on the subject of skincare. Soap is the worst thing you can put on your face. Even Dove which claims to have one quarter moisturising oil and a neutral PH will dry your skin. Instead use a daily face wash or just warm water.

Some Second Life Stuff

So I spent a little while in second life today and I took a few photos:

This is a furry club that I went to. They had some great music.


Me relaxing.


Would you believe this guy has been paid to stand in a box and model clothes! Even stranger later on I discovered Money Chairs which give whoever sit in them money. This is designed to get the popularity rating of clubs and bars up to get a higher ranking on Second Life's search engine.


A rock that actuality tells you what the weather is with 100% accuracy.


O' Rly?
If I right click on this image and select buy I can get this tshirt. Witch I didn't.


I was going to take a picture of a cinema I went to, but I didn't want to get sued or anything, because they where showing the first ten minuets of Hostal.

New Spore Footage

You can see the new trailer over at YouTube Here.

The Numbers they DON'T want YOU to Have

Every been in the situation where you have wanted to speak to a person on the phone who works at Amazon, eBay or PayPal, but been unable to find a telephone number to call?!

Well HardToFind800Numbers.com is just one big list of customer service numbers from big companies who for some reason fail to put their telephone number anywhere on their website.

Viva La Internet!

XBox Live! is like SO Innovative

Next week Microsoft will be singing about how successful Live! has been and will probably start pushing so much content onto Arcade and Marketplace that Sony and Nintendo find it hard to invade into, but the thing is that Nintendo actually did an arcade like service first called Satellaview for the SNES. Players could subscribe to a service, create an Avatar, walk around an Animal Crossing type town and play games that where downloaded through the service.

Random Fact

Super Mario Brothers 2 for the NES was called Doki Doki Panic when it was originally released in Japan and featured slightly different characters.

Network Performance Update

And what is this, what has reduced Microsoft's powerful network to this crawling wreck, a Top Spin 2 demo, that's what!

360 Network Performance

Somehow I don't think Microsoft's network is going to be able to handle E3.



For comparison here is what is should look like:

Consolas

Microsoft has a team of typographers that do a lot of work trying to improve the lives of readers all around the world. They do research on eye tracking, what increases reading speeds, decreases reading speeds and they are a very opinionated bunch, but their latest creation is Clear Type which was originally designed to take advantage of sub-pixel rendering of fonts on LCD screens. With a CRT screen a pixel is either red, green, blue or a combination of those colours from black to white, but with LCD displays each pixel is made up of three concentric diodes which from a few feet away look just like one pixel. So by manipulating the individual diodes instead of the whole pixel a better rendered font can be created (the article in the link above has more on this).

So anyway Clear Type will be making it's way into Vista and for that the typography team have invested a lot of time and effort creating some new fonts as the ones we are using today where created with the limitations of pixels.

One of the fonts they have developed is called Consolas which has been specifically designed for programmers, who incidentally spend an awful lot of time looking at text.

Today Consolas can be downloaded for Visual Studio 2005 from Here. I have installed it, it might take a little getting used to, but on a CRT Clear Type just looks like antialiased text anyway, but below is a before and after Clear Type.

Sometime in the Early Hours of Tomorrow Morning

01.02.03 04/05/06

Apple's New Ad Campaign

So Apple has a new US ad campaign (hope I doesn't make it to the UK) called Gat A Mac. This is yet another in a growing list of human conversation advertisements that Americans are being subjected to. The US has had these kind of ads since they where being sold cigarettes at the dawn of television. Even the FlintStones once proclaimed the benefits of Winston Cigarettes. Although that was before people realised about the Effect it was having.

Anyway after a long absence this kind of one-on-one conversation ad is back. Phillips is doing it with their ShaveEverywhere.com campaign which is cheesy, but then the average American finds it difficult to talk about male grooming so that's ok. And then there is the Game Killers by Axe (known as Linx in the UK) whitch is also trying to be you're best friend.

My problem with this kind of advert is that they pretend to have a conversation with me, but they don't have an adult conversation with me. The issue is especially present in the Phillips campaign. There are glaring details left-out from the conversations just like in the good-old days of the tobacco advert and I find that frustrating. Talk to me, pitch me a product, even show me some of those Sony Third Place Ads again, but not this silly conversation stuff!

It Has Past

Half an hour later than it should have XBox.com has been updated. MyXbox looks very different and you can now send and receive messages from the web.

No dashboard update and download seepds are back to normal, but I suspect not many people are downloading right now.

XBox360 E3 Content List

Only a few hours until Live! is backup and we can all see what has changed, but until then The Good Major has posted a lit of what will be released on Marketplace over E3:

Playable game demos and/or trailers from highly anticipated titles like:


• Crackdown (Microsoft Game Studios)
  
• Dead or Alive® : Xtreme 2 (Tecmo)
  
• The Lord of the Rings ™, The Battle for Middle Earth™ II (EA Los Angeles)
  
• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Capcom)
  
• Moto GP™ ’06 (THQ)
  
• Sonic the Hedgehog™ (Sega)
  
• Splinter Cell Double Agent ™ (Ubisoft)
  
• Test Drive Unlimited (Atari)
  
• Viva Piñata (Microsoft Game Studios)
  
• Plus a flood of HD trailers from games that have yet to be announced
  
  
  
• Call of Duty®2 – New Multiplayer Map Packs (Activision)
  
• The release of UNO on Xbox Live Arcade
  
• Game with Fame celebrity gaming sessions with stars like Jenny McCarthy, Method Man and Panic Channel (Featuring Dave Navarro, Stephen Perkins, Chris Chaney and Steve Isaacs).
  
• Play and Win contests with the latest Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade titles
  
• Exclusive high-definition blockbuster movie trailer downloads
  
• Limited edition E3 Gamerpics and Themes
  
• A Backstage Pass to see developers preparing for E3

Now I don't know about you, but i wasn't expecting a Viva Pinata demo so soon.

Name Development Comments On The Wii

This is a company that just makes up names. So I was interested in what they Had To Say.

Strange Game Controllers

Strange Game Controllers

Something Not Right in the Land of Live!

When I first started downloading stuff from live my little NetMetre program display would all red and I would be getting a constant 250K/s download rate, which is my top download speed. Right now however I don't seem to be getting anything like that at all. This has actually been getting progressively worse, supposedly as more people have been getting 360s and downloading stuff. So I am thinking the maintenance tomorrow might upgrade the network a little and prevent Live from disappearing from the internet come E3.

No Dashboard Update

Tuesday XBoxLive!, XBox.com and the XBox Forums will be down for maintenance, but there won't be a dashboard upgrade.

HA!

A while ago I did a Post about the research Microsoft did at Cambridge with camera effects and stuff to make using a webcam more fun. Call me crazy, but I still think Microsoft will be using this with the 360 cam.

Anyway I don't know wither it just applies to the Logitech Orbit Cam, but you can indeed do all these cool visual effects with that camera, Check This Video.

Live! Will Be Down Tuesday

Major Says That Tuesday between 10am and 11pm GMT XBox Live! will be down. No word on why, but I suspect an upgrade because the only time previously Live! has ever been down was because of the upgrade from the old Live! system to the nice new 360 version.

Rumours in trend at the moment are:

• Camera support
  
  
• A DirectTV blade for streaming TV and cinema

Additional: here are a couple more rumours that have been going around:

• Background downloading of marketplace content so you can do other stuff while a demo or movie is downloading.
  
  
• Ability to stream video from your computer without a copy of Windows Media Centre Edition.

Metal Gear Solid 4 - Realtime Devkit Demo

YouTube has a Video of MGS4 running in realtime on the PS3 devkit. This thing looks very good, snake's hair looks especially good, but to achieve this I wonder if they did the same trick that EverQuest II pulled where each character was highly detailed, but the environments where low poly.

PS3 Real Time Footage- Brother in Arms

So I was checking my RSS feeds when I seen This on DIGG which is a link to IGN and a Brothers in Arms Video supposedly running on the PS3.

If you read the comments, some people are debating the framerate, but if you actually watch the video you will see as I did that this video is so blatantly not realtime. Yet this is a trailer for E3 2006 so that tells me Sony will be pulling the same trick that they did last year. *sigh*

Joystiq actually constructs an argument

Joystiq has actually done a well constructed and intelligent Article on Wii and why it doesn't compare to any other made-up name.

And to fill in their table:

• Wii
  Wii sounds like 'we,' which emphasizes that the console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.

Slamming

64mm is a Skateboarding video production site with a Videocast of skater videos which is nice, but This latest video with the Grom Twins (Nic & Tristan) was something else. These kids are just eight, skate like pros and slam hard. Literally if it wasn't for their protective padding they would both have serious longterm injuries, yet they skate like pros. Maybe it is the combination of not caring about the broken ribs and blurred vision that has made these kids so good. Maybe we could all learn something from them and forgo personal safety when trying to achieve something. If your head hits the concrete then just standup (if you can) and keep trying until you get it right.

Japan doesn't like the name either

From Joystiq on what Japan is saying:

post 39: "Wee is an english baby word for pee or penis according to foreign forums. This might be bad. May be this is why foreigner's response is pretty bad."
posts 47-49: "I think Revolution was a better name."
posts 60, 62: "It is better naming than Revolution."
post 116: "It looks good if you write it, but awkward if you say it."
post 122: "'Can I have Wii.' It's little bit embarrassing to say it."

The Name

I can't do a serious post on the name without it sounding stupid so just read what Matt Says because I agree with him.

The Nintendo Wii

The Nintendo Wii! WE, oui!?
The name has been met with a unified WTF!
I like the mature stand the IGN staff have approached this news however:

Mark Ryan (IGN Guides)

Erik Brudvig (IGN Guides)

Craig Harris (Nintendo DS)

EDIT: Some more below.

Steve Butts (PC)

IGN Roundtable Discussion

Theme Song

A Wii list of games for the new console

Bankshot Billiards Achievement

So for the past week and a half I have been trying to get the Bankshot Billiards Addict achievement on Bankshot Billiards 2, which requires players to complete 200 games. I wasn't originally going to bother, but a game of three ball doesn't last very long and it's something to do while I am listening to a podcast. So it was only a matter of time before I got the achievement, today I got it, but What I wasn't expecting however is to now be ranked 36 in the world on 3 ball. Which is nice, but I have only been playing against the easy AI and thats only because the hard AI drags games out too long. It's not like I have any skills at this.

Crystal Ball Gazing (E3 2006)

For E3 there are so many rumours flying around here is a summery of what you can probably expect:

Microsoft

• Will be showing off a few new titles (this is actually confirmed).
  
• Putting a lot of E3 content up for download from Marketplace. Including videos and some playable E3 floor demos.
  
• We will hear all about the new camera accessory. Which will be used by the up coming UNO card game on Arcade.
  
• And I suspect they will also launch some new Live! Arcade titles during E3.

Nintendo

• The name of the Revolution finally spoken.
  
• Playable floor demos.
  
• No pricing.
  
• No launch date.
• Something about an American DS launch.

Sony

• A cover-up on how badly the PSP has been doing with movie sales AND games sales.
  
• Redesigned controller unveiled.
  
• More CGI movies from top Hollywood studios showcasing what Sony would like their games to look like.
  
• Talk about the online hub and how wonderful it is going to be, but with a mention that "we are not directly competing with XBoxLive!" as if.
  
• Playable games running, but only on dev kits behind closed doors.
  
• Possible price announcement.

Additional: This year Microsoft will have 165 game stations!

A Soda at The Mall

So the wizards tower has been released for Oblivion and the word is that this add-on is ok because it's cheap (150 points) and you get a tower, herb garden and a battle spirit that you can summon when in combat. The thing I found most interesting about this however is how people on forums are talking about how cheap this is in dollars as they always choose a fast food simmily.

Common $1.85, that's like a soda at the mall.

Burgers have been used a lot too!

Untapped Markets

Been thinking about untapped markets that video games haven't entered yet and there are several. My final year project doesn't require players to be able to see. Amputees that only have one hand or people with other hand disabilities, or even people that want to multitask in a way I would rather not think of will actively seek games that they can play one-handed.
There is a population of people out there that suffer from a type of epilepsy that was probably discovered when they where playing a video game as a child and can't allow themselves to watch any flashing lights or repeated patterns. For epileptics the conditions for them to have a fit are very specific and there is software out there which will monitor what is being displayed on a screen and produce a graph of probability of a fit occurring based on what is displayed. The worst offending titles are older, so called 8bit titles, so many newer games would probably pass such a test without incident.

I really do think that a sticker on the back of a gamebox describing the control interface of the game or wither or not the game is safe of epileptics would benefit the disability community and grow the gaming population a little.