With this you can command the element of Wind!
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The much touted and recently ported Game Dev Story caught my eye whilst checking for app updates. I had heard of the game and knew its general flavour. What I didn’t know was what a complete attention hog it would be!Look at me! it cries, “Your new game Finally Fanny has sold 692,194 copies.” . So I do what any sane person would do. I start on the next project….then another one….then another one. My company Superfuntimes is doing ok so far, I’m currently developing for the Sonny Playstatus with several #1 titles under my belt.
In a nutshell the game is a menu driven business sim where you hire your staff, select a genre and theme then wait it out until you get
the results. In a rather meta reviewing way it manages to score highly on its four game attributes. Fun , Creativity, Graphics and Sound. The simple menus are wrapped with pixel art and tones that only a cartridge driven console could make. It sets you tasks you can complete in 5 minutes of play in your spare time that edge you towards a much bigger game and it does it in a way that very original. I haven’t seen this kind of game since the old days of Detroit, the fun but ever so buggy car business sim. Due to its retro yet stylish presentation it also work perfectly well on my HTC HeroThe biggest thing this game has done is made me realise how real a platform for games Android, Windows and Apple phones are. This is exactly what the industry needs more of, portable games, not console games ported to handhelds. If you have any interest in the games industry you need to outlay £1-2 on this right now, you won’t regret it.
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Planting 3D vision glasses on your face for World of Warcraft is a worthwhile experience. When you fire up the game you will have a couple of extra settings in the Advanced Graphics section in addition to the depth modifier built in to 3D vision. The two sliders can be adjusted on the fly to fine tune and will probably need to be altered on a user basis to account for taste and eyes.
Once you get it to good spot however, WOW. There is a supurb “model village” effect, all of the models look simply amazing and it really adds a sense of scale to the enemies you face.
All the model, world geometry and spell details work perfectly. The models and the art style come alive with an extra level of detail that as apparent when you view in 3D. Things like floating crystals around weapons become more prnounced when they have depth, in fact many models look different due to their newly imbued chubbiness. Mounts in particular look a lot grander and bolder.
There are several quirks like the interaction between the clouds and skybox which looks like it is being rendered closer that it should be. Also directx 11 mode currently appears to remove the extra 3D options from the game leaving you with just the 3D vision depth slide to play with which removes a lot of the graphical improvements. I suppose i can’t hold it against them too much as it is only their for testing at the moment. The mouse cursor also takes some getting used to, you effectly have to refocus your eyes to look at the cursor as it sits on the UI level.
The only major graphical problem is the new fluid water which seems to render the edges twice with a small gap between them. This spoils the experience so I would recommend setting the water to either the old animated water or the lowest setting for the new water which renders it as a opaque liquid.
In all the game has some minor flaws when presented in 3D. It does however give you an extremely beautiful and flexible world which feels richer and more alive. This makes me believe 3D has a place in gaming.
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Now that I’ve got my new system running its time to start churning out some information about how well various games work in 3D and if it brings anything new to the table. Before I do that however I thought it best to give a quick overview of nVidia 3D vision itself and what is needed for it.
First off this is by far the best 3D experience I’ve seen. Although it changes depending on the content you are viewing you can expect to see models displayed in 3D in a 3D world with a realistic amount of depth. Mileage may vary depending on your eyes but for me I can comfortable sit there with the glasses on for a couple of hours without any problems. I was slightly worried that I was going to be disappointed, this was not the case in the slightest. This might not be the final technology however looking forward 3D is going to be the future.3D Vision works by rendering each image on the screen from two slightly different angles. Using active shutter glasses it then blocks each eye rapidly in sync with the screen so that each eye only sees the one image. Your brain then does what it normally does and combines the two images in to a stereoscopic view.
Most modern games can be used with 3D vision. Results vary from game to game however nVidia does have a chart showing recommendations. 3D vision ready titles are those which have had special attention to 3D and will often have old school colour based 3D as well, these include Lost Planet 2, Dead Rising 2, Batman: AA and Civ5 . Other games will still work but may have various quirks. The main offender tends to be the cursor or cross-hair. The problem being that you have a targeter on a 2D plain in the 3D world. nVidia has work around for this where it disables the game reticule and adds its own one but this isn’t possible on every single game. If there are any know quirks for each game an overlay will tell you that you should turn off Bloom or HDR lighting.
For 3D Blu-ray playback you will need to buy software separately. The usual company’s like cyberlink and roxio have these for sale however they are currently at a bit of a premium. I haven’t currently got any 3D blu-ray disks to test but I’m sure I will report back in time.- A modern nVidia graphics card, anything from the 8800 GT onwards. Low end ones will do it however you should take in to account that your computer will be rendering each image twice so there is a big performance hit.
- A 120Hz 3D Vision ready monitor. You will also need a dual link DVI cable which is normally supplied with the monitor
- 3D vision Glasses and IR sender kit
- Windows Vista or Windows 7
Once you have those it should just be a case of setting your refresh rates to 120hz and installing the 3D vision software. The software setup will then guide you through the process. The result…..
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Too much spare time over the last couple of weeks caused me to buy parts for a new computer. To get the best prices I shopped around and bought from 3 different suppliers: Ebuyer, Overclockers.co.uk and Scan.Overclockers.co.uk had previously be problematic when I had dealt with them a few years ago. Now however they are under new management. I ordered items from the on a bank holiday and they arrived the next morning at 9:30 am . WITCHCAFT . Overclockers get a big thumbs up and so do DPD who actually deliver packages on time.
Scan delayed the order by a day due to a case going out of stock, I cancelled the case and reordered a similar one it from Overclockers who then delivered it the next day. Thumbs up Overclockers and DPD again.
Ebuyer ,well they dispatched a box which arrived the next day. Unfortunately one week later I’m now going to have to pick up the other box from City Link. They did at least refund me the delivery cost although I expect I’m going to have a few pound on my phone bill from calling City Link terrible customer support who had their system switched off most of last week.
Oh and if you buy an SSD don’t forget to by a 2.5″ to 3.5″ drive adaptor so that you can mount it
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It has been over a year now since i received my HTC Hero handset. Usually around this time i would be itching to get my hands on the latest upgrade. This year however I’m not chomping at the bit quite as much to move on, why exactly is that? I simply have very little reason to upgrade. I’ve long had a dislike for Apple’s ability to churn out and sell their yearly iPhone upgrades which lack features of their competitors but I’m starting to see method in their madness.I love Android, its open and forthcoming with updates. I’m currently sporting the Elelinux Froyo 2.2 Special Edition on my Hero which is great and a slot smoother than the stock HTC Sense 1.5. The problem is that i have taken away half of the reasons for upgrading, I already have all of the additional software features and will have all of the features of 2.3 when that is on general release.
Now you might be thinking Apple also do iOS upgrades for their older handsets so what is the difference? Thats correct you can for example upgrade a 3GS to iOS4 however it doesn’t have all the features and often performance drops. In short Apple do make clear jumps in terms of Software upgrades between iPhone generations even if it is artificial.
We we are left with Hardware upgrades as the big means to push the upgrading path along. I love specs as much as the next geek but how I’m finding it difficult to get excited enough to jump to the Nexus S for example. The specs are roughly double by Hero but in the real world would i really see that much better? -
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It didn’t take long for me to swap a spec over to shadow. As i hit 81 and paid a visit to my local trainer I picked up the new mind spike ability. I wasn’t expecting much from this, it removes DOTs. Thats horrible for shadow priests right? Wrong
After swapping a spec over to shadow to check it out i got to grips with its intended use. Typically DOTs are wasted on trash and leveling mobs as they die to quickly. In steps mind spike, it does a nice bit of damage, reduces the cast time of mind blast and increases the crit chance of mind blast. These effects stack 3 times, this leaves with you a mind blast which is instant with a +90% crit chance.
So shadow priests effectively have two modes of attack, DOTs for long fights and Direct Damage for short fights. This simple spell has made a big difference and is a welcome addition.
Next stop Inner Will
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TuppenceABag won the honor of being my first character to level up in Cataclysm. Last night she held her breath and went down to vashj ir to see what all the hub-bub was about.
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One of the big changes for Wrath of the Lich king was the mantra “Bring the player not the class”. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of moaning and groaning about it homogenising the game but is that really the case?
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Before we out geared him Loken killed more players than anyone else Its honest to say my love of Warcraft has lapsed over the last few months. Content burnout mixed with the knowledge that the gear slate is going to be wiped clean shortly has taken its toll.
Wrath of the lich king has been a mixed bag for me. Over all it boils down to the old gameplay quirks being “improved”. During the late TBC and WOLTK expansions there have been lots of changes that improve the game on paper but these changes ended up changing the game in bad unexpected ways as well. One place a lot of these intersect is the heroic dungeons which has lead them to be not fun but in my opinion a chore.
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Ludological 
