Modern Warfare 3 Released 201

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday November 09, 2011 @04:32AM from the now-with-gunnier-guns dept.

Activision released the latest iteration of their blockbuster first-person shooter franchise yesterday, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, narrowly avoiding a whole year-long gap between this one and the last Call of Duty game. Still, analysts estimated pre-orders at 9 million worldwide, and expect the game to generate another billion dollars in sales, give or take. Reviews for the game range from "amazing" to "slightly less than amazing." Eurogamer sums it up simply: "Modern Warfare 3 is exactly the game you expect. It's conservative in every sense of the word, a paean to military superiority which never ventures far beyond gameplay parameters that were set in stone in 2007. ... With such a well-rehearsed recipe to follow, there's more room here for innovation than there is for improvement. There are plenty who would love to see Call of Duty dragged through the mud for its lack of new ideas, but the game itself is too confidently constructed, too generous with its pleasures, to deserve any lasting vitriol. This is a ferocious and satisfying game that knows exactly what players expect, and delivers on that promise with bullish confidence."

Comment Re:Excellent! While they're at it... (Score 1) 212

by Kalroth on Monday January 31, 2011 @01:46PM (#35058306) Attached to: Sandy Bridge Chipset Shipments Halted Due To Bug

I believe this won't be possible before Intel releases their Z68 chipset, so you're out of luck if your motherboard got a P67 chipset.

It is possible to do it with software on motherboards with the H67 chipset: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4113/lucid-enables-quick-sync-with-discrete-graphics-on-sandy-bridge

Comment Re:Doesn't everybody do that? (Score 2, Informative) 397

by Kalroth on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @09:11AM (#34172444) Attached to: Bethesda Criticized Over Buggy Releases

When game developers can see that people are willing to pay for beta access to games, what is their incentive to ship a polished game? Most consoles have online connectivity as well, so patching up later is usually not a problem either. I don't see this changing anytime soon, with quarterly budgets being more important than quality.

As for Fallout: New Vegas; the bugs were totally expected from anyone that played Fallout 3, which was also full of bugs. And it is not just gameplay bugs, the entire engine is extremely buggy and the game was neigh unplayable for a lot of PC players, but thankfully a very clever developer at http://www.transgaming.com/business/swiftshader made a custom D3D9.dll which corrects some of the engine bugs (like NOP all debug calls, ignore some buggy shaders, etc.):
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34778 for the nVidia version.
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34970 for the ATI version.
(The custom dll was made for Fallout 3 and not Fallout: New Vegas. Yet it fixes the same issues in both games.)

Note: the game is very, very good -- without the bugs. Too bad that it is the community that has to fix the bugs.

Comment Re:Acronym courtesy missing... (Score 1) 128

by Kalroth on Thursday October 14, 2010 @07:58AM (#33891914) Attached to: Valve Announces <em>Dota 2</em>

Please, if you encounter new acronyms or new words on the internet, follow common sense and try searching for them. Google is especially helpful in this regard.

Odds are that if you don't know what "DotA" means, then you wont know what "Defense of the Ancients" means anyways.

Future Ubisoft Games To Require Constant Internet Access 497

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 27, 2010 @07:46AM from the this-will-go-over-well dept.

Following up on our discussion yesterday of annoying game distribution platforms, Ubisoft has announced the details of their Online Services Platform, which they will use to distribute and administer future PC game releases. The platform will require internet access in order to play installed games, saved games will be stored remotely, and the game you're playing will even pause and try to reconnect if your connection is lost during play. Quoting Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "This seems like such a bizarre, bewildering backward step. Of course we haven't experienced it yet, but based on Ubi’s own description of the system so many concerns arise. Yes, certainly, most people have the internet all the time on their PCs. But not all people. So already a percentage of the audience is lost. Then comes those who own gaming laptops, who now will not be able to play games on trains, buses, in the park, or anywhere they may not be able to find a WiFi connection (something that’s rarely free in the UK, of course – fancy paying the £10/hour in the airport to play your Ubisoft game?). Then there's the day your internet is down, and the engineers can’t come out to fix it until tomorrow. No game for you. Or any of the dozens of other situations when the internet is not available to a player. But further, there are people who do not wish to let a publisher know their private gaming habits. People who do not wish to report in to a company they’ve no affiliation with, nor accountability to, whenever they play a game they’ve legally bought. People who don’t want their save data stored remotely. This new system renders all customers beholden to Ubisoft in perpetuity whenever they buy their games."

EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers) 308

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @02:09AM from the blame-it-on-the-torrents dept.

captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."

Submission + - Russia's New Holiday: Programmer's Day (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by

Glyn Moody

on Saturday September 12, 2009 @05:26AM

Glyn Moody writes: "Russia's President Medvedev has decreed a new holiday for his country: Programmer's Day. Appropriately enough, it will be celebrated on the 256th day of the year: September 13th (September 12th for a leap year). Do programmers deserve their own holiday ahead of other professions? Should the rest of the world follow suit?"

Submission + - Sam Ramji, Microsoft's Open Source Guru Moving On (typepad.com)

Submitted by

barking_at_airplanes

on Saturday September 12, 2009 @05:16AM

barking_at_airplanes writes: "Some called him crazy 3-1/2 years ago when he joined Microsoft to run the Open Source Software Lab but he endured and made real differences to how Microsoft treats Open Source and how open source people now view Microsoft. Sam Ramji is now heading back to Silicon Valley to join a Cloud Computing startup. Sam comments in his announcement:
46 months later, I am amazed at the changes that have occurred for the company, for the team I belonged to, and the sentiments of the industry.
It's a statement that 46 months ago few Slashdotters would have thought could come true! With Sam leaving, can Microsoft's positive momentum into Open Source continue successfully?"

Comment Dupe (Score 1) 1

by Kalroth on Friday September 11, 2009 @07:39AM (#29387887) Attached to: Turing given posthumous apology

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/09/09/10/2221249/Alan-Turing-Gets-an-Apology-From-Prime-Minister-Brown

Submission + - An Early Look At Ragnar Tornquist's The Secret Wor (eurogamer.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11, 2009 @04:03AM

An anonymous reader writes: At the recent Penny Arcade Expo, Funcom revealed a ton of new information on The Secret World, an MMO being designed by Ragnar Tornquist that's aiming to buck several of the genre's common trends. Tornquist also spoke later about several of the game's features and some of the design philosophy that they're working with. The game does not have a traditional class or leveling system. Instead, players gather the powers they want to use and align themselves with various factions of their choosing. "We want you to feel part of a world where the conspiracies are so dense and the politics is so thick that, when you join the secret society as a novice at the very beginning, it's this vast organization, and you'll have no idea how it works initially." PvP will be largely segregated from PvE, and new players will be able to contribute in fights that involve more experienced players. Funcom released some concept art and in-game screenshots for The Secret World to go along with a new cinematic trailer.

Submission + - Motorola unveils Open Source Android phone and Soc (ostatic.com)

Submitted by

ruphus13

on Friday September 11, 2009 @02:20AM

ruphus13 writes: "Motorola announced their Android handsets today, along with a 'socially aware' application layer called MotoBlur. The Motorola Cliq is expected in a few weeks. From the post, "Dr. Sanjay K. Jha, Co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of the company's Mobile Devices division, unveiled Motorola's Android platform play. Motorola is going to be placing large bets on the open source operating system over the coming years, but is coming out of the gate with just two Android phones...It will arrive before the holidays. Key to both of the phones, and key to Motorola's overall Android strategy is a new interface and application layer called MotoBlur. It's focused on "a single stream" for social networking features, software updates, messages, syncing, e-mails, videos, photos, and more...The Cliq phone has a 5-megapixel camera, slide-out keyboard, 24 frame-per-second video capabilities, GPS, a headphone jack, an advanced browser from Google, integrated Exchange service, and Google roaming services including Google voice search, access to maps, Google calendar, and more. It also provides one-click access to Android Market and the thousands of Android applications there."

Submission + - NASA Scientists Levitate Mice (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by

sterlingda

on Friday September 11, 2009 @12:16AM

sterlingda writes: "Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals. Experiments are being run to test how they respond to microgravity, both physically and psychologically."

Engineering Students Build Robotic Foosball Players 59

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday April 04, 2009 @09:32AM from the taking-over-the-world-one-table-at-a-time dept.

Andre writes "As their final-year project, an eight-man team of fourth-year electrical and computer-engineering students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, constructed a robot-controlled, motor-and-actuator foosball table capable of playing against human opponents in a two-on-two fashion; one mechanical player controls two defensive rods (goalies and full-backs) and the other controls two offensive rods (half-backs and forwards). They considered the computers 'medium-skilled' players in that they were very competitive against beginners and fairly competitive against intermediates."

Quebec Says 'Non' To English-Only Video Games 554

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday April 04, 2009 @12:04AM from the cette-ligne-est-mal-écrit-en-français dept.

daveofdoom writes "The French-Canadian government of Quebec is saying 'non' to English-only video games if French versions are available. 'It's causing a lot of consternation among retailers and gamers alike, who fear the rules will lead to delays in video games arriving in the province, and may not accomplish what the law intends, which is to promote and protect the French language.' This is a ridiculous rule, as game companies can simply stop creating French versions of games to bypass the restriction."

MIT Building Batteries Using Viruses 98

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday April 03, 2009 @07:01PM from the i've-caught-a-battery dept.

thefickler writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are now using viruses to build cathodes for Lithium-Ion batteries. Three years ago these same researchers found they could build an anode using viruses. Creating both the anode and cathode using viruses will make batteries easy to build. This nanoscale battery technology will allow batteries to be lightweight and to 'take the shape of their container' rather than creating containers for the batteries, which could open up new possibilities for car and electronics manufacturers."

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