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Star Wars: The Old Republic Sarlacc Enforcer Class Unveiled 27

Today BioWare unveiled the most impressive new class yet seen for their upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Sarlacc Enforcers are "paragons of patience and planning, always waiting for the right moment to pounce on their quarry – even if it takes one thousand years." Gamespot had an interview with the game's developers to get a clear picture on how such a unique and innovative class was designed. Quoting: "Well, this is a stealth class, so the soloing experience of the Sarlacc enforcer is going to be a little slow. [This character] spends a lot of time slowly sneaking into position before unleashing potent close-ranged attacks, such as 'devour.' But once exposed, the enforcer heavily relies on companion characters to lure enemies close, so he/it can unleash his/its close-ranged attacks. However, the enforcer shines in a group, especially when paired with a Jedi consular that can knock enemies toward him. At this point, the Sarlacc enforcer can use his/its powerful suite of damage-over-time abilities, like 'digest' and 'regurgitate.'"
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Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83

dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."

Comment I think the server benchmarks look good (Score 1) 744

I think the results for Linux sound pretty good. For one thing they compared the bleeding edge release of Windows (Win Server 2003) to the near end of release cycle of Linux (2.4 kernel). And its Linux implementing Windows protocol with Samba. Even with the deck stacked in Windows favor on this test, it only managed a 86% to 95% improvement in the server function that it should do best. Even at this level I'll take the freedom, cost, security, and stability of Linux over Windows. While enterprises are locked into Windows Server 2003 for at least the next 2 years, Linux users will be enjoying the performance of at least 2 more kernel releases. On the test method: it shows Windows Block Size as 64K, but Linux Block Size as 'default'. What is the default size for Redhat Advanced Server 2.1 and 8.0? Isn't this going to be a key parameter in file server performance? Was this changed as part of their tuning effort? If this was a valid benchmark then it gives us something to shoot for (and I believe the new kernel has improvements in SMP and 'no-copy' file transfers). If its a heavily biased test then its another example of Microsoft having trouble speaking the truth.

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