DAoC 1.84F Notes 05:30 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: MMOG (1 comment)
Mythic posted the Dark Age of Camelot version 1.84F notes this afternoon which include even more Valk love in the from of some sword procs. Other changes include tweaks to master level experience (it's easier to get now), the dock near DC was moved across the water like the ones at Bled and Beno, plus all sorts of other minor changes and tweaks as well.

Pendragon got switched to the Gaheris pve playset too, in case you want to check it out (for the weekend).

Take Two Stock Woes; DNF Release Dates? 05:20 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (21 comments)
Take Two recorded a $50.2 million dollar lose for the last quarter as shares slumped 17.53 percent. The filing also mentions some Duke Nukem Forever release date rumors and incentives:

According to the 10-Q, March saw Take-Two and 3D Realms renegotiate the original contract for Duke Nukem Forever, which began back in 1997. Under the original deal, 3D Realms was to receive some $6 million from Take-Two to develop the title. Now, the Texas-based developer will receive only $4,250 for the oft-delayed game, when it is completed.

When will that be? Well, 3D Realms now has a fairly large incentive to get Duke Nukem Forever done by the end of the year. The 10-Q also reveals that Take-Two has offered the studio $500,000 in the form of a promissory note if the game sees "commercial release" by December 31, 2006. The deal applies only to the PC version of the game, although it was announced for the Xbox and the PlayStation 2 in 2001 and is rumored to be in development for the Xbox 360.

Top 20 Best Selling Console Games in May 05:13 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Consoles: General News (5 comments)
Just as the headline reads, here are the top-20 best selling console games in the month of May:

1. New Super Mario Bros-Nintendo (DS)
2. Kingdom Hearts II-Square Enix (PS2)
3. Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes-Nintendo (DS)
4. God of War-Sony Computer Entertainment (PS2)
5. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter-UbiSoft (Xbox 360)
6. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion-Bethesda Softworks(Xbox 360)
7. MLB '06: The Show-Sony Computer Entertainment (PS2)
8. Guitar Hero (with Guitar)-RedOctane (PS2)
9. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas-Take Two Interactive (PS2)
10. Kingdom Hearts-Square Enix (PS2)
11. X-Men: The Official Game-Activision (PS2)
12. Over The Hedge-Activision (PS2)
13. Fight Night Round 3-Electronic Arts (Xbox 360)
14. FIFA World Cup 2006-Electronic Arts (PS2)
15. The Godfather: The Game-Electronic Arts (PS2)
16. Gran Turismo 4-Sony Computer Entertainment (PS2)
17. Battlefield 2: Modern Combat-Electronic Arts(Xbox 360)
18. Midnight Club 3: Dub Ed Remix-Take Two Interactive (PS2)
19. Major League Baseball 2K6-Take Two Interactive (PS2)
20. Major League Baseball 2K6-Take Two Interactive (Xbox 360

Bungie Weekly Update 05:09 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Consoles: Xbox 360 (0 comments)
This week's Bungie update celebrates the elventy billion games of Halo 2 that have been played, plus breaks the stats down in pie charts and what not. The Mister Chief sketch is pretty scary too.

Blizzard Bits 05:03 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (1 comment)
Pretty slow one today, eh? To help grease things up Blizzard released a new WarCraft III map called Tech Wars plus also updated The Burning Throne Bestiary with fungal giants and ogre lords.

Meanwhile, WorldofWar.net has the news that Blizzard banned some 30,000 WoW accounts. Plus, previews some upcoming content.

Battlefield 2142 Demo Plans 04:51 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (5 comments)
BF2142.com has the poop that the plan is to release a demo for Battlefield 2142 ten days before the game's release. Plus word of an open beta:

DICE- The demo for BF2 went out about 10 days before launch if I remember correctly, I am sure something similar will be the deal for 2142. We are also going to throw out an open beta in the beginning of August. The beta is predominately to learn about large scale issues, i.e. when we have 10 000's of people playing at the same time, eliminating some of the problems we have encountered after launch previously in the franchise. Keep your eyes open to join.

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 01:30 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (3 comments)

Cases

• The RAIDMAX X-1 case - Modders-Inc

  Cooling
  

• Zalman CNPS8000 Cooler - Pro-Clockers

  PPU
  

• ATI's Physics? - GD Hardware

  Video
  

• eVGA GeForce 7950 GX2 1 GB - GamePC Labs
• Inno3D's GeForce 7600GS - nV News
• Sapphire "Ultimate" x1600 PRO 256MB Graphics Card - Virtual-Hideout
• Sapphire ATI Radeon Ultimate X1600PRO PCI Express - Tweaknews
• XFX GeForce 7900 GT 256MB PCI-E XXX Edition - TheTechLoungue

Game Reviews 01:15 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)

PC

• Auto Assault - Computer Games.ro - 83%
• GRAW - Boomtown - 6/10
• Namco Museum 50th Anniversary - Boomtown - 4/10
• Rogue Trooper - PC.IGN - 8/10

  Xbox
  

• And 1 Streetball - Xbox.IGN - 4.1/10
• Stacked - 2.5/5 - Gamespy

  PS2
  

• GTA Liberty City Stories - Gamespy - 3.5/5

  DS
  

• New Super Mario Bros. - The Mushroom Kingdom - 9.6/10

In Other News... 01:00 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (26 comments)
TGIF, like whoa. You might've notice a sneak invasion of the "Ask" stuff. Truth be known, I sent a random Q off to Tim, he answered quickly, so I posted it. Tim Sweeney is the man. I also asked Ken from Irrational as well, since he used to do some "Ask" stuff here. Maybe an "Ask Bioshock" or whatever. I dunno. I don't have anyone else's current email so we'll go from there. Right now, I'm thinking "Ask Bill Roper" and maybe someone else. I think five is around our cap. We shall see...

In my spare time I think I'm going to be taking over some fansites for games I have come to love the past few years. As many of you know, I used to work on a buncha Planets. Plus others. We have a big community of sites on the Vaults and Planets, and since things are slow I wouldn't mind helping out a bit. Dark Age of Camelot would of course be my current love. Nothing official of course, but I have expressed my interest to the powers that be. So lets all be nice to Evil Homer / Fragmaster. :)

Today's question:

What games are you currently playing?

Why Can't GPUs do Round Polygons?

Tim Sweeney: GPU rasterizers are based on triangles because rasterization (the process of determining which screen pixels fall inside the polygon) is very simple that way, since all of the arithmetic is projective and linear.

Curved surface representations (spheres, conic sections, bicubics) are more difficult to rasterize and clip, and there aren't well defined standards in this area. With modern hardware, it wouldn't bee so hard to do this, but would be a very difficult political process to try to get the 3D industry (GPU makers, microsoft, 3d modelling program vendors, game developers) to agree on a common curved surface format.

The Witcher Screenshot 06:50 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (5 comments)
CD Projekt has released some new media for The Witcher, a stand-alone RPG powered by BioWare's Neverwinter Nights engine. They'll be releasing a new screenshot every day this week. Here's the first:

(Click to Enlarge!)

Infinite Dungeons Interview 06:35 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (0 comments)
Our good buddy Maximus from the Neverwinter Nights Vault conjured up an interview with Jason 'Elidrin' Lowry, co-creator of BioWare's latest premium module "Infinite Dungeons".

Unless BioWare busts out the ass beating stick, Infinite Dungeons may be the last NWN 1 premium module since Atari is now fully supporting Neverwinter Nights 2.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Update 04:46 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (10 comments)
GSC Gameworld's Oleg Yavorsky knocked up the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. boards with an update about how the game is shaping up (thanks Blue's News):

Rumour 1. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had been turned into corridor-like scripted shooter, while A-Life was removed.

Yes. After playing Serious Sam 2 we decided - "why should we bother implementing that A-Life" - let's add more gore and 'stiff' scripts as the player moves alongside the 'corridor'.

Test Drive Unlimited: Lotus Screenshots 03:30 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Racing (14 comments)
Welcome a new car to the Test Drive Unlimited garage -- The Lotus:

(Click to Enlarge!)

Speaking of Cars and Hawaii, yesterday's Penny-Arcade is really funny.

Prey Website Relaunched 02:03 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (4 comments)
2K Games has relaunched the Official website for Prey which now includes a bunch of new gameplay movies showing off stuff like gravity flipping, wall walking, deathwalking and spirit mode. Plus has "live" animations of the characters and some of the monsters. Thanks 3D Realms.

I'm not a big fan of flash sites, but the little videos are cool. I wouldn't try reading it on dial-up though.

Half-Life 2 : Episode One Tops Euro Charts 01:53 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (8 comments)
Valve announced that Half-Life 2: Episode One debuted as the best selling game in Europe for the week of its release. I don't think this even counts Steam purchases either. Just retail boxes sold.

"After spending six years creating Half-Life 2, we decided to build HL2's successor as a trilogy of episodes," said Gabe Newell, Valve's president and co-founder. "This has allowed us take greater risks in gameplay, move the technology forward faster, and let people know what happened when the Citadel blew up in 18 months, rather than asking them to wait 6 years."

Meanwhile, Shacknews looks at episodic releases, Eurogamer milks the second part of its interview with Valve about Episodic issues and tomorrow the 1Up Show podcast will have an interview with Robin Walker.

Call of Duty 2 v1.3 Patch 01:50 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (1 comment)
Infinity Ward has released the v1.3 patch for Call of Duty 2. "The patch fixes some multiplayer game and level issues, raises the gamestate from 16k to 128k and addresses the PunkBuster GUID issue where players were not being assigned PunkBuster GUID's of exactly 32 characters. More information can be found in the readme file."

Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom PS3 Screenshots 12:43 pm - Elia 'Mithan' Doulia - Consoles: PS3 (31 comments)
Here are 10 high-res screenshots of Untold Lengends: Dark Kingdom, which is coming out for the PS3 at an undetermined date.

Hellgate: London Interview 09:55 am - Elia 'Mithan' Doulia - Games: Action / Roleplaying (4 comments)
CV&G; has a short interview with Hellgate: London designer Bill Roper for your reading enjoyment. If you missed the shots we posted yesterday, check them out here.

What's been the most fun thing you've seen put into the game so far?

Bill Roper: Definitely multiplayer. The game instantly became five times as fun when we started forming groups. We've always been huge fans of the multiplayer experience - Diablo was the game that launched Battle.net, after all - and it suddenly opens up all kinds of new tactics and strategies. There are a lot of really fun weapons (over 100 base types), spells, monsters and areas to explore - but it definitely gets kicked up a huge notch when you can experience it with your friends.

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 01:00 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (1 comment)

Boards

• ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe Motherboard - Hardware Secrets
• MSI's K8N Diamond Plus nForce 4 SLIX16 - HotHardware

  Cases
  

• Thermaltake Matrix VX Case - ATR

  Keyboard
  

• Logitech G15 Gaming LCD Keyboard - Overclockers Club

  Memory
  

• OCZ 2GB PC2-6400 Special Ops Edition - TechAge
• Super Talent DDR2-1066 1GB CL5 Dual Channel Memory Kit - Thinkcomputers.org

  Power Supply
  

• OCZ GameXStream 600W PSU - 3DGameMan

  PPU
  

• ATI and Physics Acceleration - PureOC

  Video
  

• BFG GeForce 7900 GTX OC 512MB PCI-E - TheTechLounge
• EVGA 7950GX2 - GamePyre
• GeForce 7900 GT - Hexus
• nVidia GeForce 7950GX2 overclocked by XFX - Tweaktown
• Sapphire "Ultimate" x1600 PRO 256MB - Virtual-Hideout

Game Reviews 12:45 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (2 comments)

PC

• Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday - KillerBetties - 3/5
• The Movies: Stunts & Effects - Gamespot - 7.7/10
• Over the Hedge - PC.IGN - 6.5/10

  360
  

• Football Manager 2006 - 3DAvenue - 4/5

  Xbox
  

• Army Men: Major Malfunction - TUSK Mag - 4/10

  DS
  

• Lost Magic - Atomic Gamer - 70%
• Worms Open Warfare - 3DAvenue - 2/5

  PSP
  

• Daxter - Armchair Empire - 9/10

  PS2
  

• GTA: Liberty City Stories - Gamespot - 7.1/10

In Other News... 12:30 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (65 comments)
I need to find a new place to live in the not-too-distant future. About a block down the road from my old apartment (which are turning into condos) is a nice little complex. The housing market may be going nuts here, but rent is still fairly cheap. Well, cheap compared to LA/SF at least. I guess I could move to a new area, but I do love Phoenix. Cost of living is dirt cheap, the air is clean and the weather is always nice.

I played a few more hours of Rise of Legends yesterday. Very cool game! The setting is just so unique. I dig the Steampunk vs fantasy vs whatever the Cuotl are. The AI isn't very aggressive, but I'm still early in. Runs great too, but I did download like four patches for it. Playing RoL makes me want to get one of those big-ass Dell widescreen LCDs. Maybe I'll just hook up my HDTV and play it on that. Anyhow, I'm enjoying it so far. I plan on playing a few more hours once the Midnight update is finished.

Today's question:

What's the last massively multiplayer game you played?

It doesn't have to be your main or favorite one, just the last mmog you actually logged into play.