RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[BruceVC]

 

 

 

Does she have sisters? Or clones?

 

 

one older sister, also married.  plus, california vs wherever nepenthe lives

 

 

"Have advanced degree, willing to travel" :D

 

 

 

 

But Nep they probably don't speak Finnish so how would you communicate?

Edited September 26, 2013 by BruceVC

[Nepenthe]

That's a good question. I'll have to rethink the plan and start learning English.

[Cultist]

Nvidia Exec: Next-Gen Consoles Can't Match the Power of PCs

Nvidia's SVP of content and technology Tony Tamasi tells PC PowerPlay in a new interview that it is no longer possible for a game console to match or surpass the graphics capabilities of a PC equipped with the latest graphics technology.

[Humanoid]

Well, he would say that, wouldn't he, given that both consoles are powered by their competitor's tech. Though it's a fair enough statement really.

 

(Both links pointing to the same article by the way)

 

---

 

Actually the elephant in the room now is AMD's announcement today of 'Mantle', a semi-proprietary API intended as a faster alternative to DirectX (by virtue of being very device-specific). Normally one would think this would have a snowball's chance in hell of being successful, but if it's tightly integrated as part of the console dev kits, it would mean the tech would be present by default in cross-platform games. (And it will be present in Battlefield 4 and all subsequent Frostbite engine games at the very least)

 

In terms of competition, it's a strike against both nVidia and Microsoft: the former not having an option to migrate from the slower DirectX since they don't have any presence in consoles to leverage a competing solution; the latter in its loosened grip on PC gaming with the DirectX-Windows co-dependence.

 

Then again, this is AMD, who are somewhat prone to tripping over their own feet from a winning position. Me, I don't anticipate a huge impact for now, other than some headline games having a faster "Mantle mode" graphics option, but in the medium term, it ought to also contribute towards the increasing viability of Linux gaming. At the very least, hopefully it needles Microsoft enough to work harder on improving the atrocious performance overhead of DX.

 

 

TL;DR version: PC games can be programmed to extract similar performance from hardware as consoles are able to now, and this can be done with comparatively little effort for the upcoming generation of games.

Edited September 26, 2013 by Humanoid

[AwesomeOcelot]

Nothing good will come of this. Both companies are guilty of trying to push proprietary tech, but this is a step too far. Microsoft probably doesn't care, as long as Mantle works with higher level DirectX which it does but Nvidia will respond and it won't be good for gamers.

[Keyrock]

The biggest problem I see with Mantle is that it's hardware specific.  For consoles this makes sense, since AMD hardware is present in both XBOne and PS4, presumably both GCN architecture GPUs (I have no clue what's in the WiiU).  For PCs, if you use Mantle, you're targeting less than 25% of the market.  Meanwhile nVidia has been working with Valve to optimize Linux OpenGL drivers.  They can never get the same level of performance that Mantle potentially could because OpenGL is a high-level API while Mantle is low level, but I'm sure nVidia will be looking for any tricks that could give them and edge in OpenGL performance.  It will be interesting to see how Mantle does.  Glide was fairly short-lived, and this is basically Glide all over again.  I wonder if they two-pronged attack of nVidia and Valve with OpenGL and AMD with Mantle could kill off DirectX?  Probably not, but they could definitely wound it.

 

As Humanoid wrote, AMD is well known for stumbling over their own feet, so while this does sound like a good move, they have to actually execute it well.  

 

I would much rather AMD would jump on board with nVidia and Valve, and push OpenGL.  I'd rather they moved more toward an open API than throwing yet another proprietary hat into the race.

Edited September 26, 2013 by Keyrock

[Humanoid]

The thing is, there is no reasonable solution, even if the three players in the market (nVidia, AMD, Intel) played nice with each other: any collaborative effort to replace DX would be similarly hobbled in performance due to the consequent need to be generic enough to work with the full range of products. If we want to extract 'full' performance from our toys, the architecture-specific API is pretty much required. (Unless there was a sudden outbreak of peace and love between the competitiors resulting in magnitudes more cross-licencing and general tech sharing)

 

So I'm not so firm on how I feel about this. It could be the thin end of the wedge leading to the death of competition on one (admittedly extreme) hand. nVidia can try to respond but will be limited by having no presence in consoles, meaning they have the much tougher task of getting developers to specifically support a much much smaller segment of the market (having to code for PCs with nV GPUs alone, as opposed to all three of the next-gen consoles, PCs with current or newer AMD GPUs, and upcoming AMD APUs). But at the moment we're just leaving so much performance on the table (Carmack's term) because of the atrocious overheads imposed by DirectX (and OpenGL is no better). In the manner of which Sound Blaster/AdLib support was required by the early 90s, shared codepaths are nice, but damn, hearing the wavetable MIDI capable cards made the sacrifice seem compelling. If DirectX were to be the new "Sound Blaster-compatible" and Mantle the MT-32, I'm not sure I could say no to that.

 

Glide faded from memory not because it was proprietary, but because the Voodoo3+Glide package was matched then beaten by the TNT2+DirectX package. I wonder what an alternate universe where 3dfx had trounced nVidia would look like.

 

 

EDIT: On Mantle itself, Carmack hasn't said much on Twitter, save that MS and Sony may be somewhat hostile to the move as it erodes the main speed advantage their consoles enjoyed, a result that would play into the hands of Valve.

 

Aside, I don't think the work, partly inspired by Valve, that both GPU vendors will no doubt be ploughing into Linux right now is of any real relevance to this move. At best it'd bring the situation into parity with DX on Windows, as opposed to something to improve on.

Edited September 26, 2013 by Humanoid

[Amentep]

 

So...there were no plans for a Legacy of Kain sequel but the fact that its using the setting and not being a Legacy of Kain sequel is...upsetting? 

 

There were actually two attempts to make another game. First one was right after the last one, stopped production because lack of interest. Second one was more recent, but it was also cancelled in favor of this new game.

 

I'm surprised with the "lack of interest" in the first attempt, the second attempt was even tried. Not surprising they decided to do something different with the IP.

 

I figure if they ever go back to the story of Kain (which I doubt, honestly) they'll either ignore or change whatever continuity this game creates to suit what they're doing...so still not seeing the issue.

[Keyrock]

I'll be curious to see how much success, if any, nVidia will have in pushing Tegra onto SteamOS and make it the dominant hardware solution on that platform.  I mean, that's the move for them, right?  nVidia has no presence in x86 and never will, they've firmly thrown their hat in with ARM.  Both AMD and Intel have all-in-one solutions combining x86 CPUs with GPUs.  Iris Pro 5200 essentially makes entry-level, and even some mid-level discrete GPUs obsolete.  I'm assuming Kaveri will do the same for AMD.  With Tegra4 running at the ridiculously low power envelopes in the 1-10W range, they could conceivably slap like 4 or even 8 of these together to make a monster running on like 16 or 32 cores.  Who knows what Tegra5 will be bringing in terms of raw horsepower?  I mean, nVidia has to go there, otherwise they will be left out in the cold in the desktop/home market as discrete GPUs are a dying breed in my opinion.

Edited September 26, 2013 by Keyrock

[AwesomeOcelot]

Nvidia would just match, create a low level API of their own, compatible with high level OpenGL and DirectX. Developers are still going to have to port from Mantle to DirectX/OpenGL because the majority of the install base (including me with a 3 year old AMD GPU, probably the majority of PC gamers with AMD) is not Mantle. What this would do is make things particularly difficult for Intel, I don't know how they'd respond. Intel are wiping the floor with AMD concerning CPU, their GPU strategy relies on DirectX/OpenGL.

[NOK222]

 

 

So...there were no plans for a Legacy of Kain sequel but the fact that its using the setting and not being a Legacy of Kain sequel is...upsetting? 

 

There were actually two attempts to make another game. First one was right after the last one, stopped production because lack of interest. Second one was more recent, but it was also cancelled in favor of this new game.

 

I'm surprised with the "lack of interest" in the first attempt, the second attempt was even tried. Not surprising they decided to do something different with the IP.

 

I figure if they ever go back to the story of Kain (which I doubt, honestly) they'll either ignore or change whatever continuity this game creates to suit what they're doing...so still not seeing the issue.

 

 

If they wouldn't have made defiance a God of War type actionfest and instead continued with the puzzle and platforming of Soul Reaver, it would have continued and the series would have ended properly. 

[Guest Slinky]

I figure if they ever go back to the story of Kain (which I doubt, honestly) they'll either ignore or change whatever continuity this game creates to suit what they're doing...so still not seeing the issue.

Yeah, Defiance was released 10 years ago so I would bet the suits who sit on the money aren't too keen to continue that old story. Even the almost-to-be Legacy of Kain game Dead Sun had apparently nothing to do with Kain's story.

 

Might actually be a good thing after all if the story doesn't get continued, unless they get Amy Hennig back on board. Blood Omen 2 already showed once how wrong that can go.

[Gfted1]

Ive never heard of this company but Bundle Stars is offering four Commando games for $2.25.

[alanschu]

A colleague shared this on Facebook (Most of the information is new to me as well, so I can't really elaborate on anything.  I only know what's in the slides too)

 

http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/battlefield-4-frostbite-3-mantle

[ManifestedISO]

A colleague shared this on Facebook (Most of the information is new to me as well, so I can't really elaborate on anything.  I only know what's in the slides too)

 

http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/battlefield-4-frostbite-3-mantle

 

Those slides have some very entertaining syntax ... as though translated from an internal DICE Swedish company presentation.

 

Mantle sounds more like proof-of-concept marketing, but I'm cool with that, and so is my Radeon. It gets old rooting for the underdog, so yeah, give me something more tangible to feel good about my choice of CPU and GPU.           

[Malcador]

 

Not quite as energetic as his Sky ad back in the day.

[Keyrock]

 

Not quite as energetic as his Sky ad back in the day.

One does not simply walk into Mordor.  One rides a train into Mordor.

 

One of these days I'm going to either pick this up or Euro Truck Simulator.  I need a nice chill game to take a break from the endless treadmill of constantly murdering in video games.

[Malcador]

http://kotaku.com/how-lucasarts-fell-apart-1401731043

 

Article on LucasArts and its demise.

[Serrano]

 

Out on December 10th

Edited September 27, 2013 by Serrano

[Fighter]

Frictional Games' (Amnesia) new title will be revealed/teased when the counter reaches 100% supposedly. Might be based on visit numbers so click away.

 

http://nextfrictionalgame.com/

[NOK222]

I hope all that extra time for South Park means it's a bigger game. 

[Hurlshort]

I hope all that extra time for South Park means it's a bigger game. 

 

I don't think they've been working on it in that way.  It better be a stable game at least.

[Keyrock]

I hope all that extra time for South Park means it's a bigger game. 

The game will feature 33% more underpants gnomes.

[Volourn]

I was looking forward to SP but it just looks dumb and unfun. Sadly, this will be the 2nd straight game of Obsidian\s I will likely skip completely.

 

*continues to wait for PE*

[Blodhemn]

I haven't watched South Park in years, and haven't payed much attention to the development of the game, but it actually seems like more fun than yet another RPG set in the typical RPG setting. Also curious to see if Matt and Trey's involvement enhances the game, makes it something a bit more original or what exactly.