Asus Ares - fast and expensive

Buying a graphic card for PC is always a difficult. Just when you finalize your decision new model comes along. One option to reduce frequency of graphic card upgrades is to buy fastest dual card. One of these is Asus ARES. I would love to give you personal experience but for a number of reasons I can only point you to a review done by Hot Hardware site.

Here is how this beast looks like.

Summary of features includes:

• 4 Gb GDDR5 memory
• 4800 MHz memory clock
• 3200 stream processors
• metal case

It is obvious this is no average stuff. Everything that comes in metal case with foam mould is expensive, really expensive. Think about $1200 USD.

To find the details about this card check the review. If you find reading of 11 pages too long here are the key points:

• fastest card ever (for now at least)
• overclocking is supported
• gaming mouse included

So, if you have some extra money and big power supply treat yourself...

Are you fast in Starcraft?

Starcraft is a truly legendary RTS game. It stood the test of time and it is probably the best RTS game. I've been playing it with friends for a long time and it was a great fun. We used to record matches and then discuss them and have a good time analyzing strategies and moves made. All those games were very casual, even we tried hard to be the best.

Korean players are well known to be the Masters of Starcraft. In general, Korea has adopted Starcraft as a national sport. Just have a look at this or this.  As a result they have a lot of really good and really fast players. Professional players must be fast if they are expecting to win the tournament(s). Speed is measured as APM (actions per minute).

To see what this is watch the video below.



So, you think you can beat 200 APM? Or even 300 APM? I would love to know your secret and see you play.

New high definition cable - HDBaseT

Just when you think you are all sorted for HD TV and 3D movies somebody thinks of new standard or in this case, interface. But it is not all bad. The latest is HDBaseT.

What is HDBaseT?

This is a product of HDBaseT Alliance - a specification for unified distribution of uncompressed HD content. It has a bandwidth to support full HD, 3D and 2Kx4K formats.

How does it look like?

You are almost certainly familiar with it. It is your standard network cable, cat 5 or 6 with RJ-45 connector.

For comparison of features have a look at this document.

Who is behind it?

HDBaseT is supported by founding companies: LG electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Pictures and Valens Semiconductor.


Will it matter?

It's hard to say yet. Definitely it is a good candidate for a race. It is base on existing, cheap, proven and standard port/cable pair. The questions is how will other big player respond. It is hard to say what Sony Entertainment will do since they are supporting (installing) HDMI in Playstation 3. I don't see a change coming to PS 3 any time soon. But I would love to use my existing home network used for delivery of HD movies. As always, time will tell who will prevail.

Make Something Unreal - Phase 4 winners

Winners of the last phase of Make Something Unreal are announced. This is the last phase and it concludes 2 years long contest. Here are the categories and the winners.

Best Art in a Game Mod

Airborn by Steffen Unger

Airborn is an action adventure total conversion for Unreal Tournament 3 in a fantastic world on flying islands eons after the world has collapsed from overexploitation.

Best Graphics in a Map

The Haunted Lost Temple by The Haunted Team

This version of TH-Temple is specialized version of the Lost Temple only
available for the MSU contest.

Best Machinima

The Plan by John Beswick

A little animated short about a toy with a plan. 

Best Vehicle Set

Angels Fall First: PlanetStorm Mod by AFF Team

A huge collection of futuristic vehicles are available to pilot in this hybrid
FPS/RTS mod that has 11 unique vehicles from huge space destroyer ships,
versatile space fighters, tanks, and more.

Best Use of Physics

Project Swing by Scott and Aaron Ash

Project Swing is a physics oriented vehicle gametype. Players use a
scavenger-like vehicle equipped with grappling hooks that attach to enemies
(primary fire) and strategically placed grapple points (alt fire) around the
map.

Best FPS Mod
The Ball by Toltec Studios

The Ball offers an adventure that puts you in the boots of an explorer who
gets stuck in a cavern and bumps onto an ancient complex holding a mysterious
ball. While making your way through the internal workings of ancient ziggurats,
golden cities, and huge caverns, your only companion is a giant gold and
metal-shelled ball.

Best non-FPS Mod
The Haunted by Michael Hegemann

The Haunted is a fast paced third-person horror-action game which can be
played in singleplayer against AI monsters or in multiplayer, where one player
is the haunted and the other players control and spawn the enemies.

Best Level for a Mod
Hazard: The Journey of Life by Alexander Bruce

A philosophical single player first person environmental puzzle art game
that will change the way you think about the life. This very non-standard game
was selected as a finalist in the Sense Of Wonder 2009 Experimental Gameplay
project at the Tokyo Game Show.

So these are the winners only of this contest. There are many other entries you should check out if you got bored with standard UT3. This content was always an opportunity and showcase for many modders. Again, I wish Epic or somebody else would make a DVD ISO of all winners (including 2nd, 3rd and 4th place) for all phases so we can get it in one go. I hate getting them down separately from different sites...

Anyway, this should consume another sizeable chunk of your free time. Go and have fun.

Protoss in Wings Of Liberty

There were some questions posted on Battle.Net forum about availability of Protoss missions in upcoming Wings of Liberty game. As usual, there is a number of replies to original post but the most interesting one is from Blizzard RTS community team. Here is his reply:

I won't go into details, since we don't give out information on the campaign of StarCraft 2, but I can confirm that there will be a Protoss mini-campaign that lets you control Protoss units. This part of the campaign mode is of course way shorter than the Terran part, but it is very fun to have a very different playstyle to add even more variety to the game. I am sure every Protoss fan will love this part of the Campaign! 

That being said, the Protoss mini-campaign will not prepare you for the multiplayer as Protoss, you won't be using all units or getting to know buildings and upgrades. In general, even for Terran, it is not the objective of the singleplayer to show how to play the game effectively, it is to tell a story and do a lot of fun things, that would not be possible in multiplayer. The Challenges, mini-missions, that ask you to complete a very specific task, are more suited to give players the opportunity to learn how to use the units and how to play the game.

All we have to do now is wait until Wings Of Liberty is released. I just hope we won't have to wait until Legacy of the Void is released to see any of the Zerg campains, even a mini one.

Blizzard, be nice a add a mini Zerg campain in WOL please.

Happy New Year 2010!

If you read my other blog you know I was away during Christmas break. Now I'm back and slowly catching up with news and events in gaming arena.

It does not seem much was happening in these 10 days.

Here are things I would like to see in this year (it is already 10:25 AM, Jan 1 2010 in Auckland)

• Starcraft II (more than first game)
• Diablo III
• Gran Turismo 5 
• Little Big Planet map packs (if not LBP 2)
• more tables for Zen Pinball
• more games supporting DirectX 11

That's all for now, have a very Happy New Year!

Make Something Unreal Phase 4 finalists

Finalists for "Best use of Physics" for Phase 4 are announced on Unreal Tournament forum. The finalists are:

• The Ball http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-ball
• Crucible http://www.runestorm.com
• PlanetStorm http://www.moddb.com/mods/angels-fall-first-planetstorm
• Steam Racers http://www.moddb.com/mods/steam-racers
• Project Swing http://www.moddb.com/mods/projectswing
• XS Vehicles http://www.fileplanet.com/204529/200...---XS-Vehicles
• DM-RB-Derelict http://www.fileplanet.com/204340/200...DM-RB-Derelict
• DM-RB-Mayhem http://www.fileplanet.com/204334/200...--DM-RB-Mayhem
• DM-RB-Wasteland-SE http://www.fileplanet.com/204332/200...B-Wasteland-SE
• DM-RB-ZeroG http://www.fileplanet.com/204342/200...--DM-RB-Zero-G
• Robo Coop http://www.fileplanet.com/204330/200...Robo-CO-OP-Mod
• CarBall 3 http://www.carball.net/
• Takeshi Gladiators http://www.fileplanet.com/204749/200...9;s-Gladiators
• VCTF-RumplesRaceway_Twisted http://www.fileplanet.com/204531/200...aceway_Twisted

Even these are not finalists following got Honorable Mentions:

• XS Prototypes
• MillagunUT2D
• UnWheel 2
• Snarf Vehicles
• DM-NewHorizon
• VCTF-Electro
• UT2D Killing Time
• Cubes of Serenity
• TRE - Last Life
• DM-RB-Labyrinth 

Here are few examples of finalist's work.

There are many other contestants and it is worthwhile to have a look at other entries. If you have some spare time head to Make something Unreal site and start downloading.