Havok bought by Intel

AMD bought ATI. Intel bought Havok. With this purchase Havok will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel. What does that do for Intel?

From Intel's press release:

The acquisition will enable developers in the digital animation and game communities to take advantage of Intel's innovation and technology leadership in the creation of digital media.

Most of PC users don't consider Intel as significant player in the graphics cards market. That's where you are wrong. If you check some numbers you will see that Intel has 40% of the market with AMD second with only 26%!

 With the biggest market share and new technology acquired by Havok Intel has a huge potential in gaming market. Havok does not need an introduction but if you are new to gaming market you have almost certainly played a game using Havok engine. It runs on Wii, PlayStation®3, PlayStation®2, PSP™, Xbox360™, Xbox, GameCube™ and the PC and over 70 games are using it. Keeping that in mind and Intel's share market AMD and nVidia may have a lot of hard time ahead of them. Especially if Intel creates a half good card that will be sold in millions as integrated video card. I know I would like to run Half-Life 2 on built-in video card instead forking $250 for it.

Let's wait and see what they will do.

StarCraft II - Terran units

The official StarCraft II web site is finally updated with some new content. Of course this coincide with BlizzConn 07 which has finished few days ago.

There are couple of new units described: Reaper and Viking.

Reaper is a light armored unit not designed for the head-on fights. It is equipped with a jet pack and to me, this looks very similar to Command and Conquer 3 Zone Trooper. The jet pack is something very different in StarCraft universe. In original game(s) no unit had a possibility to jump over the obstacles. This will change the the way games is played quite a bit. From now on, when fighting Terrans you have to keep a close watch on the whole base or battlefield. Another element changing the balance is their speed. They move very quickly over the terrain and combine that with jet packs - you have a really deadly unit.

StarCraft web site describes Reapers as

Reapers are the most hardened terran criminals, taken from the most dangerous and violent prisons. Potential marines who prove too intractable even after resocialization are instead sent to the "Icehouse" in the Torus system, where reapers are trained.

This in not a new idea but a combination of Alien 3 and Dune. Why Dune? Because Arrakis is the desert planet with extreme conditions where Fremen live for centuries. Muad'dib has discovered they are not only survivors but amazing warriors.

 

Viking is a second new unit that again, changes the balance compared to the original games. Is is based on the siege tanks concept but with lot of new ideas.  The description of Viking is:

Based heavily on the transformation design of the terran siege tank, the viking was designed to be the ultimate anti-air and ground-support weapon system. With the ability to change its combat role from an assault walker to an air-superiority fighter, the viking can switch smoothly to fulfill tactical needs in a developing battle.

The true is that Terran could not defend successfully against Zerg but introduction of Vikings definitely fixes this problem. To balance this big advantage it seems that Vikings are bit hard to handle and they may be available only in later stages of the game.

 

As you can guess from my blog's name I am the big fan of Zerg. Seeing these new units added to the Terran army makes me a little bit nervous. It definitely requires review and adjustments in strategy when dealing with Terran. But, Blizzard is yet to reveal new units for Zerg and I am expecting some exciting and powerful units to counter Reapers and Vikings. (I don't much about Protoss, I never play as Protoss).  

Guitar Hero on PC? No, it is Frets on Fire!

If you like playing guitar (even air guitar) you've probably seen the Guitar Hero game for Playstation 2. If you are brave enough you may have tried it in the computer store when no one was watching...

If you liked it but you don't have a PS2 (or don't want to buy guitar controller) it is your lucky day. Just today I have downloaded Frets on Fire, free game for PC. You guess it, you are playing guitar. What is interesting is how you are supposed to play it.

Check the suggested pose for playing. The only thing I am missing is the strap for keyboard. If this is not enough to get you interested check the feature list. Here are my favourite features:

• Includes a song editor for making your own tunes
• Compete with others on the World Charts
• Supports importing Guitar Hero™ I and Guitar Hero™ II songs
• Multiplatform; runs on Windows™, Linux®, Mac OS X™ and FreeBSD®
• Open source, full Python source code available

As you can see game is feature rich and it is fun to play. Don't miss the tutorial (and learn about the significance of the ESC key).

Bye now, time attach the strap to my keyboard and start shredding...

Samsung leads the way

Again, Samsung shows leadership when it comes to SSD (Solid State Disk). They have started mass production of the 1.8 " 64 GB SSD drive. It is based on the single level cell flash memory. On the practical side this means that battery life of your laptop could be extender by 20%.

On the other front they have released hybrid disk drives, MH80. These drives are combination of standard disk drive (80 or 160 GB) and 256 MB flash memory. This was only a matter of time before someone does it. Again, on the practical side this can significantly reduce power consumption of laptops and faster resume from hibernation.

It still may be quite some time before we see laptops with SSD drives only. Reason is not technical this time - it is the price. Over the time prices will drop but until then keep your eyes focused on Samsung.

Starcraft II site updates

Starcraft II site has been updated with new information about Zerg.

id Tech 5 - John Carmack's latest toy

A few days ago at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference John Carmack from id Software has shown what he was doing for a last few years. As surprise to most gamers his latest gaming engine, id Tech 5, was running on a Macintosh. Video is available here as streaming video. If you would like to download it and check out the details he is describing in during the presentation download it from usual places.

To me, it still looks like Doom 3 engine but taken to a slightly higher level. Vehicles and structure have a distinctive look and feel from Doom 3. The same goes for characters as well. I don't know if this is due to textures used in the demo or specific result of the engine but gives strong resemblance to other id games.

id always had a very good technology and it was amazing what they could do with it. It gets even better when developer studios like Ravensoft take it over and push it even further.

This video could be a response to lot of media attention to other gaming engines. Hottest titles are Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Halo 3, Force Unleashed.

If I have to choose new gaming engines that are coming up my first choices are Crytec's CryEngine 2 engine and combination of Euphoria and MolecularMatter for Star Wars: Force Unleashed game.

I suspect that in next few months we will see more of videos of all of these engines. The battle for the king of next generation gaming is going to be very intersting one...

Starcraft 2 demonstrated

After a long wait 'Starcraft' finally got a sequel. 'Starcraft 2' was announced and demonstrated in South Korea on May 19. This is a perfect place to announce the sequel for a very, very successful RTS. Koreans are well known for their passion for this game.

The game is quite well developed - pre-alpha version. Blizzard started development just after 'Warcraft III - Frozen Throne'. With a little bit of luck we can expect a release in 8-9 months but of course, the official release date is "when it's done".

gThere is plenty of video footage available on Starcraft 2 web site. The game is in a full 3D environment and units are very much the same as in the original Starcraft. There are some new units added for all three races and lets hope the balance of power will remain the same. So far, the Protos Mothership was demonstrated in videos and it is very powerful. I can't wait to see what is equivalent of it for Zerg!

Here you can see all videos from the demonstration combined in a single video with commentary. Trailers without commentaries are available on usual sites like YouTube, GameTrailers and others.

I really look forward to playing as mighty Zerg all over again!