Every time I hear something new about these guys I like them even less. Most recently they linked to a torrent of Galactic Civilisations II on their forum as some kind of “why you need Starforce” statement. Unbelievable.

I wouldn’t wear it, but the BSG in joke here is brilliant even so.

Yes, I’m a closet Trekkie, but nowhere near enough of one to buy an entire series on DVD. Luckily enough, Paramount are collecting the best Borg episodes, as voted for by fans, in one boxed set. Arguably a cynical money making effort to make up for the lack of income from a current series, though it also means people like me get to watch some of the best episodes (i.e. the Borg ones, clearly) without having to shell out too much cash. It seems many of the best Voyager episodes had the Borg in them too, which saves me watching the entire series! Not out in the UK yet (if ever), but then that’s what DVD Box Office is for.

Terra Nova recently covered a “textual world” (presumably a MUD) which has quarterly wipes. Everything goes. It sounds harsh but there are benefits here. I think the strongest is that things can finish. Imagine if PlanetSide could have an ultimate periodic winner instead of a tiresome, unending tug o’ war. Imagine a full story arc in an MMO with a start and finish, bringing things closer to being a “proper” RPG. There are downsides of course, all covered in more detail at Terra Nova. (Spotted this on Alice’s del.icio.us feed)

Intel are finally starting to pull some smart moves again. First they’re ditching the ultra-inefficient P4/NetBurst architecture for Conroe goodness, and now it turns out they’re also building a damn nice water cooling system. Small, efficient (it can cool a 3.8GHz P4 EE to a crazy 5GHz), metal pipes, a (presumably) quiet centrifugal pump, and all for under $50. Suddenly all the current water cooling solutions look pretty amateurish, just goes to show what you can happen when a mega corp lets their hardcore geeks off the engineering leash.

That is geek lust right there. And I thought my dual monitor setup was impressive(ish). (via digg)

I wish I was clever enough to rename then patent an existing idea and get 4 million in funding for it. Oh, and this thing that is basically a tweaked network card will cost $300. Isn’t that called a con? And I thought the Ageia PhysX guys had a difficult sell ahead of them. Graphics cards alone are expensive enough without other (pointless) cards to buy.

Today, my index finger was shaking. Not badly, but noticeably, especially resting on a mouse. The onset of early arthritis? Thankfully not. I realised it was from hanging onto colossus after colossus in that game. Gripping R1 for hours on end clearly had its impact. Don’t worry, it’s better now. My left middle finger also gets a friction blister near the knuckle during PS2 fighting games - weird. Do people make these kind of sacrifices to experience movies or books? I think not.
Anyone else had any such gaming related (very) minor injuries?

In the comments Matt Sephton linked to this great look at the technology behind Shadow of the Colossus. It really does sound like they used every trick in the book - rendering off distant terrain as 2D (very subtly if you ask me), rendering fur without shaders, faking HDR and many other such impressive techniques.

I’ve mentioned the demo scene before and I’m sure some of you were already familiar with it. The problem has always been finding the truly impressive pieces and then viewing them - it can be a time consuming process. Well, not anymore. I just stumbled across this site that offers video previews of each demo along with the download link. Super easy to browse, I’ve already lost about an hour to the coding wizardry on show there. Login required but it’s well worth it.

A couple of demos I’d recommend in particular are Silkcut, an Amiga 3D demo, and 195/95, a very polished 3D PC demo with incredible lighting by plastic.pl.

Not enough superlatives or hyperbole can be applied to Shadow of the Colossus. It is so lovingly, meticulously designed, so unfailingly unique, so unspeakably beautiful, so frequently wondrous and moving in ways other games practically never are. Every victory’s sense of glory is swiftly replaced by sorrow at the death of these immense creatures. And the ending sequence stands as one of the most satisfying I have ever seen in a game, far too rare a thing.

For once, the reviews that gave it 10/10 are not far wrong - it’s so very hard to criticise the game that rounding up from the few decimals it’s short seems fair. Not since the original Unreal have I felt such a sense of wonder at a game; one Colossus literally made my jaw drop while my mind scrambled to figure out precisely how a mere PS2 was rendering such astonishing visuals. Truly an incredible game.

Maybe this is just post-completion euphoria speaking here. We’ll see.

20 years of computer animation that kids, geeks and grown ups alike can enjoy, and now us Londonders get to see how it’s done.