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20100718.144024
website is now in archive mode. visit blog.subnova.com for information.
20080730.144615
i added amazon context links... just because i can... if they're not too obtrusive... i'll leave them
20080114.231544
enabled mod_deflate on andromeda. the site is now seeing an estimated 80% reduction in overall size for clients to download
20080109.022443
added an rss 2.0 feed for the news at http://www.subnova.com/news/rss/. it will show the 14 most recent posts
20070823.031056
updated cq calculations so that if a member doesn't login to the website in the past 77 days, the contribution points start vanishing in a hurry... tanking the irank
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(Continued from part 2)
We headed into E3 a bit late, as everyone wanted to sleep in after last night. Setting out from menemsis's house, we parked even further away this time and went in to check out everything else on the floor.
The first stop was Nintendo's huge booth, complete with vertical LED displays featuring bouncing game characters. Unfortunately I never got a look at the Nintendo DS.
Sony's PSP was shaping up to be a major assault on Nintendo's handheld monopoly. As you can see, the PSP is downright puny, barely larger than the original Game Boy Advance, but nearly as powerful as the PS2, capable of running 3D games like Metal Gear Acid. The device has what appear to be iLink/Firewire and infrared ports on top, and has built-in 802.11 wireless networking for multiplayer gaming. The small circle just below the directional pad is a miniature analog stick. The PSP runs its games off the new and equally miniscule UMD format, which is apparently capable of storing a full-length movie (presumably at lower than DVD quality, but the PSP has a smaller screen than a DVD player anyway). Hanging above the display, we can see how Sony plans for the PSP to attack Microsoft's monopoly on HUEG.
The Matrix Online put in a showing in one of the smaller rooms (apparently there was a larger booth with some film props that I wasn't able to locate), with a few playable stations. They seem to have gotten the look and feel of the Matrix world pretty well, but I'm not a very good judge of MMORPG gameplay. At least performance was good.
The EA booth had a brilliantly stupid design. The vast, wide screen was nice to watch and capable of showing 2 normal-sized movies at once, but after each brief presentation a set of moving lights at the top of the screen drew our attention so we could be blinded by a group of strobe lights set directly above the screen. Great marketing, guys, now I really want to stand there for hours and see all you have to offer.
You can't really tell in this picture, but that's real blood in there (or at least real dripping red liquid). Yummy.
Blizzard was showing off Starcraft: Ghost at their massive multilevel booth, and I got a chance to take control of Nova for a bit. The graphics are great (sorry about that screenshot), and it seems to be very true to the Starcraft universe. I was unable to find a mission briefing, so I wasn't able to do anything really interesting, but I did throw some grenades at a nearby Space Marine who ignored them. And no, I could not find a zerg rush.
The velociraptor pit. (OK, not really, but you tell me why those ferns are in the basement.)
Speaking of ferns, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater had a huge an elaborate display, complete with Snake himself hidden among the leaves.
Epic Games was showing off their Unreal Engine 3.0 tech demo at nVidia's booth. The engine, and the Geforce 6800, are hideously powerful, as seen in the various versions of the demo making their way around the net. The most impressive aspect of the demo to me was the first glimpse of their "virtual displacement mapping", which is essentially bumpmapping with proper parallax and perspective visible on the simulated variations in surface height.
I swung back around to the Phantom booth to pick up one of the T-shirts I'd heard they were giving out, and to take a closer look at their keyboard and mouse solution for console-style couch-slouching use. This is actually a really cool idea, and the best thing out of Infinium Labs so far. I could easily see this peripheral becoming a much-sought-after secondhand accessory if (some would say when) Infinium gives up or takes the money and runs. The Phantom itself had been a bit rearranged from the day before, with the unsightly and suspicious electronics tucked away somewhere to highlight the case, which seems surprisingly small for the equivalent of a middle-of-the-pack gaming rig. Meanwhile, the Phantom team were watching us from their secret mountain hideout.
The biggest surprise of the show for me was Kiev-based GSC Game World's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl, presented in a huge theater resembling the game's inspiration. Published by THQ, the game takes place in the 30x30-kilometer "Zone" surrounding the ruins of Chernobyl, simulating a mutated ecosystem with the sort of "natural" creature behavior that was first promised for the original Half-Life. Animals will hunt for food, fight each other for territory, and attack other humans in the world. The population and behavior of the world's inhabitants depends on the dynamic day-night cycle. The game even has some elements borrowed from RPGs, such as trading either with established shops which also provide missions or with neutral NPCs encountered in the world, and the presence of factions of NPCs whose relationship to you (which is pretty much defined by whether you shoot at their members or not) affects how future encounters with them will go. The custom-built engine is quite impressive, with DX8-based light and shadow, advanced physics, and the increasingly common ability to dynamically load parts of the world during play, reducing the need for loading zones. The gameplay seems like a standard military FPS from what I saw, but this is definitely a game to check out.
I believe you have my NGAGE! Nokia had a large UFO-shaped theater for their new sidetalking-proof Ngage QD, along with a large multiplayer arena (it's even larger than that).
The omg sellouts at ATI were showing off Half-Life 2, but I was informed that the movie was not worth the very long wait in line and could be obtained online, so I skipped it.
For lunch today, I hooked up with the crowd from The Psyjnir Complex for lunch (From left: Djof, Jester, SilverBrin, Psyrixx, Tirion lying down). On our way to a nearby Subway, we saw a large military helicopter flying very low over us and heading straight for the convention center. Later on, I learned that our hunger had cost us one of the coolest stunts at the show, as the U.S. Army invaded the show floor by sending some troops wielding real (unloaded) assault rifles rappelling down from a Blackhawk helicopter [insert joke about finding WMDs here].
This was posted in the official E3 merchandise booth. California...
We ran into this dude outside the convention.
After lunch, I explored mysterious underground realm of third-string publishers and hardware vendors that time forgot in Kentia Hall. The best thing I saw there was a company that makes really, really bizarre game controllers, like this alien infection Xbox model.
The day ended in the Xbox booth again, since it was a convenient place to find and return to. While waiting for the Expo to shut down and deanero's lanparty to begin, we watched people play Burnout 3, which has such great crashes that if any player began to do too well and broke 200Mph he'd be assaulted by cries of "Hit that bus! Hit that bus!" (which would provoke the game to announce "BusTed!" along with the cool bullet-time orbiting crash camera).
Eventually, the expo shut down, and we all piled back into our cars and headed over to deanero's house for some hot Chief-on-Chief action...
(Continue to part 4) |
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Slackers.
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