Tech 1

Epic Games calls out Intel

You can’t help but like Epic Games VP Mark Rein. Sure, he is a graphics whore but he openly speaks his mind and has a lot of important things to say. In an interview with Firingsquad, Mark Rein called out Intel on making horrible graphics chips, and I could not agree with him more.

FiringSquad: What is Epic’s feeling about PC game hardware and how will the Unreal engine be part of that?

Mark Rein: I wish I could report only good news but that’s not the case.

On the good side there is a lot of exciting news in the PC space. Ageia is launching their physics hardware. NVIDIA now has Quad SLI. Dell is getting serious about PC gaming with their XPS 600 Renegade system and XPS M170 laptops. Both Intel and AMD now sell dual-core processors. Apple has switched to Intel. NVIDIA’s SLI is taking hold and lots of game enthusiasts are starting to use it. These are all good things that Unreal Engine 3 is very qualified to take advantage of. We’re obviously using the PhysX library which, in addition to giving us very strong physics performance on Xbox360 and PS3, will give us the ability to take advantage of the upcoming PC PhysX hardware. Prior to their announcement at CES this year we had a chance to run Unreal Engine 3 on Dell’s new XPS 600 Renegade Quad SLI system and I can tell you that it is fantastic! Dell is lending us gear for our GDC demos this year. In addition to running our theatre on the amazing Renegade we’ll also be demo’ing on more down-to-earth SLI-equipped XPS 600 systems and the Dell M170 laptop with NVIDIA’s Geforce Go 7800 GTX. Dell is also lending us some of their amazing 30” monitors which are fantastic for Unreal Editor demos. Our new multi-threaded renderer will also be great on dual core processors from AMD and Intel. Windows Vista will also give us a nice performance boost by getting us closer to the hardware than past versions of Windows have.

Unfortunately the bad side is getting really bad. It is getting harder and harder for the average consumer to buy a computer with a decent graphics chips in it. When I go to major electronics retailers I see that most of the machines being sold are using Intel Integrated graphics – including the vast majority of laptops. Some of the desktop machines don’t even have slots for discrete graphics cards which I find personally offensive. Laptops of course are mostly not upgradable so a bad laptop is a bad laptop forever and considering how many people are replacing desktop with laptops this is especially worrisome. It is really sad when you see the moniker “media” or “entertainment” attached to something with Intel Integrated graphics in it. I question the logic of developing dual-core CPUs and saddling them with ultra-low-end graphics especially considering that one of the big benefits of Windows Vista will be a hugely improved graphical user interface that will help improve productivity. There are some seriously expensive desktops and laptops with crappy graphics chips in them – these aren’t just the low-priced machines either. Intel salespeople are probably patting themselves on the back for these design wins but the truth is the more successful they are with this strategy the faster they could be killing off the PC games market and nobody has the balls to stand up and cry foul because Intel is so powerful.

If people take those machines home and try to play recent PC games on them they’re going to have a horrible experience and possibly give up on PC gaming altogether. Users aren’t educated in this area but when their new $1,500 PC says “no” to a decent PC game they’re going to just assume the PC games market had passed them by. This is sad because the difference in cost the PC manufacturer to put in a decent graphics chip isn’t very much.

We need to find a way to encourage manufacturers to offer more balanced systems with better graphics chips and understand that every user they convert to a gamer represents a potential higher-margin sale the next time and every user they discourage from gaming represents a potential lower-margin commodity purchaser later. We need those mainstream users to be trying PC games. It is nearly impossible to justify the cost of making games that scale down to integrated graphics when the next-gen consoles have so much graphics power and represent a huge upcoming market. How many publishers would bother bringing their latest games to PC if only the hardcore players could run them? Those customers have already proven they’re willing to spend $300 for a graphics card so expecting them to own a next-gen console isn’t much of a leap.

So despite the fact that I’m a big cheerleader for PC gaming I am worried about a potential for catastrophic failure of the PC gaming market. You’d think Intel would be worried about that too especially considering that none of the next-generation consoles use Intel CPUs.

Source

Tech Video

PhysX Cards

So, price info has been coming out for the BFG PhysX card. It should cost around $350. I am still not sure if I will be buying one of these or not. In a way, it seems somewhat pointless to buy a physics card. With today’s dual core processors and GPUs, I don’t see any problem with calculating physics on the CPU & GPU. Two processors with 4 threads are enough in my opinion, especially considering most game engines are still single threaded.

Then there is the issue of support. The PhysX cards only work for games that run AGEIA’s physics middleware. How many games will actually use it? Havok is by far the most commonly used physics middleware and if anything its support is growing. It is also worth mentioning that Havok has been talking about physics processing for the GPU for a while now. To me, it sounds like a much better idea then having a separate PPU for physics. I find it hard to suggest buying a physics card that will only work on select games. Can you imagine buying a video card that only worked on games that ran in OpenGL?

Then there is the fact that AGEIA’s physics middleware runs perfectly fine on the CPU. So you don’t even need the card to play games that use it. I would suggest waiting a good long time before buying one. I would like to see how much support this card actually gets, and how much of a performance boost you will actually find on a game running on dual cores.

One thing is for sure though, the demos do look sexy (just not $350 cool) and I am willing to bet those demos can run fine on a dual core processor if it took advantage of it. You can view one of the demos below. If it looks interesting, a slightly different (and a little bit cooler) high resolution version of that video can be found here.

Games 2

Good news for Bethesda

1.7 million copies of Oblivion have shipped since March 20th. This is great news for Bethesda. For the past few weeks Oblivion has held the #2 spot for the most played Xbox live games. The list includes all Xbox 360 games and all live enabled Xbox games. That’s pretty amazing for a single player only game. The top spot is of course held by Halo 2, but when you consider how many Xbox 360s are out there compared to the number of original Xbox consoles as well as how many copies were sold of Halo 2, that’s not surprising. Expect to see Oblivion stay in that top 10 list for a good while, that game has a lot of content.

Here is the top 10 Xbox live games for this week:

  1. Halo 2
  2. Oblivion
  3. Ghost Recon 3
  4. Call of Duty 2
  5. BFMC (Original Xbox)
  6. EA SPORTS™ Fight Night Round 3
  7. PGR3
  8. Perfect Dark Zero
  9. DEAD OR ALIVE 4
  10. Battlefield 2: MC Demo
Games Video 1

Oblivion

Ok, so I am about 30 hours into the game and decided to write down my thoughts so far. The first word that comes to mind when trying to describe the game is “massive”. The world is so large and there are so many things to do its crazy. The world itself seems alive as you explore it. Everything from wildlife walking around, storm fronts that roll in, and people going about their daily lives creates a game world unlike anything before. The world is so beautifully crafted; it gives you a sense of awe just walking around.

I decided to create a warrior for my first time. I plan to play again as a mage or some other class that uses a lot of magic. The game would play a whole lot different depending on what class you are. My friend Tom has been playing a ton just as a master thief. He has already made a massive amount of money. I am sure he has made lots of progress in the thief’s guild as well. My other friend Jeff is playing as some magic class I believe. He is also getting pretty good with the bow, shooting people from a distance. My warrior prefers to get in close and cut up fools with his one handed glass sword while blocking with his shield. I have a few magic spells to back me up too.

From the start of the game there were many quests I could have done, and I did a good number of them. Right now I probably have more active quests then I have completed quests, and I plan to do every one of them. Each quest is completely unique and interesting. Not one of them has been boring so far, and they have all been worth doing. Getting quests feel natural. Some you get from overhearing dynamic NPC conversations while others (like the main storyline quests) are directly given to you by NPC characters.

The amount of dialog in this game is impressive. Absolutely everything is spoken (except for books) and the voice acting is excellent. The characters look great and have a good amount of facial expression. You can even tell how much someone likes just by paying attention at how they look at you.

So far, the main quest story line is excellent. There is a good set of well developed core characters and the quests are very fun to do. However, I have been spending most of my time doing side quests. I spent a good amount of time fighting in the arena and eventually became champion. It’s definitely worth it and I suggest everyone to give the arena a go. I have also been doing a lot of quests for the fighter’s guild as well as the mage’s guild.

I have also gone into a lot of cool dungeons that I randomly came across while walking around the beautifully rendered and animated forests. All of the dungeons are unique and have some pretty good loot to be found if you go looking for it. I have also closed quite a few oblivion gates and have gotten some pretty cool stones for it.

I think I am getting somewhat close to the end of the main quest, but I plan to be playing this game much longer even after I am done with the story. This is just one of those games that are fun to live in and go exploring. When I finally finish the game (well more like the main quest) I will post a review.

Oblivion is the best Xbox 360 game so far and is reason enough to buy the console. I can easily recommend this game to just about anyone.

If you want some more information on Oblivion, check the video below. It starts off with the E3 trailer of the game followed by a demo of the game with one of the developers narrating. It shows off everything from the forests and dungeons to how the impressive AI makes the world seem alive.

Also, if you have been playing this game, I would love to hear your impressions of it so far.