Posts by Thrik

Kind of like real life then.

The general impression that I've gotten from Carmack et al talking about megatextures over the years is that it doesn't necessarily make much of a difference to the aesthetics of a game: developers can still repeat textures and shit if they want to, and gamers probably won't even notice the exorbitant amounts of unique detail anyway. To be fair I hardly notice asset and texture repetition in most current-gen games.

However, it does have huge implications on performance and is presumably a major factor in them hitting 60 FPS rather than 30 FPS on consoles despite having superb visuals — like HP says you're not using the engine to paint individual textures onto meshes and shit (which works fine but eats RAM like a mofo), it's all done before that stage. Do they have external tools for doing that, do they use regular Photoshop and brushes, or do they have an in-editor texture tool for working on the megatexture? Not really seen much of the developer tools.

I'm more interested in the post-Rage iteration of megatextures personally, which will have all the infinite detail shit going on.

Quote from Bunglo

Is it? I thought it was only partially open source with their chronium browser.

Kind of. Chromium is the development version of the browser that Google and the open source community build, and then when it's ready for a proper stable release Google integrates some additional modules (primarily third-party things that aren't open source like PDF support, Flash, etc) and switches the logo from the blue Chromium version to the multi-colour Chrome version — very quick and basic stuff that can be easily slotted into each Chromium release.

While some stuff is tracked as with any browser, unlike many browsers they're completely open about it and if you go through the options anything that you might be worried about is clearly indicated and can be turned off. You can also find a list online of what few things are tracked and why.

Really there's no reason to fear the big Google machine just because it's big. They don't abuse privacy — never have, most likely never will. It's part of their company mantra.

Very good decision. I've been loving LA Noire (only doing traffic cases at the moment) but it's very much an adventure game first and foremost, which is traditionally a genre mostly found on the PC. I bet there's a massive audience of PC gamers who'd love to play this, which would explain them going to the effort of porting LA Noire but not Red Dead Redemption ( ).

Quote from Bunglo

Is it? I thought it was only partially open source with their chronium browser.

Kind of. Chromium is the development version of the browser that Google and the open source community build, and then when it's ready for a proper stable release Google integrates some additional features (primarily third-party things that aren't open source like PDF support, Flash, etc), switches the logo from the blue Chromium version to the multi-colour Chrome version. While some stuff is tracked, they're very open about it and if you go through the options anything that you might be worried about is clearly indicated and can be turned off.

Really there's no reason to fear the big Google machine just because it's big. They don't abuse privacy — never have, most likely never will. It's part of their company mantra.

Admittedly I've not used Steam much this year but it never struck me as a laggy piece of software before, and I personally find all the in-game tab stuff extremely convenient when I've administrated servers and needed to refer to the web to check commands, add bans to databases, etc. Obviously it'd be optimal to just be able to tab through Windows but as we all know that's asking for trouble in too many games.

Chrome is open source too, there're no secrets regarding what it's doing that might compromise your privacy (nothing).

To be honest any browser that isn't Internet Explorer at the moment is more than adequate — I wouldn't dream of calling Firefox, Opera, or even Safari bad browsers. It is worth bearing in mind two things when choosing which to go with, though: Chrome remains the fastest and probably always will be, and every other browser is copying whatever Chrome does (including the UI).

Yeah it's lovely. I switched from Firefox to Chrome about half a year ago after being disappointed with 4.0, and I've never looked back. Most extensions I had were just clutter to be honest, and everything I need Chrome does out the box. Also it's almost like it's reading my mind because it's so usable and allows me to do what I want to do so easily.

Performance-wise it just blows Firefox et al out the water.

I think it's very telling that Firefox, Opera, etc are all basing their designs and features on Chrome (but not doing it as well).

You know bookmark/password/etc syncing has been built into Firefox itself for a good year or so right? Same for Chrome.

More than enough to designate it official home of MapCore!

I absolutely love the colour approach they've gone for to be honest; this is a rare example of colour grading done right. Monotonous schemes are used for depressing areas like the dead city recent media has depicted, bright and colourful schemes are used for more bustling places, etc. Then you've got per-area grading which helps make certain places feel warmer, colder, etc. On top of that they retain bolder colours on things of interest to direct your eye cleverly. I think it's done really well.

Quote from D3ads

That's because most of the Polish people have moved over here.. *ZING*

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I think there's a good few of us in Nottingham so naturally it's the logical meeting place.

Actually I think you will find that's against the terms of your EULA, TOS, and PA Furyo.

Quote from Warby

w0rd !

half-life 2 > half-life 1

Agreed. HL1's much-copied intro is unbeatable, but beyond that HL2 just soars and soars.

Quote from Rick_D

$20 for a dvdmovie lasts 90 minutes

$60 for a game

game lasts 7 hours

i don't know what people want anymore

Spending 10 hours in a public park with a football... free. Reading a games magazine for 4 hours... £5.

You can't compare entertainment in such a limited way. Like it or not, most films pack more emotional response, tension, story development, and general quality into 2 hours than many games manage in 8-15 hours.

This latest batch of screenshots is incredible. Great to see this game's bringing the wow-factor as well as awesome gameplay (assuming it sticks to its historical greatness).

In the UK you either get BT lines or Virgin lines: BT own all the copper lines and Virgin own all the fibre optic lines. BT allow other ISPs to use their lines at varying prices and speeds, whereas Virgin do it all alone.

If you can I'd go with Be* or TalkTalk. They both use BT's lines and serve up to 24mb/s depending on your distance from the exchange, and neither do the kind of traffic management crap and OTT 'fair use' capping that BT and most others do.

Virgin is a good alternative (up to 50mb/s) if you're too far away from a BT exchange to get good speeds, but they do have quite an aggressive traffic management policy which could be a concern if you do a lot of heavy downloading.