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Gamasutra's regular 'Question of the Week' feature touches, this week, on the ideal length of games, and the importance of game length. While the overwhelming opinion was 'quality is better than quantity', there were a range of opinions along that scale. From the article: "I would say as a gamer on the more casual side (30+ years) the game length is fine around 20-25 hours. If you are having fun while playing. I never have time to finish anything longer. It makes me more satisfied to have played through the game in 20-25 game hours than never even reach half way. - Joachim Carlsson, Massive Entertainment"
Rush is a PSP update of a middling street racing game that really wasn't worth your time when it was released on consoles last year, and certainly isn't worth your time now.
And why this is no time for software engineers
After serving as a panelist on America’s Next Top Model for five cycles, Twiggy is stepping down as a judge and handing her seat over to former model, Paulina Porizkova. Twiggy’s reason for leaving? Scheduling conflicts. Twiggy took over when Janice Dickinson left the show after the fourth cycle.
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Ratings
HBO hasn't been able to replicate the success of its biggest hit to date, The Sopranos, but that doesn't seem to bother its subscribers. According to Reuters, even experts such as senior analyst Deana Myers, who's been tracking premium cable viewing patterns for the past decade, are surprised. While she says "it did seem like it was going to go down," those numbers in fact increased slightly. Apparently the viewers weren't hanging onto HBO just to see how the saga of mobster Tony Soprano turned out after all.
Continue reading HBO not whacked without Sopranos
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A row has erupted around reviews of the new Lara Croft video game, Tomb Raider: Underworld, after some journalists claimed they had been asked not to post reviews that gave the game a low score.
The situation first came to light on the microblogging service Twitter, after one reviewer said he had been asked by the PR company representing Eidos, the game's publisher, to hold off posting a review of the title if he gave it a mark of less than 8 out of 10.
Several other games websites picked up on the story, although the PR company at the centre of the row has denied trying to influence reviews.
The game isn?t even out yet but when has that ever stopped cosplay before? This guy is dressed up as Travis Touchdown, the main character of Suda 51?s new Wii title No More Heroes. While the lightsaber like blade he wields is quite cool, he also gets the attire right as well.
Check out a new Japanese commercial for Nintendo’s upcoming fitness title and Balance Board peripheral.
Filed under: Gaming
In the heat of the moment, we've no doubt that many of you out there rushed home and set up your
Rock Band drum kit smack dab in the middle of the den. Yes, it probably seemed like a splendid idea at the time, but as the days pass, chances are that other occupants (roommates, SOs, parents, androids, etc.) will grow increasingly frustrated with having to bypass it order to flip on the gas logs. Enter the Rock Band drum bag, which enables you to disassemble your kit, neatly tuck it within the bag's confines and slip it under the couch until your next "gig." Of course, we can easily think of solutions about $50 less expensive, but just how sweet is that official Rock Band logo to you? Click on through for a shot of the inside.
[Via
Joystiq]
Continue reading Rock Band drum bag keeps your SO from trashing your gear
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Spore evolves into IGN's number one most wanted PC game.
Adds application delivery appliance.Sun is licensing Zeus Technology's software so it can offer application delivery controllers (ADCs) to the telco and service provider market. Sun will sell both Sparc and Opteron-based appliances that run Zeus's ZXTM traffic management system on Solaris 10.
Kotaku: "Having had the pleasure of playing a fair amount of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune over the last couple of days I can tell you that it's quite a good time. Watching this video might lead you to believe that the whole game is shooting, but it's so much more. They seem to have taken the best bits from some great games and combined them together to create a really fun and entertaining gaming experience. Think Tomb Raider with some Gears of War thrown in, a little Prince of Persia for good measure and a storyline that will have you fondly reminiscing over Raiders of the Lost Ark. All this plus some of the best, if not the best graphics I have seen on the PS3 thus far. Make the jump to check out some of the wall scaling action".
Lord of the Rings paves the way for more RTS.
spong.com writes: "India, it's a huge potential market for video games. We've already reported this week how Sony's country manager, Atindriya Bose, does simple and straightforward business.
Mr Bose also pointed out that, in terms of the PS2, "Activision have transferred all their assets here".
Well, it seems that whatever the PS3 is doing in the rest of the world, the PlayStation 2 is firmly on course to make the most of sub-continent's keen gamers. Next up for the platform is an announcement from Ben 10 Alien Force developer, Vicious Cycle, that includes the following:
"Vicious Cycle Software announced today that the company is partnering with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) to provide Vicious Engine, the leading middleware solution, to game developers in India."
Dell has launched in the United States the Vostro A860, an affordable 15.6-inch laptop that was previously aimed only at emerging markets.
Starting at $379 after instant savings, the Dell Vostro A860 features Intel’s Celeron or Pentium Dual Core processor, GM965 chipset with GMA X3100+ integrated graphics, 1GB or 2GB of DDR2 memory, a 120GB [...]
Microsoft announces weekend sales of 2 million copies and a new record for concurrent Xbox Live players...
One desktop and 12 Xeons mark the beginning of the Hafnium era.
Chairman Strauss Zelnick directly addresses reports stemming from his address to a business summit earlier this week, says industry sales shouldn't be so holiday-centric.
Thirty-two seven-player teams show off their strengths in shooting, flame throwing, grenade launching, and more. Tune in to find out who comes out on top!
Role-Playing Game, from Square Enix
There's no excuse for poor customer service...
The gameplay might not be anything special, but The Simpsons Game delivers more than enough laughs to make it worth a look.
Filed under: Displays, Features, HDTV, Home Entertainment
So, in case you haven't noticed, we're building our own LCD projector! In
part one we specced out what we needed and got together some optics. In
part two we really tore into our 19-inch Samsung monitor. Today we take a dive into the most difficult part of the projector: designing it to be built. It's easy to talk about something when you're just putting it down on paper. But now it's time to put it together and build it. It's crunch time. Jump into today's how-to; we'll show you how we're going to pull it off and the details that have to be considered.
The projector enclosure is the most important component, and it can be the most difficult to make. Optical alignment, light control, and cooling are all required for success. Before firming up the design in your head, it may help to look at some other enclosures. We can use some of those ideas, but because we're using such a large LCD, the stock designs won't quite work for us.
We want to have two solid, supporting sides. We'll use the same material to provide structural bracing, and finish it off with a thinner covering to keep the light inside and the weight down. We decided to use 3/4-inch birch plywood for the sides and the cross bracing. It's reasonably light, strong, straight and we can put a nice finish on it. For framing up the LCD, we picked up few four foot pieces of straightest 1x2 select pine we could find.
At our
un-named hardware store, we had one of the "red shirts" cut up a four foot by eight foot piece of plywood for us. He cut it too fast, so we got some rough edges, but we'll clean them up later. (A four by four piece was $10 less, so we bought the bigger piece.) Most hardware stores will do these cuts for free or a minimal charge. They'll be straight, just don't depend on the measurements being very accurate. (Careful of those red shirts! Just after this, he was sucked up by the shop vac just like the kid in Willy Wonka)
Getting wood cut can become a chicken and egg problem. We had a rough idea of what we needed, so we had two 14 inch wide rips cut. The rest was cut into thirds for easy transport.
Oh so carefully, we measured the thickness of our panel. It's under an eight of an inch thick. Be careful not touch the LCD with the calipers!
Next we need to create a frame to hold our LCD panel. This is the first real task for building the enclosure. We'll determine the final dimensions of our enclosure from our framed panel size. The LCD is 10.5 by 16.5, so we cut two 12-inch and one 18-inch piece of 1x2-inch pine. Later, we'll trim them to the final dimensions.
The LCD is thin, so a single cut with a table saw blade is wide enough to accommodate the edge of the LCD. We set the depth to 1/4-inch and the fence is 5/8 of an inch from the blade. We want the lamp side Fresnel lens to be about 16mm (5/8-inch) from the LCD, so the frame will act as a simple lens spacer.
To keep from screwing up, we made a test cut on a scrap.
A quick test fit to the width of the LCD and we know we're golden.
Notice those little cables on the right side and the cables up top? We have to accommodate them in the frame. We'll come back to the stuff up top later.
We cranked up the blade height of our table saw and cut one side deeper to accommodate them. We eyeballed it for the cut, but it's about 1/2-inch deep.
Once we had everything tweaked, we measured our final framed LCD width. We'll be building our enclosure to be 17.5-inches wide inside. Knowing that, we got out the table saw again and ripped down one of the spare pieces of plywood to 17.5-inches wide. By cutting all the cross bracing to the same width, life should be easier later on.
To get a feel for the height and width of the box, we set up the sides with a 17 and 1/2 inch spacer in the middle. The finished product will be much smaller, but it helps to get a feel for what's coming.
Digging into the design, we have to consider and commit to our design decisions. We laid out our design on directly on the plywood. Photographing pencil marks on plywood isn't the easiest to read, so we'll walk through it step by step. (Use a pencil, it's not committed until you start cutting!)
The LCD is the heart of the projector, so we have to determine it's placement and locate everything else around it. To place the LCD, we determined the maximum distance we would ever want the projection lens at, added a bit for good measure, and came up with 25 inches. The is a bit long, but it'll give us room to maneuver.
We pulled out
Focal Calc II from the
Lumenlab forums to come up with our numbers. The LCD and screen width can be considered either diagonally, horizontally or vertically. Our screen is 104-inches wide, so we used that along with a 16-inch LCD width. The Pro projection lens has a 500mm focal point, the lens side Fresnel has a 650mm focal point and the lamp side has a 220mm focal point. Plunking that into Focal Calc gave a lens distance around 24-inches, and a 72-inch screen gave around 22-inches. We'll overbuild and provide for up to a 25-inch distance with the enclosure. (We'll get a bit more travel once we build the carriage for the lens.)
As we lay everything out, it's helpful to revisit the components. We measured our bulb and base. We care about the center of the bulb - it comes out around 7-inches from the bottom of the mogul base. (Note the small stub on the inner glass envelope.) We'll have to offset the ceramic base with a wooden base.
The drawing isn't quite to scale - the end result won't be 48- long, so relax. Now we add in our lens placements -- the Fresnel's on the lamp side will use the frame of the LCD as a spacer. It will be 5/8 (about 16mm) away from the LCD. The lamp will be 220mm from the Fresnel lens.
Alignment is key to the optics. Before determining where the center of the bulb and Fresnel lenses should be, we need to determine the location of the LCD's center. Obviously, the center of the LCD is easy. Remember the big cable on the top of the LCD? Now we have to consider where to route them and how much we'll have to offset the LCD.
Inside the projector, the image from the LCD will be reversed and flipped upside down. So the display needs to be mounted upside down and facing the lamp. The cables can exit forward or backward, so we've decided to place the interface board on the bottom of the projector, and flip the cables toward it for an easy connection once the display is inside the enclosure. Inside the case, we'll place blocks of wood to set the height of the LCD, while the LCD will rest in the channels of the frame we built.
Bringing that idea back to our layout, we need to note the upper and lower limits of the LCD, as well as the position of the interface board. Initially we provisioned for over an inch, but it'll probably end up between a quarter and a half inch.
Now's a good time to measure the ballast. It's 10-inches long, 4-inches wide and 3-inches wide. We're still toying with mounting locations, so we're going to get some of the enclosure built before making the decision.
Now that we've nailed down the basics, we'll start building up our enclosure. (We'd have a nice preview shot for you, but our intrepid how-to author forgot to buy wood clamps.) Next time we'll dig into the construction details and get up close and personal with each component as we mount, clamp, glue and wire our way to HD viewing pleasure.
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
With 1.3 million households out of 7.4 million total—17.5 percent—receiving at least one HD network, NYC is leading the US in HD uptake. Los Angeles technically has more households receiving HD, but only 17.1 percent of total households are getting the good stuff. Nation-wide, 12.7 million households—11.7 percent—get HD service. Oh, to be one of them. [Yahoo!/IDG]
Content already planned for DVD release.
A trio of EA developers have fired back at Rockstar on Geoff Keighley?s Game Head program. Executive producer Matt Selman explained the controversy:
"The game begins with Bart wanting to play a game called Grand Theft Scratchy. Of course this is a parody of Grand Theft Auto. And Marge immediately takes it away from him. She tries to clean up the town and stop the game from being distributed in Springfield because Marge is against video game violence. She uses horrific violence to stop video game violence? in a video game. Thats called irony? The people who make Grand Theft Auto, they spazzed out like little babies."
Senior producer Matt Warburton chimed in: "They?re supposed to be rockstars? That?s not a big Rockstar move, to be afraid of The Simpsons making fun of their game."
"Postal will insult all cultures, religions, political groups and leaders. No one will be spared. The film is intended to provoke thought, laughter and open debate. Our world is out of balance and Postal will reflect just how (expletive) up we are." So says Uwe Boll, director of the screen adaptation of the ultra-violent videogame Postal, in a posting at the Skewed and Reviewed website. The pugilist-filmmaker's screed claims Postal is a reaction to and commentary on everything from 9/11 to U.S. foreign policy. "The world is in need of a film that is tougher in it's humorous mockery of the globe than South Park. The audience is ready to approach this type of satire with live actors rather than cartoons. Postal will not accept any form of censorship." After calling for filmgoers to "wake up" and saying that the victims of 9/11 "were not heroes at all," Boll closes with: "May Postal shock, stir, offend and entertain you !!!!!" Uwe Boll's full posting can be found at SKNR.net
National distance learning provider The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand has been
honoured at the New Zealand Open Source Awards for its pioneering role in promoting
the adoption of low cost eLearning technology in New Zealand (New Zealand Open Source ...
Shanna Moakler Is A Hot Psychic (IDLYITW)
Just In! Lindsay Lohan Is Still Into Dick (Dlisted)
Giselle Bundchen In A See Through Shirt! (DS nsfw)
Kate Hudson Is Young, Single & Super Sexy (Lainey Gossip)
Adrianne Curry Is Married To A Midget (The Bastardly)
Brooke Hogan's Brother Is Free (Pink Is The New Blog)
Jennifer Aniston [...]
Side by side graphics comparison of the recently released demo of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue on PS3 and the full game Forza Motorsport 2 that was released a while back on Xbox 360. Images were taken with the same TV, same camera, same settings, same track, same color car, same positioning on track, same room lighting. The comparison is simple, GT5 is on the left while Forza 2 is on the right side. Which looks better in your opinion?
If you're not familiar with HTC, it's a company that makes various smartphones both under their own name and for service providers to brand as their own. Their latest, the PDA/phone Artemis, continues their tradition of great phones in a PDA body.
The most notable feature: a built-in GPS with the Sirf-Star III chipset which enables built-in navigation functions. Other great stuff were the clear call quality, A2DP Bluetooth, touchscreen, 2-megapixel camera, and the BlackBerry Pearl-like scroller. The ball can actually control a cursor on the screen as well as scrolling through menus.
The bad? The aging 200MHz processor and the lack of a QWERTY keyboard. Because of this, you probably won't be doing too much messaging or emailing—it's more for organizing and navigation. – Jason Chen
Product Page [HTC Phone Store]
HTC P3300 (Artemis) Review [HTC Phone Store]
Analyst Jesse Divnich believes that Nintendo's Wii will be the top-selling console, moving approximately 485,000 units despite the release of Halo 3. Microsoft's Xbox 360 sales will be close, however, at an estimated 423,000 units sold.
"Nintendo has just recently announced their game releases for both the Wii and DS from October through the holidays."
Green screen technology gets a makeover.Terminal emulation company Attachmate has launched a Vista version of its Reflection software, even though the company admits that take-up of the operating system has been low.
Filed under: Programming, What To Watch Tonight
At 7, ABC has a new America's Funniest Home Videos, then new episodes of Extreme Makeover, Desperate Housewives, and Brothers & Sisters. - NBC has a new Football Night In America at 7, followed by the Saints/Seahawks game.
- The CW has a new The CW Now at 7, then new episodes of Online Nation and Life Is Wild.
- At 7:30, CBS has a new 60 Minutes, followed by new episodes of Cold Case and Without A Trace.
- At 8, FOX has a new Simpsons, then a new King of the Hill.
- TCM has the original Sleuth at 8.
- At 8:30, TBS has a the Rockies/Diamondbacks game.
- At 9, PBS has a new Mystery!
- There's a new Challenge on Food Network at 9, then a new Next Iron Chef.
- Showtime has a new Dexter at 9, then a new Brotherhood.
- Also at 9: HBO has a new Tell Me You Love Me, followed by a new Curb Your Enthusiasm.
- At 9:30, FOX has a new American Dad.
Check your local TV listings for more.
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Filed under: Displays, Peripherals
So you've just purchased a new desktop that checks in at 1.6- x 2.4 - x 2.1-inches (actual size may vary), and you're looking for the perfect LCD to accompany it. At long last, we finally have a solution for the aforementioned quandary. The Century LCD-4300U is a 4.3-inch LCD monitor that not only provides the convenience of a USB connection, but it also gets every ounce of energy it needs via that same USB cable. The mini
monitor touts an 800 x 480 resolution, LED-backlighting and compatibility with Windows XP / Vista and OS X. Now, if only the darn thing didn't cost ¥19,800 ($197), we might have ourselves a runaway winner.
[Via
OhGizmo]
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I want to work for whatever company where they have time to set this up.
Some users fear that SAP's acquisition of Business Objects SA will lead to dwindling support and a decrease in product upgrades.
Even with severe burns covering most of his body, Travis Barker found a little time to smear his ex-wife. The former Blink-182 drummer who was recently involved in a plane crash took to his MySpace Page, thanking fans for their continued support and haranguing his ex-wife for steering clear during his recovery. Oh snap. ThereÂ’s nothing like a good old fashioned husband-on-wife diatribe
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 gets off to a roaring start; Pok?mon titles continue selling six digits.
Attached below are the first teaser trailers for the two upcoming exclusive Final Final Crystal Chronicles titles for Wii.
The first title is "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Chiisa na Ousama to Yakusoku no Kuni" ("The Young King and the Promised Land".) The first video and set of screenshots from the game are attached below. This is a new title that was announced at the Nintendo Fall Conference 2007. The only currently available video is in low res. A hi-res version should be coming soon. The game will be available exclusively via WiiWare in March 2008.
In case you missed it, the other exclusive Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle title for Wii, "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers", also has a trailer. The release date is yet to be announced.
Loebner Prize founder on why he's backing AI
For those of you who’ve always wanted to go Through The Keyhole of the homes of your favorite comic creators - and there’s a television reference that’s probably lost on the majority of those reading - John Byrne offers you pre-renovation pics of his hot and happening pad to mark his 800th day in the [...]
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans Senior Vice President and CIO Holly Morris' people-focused technology transformation is taking the fraternal benefit society into the age of information democracy.
This patch includes several game tweaks and balances.
