We headed into the wonderific CGI fray known as SIGGRAPH this year, and ultimately decided that we need to start checking this out more often. The technical conference just entered its 35th year, with the acronym being for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques. While it's evolved into a pretty glorified job fair, they still show off new and impressive technology, have a large section focusing on papers relating to innovation in the field of computer graphics (like this year's "Simulating Knitted Cloth at the Yarn Level") and feature a fun Computer Animation Festival component filled with dozens of short CGI films in competition.
The only gaming companies we noticed in attendance were Activision, LucasArts, and THQ, which mostly offered "we want to hire you!" booths, but a lot of the tech behind games was being shown as well. NVIDIA was demoing "the world's first fully interactive GPU-based ray tracer," and the Mova Contour system was showing off their futuristic looking rig. Plus, it now seems like everyone and their uncle is creating 3D printers that pump out plastic models, but that doesn't mean we don't want one.
Read on after the break to find out more, explore the gallery below, and be sure to watch the video that got the biggest laughs, just ahead.
We know what you're thinking, and we're right there with you. The absolute best way to capture the intense horror and gore of EA's upcoming Dead Space for a direct-to-DVD (and Blu-ray) movie is with a cartoon. Oh, that wasn't what you were thinking? C'mon – as if the age gate on this trailer for the flick wasn't enough indication, it's not exactly a kid-friendly affair. No sir. It's nice and gory (as gory as cel animation can get, at least).
Set for release on October 28 (hey, that's right around when the game's hitting ... coincidence?) the film follows the events that occurred on the mining ship Ishimura (the game's setting, in case you're just joining us) and the planet it's lifelessly orbiting (and why it's orbiting said planet lifelessly) before the outset of the game. Think of it kind of like Enter the Matrix in reverse. On second thought, don't think about Enter the Matrix.
Fans are already filling our need for more Metal Gear post-MGS4. Created by The Duo Group, "Cold Blooded" is an animated short in the vein of the Kojima Productions' Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel, with an almost story-board-like look and an intriguing twist for such a short ... short.
Now that we've watched it, we're more eager than ever to hear anything new on the Digital Graphic Novel treatment of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty that was announced last year. The last we'd heard, the comic book adaptation is being slightly tweaked in order to better jive with the plot-bombs dropped in MGS4, in which case we're willing to wait a little longer.
Players will use the stylus to conduct classic tunes from the, er, 'toons, and then be "rewarded with clips from favorite Looney Tunes cartoon moments." Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety will be on hand for a game designed for "absolutely everybody who enjoys simple but addictive gameplay." And who doesn't enjoy that? No one, that's who! So that means everybody will enjoy this game! It's logic as indestructible as an ACME Indestructo Steel Ball.
It was only a few short years ago when in-game physics were a novelty, like lava lamps and black lights. Today, however, like barrels that explode when shot, obeying the laws of physics is expected behavior for objects in most any game. This turnabout is pinned largely on the popularity of Havok's core collection of animation and physics tools, which the company notes that it will make available to PC game developers for free later this year.
The toolset, dubbed Havok Complete, has been used in creating a number of high profile titles, such as Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword. Beginning in May, Havok will make available these same tools to developers for non-commercial use, while both it and parent company Intel also plan to offer those devs deemed worthy with a free commercial distribution license as well. Says Havok, the move is designed to "boost creative game development throughout the industry," from indies and academics, to PC enthusiasts who for too long have lived without the joy of being able to throw virtual ragdolls down flights of stairs.
Football is a game of split second decisions, and simulating the sport on the Xbox 360 will soon let you split those seconds more finely. 1UP is reporting that this summer's major pigskin simulators -- EA's Madden NFL 08 and NCAA Football 2008 and 2K Sports' All-Pro Football 2K8 -- will run at 60 frames per second on the Xbox 360 and 30 frames per second on the PS3. The move represents a jump from previous Madden games, which ran at 30 frames per second on all platforms, including the Xbox 360 and PS3.
While the additional frames mean smoother, more fluid animation in the 360 versions, it's still unclear how the jump will impact graphical fidelity or resolution. A comparison between both versions of last year's Madden 07 conducted by Gamespot showed the 360 version had "sharper textures on the character models in the close-up shots shown between plays." In comparing this year's games, 1UP simply stated that "All-Pro Football 2K8 definitely runs better on Xbox 360."
The reasons behind this frame rate difference are hard to pin down. Todd Sitrin, EA Vice President of Marketing Sports Branding, told 1UP that there are trade offs in designing football simulations and that "every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps." Extra time and familiarity with the Xbox 360 hardware could have influenced the development, as could the purported difficulty in programming for the PS3's multi-processor architecture.
One part The Incredibles, one part Sony's crazy European bathtub ad, the new Team Fortress 2 trailer gets cheeky with "The Heavy." Although we are looking forward to continuing the Half-Life 2 story with the Black and Orange Box this fall, it feels like Portal and Team Fortress 2 is starting to grab our attention a lot more. Although, all that Half-Life 2 goodness in the Orange Box for those who've never played should be hard to resist.
The comic-style first-person shooter of Team Fortress 2 might help grab some XBL players who aren't into the ultra-serious, super-hardcore, lifestyle that Halo 3 online will be. Team Fortress 2 could very well shape up to be the "other" multiplayer shooter for the Xbox 360 and some great multiplayer action for PS3 owners.
While the arrival of HDTV has generally been a boon to the game industry, it's definitely caused headaches for at least one shrinking but still important sector of the industry -- 2D sprite artists. As the above illustration of the Ryu sprite for the upcoming Street Fighter II HD Remix shows, drawing good-looking 2D characters in HD requires a lot more attention to detail than the old standard-resolution sprites.
This problem is not exclusive to Capcom. Castlevania designer Koji Igarishi remarked at GDC on the labor involved in creating high resolution 2D art and SNK President Ben Herman lamented in an IGN interview that bringing the company's fighters to the 360 and PS3 would require artists to "re-draw every single older game."
The extra work leads to extra benefits, though, as the sleek new Ryu above clearly demonstrates. Still, the proof will be seeing these beautiful high-def drawings come to life. All the graphical fidelity in the world doesn't matter if the animation is on par with Star Wars Adventures.
It's cute, it's simple, and it's better than a slew of video games we've been playing lately. We give you Super Smash Bros., in hand-drawn animation. A sweeping cinematic score only underlines the awesomeness of this fine video.
Nintendo, if you want to save some money, get someone on this project, pronto. Release it, rake in the dough, and we'll have something to tide us over until the real game comes out. Trust us.
At first glance that panel title sounds like a very special episode of Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator," but the subtitle makes it a bit clearer ... for some: "A Robot, a DS, and a dot-matrix printer menage a trois." This panel was all about hacking and homebrewing, and we saw some pretty cool stuff.
Bob Sabiston's Nintendo DS animation project -- this is a homebrew kit that Bob began developing after sending Nintendo a letter explaining that he was a fairly decent programmer and engineer (he is - he wrote the rotoscoping software used for the animation in Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly) and they sent him a software development kit for the DS. His animation and painting program is one of the best apps we've ever seen on the DS, and even the artwork he's produced on it is very impressive.
Rich LeGrand got into game robotics with the Game Boy Advance, because there is a fairly limitless supply of hardware available on eBay at around $20 a pop. He reverse-engineered a robotics tool for the GBA called the Xport, which he sells through his company Charmed Labs, that lets you program and build a robot around your handheld (most people use Lego for the robot exoskeleton). He has also very successfully not been sued by Nintendo.
Paul Slocum took an old Epson LQ500 dot-matrix printer and reversed engineered a box that lets him program and play music through it by changing the speeds and strengths that the pins strike the paper. It really has to be heard to be believed (it's part of the song - former dot-matrix users will hear it right away). He also uses an Atari 2600 with a modified cartridge to generate drums and "bleep" sounds. Pretty impressive stuff.
We lovingly retitled this panel "How to hack up your precious hardware," but now we're thinking about cracking something open and giving it a whirl. We just wish we'd kept those old dot-matrix printers.
Maybe if Doctor Melfi tried this with Tony Soprano, he could've worked out his anger issues without that near-death experience. Nothing soothes the angry nerves of the savage beast like a few rounds of a GTA-like game. Of course, you need to be careful you don't carry it over into the real world. Whenever we play GTA for hours (days) and then finally get in a car, it is so tempting not just fly off a ramp and bypass traffic.
No idea what system they're gaming on either ... just check out all the buttons on Bart's controller. It's like the red-headed stepchild of the Dreamcast that never came to fruition and only exists as some ideas doodled on a napkin at a Japanese karaoke bar somewhere.
Word from the Canadian newswire is that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot is preparing to announce a major "growth plan for the company" tomorrow. According to Québécois newspaper La Presse, Guillemot will unveil plans for a new computer-animation studio in Quebec, which would initially produce "short films for the general public."
Ubisoft's new CGI studio would be made possible, in part, by an ongoing government grant that is providing the company with roughly C$454 million (approximately $383.9 million USD) over time, in order to create 1,000 new jobs in Quebec. Supposedly tomorrow's announcement will see Canada labor minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn and Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay present Ubisoft Montreal with a portion of the grant worth C$8 million (approx. $6.8 million USD).
Today's video pick comes from the bowels of YouTube, thanks to a Boing Boing tipster. This stop-motion animation of dozens of tea lights proves that anything can be made into a gaming homage. After detailed arrangement and the addition of fire -- fire good! -- the flames dance into Pac-Man, Tetris, and other classic game scenes.
Havok has officially unleashedHavok 4.5, the latest version of their comprehensive animation and physics toolset for developers. The update adds full optimization for the PS3 and its Cell architecture, and is derived from Havok's cooperation with Evolution Studios in the construction of Motorstorm's physics system. Upcoming games utilizing the 4.5 variant are expected to handle Havok instructions between five and ten times faster than the previous release.
"Havok 4.5's ability to allow developers to massively scale game content will make it possible to develop even more compelling, realistic and complex worlds that harness the full power of new generation architectures," says Havok's David O'Meara. Though the emphasis remains on crafting "realistic" worlds, one might also consider the impact that robust physics and animation have on "unrealistic", fantasy games. When objects and clothing behave as you expect them to, it can lend even the most unusual world a sense of believability and cohesion. It's not all sliding crates and rolling barrels, you know.
Havok announced today that Molyneux and company have licensed Havok Complete for Fable 2. 'Complete' rolls Havok Physics and Havok Animation into one integrated package.
As Molyneux iterated, relying on Havok allows Lionhead developers to focus on the team's lofty aspirations, most-simply defined as dynamic regions, unconditional love, wealth accumulation, constrained combat, and an as of yet undisclosed uber-feature. As with the original Fable, at this stage it's hard to distinguish fantasy from reality (what gameplay elements will and won't make it into Fable 2's final release). But there is now at least one certainty: ragdolls.
Today's video pick comes from the bowels of YouTube, thanks to a 
