GRID Officially Announced and First Screenshots

Codemasters announces GRID, the next game in their long running racing series. GRID will be released in mid-2008 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 from the same development team which brought you Colin McRae: DiRT. Here is a release and first screens:

Coming mid 2008, GRID is set to capture every moment from the starting grid to the chequered flag and concentrate those moments into an intense and dramatic race experience. GRID is being developed for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and Games for Windows®.

GRID will take players to beautifully realized and dramatic race locations over three continents to compete in an unprecedented variety of racing events. Packed with the most powerful race cars – new and classic, circuit and drift – players will compete to conquer the most prestigious official race tracks and championships and then go beyond to compete in challenging city-based competitions, through to road events and urban street races.

In Europe, race gamers will compete on the greatest official tracks in prestige Marques including Aston Martin, Koenigsegg and Pagani.

Iconic cities across the U.S. – including San Francisco, Washington DC and Detroit and each with their own atmosphere and events – play hosts to diverse street races. Here, high-performance V8 muscle cars set the pace in aggressive closely fought pack competitions.

In the Far East, Japanese racing culture sets the tone where night races, including Drift racing, take drivers through neon illuminated cities and to outlying mountain roads. There is also the opportunity to compete in races that operate on the fringes of legality in the back streets and industrial areas of Yokohama.

EVE Online: Trinity To Launch On Dec. 5

CCP announces today that EVE Online: Trinity, the latest free expansion pack for CCP’ s space based MMO game, will be released for their subscribers on Dec. 5. While there will be a classic / standard version of the expansion there will also be a premium version with enhanced graphics adding Shader 3.0 graphics.

CCP, one of the world’s largest independent game developers, today announced that the highly anticipated EVE Online: Trinity expansion for its popular massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) will be available on December 5, 2007. Available as a free online download for all EVE subscribers, Trinity features a next-generation graphics engine that sets a new aesthetic standard for online games. This expansion comes on the heels of another important milestone: more than 200,000 players now subscribe to EVE Online.

The release of the Trinity expansion fortifies EVE Online’s position at the forefront of three-dimensional game graphics, creating a breath-taking cinematic experience during actual gameplay. In order to achieve its visual goals, CCP developed a new graphics engine, architected for Shader Model 3.0 and above. In this first showcase for the new engine, all ships, stations and stargates have been reconstructed. EVE Online: Trinity employs advanced lighting techniques and complex surface materials to make these highly detailed models even more realistic.

“EVE Online players always inspire and amaze everyone at CCP, and it is invigorating to see our subscription numbers surpass 200,000 as we prepare for the Trinity release,” said Hilmar Veigar Petursson, Chief Executive Officer of CCP. “We’re pleased that advances in graphics technology allow us to present the world of EVE Online as we had always envisioned it. We look forward to sharing the Trinity edition with the fast-growing, dedicated community that shares our passion to remove the barriers that constrain virtual worlds from meeting their full potential.”

The Trinity launch also includes a host of new features. For full details of added features, please visit http://www.eve-online.com/trinity/. To experience a preview of EVE Online: Trinity, see the trailer here http://myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/.

Pricing and Availability

CCP is releasing two versions of EVE Online: Trinity. Gameplay will remain the same in both versions. A classic version of EVE Online: Trinity will be available as a free download December 5, 2007 for Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms at http://www.eve-online.com/download/. The premium version of EVE Online: Trinity, which will include updated and enhanced graphics, will be available on Microsoft Windows on December 5, 2007 and to Mac and Linux subscribers in the first quarter of 2008.

The premium version is compatible with graphics cards capable of displaying Shader 3.0 graphics or better.

Now That’s a Home Arcade You Can Be Proud Of

Do you always have to have the Biggest and best toys and show them off to your friends? If yes, the “Dreamcade Vision 120” is the must have game system gift for you this Christmas.

The “Dreamcade Vision 120″ isn’t just a game system; it’s an arcade center. In fact, the Vision 120 comes complete and ready to play with more than 145 classic arcade games, including all of your favorite classic games from Atari, Midway, Namco, Digital Leisure, and Capcom as well more than 7,000 classic console games. What did you just say; you already have a Next-Gen game system? The Vision 120 also comes with Component and HDMI video inputs for your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or Nintendo’s Wii console with a wireless sensor bar built right in. Play all of this in high definition with a 120-inch portable screen.

All this for the small retail price of $3,999, but can you really put a price on playing 145 classic arcade games on one system with a 120-inch screen?

Dreamcade Vision 120 Features:

• High powered projector – Bright enough for daytime use!
• 120-inch Portable projection screen – makes it simple to set up, move, and store
• Dreamcade 2.0 Gaming PC – modern PC games can be played using authentic arcade controls
• More than 145 classic arcade games including Ms. Pac-man, Centipede, Dig Dug, and many more.
• Free year’s subscription to more than 7,000 classic console games via Console Classix, including games for Atari, ColecoVision, NES, SuperNES, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Sega GameGear, and GameBoy.
• Component and HDMI video inputs for your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii for the ultimate in modern gaming as well as classic arcade games.
• Arcade Control Panel Features:
• Lighted trackball – For authentic gaming action on games like Centipede and Missile Command
• Spinner – To play retro classics like Warlords, Breakout and Pong
• Full arcade control panel with additional side buttons allows playing nearly any game from Street fighter to MAME pinball as well as modern games and classic console games through Console Classix
• Removable control panel – Gives you the ultimate versatility

Build Your Own RTS With the Sudden Strike Next7 Engine

Did you ever want to make your own RTS game and lack the programming skills to do so? Well now is your chance with FireGlow’s new Sudden Strike Next7 engine!

Fireglow publishing today announced its plans to use Sudden Strike Next7, the engine behind the upcoming Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory title. This engine will allow a variety of products to be created. Some of them will be announced soon.

Sudden Strike Next7 is a generic RTS engine to be used in subsequent games in the Sudden Strike series and other games from Fireglow. Fireglow is also developing thorough documentation in order to license the engine to third parties. The public version of the editor is being prepared and will be released with add-ons.

Here is a trailer showing how microAI works in Sudden Strike Next 7. After the Player gives the units a single command to unload, they can be left on their own to defend, supply and fight without orders from humans and without having to be managed.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Highlights:

• The editor allows to process maps in range from 250 by 250 meters up to 2 by 2 kilometres. You can specify a level of detail for the landscape.
• The editor allows bending the landscape. Objects are adjusted by the landscape’s height, unless marked by a special flag. Landscape and objects on the ground have different passability. It is taken in account in pathfinding or when destroying an object upon collision. Each object also has it’s own transparency. Together with the height of the ground, the transparency limits the unit’s sight of view.
• The editor has a built-in splines processing mechanism. It allows creating a long twisted fences, roads and trenches. Any spline can be easily readjusted, and its size or elevation changed.
• Any object may be placed at any place of the map. If you wish, you can use the Automatic Placement feature, which helps optimizing the path finding grid.
• You can quickly place a number of objects, randomly taken from the list. You can change, store, and load the lists. Any group of objects may be rotated or moved.
• Any part of the map (landscape, objects, units, or all together) may be exported, and then inserted into the same or any other map, using an arbitrary angle.
• Current parameters of any unit (or a group of units) may be easily changed. Some of the parameters are: health, experience, fuel, primary and secondary ammo, crew and passengers inside (for guns & vehicles), broken parts (tracks, turret, hull etc).
• The editor allows to create and edit surf waves of different shapes. You can specify direction and force of the wind, which blows away smoke.
• The built-in visual scripting tool with an intuitive interface (you don’t have to be a programmer to handle them) and independent AI behavior templates allow trying various gameplay ideas within minutes.
• Any object or unit has special zones that receive damage. Damage in different zones cause different consequences. Damaged tracks immobilize tank, fire in the engine compartment causes tank to loose hit points for some time.
• In the editor, you can run your mission inside the editor and test the gameplay without further ado.

KWARI Walkthrough Video

The latest video for the soon to be released Kwari game is here.  It is a walkthrough that should explain all you need to know about your “Five steps to Kwari heaven”.

[youtube ILTUWsQKhX0 nolink]

NVIDIA ForceWare 169.12 Beta Drivers For Vista Users

NVIDIA has released new beta ForceWare drivers for its GeForce based graphics cards running windows Vista. The drivers 169.12 apparently fix one issue, “Fixes a resume from Sleep/Hibernate issue with GeForce 8800 GT.”

Tournament.com Goes Down The Drain

Tournament.com, a web site that presented a way to win money by playing and winning matches has now announced that after only about 7 months Tournament.com is closing its doors.

The Tournament.com website have given the lame excuse of “the servers are temporarily offline”, and added that “We have taken a step back to take a fresh view of our business model and have decided we need to change direction. We can give no guarantee as to when our service will resume.”

People who still have money in a Tournament.com account are asked to email them by Dec. 7 so they can get access to withdraw their money from a PayPal account. It is really kind of shitty to give so little time to get the cash that is rightfully your own off Tournament.com’s banking system.

World Of Warcraft TV Ads with Mr T. And William Shatner

World of Warcraft has a new set of TV spots trying to get even more people hooked on the wowcrack pipe. One feature’s William Shatner talking about his shaman character while the other has Mr. T doing what Mr. T does best.

U.S. Senators Gunning For Videogames … Again

Four U.S. senators, Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Sam Brownback and Hillary Clinton a current US Presidential candidate, have released a letter on Monday to Patricia Vance president of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). The senators are calling for a “thorough review” of the system in the wake of Rockstar Games’ Manhunt 2 receiving a “Mature” rating and not the “Adults Only” rating some say the game should have received.

The letter the senators sent also went on to claim that the motion-sensitive controller used with Nintendo’s Wii system “permits children to act out each of the many graphic torture scenes and murders” in the game and suggests that ESRB take the controller’s advanced capabilities “into consideration” in rating future games.

[source: Video Business]

My Opinion:
The video game rating system is just like kids watching cable TV. If the parents are out of the room you know the kids will most likely be watching something they should not. Everybody knows the amount of sex and violence that can be found on cable TV even during the day can be staggering. Every TV in America has a V-Chip installed and it’s up to YOU as the parent to activate the V-Chip and use it. Just like it is your job to not give your kids $60.oo or more for a video game and not monitor what they buy.

Come on they are YOUR children not the Governments. Start taking some responsibility for your lack of action.

Do you want to allow the government to control what you and your family can or can’t watch or even what games people can buy? Then continue to do nothing to fight for your rites and that day will come, sooner than you think.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Invasion Video Trailer

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty the new “Invasion” trailer have been sent over today. The “Invasion” video is part of the beginning of the game as Nazi forces overrun New York City in an aerial assault. (Why is it always New York that everybody hates so much? What did they ever do to you?) The video also features Spark Unlimited CEO Craig Allen talking about some the aims and inspirations behind the game. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty will be released for PC, Xbox 360 and the PS3.