Rogue Warrior is being built on the Unreal 3 engine, the same one being used for the upcoming Gears of War, so it goes without saying that the visuals, even at this early stage, look really sharp. The character modeling on the various SEAL team members is eerily good. However, this may be a game in which the audio outdoes the Unreal 3 graphics, as Marcinko and the other ex-Navy SEALs that he bases his characters on provide their own voices in the game. And if you've read any of his novels, you know that the man has a very "colorful" way with the English language. He talks like the seasoned sailor that he is--only this is a seasoned sailor with a master's degree. Listening to his descriptions of a tactical situation is humorous, crude, and enlightening at the same time. Saturday, November 04, 2006
Rogue Warrior is being built on the Unreal 3 engine, the same one being used for the upcoming Gears of War, so it goes without saying that the visuals, even at this early stage, look really sharp. The character modeling on the various SEAL team members is eerily good. However, this may be a game in which the audio outdoes the Unreal 3 graphics, as Marcinko and the other ex-Navy SEALs that he bases his characters on provide their own voices in the game. And if you've read any of his novels, you know that the man has a very "colorful" way with the English language. He talks like the seasoned sailor that he is--only this is a seasoned sailor with a master's degree. Listening to his descriptions of a tactical situation is humorous, crude, and enlightening at the same time. Sunday, October 29, 2006

Gaming PC
As computer games started becoming graphically and computationally complex in the 1990s, with games such as Quake and Tomb Raider using hardware accelerated graphics, the concept of building PCs specifically for gaming was born. As such, the power of a gaming PC's GPU has always been the top priority.
In the early and mid 90s, companies such as Voodoo PC, Falcon Northwest and Alienware, focusing entirely on gaming and high-end PCs were launched. Games like The 7th Guest and Myst were killer apps that helped CD-ROMs and sound cards become far more popular. In 1998, AMD incorporated the 3DNow! instruction set into their K6-2 cpu line as well as every CPU model thereafter. The technology was designed for vector processing, a frequent task in 3D games. Intel responded with Streaming SIMD Extensions in the Pentium III, which AMD eventually also incorporated from Athlon XP onwards. However, it wasn't until the 2000s when major computer manufacturers such as Dell made any serious attempts at building gaming PCs.
From: Wikipedia
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Company of Heroes is based in World War II. Specifically, it follows the travels of Able Company as they go from the horrific landing at Normandy Beach through the push through the French countryside, culminating with the collapse of the German 7th Army. The single-player campaign consists of 15 long and enjoyable missions ranging from capturing the town of Cherbourg to a covert operation to take out a V2 launch site to a truly horrific battle through the hedgerows to capture Hill 192. Each mission is preceded by a well done in-engine cutscene and briefing.
In fact, the cutscenes are just one element of just how impressive Company of Heroes' graphics are. In general terms, of course, they look amazing. Soldier animations as they run, duck and dive on the battlefield are fluid, and a real physics engine creates some amazing scenes as bodies are thrown through the air by artillery fire. Everything on the battlefield is also destroyable and is animated in extraordinary detail. Buildings realistically crumble in pieces and get holes blown in them as they're hit by shells. Telephone wires snap and spark as they're cut. Fire teams that garrison a house actually take up positions within the building and brace their weapons on windowsills to cover the street. Destroyable maps also enhance the gameplay by finally removing the dreaded "puzzle map" once and for all. (All this technical wizardry comes at a price, though. The game requires a pretty robust system, and even the beefy rig I played on had some slowdown during some of the cutscenes and when there were a lot of explosions onscreen at once.)
Battlefield 2142 (PC) The year is 2142, and the dawn of a new ice age has thrown the world into a panic. The math is simple and brutal: The soil not covered by ice can only feed a fraction of the Earth's population. Some will live, most will die. Players will choose to fight for one of two military superpowers in an epic battle for survival, the European Union or the newly formed Pan Asian Coalition. Armed with a devastating arsenal of hi-tech assault rifles, cloaking devices and sentry guns, players will also do battle using some of the most imposing vehicles known to man. Massive battle Mechs wage fierce combat on the ground, while futuristic aircraft rule the skies. When facing one of these new behemoths, players will need to use their wits and an arsenal of new countermeasures like EMP grenades to level the playing field.
source: gamespy.com