So as those of you noticing things, we have fallen off the world slightly. The Facebook group is trundling on a little bit, but hopefully myself and Jason will start posting a little more.
We had hoped to have a lovely new theme to inspire us, but the real world has meddled with that!
In the mean time, nerdy things. Go watch Guardians of the Galaxy if you haven’t already, watched it the second time yesterday, and still in awe of the popcorny goodness of it :D
I realise this isn’t exactly news about gaming or other geekery, but I feel this worthy of a news posting because without this man, we simply would not be here today. And in case you did not know who this man was (WTF!?), he is essentially the father of computer science and was crucial in helping the UK and its allies to defeat Nazi Germany by cracking their secret codes.
Command & Conquer: Renegade is an often forgotten part of the C&C series. Whilst we all remember the first Tiberium Wars and Red Alert and their subsequent sequels, Renegade seldom gets mentioned. I must admit I never played it that much even though I quite enjoyed it, but at the time I never had the cash to buy the game. Soon though, you will be able to play it again but in a modern graphics engine in the form of Renegade X.
We’d be remiss to not mention it on the day itself! (Yes if you thought you had found one site which wasn’t banging on about it, sorry to disappoint.)
We’ve already mentioned the excellent Paul McGann mini-episode there’s a plethora of other wonderful goodies to look at over the jump:
So Doctor Who fans got a very nice surprise treat this morning when almost without warning this little gem became available on the BBC iPlayer, representing the buildup to the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who. None other than Eighth Doctor Paul McGann reprises his role in this 7 minute prequel showing the fate of the Eighth Doctor.
It certainly confirms what many of us suspected about where John Hurts Doctor fits into the big picture. With this little surprise I wonder what else may be in store for us in the run up to the 50th anniversary episode!
How often have you had a moment of pure awesome during a game that you wish you could’ve recorded for posterity? It’s not practical to simply constantly record what you’re doing like Fraps because of the big performance drop which can have an adverse effect on gameplay and the massive amount of data that Fraps has to write. You’d soon be out of disk space if you just kept recording everything you did! Enter ShadowPlay. Though it can record manually like Fraps, the key feature of ShadowPlay is hinted at in the title. Released as part of the GeForce Experience software, it’s currently in beta and has some work ahead of it, but so far I’m very impressed with its capabilities.
Fixed the conflict between forums and site so everything should be working (if not pretty!)
So we are running a wee bit behind schedule, to say the least – and this is not the final theme (it’s a bit of a butchery of the surprisingly nice WordPress Twenty Thirteen theme actually.)
So bear with while we get the old articles up and running. I’ll be posting sporadic updates as we get more things online – and eventually we will have the full and proper lovely theme but that might not be for some time yet! :)
And yes all the images are broken. And some colours are wrong :D Exciting isn’t it!
By now all of you should be aware of the still-unfolding disaster that is EA’s SimCity. And if not, what rock have you been hiding under? Its yet another example of EA screwing their customers, attempting to completely control every aspect of what you do, primarily so they can make as much money from you as possible. It could be this time EA have finally gone too far, but we’ll have to wait and see how this saga will unfold over the next few days. In any case, I feel like this is an excellent opportunity to compare how games should be developed and how you actually should engage with your customer base if you want ensured success and longevity for your product. For this I shall be looking at Bohemia Interactive (BI) and their upcoming title Arma 3.
Ahhh Homeworld, possibly my favourite game of all time next to Half-Life. It was a very unique RTS when it came out and for some reason remains a very unique RTS even today because to my knowledge, no-one has done anything quite like it since. Homeworld first appeared in September 1999 and spawned two more games, Cataclysm and the sequel Homeworld 2. All three were lauded for their design, storytelling, music and overall production. Homeworld 2 was released in 2003 and since then… nothing. Homeworld has essentially been sat on by the various companies that have owned its IP over the past 10 years. Homeworld 3 is something many space/RTS lovers want but has been nothing but a pipe dream and the franchise looked to be long dead and buried. But now there is hope where once there was none as the now bankrupt THQ starts selling off its various IPs including Homeworld…