Movies from Swedish Game Awards Kickoff

Fyra filmer från Swedish Game Awards

Penumbra: Black Plague

Penumbra: Black Plague Developer Diary

Random thought: The Blue Box?

The Blue Box

• Half-Life 2: Episode 3
• They Hunger: Lost Souls
• Left4Dead

Estimated Release: Q2 2008
Estimated Retail Price: $59.99

Let's see how good my future prediction skills really are...

Life in a Game

Life in a Game - Episode 2-1
Life in a Game - Episode 2-2

Among Fables and Men on Community Spotlight!

World of Warcaft Community Site - Main Page

WoW Moviewatch: Among Fables And Men
The Fabled Few Contest Winners
Among Fables and Men

Weighted Companion Cube Life-sized Plushies!

Behold! The grand prizes of this year's Fünde Razor, two life-sized plush Weighted Companion Cubes, fashioned by the talented Diane Koss, made possible by a grant from the Bond Street Group. Each of the two cubes, seen here sandwiching one standard-issue human female, will be awarded to one test subject in each Fünde Razor facility.

Fünde Razor '07 Grand Prize Announced
Weighted Companion Cube Papercraft!
Weighted Companion Cube Plushies!
Weighted Companion Cube in glass!

Analyzing Mass Effect Cutting

Anyone who’s worked in the game industry for some time has been on a project that came in under the wire– so much so, in fact, that this is unfortunately many people’s exclusive experience with shipping games.

Aside from the obvious negative effect this has on our quality of life, and our desirability as an industry for the world’s best creative talent, the last-minute cuts and the seemingly heroic hacks show through in the shipping product as well.

Here are some elements to look for in determining how a game’s production went, from smooth sailing (mythical as that may be) to the worst bare-knuckle stress and drama.

How to Tell a Hard Landing, with Mass Effect

Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Ghostbusters Prop Archive
About ZootFly (not developing this game)

Deus Ex 3

Eidos Announces Deus Ex 3, Talks New Montreal Studio

WoW Moviewatch: Among Fables And Men

The top winners of Warcraft Movies' Fabled Few continue to impress. First place in the drama category went to Dopefish for this video that pushes the boundaries of what you've seen before in WoW Machinima. No voice over, no text and no moving video. This entire tale is told using still images. And it's one of the best you'll see this year.

Budding machinimists often forget how important music and sound effects are to telling the story. Dopefish challenged himself by using only those two elements on his soundtrack. Add to that the innovative use of screenshots and you get a film that weaves a spell that draws you in. And isn't that what a good story should do?

WoW Moviewatch: Among Fables And Men
The Fabled Few Contest Winners

What games have I bought recently?

All good games this year came around this month
(except for S.T.A.L.K.E.R)

A co-worker displaying his Altair figurine

The Darkness fan package on eBay is just up to £26, which equals around 335 SEK. That's like half the price of what the game costs by itself, without the signatures :o

This is the last time I'm using eBay.co.uk instead of eBay.com. They even sell the game seperatly for more than what people are bidding on this package...

The Darkness fan package on eBay
I bought something on a whim last Wednesday

Weighted Companion Cube Papercraft!

Weighted Companion Cube Plushies!
Weighted Companion Cube in glass!

The Fabled Few Contest Winners

Grand Prize: 1000! - Kenion

Drama category:

• 1st - $300 1yr Premium - Dopefish
• 2nd - $100 6m Premium - Stormscape

Comedy category:

• 1st - $300 1yr Premium - BaronSoosdon
• 2nd - $100 6m Premium - InsomniAddict

Music category:

• 1st - $300 1yr Premium - Olibith
• 2nd - $100 6m Premium - Zimtower

Among Fables and Men took the first place in the drama category with 63% of the votes, while competing against 4 other submissions. Kenion's Black Rose certainly deserves the grand prize, and I think it was fitting for BaronSoosdon and Olibith to come out on top in their categories aswell. Congrats to everyone!

Among Fables and Men @ WarcraftMovies
Digg it!

Among Fables and Men
Making progress in Adobe After Effects 4

A tale about Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing is tragic
Complete image of the story hosted by Joystiq

Richard "Lord British" Garriott's home

Avalanche Studios - Game Developers Evening 2

Date: Thursday, December 13, 2007
Time: 6:30pm - 11:55pm
Location: Imperiet
Street: Götgatan 78
City/Town: Stockholm, Sweden

View Map

Avalanche Studios - Game Developers Evening #2
Avalanche Studios - Game Developers Evening

Koji Morimoto: Glay - Survival

Flourish and decorative shapes compilation

Excellent compilation of Photoshop vector shapes.

Foliage Shapes (Huge master set)

Cannabis Works - Art Book

Thank [divine force of preference] for google. Found this lovely art book there, and I recommend those who like a treat for both the eyes and the imagination to check it out.

Download from Depositfiles.com
Download from Rapidshare.com

Lit Fuse Films interview and festival video

The Overcast Podcast Interview
Machinima Europe Festival Video

Global illumination and penumbra shadows

Realtime gloabl illumination and penumbra shadows benchmark. Way to go OpenGL 2.o! DirectX 10 can go and jump off a cliff somewhere. Try the benchmark out from the Lightsmark link below.

Lightsmark
Geomerics Enlighten

Tim Burton working on Alice in Wonderland

Oh, I'm a fan of Alice in Wonderland (the book, not the Disney cartoon), and if it's someone I believe that could make a good translation from it to the movie screens, it would be Tim Burton, the man behind Nightmare Before Christmas.

The production will start early next year, and it's going to be 3D animated, so let's hope it's going to be as artistic and semi-dark as Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. And for those who haven't realized it, this is movie news, not gaming news ;)

Disney Confirms Burton's 3-D Alice & Frankenweenie Flicks

The Darkness fan package on eBay

Check it out at eBay (and start bidding if you want)

Books!
The Darkness fan package

Among Fables and Men

Sleep breakdown

Friday-Saturday: 4 hours of sleep
Saturday-Sunday: 0 hours of sleep
Sunday-Monday: 3 hours of sleep
Tuesday-Wednesday: 0 hours of sleep

It's now available for streaming through the Fabled Few Contest Page. Be sure to vote for it aswell! :D

The Fabled Few Contest Page
The Fabled Few - Time to crunch!

Weighted Companion Cube in glass!

I found this toothpick stand in the office today, and weirdly enough, the first thought that hit me was that it was a little beautiful companion cube of glass! :D

Weighted Companion Cube Plushies!

Halo 3 Global Heatmaps

"Heatmaps are the Doppler Radar System of Death in Halo 3. We’re tracking encounters, weapons used and their results in a given game, collecting that data and sharing it with players visually. The key here is “the darker the red, the more frequent the deaths (or kills, depending on the parameters)."

Bungie Online: Halo 3 Global Heatmaps

Controlling the Wii with your fingertips

Weighted Companion Cube Plushies!

"Here’s a sneak peek at the plush Weighted Companion Cube coming soon to the Valve Store. Your rear-view mirror will want a pair of companions, too."

The Valve Store

Assassin's Creed - Debug feature flying

The uploader says it's a bug, but it's more likely the one playing somehow activated the debug option for flying. I don't expect this to be possible in the retail version of the game.

The Fabled Few - Time to crunch!

WarcraftMovies.com announced a machinima competition a while back, dubbed, The Fabled Few. I hadn't been able to start until last weekend, and I'm now going into crunch-mode since it needs to get done for Monday.

As you see, I've already prepared plenty of energy to hopefully keep me awake for the time needed. Soo far I've only completed 1/5th of the movie, so it's plenty left. Wish me good luck!

Oh, also, I've finally sent this piece of junk back. Started renting it three years back through the university, and last month was the last payment for it. Or so I thought. Apperantly to buy it out I needed to pay like 5 months additional payment, and since the battery time is less than 5 minutes, and it has gotten too slow to do anything decently with, I decided to send it back instead.

So, good bye piece of junk. You costed me much, but nevermore...

The Fabled Few

Nice column about Portal

"Remarkable gameplay aside, despite – or perhaps because of the fact it’s set against the backdrop of one of the most conventional settings in gaming, it’s not much of a stretch to say that Portal has singlehandedly revolutionized storytelling in games. You may disagree, but think of this: games have made us love damsels, classic heroes, furry animals, deliciously wicked villains. But when’s the last time you loved – really loved – a gray cube with hearts on it?"

If you haven't played through Portal yet, don't read the rest from the link below.

COLUMN: 'The Aberrant Gamer': HUGE SUCCESS_

Infinity Ward sends ex-EA Chicago a message

Infinity Ward sends a special message to ex-EA Chicago employees
EA Chicago Studio To Close

Source SDK Update

Yesterday, Valve released an update for the Source SDK, which added support for Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, collectivly known as The Orange Box.

Source SDK Update 11/07/2007 Release Notes

Bethesda level designer make Portals of his own

Developing in our spare time, too

Zelda ads montage

More Game Developers TF2 Costumes

LucasArts

Volition

Game Developers Halloween (TF2) Costumes

Gamespot: Crysis DirectX 9 vs. DirectX 10

Crysis DirectX 9 vs. DirectX 10
Crysis, the DX10 is a lie?

Naruto: Rise of a Ninja - Developer Diary

Download High-Quality (.mov)

Fight Design

Download High-Quality (.mov)

Art Direction

Download High-Quality (.mov)

Game Developers Halloween (TF2) Costumes

Bioware

Blizzard

EA LA

NCSoft

Nihilistic

Kotaku Halloween Hangover

Avalanche Studios - Game Developers Evening

It was really nice to meet some of my old friends from the Gotland again, to be with some friends from work, to greet on some of the other people working in the industry and to meet fans of my ThinkGeek 8-bit tie.

But it's always a bit awkward trying to start a discussion with other game developers. "So what have you been working with?", "Can't really tell... but what have you guys been up to?", "Sorry, I'm not able to say...".

Nogg-aholic the Movie 2 year anniversary!

Nogg-aholic the Movie

It's interesting that even after two years, it's still number one on the charts of WarcraftMovies. I'm actually a little bit proud, but I find it highly overrated, especially compared to movies listed right beneath it, which are all soo much better.

Nogg-aholic - Monday, October 31, 2005

Game writer Erik Wolpaw interviewed

Erik Wolpaw is fated to only ever be refered to as “one half of Old Man Murray“, rather than “co-writer of Psychonauts and writer of Portal”. So today we bring you our interview with one half of Old Man Murray, Erik Wolpaw. We discuss what it’s like to work for Valve, how GLaDOS came about, the role of cake in games, and, of course, why all plays suck.

Note, there's some things in the interview that could be considered spoilers to Portal, to be sure to play that game through before reading it. And if you don't have Portal yet... didn't I tell you to go and buy it yesterday?

RPS Interview: Valve’s Erik Wolpaw

Crysis, the DX10 is a lie?

These screenshots were taken on Windows XP computers, with enabled features that were supposedly exclusive for DX10. What does it mean?

Essentially, what the tweak does is allow DX9 users to use the "Very High" settings that are exclusively reserved for DX10 users.

The tweaks are relatively simple. Users need to edit all of the files found in "\Crysis SP Demo\Game\Config\CVarGroups". First, back up the folder. (Since they're all text-based config files, the backup is just a few megabytes, if that.) You'll then need to edit each file, taking the first block of text and swapping it out with the text with the third option. In the example (sys_spec_Particles.cfg)below, take the text at the bottom (in italics) and replace it with the text at the top (in bold).

[default]
; default of this CVarGroup
= 4
e_particles_quality=4
e_particles_lod=1
e_particles_max_emitter_draw_screen=32
r_UseSoftParticles=1
e_water_ocean_soft_particles= 1
e_particles_object_collisions=1

[1]
e_particles_quality=1
e_particles_lod=0.75
e_particles_max_emitter_draw_screen=4
r_UseSoftParticles=0
e_water_ocean_soft_particles=0
e_particles_object_collisions=0

[2]
e_particles_quality=2
e_particles_max_emitter_draw_screen=8

[3]
e_particles_quality=3
e_particles_max_emitter_draw_screen=16

Now, enter the game, and under the "advanced" graphics settings, turn up all of your settings to high. (Your system will still show the "high" settings enabled, even though the new eye candy is turned on.) After you've seen what the game looks like at its best, feel free to decrease some of the settings to improve performance.

Crysis DX10 features in XP