Why Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is way more than a concept
Features from concept to mainstream
Evolution teaches us many things, one of the most important being that in order to survive, we must adapt. Unfortunately, some creatures are better adapted for survival than others. Over thousands upon thousands or millions of years, a seemingly simple organism can rise to be a thriving part of its species, setting an example of the benefits of such evolution.However, all evolution is met with hardship, and obstacles. In the insanely competitive mobile world, products live and die on a daily basis. If you're lucky enough to break through all the noise, you may just live on for future generations. One such company that's evolved to the top of the food chain is Samsung.
In 2009, Samsung accounted for only four percent of all Android smartphones. Today, that number has jumped to 29.3%, according to a recent comScore report. Not to mention, Android now commands just over 80% of the mobile OS market, leaps beyond its position behind Windows Mobile, RIM, and the now non-existent Symbian.
Samsung may have been blasted for "copying" designs in the past, but the company hasn't been afraid to make big bets. One of the most memorable was the Galaxy Note, a phablet, a word with an increasingly shifting definition, with a completely unheard of 5.3-inch display. It was criticized as being ridiculously big and wouldn't sell, yet here we are with the fourth iteration, and 5-inch plus phones being the norm.
Apple eventually saw the need with the iPhone 6 Plus, and helped reduce the jokes about Android users making phone calls with their "tablets." Just last year, Samsung made another bet with the Galaxy Note Edge, the first ever phone of its kind. A peculiar concept, the unique experience has made it center stage with the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, the latest flagship that also sports some firsts.
What exactly is the Edge?
While the Galaxy Note Edge had just one curve, the Galaxy S6 Edge features what Samsung claims is "the world's first dual-curved glass display." Edge is a simple marketing buzzword to advertise the curved display, and although "Curve" may sound like a better choice, it doesn't get the whole message across.For example, by swiping from the "Edge," you can access and customize a list of your five most popular contacts. Tapping on their photo, which appears as a bubble icon, lets you call or text them, and if you want to see more details such as their most recent text, you can swipe again over their photo.
Going a step further, you can customize the color for each contact. Such a feature may sound trivial, that is until you leave your phone facing down. Because the screen is slightly curved, a tiny sliver is exposed. If your friend Jason calls, and his color is red, the exposed part of the screen will light up red, instantly signaling to you your friend Jason is calling.
Where the Moto X 2nd Gen has front-facing sensors enabling you to wave your hand over the screen to ignore a call, the Galaxy S6 Edge allows you to ignore a call by putting your finger over the heart-rate sensor. This obviously makes a lot more sense if you often leave your phone facing down, which may or may not be the case.
The Edge also functions as a stream for content that interests you. Think of it as a stock ticker of sorts, able to display tweets, text messages, weather, emails, and more. Because Samsung takes advantage of a Super AMOLED display, it can display this information when the screen is turned off, and not drain your battery. To see more details about whatever information is being shown, simple tap the Edge to be taken directly to it.
More curved display features
Our phones have made traditional alarm clocks a thing of the past, and the curved display takes things a step further in this case. Displayed on the Edge, an alarm clock function lets you see what time it is in the middle of the night without picking up your phone.
All of this adds up to a completely new experience, both from a software and design perspective. Of course, if you could care less about the special features the "Edge" allows for, you can turn them off in settings under "Edge screen." We'll for sure see tweaks and new features added over the coming months, but where Samsung is truly betting is the curved display, and it has even bigger plans to extend beyond that.
LG and Samsung are working on incorporating foldable displays into the next generation of smartphones in 2016, according to a recent report from Business Korea.
"LG's G Flex 2 and Samsung's curved edge displays, which can bend up and down and side to side, are between the first and second stages. An official from Samsung Display said, "The industry believes that the commercialization of foldable smartphones will be possible in 2016."
Curved displays can add for a more immersive experience, and particularly in the case of the LG G Flex 2, is very ergonomic in the hand. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is a way for the South Korean giant to test the waters on a large scale. The Galaxy Note Edge is rumored to have sold 630,000 units worldwide, which doesn't sound like a lot, except for the fact it was most definitely a concept device.
The Galaxy S6 Edge on the other hand isn't another concept. It's a serious bet on what Samsung believes is the future of smartphones. So far, it's a bet that appears to be paying off, at least with carriers. Shortly after the March 1 announcement of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, Korea Times reported that Samsung received 20 million pre-orders. This is a record for the company, and five million of those pre-orders were for the Galaxy S6 Edge.
This is still carriers we're talking about, and not pre-orders from actual consumers, but it's a good start. Will the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge spark a new trend in the same way the Galaxy Note did? We're about to find out.
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PC Gaming Week: The greatest Star Wars games of all time
Introduction
Star Wars changed the face of the sci-fi film genre forever by busting out Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader onto an unsuspecting public way back in 1977. Gamers have had more than their fair share of Star Wars titles to get stuck into over the years — from Rebel Assault to Knights of the Old Republic.
Whether it's flying through space blasting Star Destroyers, locking lightsabers with Sith lords or interacting with online players in vast virtual worlds, there's probably been a Star Wars game on the PC for you.
Star Wars: X-Wing
- Developer: LucasArts
- Publisher: LucasArts
- Year of release: 1993
- Genre: Space simulator
- Platform(s): MS-DOS, Macintosh, Windows 9x
X-Wing required you to complete several tours of duty fighting in the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. Not only were you controlling your own fighter but there were computer controlled wingmen who could help you out too. The graphics look incredibly dated now, but seemed top-notch at the time, and thanks to appropriately scored music and voiceovers from Star Wars actors, gamers had the best possible experience of flying an X-Wing fighter back in the early nineties.
Star Wars: TIE Fighter
- Developer: Totally Games
- Publisher: LucasArts
- Year of release: 1994
- Genre: Space simulator
- Platform(s): MS-DOS, Macintosh, Windows 9x
Dark Forces 1 and 2
- Developer: LucasArts
- Publisher: LucasArts
- Year of release: 1995
- Genre: First and third-person shooter
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows (Part 1 and 2). Part 1 only: MS-DOS, Macintosh, PlayStation, PlayStation Network
- Graphics Engine: Jedi (Part 1), Sith (Part 2)
Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast
- Developer: Raven Software, Vicarious Visions
- Publisher: LucasArts
- Year of release: 2002
- Genre: First and third-person shooter
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Mac, GameCube, Xbox
- Graphics Engine: Quake III: Team Arena
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
- Developer: Raven Software, Vicarious Visions
- Publisher: LucasArts
- Year of release: 2003
- Genre: First and third-person shooter
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Xbox, Mac, Amiga OS 4
- Graphics Engine: Quake III: Team Arena
Knights of the Old Republic
- Developer: BioWare
- Publisher: LucasArts
- Year of release: 2003
- Genre: RPG
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows
Star Wars: Battlefront
- Developer: Pandemic Studios
- Publisher: LucasArts
- Year of release: 2004
- Genre: First and third-person shooter
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Mac
- Graphics Engine: Zero
Confusingly, as you progress through the game you change sides. Initially you are controlling droids from the Trade Federation, then you are fighting those droids as a clone trooper, and so on. All that aside, the Battlefront series was an ideal game for Star Wars fans who were also into the Battlefield franchise.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Developer: BioWare
- Publisher: LucasArts, Electronic Arts
- Year of release: 2011
- Genre: MMORPG
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows
- Graphics Engine: HeroEngine
The game provides a quest-driven storyline for each player, including a limited form of crafting as with other MMORPGs. However, The Old Republic has copped some criticism for lacking the same open-ended gameplay style that was familiar to players of Star Wars Galaxies. For example, rather than having an open-ended arcade-style space flight model, The Old Republic only allows for starship-based quests were the player cannot deviate from a predefined flight path.
Star Wars: Rebel Assault
- Developer: LucasArts
- Publisher: LucasArts
- Year of release: 1993
- Genre: Rail Shooter
- Platform(s): MS-DOS, Sega CD, Mac, 3DO
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Running Man of Tech: A race into the night showed me the future of running
Running without a finish
There's something about running that creates a duality in most people, from the new runner to the most seasoned trotter.On the one hand the feeling of oxygen in the lungs, the notion that you're actually doing something rather than festering on the sofa is brilliant and intoxicating.
But on the other, there's the fact running can actually suck. I've lost count of the times where I've had not had the foggiest idea what I'm doing slogging through muddy fields when I could be on the sofa eating a Twix.
So Adidas' 10K Energy Takeover run through London on a brisk Wednesday night left me conflicted: after a full day of trying to work out how good the latest Samsung phone is could I really be bothered to bash around the streets before getting the last train home from… wait, where was the finish?
The premise Adidas dangled enticed me as a technology fan: a run through London, but with no idea where we were going – the only way to work it out was through a compass that would spring to life on my smartphone when the clock struck eight o'clock.
That was the reason I was huddled with a couple of hundred other people in an rejigged carwash, watching a countdown flicker on a shutter until the moment it opened and we could stamp off into the night.
There was a twist on top of the unknown route too: divided into coloured groups, each runner was sent on one of three slightly different courses.
I'd arrived tooled up with a Sony Smartwatch 3 to let me use Google Maps, (along with the trusty Garmin 920XT) thinking that we'd be given a series of checkpoints I could key in and I could smugly watch as the competition carried a smartphone while I could just glance down at my wrist on occasion.
However, as it transpired I didn't need to worry. The link on my phone turned into a compass, and I duly began to follow it en route to 'Boost Location 1'.
Except… well… it didn't move. I waited a bit longer, glancing down at the Garmin to confirm it was still dutifully tracking location, that I was definitely running and not trapped in a static nightmare.
But nothing happened. I was going straight ahead with no idea when to turn.
Somehow the people ahead of me knew the route, so I cursed my phone for failing. I don't know if you've ever tried to reset a phone while running at 80% effort, but it's not easy. The worry I was going to smash this new handset added to a heart rate that was already peaking alarmingly.
Even with the restart, the compass steadfastly refused to change. After the herd ahead of me changed direction, I decided to just follow along… which is when I realised that we were just following coloured signs attached to lampposts as all the compasses had failed. Not the most high-tech, but at this point I was glad of any direction.
I tried to keep Google Maps open to gain a semblance of location, but it proved stupid as there was no pattern to follow.
I was really hoping I was going to get a chance to take some decent photos on this run, especially with the Samsung Galaxy S6 in my pouch. The impressive image stabilisation promised iPhone-esque levels of clarity for snaps when running, and when we entered the Kennington Oval cricket ground, it seemed like the perfect time.
Except as I was panicking about getting lost, I had to keep pace with the increasingly swift group in front of me, so the moment was gone.
And that's how the pattern played out for the next five miles: keep running, hope to see a sign, bemoan the phone for not making the compass work, hit a checkpoint. It was pretty cool legging it through London's backstreet at full pelt but frustrating when we missed a couple of signs.
It was really frustrating that the tech didn't work, as it was kind of the point of the whole run. I'd really been looking forward to my smartphone giving me another way to experience the city on foot.
But this run did give me a hint of what life for runners will become in the not-too-distant future. Having just tried Sony's SmartEyeglass technology, which brings augmented reality into your vision while exercising, it seems like a very small step to make these kinds of races into the darkness, with no knowledge of the route, a reality and without the backing of a large sports brand needed.
Imagine being able to just join a group on Facebook, meet at a given point, have an app decide on a finish line and auto-populate a route through a major city. GPS tracking could create real time leaderboards, giving full motivation and only your own will to push on, while smart eyewear shows you the turnings to take.
We don't need to technology to run. But man, it could make it awesome.
Is Apple actually getting it right?
Something caught my eye this week: it seems Apple might be offering up a better running watch than I previously thought. I've waxed lyrical already about the disappointing lack of GPS built in, that you need to connect the phone to use it properly on the go, but perhaps the Cupertino brand has done something smart to partly offset that.According to Christy Turlington-Burns' diary of training for a marathon with the Watch, it can apparently read your stride pattern when out and about and connected to a phone, and match that with GPS to learn your speed and cadence.
Presumably this is accurate info, as while it's a journal of her running exploits it's hard to see Apple not fact checking what's written given it's publishing it on its own website.
That ability makes it much more accurate when running indoors or on the roads without the phone attached – while it's a long way from perfect, it's an interesting trick that I've not seen shouted about by other manufacturers.
Feel free to tell me how wrong I am about that in the comments below or on Twitter – and if anyone else competed in the same Energy Takeover race, I'd love to hear your experiences too.
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PC Gaming Week: How virtual reality could revolutionise PC gaming
Introduction and the reality of VR
It seems that virtual reality's time has come — again. With various manufacturers and hobbyists all building head-mounted displays and body tracking systems, PC games could soon be getting a whole lot more immersive.Virtual reality hardware first became popular in the nineties, but the technology massively let it down and it faded into obscurity. Now though, with the likes of the Oculus Rift and Razer OSVR on the scene, we're getting to see just how much head-mounted display technology has progressed.
Suitable for space
A quick search on YouTube will show that the Oculus Rift is very popular among players of Elite Dangerous. The setting of any space sim is ideal for VR because your in-game situation is sitting in your ship looking out onto the cosmos through the canopy. Replace the cockpit with your bedroom, and the canopy with your VR headset and you get the idea. Even the creator of Elite Dangerous, David Braben, thinks it's a match made in heaven.Elite Dangerous has really shown what is possible for a game that was built specifically (but not exclusively) for virtual reality. When a player fires up the game and dons their headset, they are instantly able to look around the cockpit, then look down and actually see their in-game body, complete with virtual hands on virtual controllers that react as you control the ship's movements via your PC. Expect to see much of the same experience from EVE: Valkyrie.
Reality bites
Even today's much improved state of virtual reality hardware is not ideal — the video bandwidth requirements for VR rule out wireless technology for a start. That means your head is tethered to your PC, which limits the distance you can move away from it. Even though most head-mounted displays have a 1080p resolution, when it's that close to your eyes, and distorted by internal lenses, 1080p is really a minimum specification rather than something to boast about. To provide video streams greater than 1080p, which must be delivered to each eye, of course, we'll need some serious graphics processing power.
Also, as any gamer knows, the top-of-the-line first-person shooters require the absolute best screen response, and so the displays crammed into a headset are going to need to keep up with these refresh rate demands. This is actually something that AMD's FreeSync or Nvidia's G-Sync could help with.
Pushing the envelope
With VR's limitations in mind, think about multiplayer shooting games where the action is intense, and some of the best strategies are to strafe, jump, and duck. It's hard to see how this would effectively map into a VR experience with the technology we have, such as with an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive plus hand controllers (e.g. STEM by Sixense).
On the other hand (no pun intended), Razer recently showed off its OSVR headset with a Leap Motion controller fixed to the front. This means that hand gestures without holding a controller could become a reality — although the latency problems that the Leap suffers would have to be fixed first.
The Virtuix Omni is an interesting attempt at addressing the first-person shooter market by providing a 360-degrees treadmill to walk on. This certainly opens up the scope for first-person perspective games in terms of VR, and even MMORPGs.
Pace yourself
The current state of VR technology really points to games that move at a more sedate pace, which doesn't include first-person shooters. The need for speed and extreme maneuverability (at least if you are unable to get a Virtuix Omni) just seems like a bit too much to ask without getting just enough screen lag to potentially cause nausea and frustration.However, there are plenty more games that would work well. Just imagine wandering around in an MMORPG stopping to appreciate the scenery. However, the control systems would need to be looked at. Just check out a few screenshots of World of Warcraft and see all the ability toolbars. Something like this, where you can't see your keyboard or (real) hands means that having a keyboard full of shortcuts isn't going to work for virtual reality. Then again, if hand tracking (i.e. Leap Motion) takes off, it's possible that VR games could have a type of HUD that you 'air tap' on with your fingers to access more functions.
As mentioned above, simulators that place you in a driving seat are ideal for VR. Puzzle games where you interact with 3D objects could work well too. In fact, talking of puzzle games, who wouldn't like to see Portal as a virtual reality game? Its unique mix of first-person perspective action and mind-bending puzzles could play very well to VR. In fact, Valve showed off some Portal 2 characters in a VR demo quite recently.
Sharing is caring
So far the experiences we've talked about are fairly solitary. What about multiplayer? Well, for most home gamers, the cost of a head-mounted display and pair of hand controllers and even an Omni treadmill is still going to be fairly prohibitive, at least in the short-to-medium term. However, this doesn't rule out online gaming where those who can afford the equipment can congregate and play.Future VR games may even make the experience of human interaction richer by incorporating facial tracking into headsets so that if you smile, or snarl, that expression is reflected on your avatar. This would be amazing in an MMORPG where multiplayer experiences are much more social than in FPS games. (Who has ever seen the Master Chief smile?!).
- Check out what's going on during PC Gaming Week
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PC Gaming Week: Nvidia G-Sync vs AMD FreeSync
In the frame
Calling all gamers, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that AMD and Nvidia have both solved the problem of screen tearing and frame stuttering in demanding PC games. The bad news is that they each have their own solutions which are not compatible – in short we have a format war… again.What is happening during PC Gaming Week?
What's the problem?
The source of displaying high-performance PC games is that monitors have a constant refresh rate, e.g. 75Hz means that the screen is updated 75 times per second. Meanwhile, graphics cards (GPUs) redraw the screen at a variable rate, depending on the computational load they're bearing.
The difference in timings of the two mean that the current frame on the monitor and the current frame on the GPU become unsynchronised. Therefore, partway through the process of sending a frame to the monitor, the GPU moves onto the next frame.
This switch appears as a discontinuity in what you seen on-screen. Usually, the discontinuity travels down the screen on concurrent frames as the phase difference between the GPU and monitor reduces. This discontinuity is what we call tearing and in extreme cases there can be several tears at once.
Most PC games employ something called VSync as a way to reduce the tearing effect. VSync effectively limits the frame rate of the GPU, such that if one particular frame has taken too long to be rendered on the GPU and it misses its slot on the monitor, the GPU will delay sending any graphics data to the monitor until the next screen refresh.
Brilliant! Problem solved then? Well, not quite. VSync is not perfect, the delay in sending a frame to the monitor causes stuttering and lag during the times that the GPU is under the most processing load, which is also the time a gamer needs the most response. Hence, many gamers choose to disable VSync in order to get the most responsive system, despite the ugly tearing effect. So, while VSync was the only remedy to tearing, many gamers choose to disable it.
Nvidia to the rescue, kind of
Since 2014, Nvidia has been promoting its solution to the VSync problem, that it has dubbed G-Sync. The basic concept with G-Sync is that the GPU actually controls the refresh rate of the monitor. By doing this, the monitor and GPU are always in sync and therefore there is never any tearing or stuttering. Prior to this, Nvidia had already been working on Adaptive VSync.As PC Perspective notes, there are three regimes in which any variable refresh rate GPU/monitor system needs to operate within: A) when the GPU's frames per second is below the minimum refresh rate of the monitor. B) When the GPU's frames per second is between the minimum and maximum refresh rate of the monitor. C) When the GPU's frames per second is greater than the maximum refresh rate of the monitor.
Case B mentioned above is straightforward – the GPU simply sets refresh rate of the monitor to equal its frames per second.
When a G-Sync compatible GPU and monitor are operating in case C, Nvidia has decided that the GPU should default to VSync mode. However, in case A, G-Sync sets the monitor's refresh rate to be an integer multiple of the current frames per second coming from the GPU. This is similar to the delaying frames strategy of VSync, but has the advantage of keeping in step with the monitor because of the whole number multiplier.
The (somewhat literal) price of this solution is that Nvidia needs to have a proprietary chip in every G-Sync compatible monitor. This has the undesirable result of G-Sync monitors incurring increased costs due to requiring the extra electronics and paying the associated license fees to Nvidia. Finally, it is not supported by AMD GPUs either.
AMD strikes back
While Nvidia was first to come up with the idea of the GPU controlling the monitor's refresh rate, AMD has struck back hard by coming up with its own solution, called FreeSync. It is based on an open standard – DisplayPort 1.2a. AMD collaborated with the VESA group to modify the DisplayPort standard to incorporate AdaptiveSync, which allows compatible GPUs and monitors to automatically negotiate the optimal refresh rate for the monitor. It thus requires no proprietary elements which in turn keeps costs lower than Nvidia's offerings. AMD even go so far as to claim that G-Sync will reduce frame rates, rather than making things better.
The key technical difference between G-Sync and FreeSync, apart from the licensing requirements (or lack thereof!), is the way in which they handle GPU output that lies outside of the refresh rate range of the monitor. FreeSync is limited to matching refresh rates to frame rates via AdaptiveSync.
It cannot perform any other refresh rate tricks in the same way that G-Sync can, when the GPU's frame rate is outside of the monitor's refresh rate. Therefore, a FreeSync GPU has a frame rate outside of its monitor's refresh rate range, it defaults back to working with or without VSync as per the user's preference, which means there will be tearing or stuttering again.
Oh great, another format war
It is early days in the world of variable refresh rate graphics and so your options are limited if you want to try either technology. According to AMD, there are eight FreeSync monitors on the market, and Nvidia reports six G-Sync monitors are now available.It is almost impossible to compare any of these monitors given the vastly differing specifications; but generally the G-Sync monitors are more expensive than the FreeSync models. As for GPUs, Nvidia's website says that any GPU from the 600 series onwards will support G-Sync. Meanwhile, compatible AMD Radeon GPUs are limited to the "R9 295X2, 290X, R9 290, R9 285, R7 260X and R7 260 GPUs".
An important consideration for gamers is that we tend to upgrade monitors far less regularly than GPUs. So whatever type of variable refresh rate technology you choose now is going to determine your choice of GPU brand for a long time to come.
As ever, when big brands get into a format war, consumers become collateral damage.
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PC Gaming Week: Why Toki made platform fans go ape
Toki was one of the more inventive platformers on the Amiga (and there were a few). With graphics that impressed at the time thanks to its parallax backgrounds, huge end-of-level baddies and a punshing difficulty level, Toki proved that Mario wasn't the only side scroller worthy of your attention in the early 90s. Here is the original review from Amiga Power in 1991.
Why is it that arcade machines such as Mitchell's Pang and Taito's Bubble Bobble, Rainbows Islands, Plotting and The New Zealand Story didn't become popular until they are converted to the home machines? It'd be understandable if they were dogs. But no – not only were they well-crafted and extremely playable, even top game designers find them an invaluable source of inspiration.
- Publisher: Ocean
- Price: £25.39 (around $37)
- Authors: Michel Janiki, Philippe & Lionel Dessoly (graphics
- Pierre Eric Loriaux (music & sound FX)
- Release: Out now
Toki is another one of those run 'n' jump romps, there's no denying that. What makes it stand out from the rest of the whoop is the fact that it's such a well-rounded piece, with all its learning curves in the right places and some neat features to boot. It's real pretty too, not to mention smooth.
No expense has been spared with the colour, and combined with the layer of parallax for the background a a healthy arcade feel is created. (Having said that, all this is more testimony to Ocean France's conversion skills than the quality of the Tad Corporation's coin-operated original).
And so to the plot, which doesn't offer anything new, that's for sure. A boy, Toki, meets a girl, Miho, and they call in love. Aah. Enter the evil wizard Bashtar. Now, Bashtar has the hots for Miho. Oooh. His big blue magic hand picks up Toki's missus and steals her away, along with Toki's manhood.
No, it's not what you're thinking – before Bashtar does a runner he knocks Toki down to the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder by turning him into an ape. Booo. But this chimp's no chump. He's still man enough to retrieve his true love (and his original form for that matter) and give Bashtar the bashing he deserves. Why, it's almost a scrolling Donkey Kong in reverse.
Believe it or not, being an ape does have its advantages. Toki has new-found versatility and a range of facial expressions which exceeds that of most actors. He walks. He jumps (and can be manoeuvred while he's in the air). He crouches. He climbs. He swims. He swings. He instinctively ducks to allow him to crawl through narrow gaps. He curls up into a ball and covers his head when he gets clobbered.
And, best of all, he spits glowing balls in eight different directions (and he even gets a grobbly together before he gobs), which comes in handy for removing the wildlife from his world. Toki's pucker power can be boosted too, though this is more convenient than essential.
The more intelligent animals do their stuff when Toki triggers invisible 'switches in the scenery. Toki has two methods of disposing of inhabitants of his world. He can either jump on them until they drop of he can shoot them down with his spit, which his slightly less powerful but often more convenient. For each hit with spit Toki is awarded 50 points. The Hit Points relate to the number of standard shots it takes to remove the creature from the scene. Note that jumping on creatures with a single Hit point yields a better score.
The ape's remarkable repertoire, along with the aforementioned arcade feel and the lush parallax-scrolling scenery (the underwater section especially – oh, and the dark forest's snowy stuff, and the waterfall), are just three of the Tasty Tidbits in my Toki Top Ten. The other seven are as follows …
- Time limit permitting, you can scroll around the environment to your heart's content. This also proves useful when it comes to disposing of creatures or avoiding their projectiles
- Restart positions are plastered all over the shop, so whenToki loses a life, play is always resumed near the point of death (well, unless it was his last life and the CONTINUE option is used, in which case he goes all the way back to the beginning of the level).
- Sound and music are used to good effect. There's a different tune for every stage (including the map screen) but not at the expense of sound effects.
- Choosing between one or the other just isn't necessary as every worthwhile event has an associated noise and the music suits the pace, which is … pleasant, I suppose. Leisurely sounds too dull, and it's not that.
- The creatures all have character – especially the Bosses. Being able to gain extra height by jumping on the little buggers is also neat (and occasionally useful for collecting items which are otherwise out of reach).
- The scenery is a little more interactive than usual, with walking up and down diagonal platforms and – best of all – the business with the seesaws and the 16-ton weights.
- There's always just enough warning to allow disaster to be avoided. Some sections seem far too hard, but once a technique is sussed, it can be done again and again…well, almost. It's never so straightforward that you can stroll through a whole level.
- The ending is…No, I shan't tell you what happens, but suffice to say that it's (sigh) nice.
Short stuff
So if Toki's so mighty fine, how come it hasn't got a higher rating? It is difficult to put down – in every sense. The problem is that the six levels are small but near-perfectly formed. What's there is so good, there should be more of it.However, the biggest gripe I have about Toki has nothing to do with the gameplay, on the face of it anyway, and it hasn't actually affected the rating, though maybe it should. You see, it's the packaging – in particular the manual, a tiny, uninspired, two-colour booklet, two thirds of which isn't even in English. For £25.99 I expect a complete package. It's not just Toki. Too often software is treated like meat.
It's terribly disappointing to open a box to be greeted with an expanse of white and a plastic bag containing a disk and a small manual. Why can't the care and attention lavished on the program itself extend to the packaging? Yes, a glossy full-colour manual would obviously be less cost effective for the publisher, but so much more could have been done with a two-colour affair.
Still, at least if the mood takes you, you can always take the box lid and rub its edge against a matt surface to recreate a sound not entirely dissimilar to the grunting of an angry gorilla. How very appropriate.
We have seen worrying inconsistencies between versions too – some boxed copies have been so pugged as to be unplayable, while others seem fine.
- Rating: 87%
- Uppers – Has all the gloss and playability you'd expect to find in a genuine arcade machine\
- Downers – It's disappointing but true: what's there is smashing but there's just not enough of it
- The bottom line – An excellent – you could even say stunning – coin-op conversion, although the lack of size and depth (it doesn't have as much to it as, say, Rainbow Islands) keeps it from the top rung.
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PC Gaming Week: eSports: the latest 21st century phenomenon or passing fad?
eSports hits the main stage in New York
Jakiro the two-headed dragon catches the Crystal Maiden in an ice stream before the wyvern spits out a burst of liquid fire. The burning phlegm connects, melting the maiden instantly as her allies come to avenge her slaying the dragon. But it's too late; the Evil Geniuses have already breached the Alliance's defenses.EG's Death Prophet storms the enemy keep with a platoon of minions and a swarm of spirits. Together they whittle down the Dire's Ancient remaining health to a tiny sliver, bringing them one attack away from victory. In the ensuing madness, the ghostly keeper dies in a four versus one fight with Alliance, but Visage's familiars manage to slip through and deliver the final blow.
The match ends as the crowd chants USA. A roar of excitement from 5,000 seats fills the theater at Madison Square Garden. This is pure unadulterated madness.
This is eSports.
A 21st century sport
Madison Square Garden is famous for being the home of the New York Knicks basketball team, boxing matches and circus performances. Recently the Electronics Sports League, or ESL, has decided to host its first Dota 2 tournament on the east coast at this iconic New York venue. While the theater might have only held 5,000 audience members, there were also (as of this writing) 10,750,707 viewers watching the event live over Twitch.
In the grand scheme of eSports events, these are actually paltry numbers. The International 4 Dota competition held at Seattle's Key Arena in July brought an audience of 10,000 people from locales around the world including Sweden, Berlin and Beijing. And that's not counting the 20 million people who tuned in through Twitch.
eSports is a phenomenon quickly becoming the most popular pastime of the 21st century. Once shunned by venues because no one thought people would pay to see nerds play around with keyboard and mice, eSports has started bringing in bigger audiences than more well funded events like football and baseball.
More than a game
Winning the Dota 2 competition in New York isn't just a matter of earning a title and a big, shiny metal cup. There's also a $100,000 (about £62,293, AU$114,794) grand prize pot on the line where $52,000 (about £32,392, AU$59,693) goes to the winning team.
Similarly there's more to being a professional gamer than lightening reflexes. It also requires good communication, teamwork and strategy. For this reason Evil Geniuses manager Charlie Yang shared that every team member spends three to six hours a day training in team practice during the regular season. On top of this, players will spend another three to six hours honing their own skills in individual training. Being a professional gamer already sounds like a full time job but EG's team members also host their own gaming streaming to further supplement their income.
Similarly there's more than meets the eye when watching the best gamers duke it out online. Turning eSports into into an event that engrosses the audience is an art. While it's easy to see the play or field in video games, Twitch COO Kevin Lin highlighted that "it also requires good spectator tools that allow you to move the camera independently and pull up stats to understand what's going on in the game."
"There's [also] professional commentators which helps the hardcore enthusiasts appreciate the deep level of strategy that's happening in these games," Lin said. "It also helps newcomers get a grasp of what's going on."
Not just a fad
Game watching hooks
eSports has existed for a long time with shooters, fighting games and StarCraft. More recently though, the revived interest in Dota 2 and similar MoBA's such as League of Legends have turbo charged the eSports movement. Now more games, even ones like Hearthstone, are becoming part of the competitive game watching phenomenon.At its core, Dota 2 is a game all about making your way from your base to the enemy stronghold to kill their ancient. The map is split into three lanes that players can travel along and strung along these paths are defensive towers that you and your minions have to take down. That's Dota 2 in a nutshell. But there's also much more to the game once you factor in items, combos, farming monsters and newly added bounty rune power ups.
Lin explains because of this complexity, watching a Dota 2 match is very engaging since you can see the player's skill level. At the same time viewers will think about how they could play out an encounter in their own head.
Even a novice can appreciate the action that comes in giant clashes and narrow escapes during a Dota 2 match. One elderly Madison Square Garden usher even noted "this is the most exciting thing I've ever seen!"
On the uptick
With eSports rising in popularity, there are bigger events happening more frequently every year."Flashback to three years ago, you'd see one event every month," Lin quipped. "Now you're seeing an event almost every single weekend with events popping up around the world and they're happening very frequently."
ESL One's Managing Director of Pro Gaming Ulrich Schulze noted that eSports exploded in popularity last year and continues to see steady growth.
"In the past it used to be during times of the year we had a few weeks off without events, we don't really have it anymore" he said. "Our studio in Cologne, Germany is booked throughout the year for big events."
Schulze said eSports is only going to get bigger and recalled that in January 2013, ESL One held its own inaugural stadium event. This year the competitive gaming organization held an event at the 52,000 seat Commerzbank-Arena, which was once used as one of Germany's 2006 World Cup football stadiums.
On December 6 and 7, Intel Extreme Masters will hold a League of Legends and StarCraft II event at the San Jose SAP Center. With a capacity over 18,000, the venue is set to welcome one of the largest eSports events ever held in North America.
From the look of these numbers, it doesn't seem like eSports are going to disappear any time soon.
ESL One New York Dota 2 event in pictures
- The rise of Twitch is one very big part eSports phenomenon
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In Depth: Best Amazon Prime Instant Video TV shows: 25 essential Amazon Prime TV series
Best Amazon Prime Instant Video TV shows
In the UK, Amazon had a stuttering start when it came to taking on Netflix in the big streaming battle. This was partly due to a stubborn insistence on Amazon's part to keep its streaming setup separate, hoping to make Lovefilm (a company it acquired when DVDs were all the rage) into an on-demand brand.
This didn't work so along came Plan B. Lovefilm didn't have global appeal, but it did have a backbone on which Amazon built the streaming service we know today - Amazon Prime Instant Video.
Since this move, Amazon Prime has grown into a media powerhouse. Taking, and in some ways surpassing, Netflix's self-serving model to produce its own content Amazon now has a bevy of television shows that are begging to be watched on its own platform. The choice is expansive and that's where we come in.
TechRadar has curated a list of the best Amazon Prime Instant Video TV shows around. Chosen by the team, these are the shows streamed in the UK that are Instant classics primed to offer up hours of compulsive viewing.
It's worth noting that these are shows that can be watched instantly when you have Amazon Prime access. There are many more shows you can watch through Amazon but these have to be purchased to be viewed. We will keep this list constantly updated if any paid shows become free that we feel need to be included.
- Check out our in-depth Amazon Prime Instant Video review
Not convinced Amazon is the way forward? Then check out our Best Netflix TV Shows article and see what Amazon's biggest rival has on its service.
1. Alias
Before JJ Abrams got Lost he created a spy show that, in hindsight, acts as a tick sheet for future Abrams' projects. Shadowy government goings on (Fringe, check; Lost, check), spies with secret identities (Mission: Impossible, check), knowing pop culture references and many an explosion (Star Trek, check; Super 8, check).
Alias is barmy but brilliant. Jennifer Garner has never been better as Sydney Bristow, while the supporting cast are superb, even if they probably never knew script to script if they were going to end up as a baddy or a goody. Lucky, then, Amazon has every series of Alias on Prime for you to find out.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 5
2. Alpha House
One of the first successes to come from the Amazon Originals program, Alpha House is the antithesis of Netflix's House of Cards. Yes it has a political edge but the back stabbing is replaced with a little bit of rib tickling. John Goodman is superb as one of four US senators shacked up in the same house.
While the humour may get a little too dry for some, there's warmth in the cynicism and a strange amount of believability in the characters. If you were to choose one comedy that lampoons US politics then go with Veep - but Alpha House is a decent second.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 2
3. The Americans
The Americans was cruelly mishandled when it originally came to UK TV, so we are glad it has finally found a decent place to reside. The show is a cracking crime period thriller that follows the exploits of a couple of KGB agents posing as US citizens around the time Ronald Reagan became US president.
It may occasionally flit between the ridiculous and the sublime but you would expect nothing more from a show that's main conceit comprises characters duelling with duality. The '80s setting is fantastic, too, though there aren't enough shell suits for our liking.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 2
4. Arrow
DC may have lost ground to Marvel when it comes to breaking box offices with their superheroes but it is bossing it in the television stakes. Arrow was the first of the new batch of DC heroes on the small screen and still the best.The plot is very Batman: billionaire playboy turns superhero after a life changing turn of events, but bats are replaced with bows as Oliver Queen cleans up the city he lives in, brandishing more arrows than seen in a whole series of Bullseye. Future linkups with The Flash and some decent action make this a TV show that respects rather than shies away from its superhero roots.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 2
5. Black Sails
Johnny Depp may have spent the latter half of his career convincing the world that pirates all look, smell and talk like a Rolling Stone but we prefer Black Sails' interpretation. Exclusive to Amazon Prime, Black Sails treats the pirate legend with a touch more reality and this is pretty much all down to Shakespearean thesp Toby Stephens.
His interpretation of Captain Flint, one of the great characters of Treasure Island, is inspired, as is the cinematography in this high seas romp. Set 20 years before Treasure Island, Black Sails is one bit of piracy we fully condone.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 2
6. Bosch
With 20-something novels to mine for source material, Bosch is a character that was always destined for the small screen. Created by Michael Connelly but brilliantly brought to life by actor Titus Welliver, the series follows the exploits of LA Homicide detective Harry Bosch and features enough grit to pave the longest of driveways.
This is no surprise - the series has been created by Eric Overmyer, who was part of the alumni that created The Wire. Bosch is another show that has been put together by Amazon Studios - proving that streaming services are becoming just as powerful as the HBOs of the world when it comes to producing compelling drama.
Number of seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
7. Twin Peaks
There has never been since and never will be a show like Twin Peaks. It's a show full of contradictions. It should have been far too strange to ever be mainstream but managed Dallas-style recognition when it first aired. It was a show that bandied around many genres - comedy, horror, romance - never quite settling on one, instead ending up as a sort of surrealist soup, served up by the genius that is David Lynch.
Yes, the second season meanders and is bogged down in trivial secondary plots but stick with it to the end and you will be rewarded with some of the most bewildering and harrowing bits of TV you will ever see. And it's coming back in 2016, so it's definitely time to catch up.
Number of seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 2
8. Constantine
The Keanu Reeves film of the same name was a hot mess and we are still not convinced that the TV version isn't going the same way. But at least Constantine the TV show rights a few of the wrongs of the movie. For a start, Constantine is finally British, with a twang of Liverpudlian like in the Hellblazer comics, and at least this detective smokes cigarettes (which in real life is obviously very bad but a key plot point in the comics).
When it was aired on TV in the US, Constantine's battle with demons and the afterlife wasn't a massive success. Viewer numbers dwindled and with it the amount of episodes that were made. But there is hope for a second season and the first is well worth a watch.
Number of seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
9. Community
On the face of it, Community's premise is dull: a collective of nobodies are forced to go to community college for myriad boring reasons. But creator Dan Harmon takes this premise and runs with it Usain Bolt style through endless pop culture references, playful parodies and a huge slab of quirk.
It's a show where the scripts feel like they were conjured up by weed smoke and too many E numbers and we wouldn't have it any other way. A word of warning, though: Community's surreal comedy lives and dies by the mind of Harmon. Which his why there's a notable drop off of decent jokes in the fourth season when he left the show. But when he comes back for the fifth, it is back to its best.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 5
10. Extant
Halle Berry's space series isn't without its faults but compared to the mountains of dross served up on television on a daily basis, it's more than commendable. Berry plays an astronaut who comes home from a sole space mission pregnant.
What follows is a whodunit that ends up being a decent twist on the tried-and-tested sci-fi genre. The series is also executive produced by Steven Spielberg which means it has already been commissioned for a second season.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
11. The Fall
Before he was whipping up a storm as Mr Grey, Jamie Dornan played an effortlessly charming and equally chilling serial killer in The Fall, a fantastic Irish drama that deserves all the acclaim it gets.
Dornan is Paul Spector, a care worker who has a sideline in killing woman. To help track him down, hard-nosed detective Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) heads to Belfast to try and capture the murderer. The Fall is a perfect blend of intelligent scripting, nuanced acting and a fantastic premise. Knowing who the killer is from scene one amps up, rather than releases, the show's tension.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 2
12. Firefly
Joss Whedon's short-lived sci-fi show had all the trappings of a long-running success (witty scripts, likeable characters, space) but it was hobbled beyond repair when it was first shown on television. Episodes were shown out of order and it was put in a graveyard slot.
Thankfully, none of this deterred the faithful few who loved Mal and his ragtag team of space cowboys so much that Firefly was pushed into cult classic status and even given a movie to wrap things up. Don't be put off that there is just one season here - it's a show that's small but perfectly formed.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
13. Justified
He may not have had the best career in movies, but Timothy Olyphant has become a TV stalwart thanks to a brilliant performance in Deadwood and an even better one in Justified. The premise of Justified is wafer thin - a Miami marshall is reassigned to his backwater home town after a bullet-strewn altercation - but Raylen Givens' (Olyphant) relationship with his family, old friends and foes is forever riveting and frequently bloody.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 5
14. Man In The High Castle
There have been a number of successful Amazon pilots that have made it to a full series but none have the epic potential that Man In The High Castle has. OK, we admit that there isn't a full season run of this Philip K Dick adaptation yet but with one greenlit we couldn't leave this off the list.
This adaptation imagines what the world would be like if Germany had won World War II and the Nazis had taken global control. Turns out it's a bit worse than us all driving around in VW Beetles and wearing Hugo Boss coats.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 0 (1 pending)
15. Masters Of Sex
Yes, Masters Of Sex could have ended up being a Mad Men rip-off when it first arrived in 2013 but thanks to the brilliance of Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan the show soon elevated above being a copycat.
Sheen is Dr William Masters, a fertility expert who turns his hand to researching the world of sex. Turns out researching sex means having a lot of it, which would all be rather gratuitous if it wasn't wrapped in some of the most intelligent scriptwork around.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
16. Nurse Jackie
After the enormous success of The Sopranos no one would have minded if the entire cast took early retirement and spent their days eating gnocchi and quaffing down fine Italian wine. Not Edie Falco, though, she went from one mega series to another, playing the titular role in Nurse Jackie.
Falco is phenomenal as the nurse who helps others but can't quite find time to help herself. It's frustrating that there are only five out of the seven series available through Amazon Prime but hopefully by the time you have caught up the rest will come to the service.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 5
17. Orphan Black
Some dodgy accents aside, it's a joy to watch Tatiana Maslany take on the multiple roles that are needed for Orphan Black. She launches herself into every one of the characters and is the constant that is needed to make this sci-fi yarn watchable. One of the reasons Orphan Black works so well is that it doesn't take itself too seriously but when it does it makes you believe in the myriad plotlines that flow through the series.
Currently Amazon is only streaming the first season but by all accounts that's a good thing - the second season and beyond are proving that maybe the source material can't stretch that far. You will still have lots of fun, though.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
18. Ripper Street
For a show that's steeped in murder, it's pleasing to note that we all have Amazon to thank for breathing new life into Ripper Street. After two seasons of the show, which focuses on the lives of the East End of London in the 19th Century, where there is a copycat Jack the Ripper on the loose, it was cancelled by the BBC.
Amazon decided there was enough fan love out there, thankfully, and revived the show for at third showing. Great acting masks some of the hokier moments of the script but this is all good, grizzly fun.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 3
19. Rogue
Thandie Newton is the latest movie star to try her hand at television drama and we are glad she did. Rogue takes some time to get going but it's a decent enough premise to keep you hooked. Newton is Grace Travis, an undercover FBI agent who is plagued by the notion that she may have been the cause of her son's death.
And if that wasn't enough, she is embroiled in the goings on of the local crime boss. The show has been renewed for a second season, so you can watch knowing that things may actually get resolved.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
20. The Shield
Before The Wire offered up its unique slice of cops and robbers, The Shield was bashing heads and dealing in storylines that blur the line between who is meant to be good and who is meant to be bad.
Michael Chiklis leads a superb cast that don't exactly show the LA police department in a good light. This is something that starts in episode one and doesn't let up till the end, which is seven brilliant series away. It may not quite have the gravitas of the aforementioned The Wire but The Shield is still essential television.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 7
21: Sons Of Anarchy
Seemingly always vying for the top spot of Best Recently Finished Drama (we may have made up that award) with Breaking Bad, Sons Of Anarchy is a long brooding menace of a show that deserves your attention. Centred on a motorcycle gang that live by their own rules (you can probably guess what their name is from the title) the show is positively Shakespearean in its storytelling and will have you gripped from episode one.
While Ron Perlman steals the show as Clay, Charlie Hunnam's Jax is one of the best tortured souls you will see on any television show. Beware that only six series are currently streaming on Amazon Prime - you will have to wait a little while before the fitting final season heads to the service.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 6
22: Top Of The Lake
Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss is superb in Top Of The Lake, the latest drama to come from the marvelous mind of Jane Campion. Set in New Zealand and focusing on the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl, this mini series takes a Killing-style metered approach to its storytelling, unpicking the stitches that hold together a small but brittle town that has the titular lake at its centre.
The series was the first ever piece of television to debut at the Sundance Film Festival and for good reason: it rivals anything in recent memory that has hit the big screen.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
23: Transparent
Anything Netflix can do, Amazon Prime can do better it seems, especially when it comes to winning a Golden Globe. Netflix may have made history by being the first streaming service to win a Golden Globe, courtesy of the acting talents of Kevin Spacey in House of Cards, but Amazon went and topped this by winning the Best TV Show prize in 2014 for Transparent.
It was much deserved. Transparent is everything you want in a TV show. It's heartwarming, funny and packs a real punch about a subject that doesn't get enough attention: transgenderism. Jeffrey Tambor's Maura Pfefferman is a television character we hope will be around for a long time.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 1
24: Vikings
If you have any interest in Norse mythology then the name Ragnar Lothbrok will mean a whole lot to you. Basically he was a king and powerful ruler that was a right git to the English and the French.
Vikings is a series that traces his Norse-based goings on with enough charm and scope to take on Game of Thrones in the sword and sandals stakes. Yes it takes a number of liberties with its source material but the acting is top class, as is the cinematography in a historical romp that's now deservedly in its third season.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 3
25: The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead has been reanimated more times than the zombies that harruange the group of survivors we have all come to know and love. Initially created with Frank Darabont at the helm, he left after the first season then his replacement was eventually replaced and their replacement replaced.
With this in mind, it's amazing that not only has the show consistently managed to improve season after season it has become one of the most successful series ever. Yes it sometimes slumps along slower than a zombie with its legs hacked off but give it time and it will reward you with more drama than you can shake a bloody stump at.
Seasons on Amazon Prime Instant Video: 3
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PC Gaming Week: A design for life: how game designers are shaping entire worlds
Introduction and game studies
In this article, PC Format looks at building the ultimate triple-GPU dream machine. PC Format is the magazine for PC gamers and hardware enthusiasts, created by geeks and gamers. Each issue covers the latest advances in graphics cards, processors, motherboards, memory, SSDs and complete systems. We also feature guides on overclocking, tweaking, system building, system modding and PC repair. Click here to subscribe.There is a certain theological argument that the entire point of mankind's existence and evolution is to become gods. Every step in our development as a species, from the emergence of life from the primordial soup, to the first time our fishy ancestors stood on terra firma, to a man in an ape suit throwing a KFC chicken drumstick at Stanley Kubrick, has been towards becoming deities. It makes sense: what better way to ensure our survival than to become omnipotent and immortal?
But there are gods are already moving among us. You won't find them in magic neverending sky palaces or the Great Pyramid of Giza. Instead they're more likely to be slurping coffee by the gallon in the swanky studios of a games company. These are the closest things we have to divine beings walking among us.
It's fairly obvious that these people are playing god by controlling and scripting the AI entities which inhabit a game's world. They shape the landscape, arrange the flora, set the weather and map routes. They build lands and breed their inhabitants; they control everything from the design of an abode's wallpaper to the shape of entire planets.
But this isn't anything new: artists and writers have been creating fictional places for millennia. There's another layer of activity happening here – one that's more profound and more philosophical. Game designers are actively engaging with and changing the way that gamers – people like you and me – think, act and react. They're telling us which path we should take, or who to kill and who to save, using sometimes incredibly subtle psychological cues to make us feel fear, or comfort, or anger. And they're putting in a huge amount of hard work to take us to utopias and dystopias.
Over the next four pages, we chat to some of the most important names in game development to tell the story of game design, and to get to grips with the intricate ideas, theories and perspectives that explain how interactive entertainment is built.
Game studies
Want to design games? Dayna Galloway explains Abertay University's various course options...Game design is an enormous and broad subject that takes in many different academic disciplines: mathematics, physics, film and media studies, architecture, art and design, and sound engineering all play parts in the development of games. So how is it taught?
"At Abertay University we have the fortune to be able to teach game design within the broader context of games development, whereby our game design students have the opportunity to work alongside students studying for a degree in one of the other disciplines (programming, art, production and sound)," explains programme tutor Dayna Galloway.
"Our approach to teaching is a careful balance of theory and practice – we aim to ensure that our graduates can meet the demands of the industry today, but also that they possess the skills, confidence and knowledge to drive future innovation."
Abertay has made quite a name for itself as a go-to uni if you want to break into the games industry, and recent success stories include indie developer Pixel Blimp, which has become part of Microsoft Ventures' business mentoring program. Galloway describes the company's success as "a real testament to the quality of our degree programmes which encourage our students to apply their creative and technical skills in an entrepreneurial context."
Of course, not everyone will have the time and funds for a degree. Galloway recommends the following books for aspiring game designers: Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton, and Game Feel by Steve Swink.
"All of these texts provide detailed critique and analysis of the game design process along with useful exercises to help you establish and develop a concept, as well as aiding with the practical aspects of prototyping and the development of a solid user experience," says Dayna.
Basic rules
In order to understand game design, we have to go back to the start of commercial gaming in the 1970s. However crude and unsophisticated they may appear now, games such as Pong, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong laid down rules of design that are still in play today; they're based on repetitive concepts that are simple to grasp, but can also be 'gamed' to the player's advantage.
"Pong is wonderful as it's such a simple concept and stands up to this day – the way that aggressive play can come back to haunt you leads to you playing a frantic game of risk and reward," explains Dayna Galloway, programme tutor for Abertay University's game design and production management degree. "Pac-Man is so iconic, and it's one of the first games that truly immersed me once I uncovered its systems and formed a strategy to increase the likelihood of success."
As the '70s drew to a close, systems were seeping out of enthusiasts' garages and university research labs, into people's homes and purpose-built arcades. Arcade games in particular had to be commercially viable. They had to look like they were easy to beat – to get your initials next to that high score – but they also had to turn a profit and drain teens' quarters.
On home systems, games could offer delayed gratification and a slower pace. According to Galloway, "Tetris deserves a mention as it has such a clear and rewarding loop of core gameplay – easy to pick up and difficult to truly master – and it also managed to achieve broad appeal across the spectrum of players. And Super Mario Bros is just a masterclass in good design."
The '80s became the '90s and new forms of gameplay emerged. 3D, which hit the mainstream with Doom and Wolfenstein, gave us multilayered levels to explore. The internet meant that people could play with or against each other. Core gameplay values and mechanics changed very little, though – a shooter is ostensibly just a platformer from a different perspective, and an MMO is much like playing Warhammer (albeit remotely rather than face-to-face).
But systems were perfected, control methods were honed, graphics were sharpened and gaming evolved. This decade also saw the beginnng of the series that Galloway believes has come to define good gameplay: Half-Life. "With the proliferation of narrative FPS games nowadays, we very much take for granted how innovative and truly ground-breaking this series was," he says.
Why are Valve's 1998 shooter and its 2004 sequel so highly regarded? "The use of environmental storytelling to make the player question and consider the events that have taken place," explains Galloway. "The implementation of intuitive, environmental puzzles that reward the player and provide a release of tension; the characterisation of Gordon Freeman within the confines of a silent protagonist; the rich, believable world that set the bar for art direction in games; and the artificial intelligence of the many foes that would aim to bring your adventure to a premature end."
Surface tension
Game chemistry
This buildup and release of tension is arguably the most important part of game design. It's long been known that games stimulate the production of dopamine in the brain, which explains why they can become addictive. Emerging victorious from a drawn out battle in World of Tanks or working out the solution to a puzzle in Hack 'n' Slash causes a frenzy of hormones in the brain, which makes us eager for the next challenge.Games aren't just pleasure – inducing lightshows though – even the most abstract titles have to have some basis in the real world, be it a rectangle with emotions or an anthropomorphic cement blob. "The best games use affordances and metaphors that we understand from the real world," says Galloway. "They treat the player with respect and give the player space and time to make connections with the objects, characters and places present in the game."
As we play games, we begin to understand how their worlds work, and what we can and can't do. At the same time, games have to introduce concepts of movement and interaction, and, guide the player forwards. They have to do so in an understated way, because to force a gameplay concept on the player would immediately break their suspension of disbelief. "Developers have to manage the player's expectations of the game and provide believable reasons for the constraints on their freedom within the world," says Galloway.
For this reason, games use subtle cues to guide the player to the rewards. In Fallout 3's dungeons flaming barrels and wall-mounted lights indicate which path to take. "'Breadcrumb trails' are used to attract the player's attention through the use of colour, lighting, form, movement or even just strategically placed objects from the game economy such as health pickups, loot or discarded notes," says Galloway.
Rewards don't necessarily take conventional forms, and a plot twist, a snippet of backstory or a stunning view could be every bit as gratifying as a new weapon or a loot drop. Half-Life is regarded as a pioneer in this respect because it seamlessly tied the narrative into the gameworld – as well as finding monsters around the corner, you uncover the revelation that the marines have turned up to nuke the Black Mesa facility rather than save its brainiac workers. It was this more cinematic, long-game approach to sustain and release that brought Half-Life and its ilk in line with film and television.
"Games utilise similar elements to film and television to engage the player," says Galloway. "As an audio-visual form, games can grab the attention of the player and manipulate their emotions through the use of cinematic style camera work, expressive lighting, sound design and music. Games also use traditional techniques such as characterisation, drama, story and plot to draw the player into a world."
Recently though, game design appears to have rubber-banded on itself. Generation X, who grew up in the '90s and '00s, created the language of modern gaming, but a new generation - millennials - have spoken this language since birth, and are now coming up with new and interesting swear words. "We are seeing the emergence and critical success of games that use systems and mechanics in provocative, innovative and thoughtful ways" says Galloway.
"Titles such as Papers, Please, 9.03m, Gone Home and DayZ all embed meaning within the individual elements and systems they present to the player," he continues. "Every choice and action undertaken by the player has a consequence – so whether a survivor in DayZ decides to check one more apparently deserted barn, or momentarily trust another player by providing them with a spare weapon, takes on a greater significance and essentially becomes an exciting, emergent playground of cause and effect."
Build the playground
But the psychology of games is only half the battle, and a designer facing a deadline is going to be more interested in making sure that characters' heads don't float off due to a programming error than the Freudian semiotics of a sword design. "In the games industry you are always faced with time constraints; developers always want to push themselves and the games they are working on," says Patrick Esteves, design director of Crytek's gladiatorial combat title Ryse: Son of Rome.From a commercial perspective, games need a unique selling point in order to differentiate them from the masses of similar titles. With Ryse, it was "always about creating a cinematic gaming experiencing, where the player was taken through the grandeur and gutter of the Roman Empire," says Esteves. "Gameplay wise, it was built around players engaging in the brutally honest combat of the age as a soldier rising through the ranks."
At the very foundation of every game is a game design document. This huge blueprint details every aspect of the game, and includes concept art, character descriptions, diagrams of particular mechanics or plot iterations, level overviews, musical cues and menu design. They become bibles that are referenced through every stage of development, and frequently altered or updated as designers realise what does and doesn't work.
"As you develop a game you start with an idea, and build on that idea," says Esteves. "During that process you make the leap from paper design to functioning in-game, and it's not always the case that what was on paper was as fun to play as you originally envisioned. At that point the team rallies behind what is functioning in-game and makes changes to get it to play and feel as good as possible."
But as with any creative process, divorcing yourself from your favourite ideas can be as painful as a poker to your privates. "People will tell you that you should not get married to your ideas, but that is not possible – unless you are a robot," says Esteves. "You can work months honing a mechanic or system that might just not work, or there might not be enough time to finish. Whatever the case, it's a bitter pill to swallow, but it comes with the territory."
Ryse began as an Xbox One launch title published by Microsoft, but Crytek and Deep Silver handled the PC re-issue. This method of production is as old as games themselves, but it massively increases the pressure on the developer to meet deadlines and get the game out of the door. A new generation of companies, such as Valve and Cloud Imperium Games, are rejecting this model and self-publishing their titles.
"We sit round the table and we don't have discussions about, 'We've got to ship four million cartridges on this date, and the marketing is going to spend this sort of money,'" says Erin Roberts, studio director of Cloud Imperium Games' space combat title Star Citizen. "We just sit there and say, "what's the best thing we can do for the game?"
Citizen's advice
Reach for the stars
Star Citizen began in October 2012 with a crowdfunding campaign by Chris Roberts (Erin's brother), which attracted an incredible $4.2 million. But it didn't end there: by June 2013 it had reached $10 million. Erin jumped on board at $17 million. In September 2014 it had funds totalling $55 million at its disposal. It's clear that this new way of funding interactive entertainment requires a whole new approach to making games.Fortunately, Cloud Imperium had success in mind from day one. "We always had a very long-term plan for what we were going to do," says Roberts. "The fact that the crowdfunding's taken off to such an extent has allowed us to put in a bunch of the stuff we wouldn't have at first. We haven't really changed the idea of the game, but we certainly have increased what we're working on, and the fidelity."
Star Citizen's design is shaped as a series of modules, each of which is positioned within the game's universe and tackles a different area of gameplay. It's an all-encompassing approach that makes it remarkably hard to nail down the game in terms of genre and next to impossible to review - Star Citizen has become a gaming format and ecosystem unto itself. But it's also the best way to get the game working - Cloud Imperium has released modules in dribs and drabs, satiating the thirst of eager backers and reiterating the game based on their input and ideas.
"You've got hundreds of thousands of people out there and you're working on their dream for them," says Roberts. "We work on it, and when we have something really cool to show we put it out to the community, and we get feedback from them. Then we work on some more stuff. I just can't think of a better way of making games right now, as long as you've got the right people making the game, and the community behind it."
Erin and his brother can't grant miracles and - we hate to say it - they probably aren't going to live forever. But they are building an entire universe - one more complex than anything ever imagined before. And they're living proof, surely, that mankind has just taken one more step towards godliness
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PC Gaming Week: Can a Mac be a gaming PC? How the world is changing for Mac gamers
For years, Mac gaming has been almost an oxymoron - not really worth considering if your love of games extends beyond Football Manager. But things are changing. Big games are coming to Mac quicker and quicker, instead of arriving three years later or not at all.
Perhaps more excitingly, new indie games tend to hit Mac at the same time as everything else thanks to improved engine support, with Humble Bundles seeing major uptakes from Apple users, and most Steam Early Access games eager for them, too.
More than that, the hardware is looking better and better for gaming. There are iMacs that take up little desk space, but pack in quad-core processors and good Nvidia GPUs. The MacBook Pro range offers Intel Iris graphics at the low end, and strong dedicated graphics as you get to the top - and most models have brilliant super high-res screens to show it off, too.
There's the Mac Pro, boasting a Xeon processor and two GPUs in a near-silent, eight-inch-tall enclosure (okay, it really isn't for gaming, but it's gorgeous). Even the MacBook Air is making the most of Haswell, with brand new processors and Intel's decent HD 5000 graphics in a tiny machine that gets 12 hours of battery life.
The hardware is still pretty pricey, of course (especially the new Mac Pro), but some things never really change. The thing is, it's higher quality than just about everything out there, and it's difficult to find anything that actually rivals Apple's laptops for size, weight and specs for the same price.
That's great, because with SteamPlay, you only need to buy a game once on Steam to get it on both platforms. Cloud saves usually work on both versions, so you could grab a MacBook for playing the go, and have a big gaming rig at home. And even if you want games that aren't available on Mac, you can use Apple's Boot Camp utility to dual-boot Windows on Apple hardware.
The redheaded stepchild of PC gaming has become an aluminium fox, and that's great for the growth of the industry. It's time to stop looking down on Mac gaming, and welcome it like a long-lost brother - albeit, one who got really into his music and art while he was away.
It's hard for a lot of gamers to remember now, but there was a time when the Mac was fertile ground for great games.
Maxis brought the dozens of Sim-something games it did every month to Mac; Bungie grew big as a Mac-exclusive developer, getting to the point where it announced Halo for Mac and Windows (before being promptly snapped up by Microsoft); and Myst, one of the biggest games of all time, was built in the Mac's 'make your own app!' programming tool HyperCard before being ported to every electronic platform with a screen.
This time passed, though. Windows pulled further and further ahead in sheer number of games, in providing affordable and decent graphics, and ultimately in performance.
Of course, there were companies that kept the end up, porting what games they could, but Mac gamers mostly had to be content with the likes of The Sims, and occasional scraps like Stubbs the Zombie and Age of Empires tossed their way. If you played a variety of games, you didn't do it on your Mac, or even probably in the same room as it, just to avoid being insensitive and stuff.
Turning point
But in the space of a year, Apple did two things that started the road to a gaming renaissance. In 2006, it switched to using Intel CPUs, bringing its hardware more into line with Windows machines, and in 2007, it introduced the iPhone. The first of these two points certainly made life easier for porting, since Apple's PowerPC processors were a completely different architecture to x86. It wasn't the kind of thing that made an overnight difference, of course, because of games' continued reliance on DirectX, but it was a big step for Apple.
The iPhone was perhaps the more important element, though. Once the SDK was released, gaming absolutely blew up on the iOS App Store. Suddenly, Apple and gaming weren't just being mentioned in the same sentence, but extra phrases like 'future of handheld consoles' were also being thrown in. Big developers started jumping on board and, crucially, made a bunch of money, too.
During this time, Mac sales were ticking up as most of the PC industry slowed and started contracting. At the same time, the Apple audience had showed that it did, in fact, like games, and was willing to pay for them. It was only a matter of time until Steam showed up, and where Steam goes, so go the games. In 2010, sure enough, Valve launched its store and many of its Source games for Mac as well.
The goods
Although the Mac is still a second-class citizen compared to Windows, receiving big titles after a delay of several months, it is getting them. The likes of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, SimCity, BioShock Infinite and Metro: Last Light all arrived on Mac within a few months of their original release - SimCity even had launch issues, as if to prove that we're all equals.
For Feral Interactive, responsible for porting Tomb Raider, the Total War series and XCOM, among others, strategy games tend to be the best sellers. It's no surprise, then, that XCOM: Enemy Within is due to release on Mac on the same day as Windows.
It's easy to look down on having to wait a few months for games, but in this, Windows and Mac users aren't so different. Too often, the PC finds itself getting the short end of the joystick, getting console ports that are often delayed or badly done. Now spare a thought for your Mac-playing brothers. Windows is the console to them.
Console yourself
As with console games coming to PC, the problem for Mac games is the effort involved in getting the ports working well. The Direct3D elements used to power the graphics in Windows games must become OpenGL elements for Macs, and the whole thing needs to run on the different software platform."In the past we have found that some new graphics effects available in the latest version of DirectX are not easily reproduced on the Mac using OpenGL," says David Stephen, managing director of Feral Interactive. "In such cases, we look for the best way to create those effects with the minimum hit on performance, but there is usually a trade-off involved. However, Apple's support for OpenGL 4.0 and 4.1 in Mavericks means that more processing can now be done natively on the graphics card, and that will definitely help with the performance side of things."
The technical effort of porting is just one element, though. "Delays are principally due to the Mac developer/publisher (in this case Feral) not receiving the assets they need to start the porting process until after the Windows version of the game has been released," explains David Stephen. Even this step of starting ports can only come after business negotiations between all the companies involved, which can be complicated.
"We have been working with our partners so that we can commence on the port while the original game is still in development," adds Stephen, but this carries its own potential issues. If the game is being ported while still in active development, changes made by the main development team can have a knock-on effect on the port. The Mac version also needs its own separate QA testing, and then even once it's finished, it can be delayed further while awaiting final approval from the publisher.
There have also been delays on Mac games released on specific stores - they might hit the Mac App Store before Steam for example. Steam and SteamPlay can cause business headaches in the case of ports, and that also takes time to sort out. On top of that, if it's on the App Store, it'll need Apple's Game Center adding, and other multiplayer/achievement code removing or suppressing.
Maybe it's no surprise, then, that Aspyr Media, one of the biggest Mac games companies - responsible for the BioShock Infinite port, among others - employs more staff in QA, sales and marketing than it does in engineering duties.
Going native
Life gets a lot easier for developers if there's no porting required in the first place, of course. Engine changes to allow easy cross-platform development are already happening, with smaller, nimbler games seeing the benefits currently. Unity supports everything going, meaning that games such as Gone Home and the alpha for Sir, You Are Being Hunted arrived on Mac at the same time as everything else - including Linux.
The iPhone helped Apple overall in cross-platform support, getting engine developers interested in making it easy for game devs to put their products on Apple-powered devices (for example, the iPhone's iOS is based on OS X).
SteamOS could be the next platform that helps Mac owners. Linux and OS X are far from identical as operating systems, but are close enough that some games run on both in a single binary. Basically, if developers put in the effort to make their games work on Linux, it's not a big step to Mac, and Valve's attempt to get as many games as possible to go cross-platform could be the final step that puts the Mac on pretty much level pegging with Windows for games support in the future.
You might ask, very fairly, why it would take Valve throwing its weight around to make this happen when Apple is pretty hefty itself. The thing is, Apple just never cared about gaming before it became a key selling point in the iPhone, and even now is much better at saying it's doing great things for gamers than actually doing them.
While games companies have been making the moves to get their products on Macs, Apple itself has been slow to help. The problem is partly technical, but partly it's just a failure to engage with what's expected of PC games.
Steam's presence on Mac brings all the usual goodies, like cloud saves, social features and achievements. Not long after Steam arrived, Apple launched its own Mac App Store, and the hope was that it would be another good platform to discover and buy games, especially for people who wouldn't have heard of Steam. To a degree it succeeded, but only for people who aren't used to the kind of features offered by Steam. There's nothing like the ubiquity of Steam Cloud for online saves, and the social features are tied into Apple's Game Center service, which is barely used.
Most irritating of all is the requirement that all Mac App Store games be sandboxed, meaning that developers can't include any ways to tie games into your Steam account so you can see your friends for multiplayer there. The Mac App Store is convenient, but as a gaming platform, it just doesn't compare.
Dem graphics
Then there's the state of graphics support in OS X. It hasn't been the best. Because all of its hardware is so slimline, Apple is loathe to use very large, hot GPUs, so it tends to go for mobile cards, even in desktops. That's still okay - there's great gaming to be had in a Nvidia 750M or Iris Pro - but the drivers often seem to be inferior to their Windows counterparts, and can vary from card to card.Apple can also be well behind the latest OpenGL versions at times, though its most recent update brought things in line. The problem used to be that Apple only updated OpenGL when it updated the whole OS, and until now that was a paid upgrade, so not every user would get the better features that developers needed to progress. This went for any drivers, too. Funnily, this is very similar to Microsoft's attitude with DirectX, but it's even worse for developers.
Overall, many games perform considerably worse on Macs than Windows PCs - SimCity, for example, can run perfectly smoothly on Intel HD 4000 graphics at 1080p on low settings on Windows, but on a Mac with an AMD 6750M GPU, those settings are barely playable. As David Stephen suggested earlier, though, that could change with the more advanced APIs available in the latest operating system.
The performance problems aren't the case with all games, though. "I've had some instances of performance hits, but often my ports will have performance increases, depending on the hardware. There have definitely been some OpenGL bugs/ bottlenecks, but that's something that can often be addressed in my code," says Ethan Lee, a developer on the MonoGame framework for porting XNA games to Mac/Linux, and who ported Fez to these very platforms as well.
Put the boot in
When games don't run as well on OS X, there's always one solution: run Windows instead. Apple's Boot Camp software enables you to easily partition your disk drive, and provides all the drivers necessary to get Windows working natively on your Mac.
We recommend replacing the graphics drivers provided by Apple, unsurprisingly, but the odd thing is that Macs tend to be consistently some of the best-performing Windows machines you can buy. Everything works brilliantly, any SteamPlay games you've bought will play on Windows (with your saves brought in over the cloud where supported), and you can play Windows-exclusive games.
You get storage issues if you dual-boot one of the lower-end laptops with small amounts of solid state storage, but with Intel HD 5000 graphics, even something like the MacBook Air is a viable portable gaming machine for smaller indie titles.
Macs don't represent a great deal for someone who wants high-end gaming, but they shouldn't be dismissed because of that. The range of games is already strong, and is only going to grow further - and you can run Windows for the rest.
In a balance of gaming power and size/weight, there's not a lot that can touch the MacBook line. Dear readers, it's time to embrace the Mac and its users to the PC gaming fold. They are our brothers in arms (which was a game released on Mac as well, incidentally).
- Now why not read our Hands on: Mac Pro review
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Week in Gaming: Missing: Hideo Kojima. Last seen eating sausages and making Metal Gear Solid 5
The gaming world has been shaken like a bum bag on Elvis Presley's hips this week, because of a number of scandals. You'd think we'd have all got used to it after the millionth gaming scandal (that was the time Banjo from Banjo Kazooie went into rehab) but no, we still get upset about things that happen to people we don't know and games we haven't played.
What's the scandal this week? Why, the mysterious disappearance of the beloved video game designer, Hideo Kojima. Where has he gone? What is he doing? Was he ever even real in the first place? Since March 19, the genius creator of Metal Gear, he of the cryptic sausage tweets, has been silent as the hills in Silent Hills.
No tweets, no sausage photos, and strangest of all, no credit for the latest Metal Gear - his name has been taken off all branding to do with The Phantom Pain, and Kojima Productions LA has been renamed to Konami LA Studio.
It is of no great surprise that the internet is currently whipping itself up into a conspiratorial frenzy. Perhaps he's been fired. Maybe he stormed out. Or even ascended to a higher plane. What if he's just been hiding under a box this entire time in an effort to immerse himself in the role of Snake? Well, friends, I'm sorry to say that you're all wrong, and here's why.
Our dear Kojima has finally mastered the art of transfiguration, and has turned himself into a sausage. The signs were all there: his infamous "farewell sausage" tweet was a clue. He wasn't saying goodbye to the sausage, or saying that it was a sausage of farewell - he was saying "Farewell (I am about to be a) sausage". Read between the lines, guys.
In much less secretive news, the highly anticipated PS4 exclusive Bloodborne came out this week, and it's so good that I literally have no one to talk to any more. Seriously, I call up my friends and they answer, mumble something about flappy capes and twiddly moustaches and plagues, and hang up again. I think they're playing Bloodborne. Either that or they've become over-the-top, slightly theatrical villains.
Bloodborne is being hailed as a game that rivals, if not beats Dark Souls for being hard, expansive and generally fantastic in all the ways, which is good news for its developers, From Software, who also did Dark Souls. Is it worth a play? Probably, if you like good games, gorgeous graphics and gloating to all your PC Master Race chums.
But if you don't own a Playstation 4, what is there to play this week? Well, let me recommend you my favourite dish: a bit of Dragon Age: Inquisition DLC. And by "dish", I mean Dorian. He's the dish. Because he's dishy. The Jaws of Hakkon story has all the things you love about Dragon Age: questing, secrets, dragon slaying and getting to chat to lovely Lead Scout Harding. No, you can't date her yet. Wait for the Lead Scout Harding DLC. It will happen, right BioWare? Please?
And if you don't own any consoles, and you just want to know about the hottest mobile games, then you're probably a fan of Crossy Road, a modern-day Frogger for people with quick thumbs. But you're probably thinking what we're all thinking: why can't it be first-person? I have excellent news for you, friend. It can!
That's all the news worth knowing for this week, friends. Remember: if you find a sausage anywhere, BE CAREFUL. It could be Kojima. Make sure to ask your sausage if he is a renowned video game developer BEFORE eating him. Be safe.
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PC Gaming Week: Why Star Citizen could be the best space game of all time
True space opera
This article was provided to TechRadar for PC Gaming Week by Edge magazine. Follow Edge on Twitter here. Click here for Edge subscription offers.On the edge of known space, we centre the object in our meteor-scratched canopy and hit the thrusters. In time, it begins to loom large in our vision, monolithic and yet somehow indistinct, its obsidian, almost too perfect alien surface melding into the pervading blackness. Clearly it's colossal, but it's also beguilingly mysterious.
Yet the problem isn't really a lack of information: early probes have returned full of data, it's just that much of it is apparently contradictory and there's plenty of disagreement over what it all means. The object is Star Citizen, and the only conclusion everyone seems truly happy with is that it's made a hell of a lot of money.
That could not be more perfectly calculated to wind up Chris Roberts, the creator of the beloved Wing Commander series, CEO of Cloud Imperium Games and chief creative officer on Star Citizen.
"I do get a bit disappointed," he admits. "I mean, it's today's news cycle... If you're on the online 24/7 game blog, they don't have time to [do in-depth articles], so they're always about the headline. So for them it's like, 'Oh, Star Citizen's made X million or X million,' and everything focuses on the money. And then you can read it and say, 'Well, all they care about is the money.' Not really."
Accusations fly
It is the distorting weight of $60m and counting, raised by some 640,000 backers, which has seen the developer variously accused of running a cult, a scam and, thanks to the $30 to $15,000 game packages on the Roberts Space Industries site, a pay-to-win operation. Alternatively, for the faithful, this is the second coming of Chris Roberts after a ten-year break from games. But Star Citizen's even harder to get a read on: it's a space dogfighting game, only with ships big enough to walk around and live in, except when it's an FPS, set in an online universe.The list of features defies credulity, but if Star Citizen is a con, it might be the worst-run one on the planet. For starters, it's intensely public, with Chris often making appearances on game expo stages to reveal more in-engine footage. Secondly, while only a sliver of what's promised, the dogfighting and hangar modules are both in public hands already, the former the beneficiary of a huge update in recent weeks. Some 110 Cloud Imperium staff have accounts on LinkedIn, and these are not sock puppets, but people who have portfolio sites and histories at Crytek, BioWare and Activision.
As slight as accountability in crowdfunding projects may be, the conspiracy theory doesn't stack up. Chris refutes the pay-to-win accusations himself: "The design of the game, and this is just personal preference, because I hate it in free-to-play games, is there's nothing that you can buy with money that you can't earn in the game." The packages are pledge tiers, their values set to offer funding options. Come release, the basic starting package is all you'll need.
Massive scope
The problem for outside observers is really scale. Baffling, mind-boggling scale. "We're essentially giving them four huge games all in one," Chris explains. "Squadron 42 is going to be what, or better than what, a next-generation Wing Commander would have been, and that's just by itself. And its level of fidelity – I mean, the scope and the size of the story and the missions we're doing in it is huge. I mean, I'm pretty sure if I was doing another Wing Commander for EA, I don't think they would allow me to do as much content. Because right now I think we're estimating something like 50 hours or so to play through the full narrative story."I mean, it's so big we're going to release it in episodes. Think of it as a miniseries, like five episodes. So the first episode is what we're going to release next year – well, hopefully there are two episodes next year, but for the first one I think we're aiming for Gamescom. But the first episode itself is about ten hours of gameplay. So compared to modern FPS games, that's more than you get in most of the campaign modes with a Call Of Duty.
"And then, of course, there's whole persistent [online] universe. You've got the 4X space game style, because if you don't want to get into combat, you can go into building a business up or building a trade empire and doing all that kind of stuff. And then we've got the FPS section. So someone could make a game just by itself from any one of these."
Five dev studios?
Ambition of this scale takes not one studio, but five, each working on separate modules of the game. While Chris heads up development on the persistent universe in Los Angeles, CIG alsohas satellites in Texas and California. IllFonic, a relatively unknown quantity whose output includes the lukewarmly received Nexuiz, is in charge of the FPS module. Rather more promisingly, Erin Roberts is studio director of the Manchester-based Foundry 42, entrusted with creating the singleplayer campaign, Squadron 42.
Unlike his brother, Erin never left the industry, but after producing Wing Commander: Privateer 2 and helming Starlancer, he wound up at TT Fusion making Lego games. Though he enjoyed it, he took little convincing to rejoin his brother to make Chris's self-professed "crazy dream".
Erin's part is certainly the easiest to contextualise. Taking place before the timeline of the persistent universe, Squadron 42's arc tells the story of a war between the alien Vanduul and United Empire of Earth (UEE). The setup is battle-worn: you'll play the rookie working your way up the ranks. You start with a light fighter, the Gladius, waiting in your hangar, earning the right to fly more advanced craft over time.
But Erin explains there's been a gestalt shift that defines Star Citizen; Wing Commander has long been famous for its firstperson view on the cockpit, but pilots here will be free to tear open the canopy and stretch their legs. "It's not, for me, really a space combat game," he says. "It's actually an FPS game where you use vehicles. So, 'cause you're always a person, you [might] decide to fly a ship, get in a ground vehicle, or go places and walk around."
Kilometre-long battlecruisers
So while the storyline's linear, moment-to-moment gameplay is anything but dictatorial. Ronald D Moore's Battlestar Galactica is namechecked before Erin describes 1km long battlecruisers with explorable interiors, and how ships are modelled down to the latrines and manufacturer's marks on the rivets. It seems one such capital ship will serve as a hub and home for a time, with you at liberty to wander its cafeterias and halls between spells in the cockpit.The idea is to give a sense of a living place, so the people on board are just as important as
the immaculately rendered bulwarks. Crews will assemble in the canteen at lunch, then scuttle off to service hangar craft, and key NPCs will catch your eye if they want a quick chat. Dialogue option lists are out, a body language and reputation system in their place. Stay and listen to a garrulous wingman's tall tales in a bar and he might form a closer bond with you that means more help out among the stars; get him going and dash off mid-sentence and he might give you the cold shoulder instead.
"I mean, it's crazy," says Chris, "because the Wing Commander format was that you fly your mission in space, shoot a bunch of stuff up, and then you come back onto the ship, you have some conversations and the story advances, and you basically rinse and repeat that. This is not like that. It's completely fluid. You can be going around your
It's not simply physical scale, either. Across the hour we spend with Erin, he touches tantalisingly on the topics of dropships to fly, popping out in your EVA suit to perform mid-mission spacewalks to get around problems, and calling for air support from inside a location.
All too much?
It sounds like mad overpromising until you consider that PAX Australia gave the world its first glimpse of Star Citizen's considered, tactical gunplay before capping it off with a less constrained zero-g shootout, soldiers and pirates locked in an aerial ballet as they pushed off from walls and dodged floating crates. Perhaps most attractively of all, because many of Squadron 42's systems have hooks in the persistent universe, they have been built to work in dynamic, unscripted environments, not just for set-pieces. A linear tale may deploy them that way, but Erin stresses the primacy of choice.Yet the power to choose may mean you never experience his work: in the final release, the entire Squadron 42 campaign will be optional. Still, according to Erin, you can opt out more dramatically than clicking 'no thanks' after character creation. "We're going to give you the ability to pretty much mutiny. So you may decide you're going to be an evil pirate, and you go and shoot your captain in the back of the head and make an escape... Obviously that puts an end to the campaign for you."
These choice-based systems are set to reach maturation in the persistent universe, which blends a game-shaping economy simulation with a massively multiplayer sandbox universe. Yet as you explore its 110 star systems, and around 400 planned landing locations, you should notice them free of tired old MMOG design.
"I kind of feel like in a lot of online games, especially as you get to the higher levels, you get forced into a social dynamic," says Chris. "OK, I'm 80th level in World Of Warcraft and I've got to be in my raid group... We don't have levels in Star Citizen. I don't want that. The goal of the game is there shouldn't be any win, right? Because it's like in the real world: what's your definition of a win?"
Your interpretation could mean seeking out dogfights until you carve out a legend as a combat ace, but it could equally mean starting up a junking and salvage business to make a few credits. Chris wants every path to involve skill, with mining, for instance, more a case of identifying mineral seams and extracting them, rather than floating near a rock and holding the spacebar.
Nuts and bolts
So how will it all work? On a technical level, the universe itself is designed to cater to hundreds of thousands of players – and millions more NPCs, the ratio being one human to nine AI characters – but a game server can only contain 50 to 100 craft at this level of graphical fidelity.Instead of dealing with this via shards, space will be dynamically instanced, those instances stacking on top of each other as the player count in an area rises. Smartly, however, whenever you drop out of warp, an algorithm will be making decisions about who to stick you with based on your in-game affiliations and reputation, and your personal preferences. Express an interest in PvP and you're likely to be matched with humans. Eschew social contact and pirates in your instance will more likely be AI bots. In this way, Star Citizen invisibly tailors itself to you as much as your actions alter it.
And alter it you will, entangled as you are in the web that is the economy simulation, which acts to imbue the universe with consequence and create a steady flow of missions. Chris provides the example of a factory in need of raw goods.
To start with, it will post a mission to the job board that's for simple haulage. Players get first dibs, but an NPC trucker will step in as time passes. If the sector's lawless enough to attract pirates, the factory may soon be cut off and, as the bottom line is affected, the factory's owner may then seek to hire mercenaries to protect their shipments. If that doesn't work, then you could be looking at a bounty to bring back the troublesome pirate lord's scalp. But fail to reverse the factory's fortunes and the workers will start to be laid off, crime rises and the area deteriorates visually, a wear-and-tear system responding to local affluence.
Planetside scenarios are said to evolve equally organically, with Chris's team of designers working on modular mission templates so that the universe will keep providing things to see and do long after its scripted content is exhausted. And it is here that the bamboozling scope finally begins to feel grounded. Cloud Imperium may be crafting every ship by hand, but it isn't trying to build a universe this densely packed via raw manpower alone.
But such an emphasis on a bespoke, hand- shaped approach has introduced limits. "It's not necessarily as big as a procedural game like Elite or No Man's Sky that's doing a lot more procedural stuff, because there's a slightly different focus," says Chris. "We're focused on a more crafted, detailed- oriented approach. Even in what I'm describing, there's still procedural stuff that goes on in building elements of the cities, just because they're so big and we're doing them in such high fidelity. Like, for instance, if you're in a big city, the background city blocks and everything is all much more procedural versus an artist placing down each single building."
Feeling the reheat?
With all these promises to keep, is Chris feeling the pressure of his literally invested fanbase? Well, no. "The toughest person is myself on myself. The person that would be most annoyed if I didn't do what I have this vision in my head for is myself. When I really see a game through, I have this picture in my mind and I'm really obsessed about getting to this point. The original Wing Commander was that way, and that's where I'm at on this. I'm stubborn."What Chris asks of his fans now is the same stubbornness: to bear with him while he, Erin and the team realise his grand vision, piece by piece. With so much riding on it – no more or less than the reputation of crowdfunding whales – Star Citizen can only either succeed spectacularly or fail disastrously.
No publisher would take this kind of risk, but a great number of PC enthusiasts have, perhaps seeking release from an industry driven by predictable cycles and modest yearly iterations. Whatever Star Citizen ends up being, it will shake the game industry, and that alone makes it worth further exploration.
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Review: Seagate Seven Portable Drive
Introduction and performance
I wouldn't be surprised if Spectre, the next James Bond movie scheduled to be released later this year, features the Seagate Seven as one of the products "placed" in the film. Obviously, there's the number (Seven – 007) but also a nod to another legendary Bond movie.The skin-like enclosure of the Seagate Seven reminds me of the fate of Goldfinger's secretary, Jill Masterson, who was murdered by being covered in gold after she betrayed her boss. The Seven doesn't get that costly treatment but the end product is still stunning.
Design
This portable hard drive looks superb even in its stainless steel chassis. It is thin, the thinnest external hard disk drive ever launched at exactly 7mm, thinner than some internal hard drives and at 178 grams, lighter than most. Seagate managed to produce such an engineering feat by using a 5mm hard drive with a single 500GB platter. You won't be able to open the sealed enclosure as it is literally snapped close (probably using an industrial press).But while the Seagate Seven (otherwise known as the STDZ500400) is undoubtedly a premium hard disk drive, it comes at an equally premium price, selling for £100 at Ebuyer. It doesn't sound a lot, but we're used to 2TB external 2.5-inch hard disk drives like the Toshiba Canvio that are priced under £80.
Sure, it is not as pretty or portable, but paying five times the price per GB is a prospect hard to fathom – it seems that being the thinnest around does come at a very hefty price indeed. Pricewise, it is almost more akin to a 500GB SSD (the Kingston V300's price currently hovers in the £130 to £140 range), which might not be thinner but would leave the Seagate drive in the dust when it comes to raw performance.
Also, while the metal chassis looks great, it comes with some issues – it is prone to fingerprints and scratches.
The Seagate Seven boasts just one blue LED status light and a flat USB 3.0 interface at one end. The hard drive was supplied with a single USB 3.0 braided cable which is probably the best looking cable we've seen in a while. Not that we're excited about cables often, but this one not only looks great, it is also bendable.
Seagate's Seven is formatted to the exFAT file system but its default application, Dashboard, is Windows-only. Like other similar software, it allows the user to back up entire drives or designated file types or folders, on a defined schedule. Note that it also asks you to register with Seagate which is not essential.
That said, at 500GB capacity you will very likely run out of space quicker than you might hope. Another interesting feature is the fact that you can back up your Android or iOS devices as well as media from Flickr or Facebook (but not Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and the flurry of others).
Performance
The drive achieved 113MBps/51MBps in sequential read and write respectively on CrystalDiskMark. Similarly, the Seagate Seven achieved a respectable score of 1954 on PCMark 8, not bad for a 5400RPM hard disk drive. All three results are very decent figures and surprising given that it is a single platter model.That said, the scores are nothing to shout about and similarly priced hard drives like the HGST Touro Pro (which is thicker but also features a 7200RPM hard drive) are far faster and more capacious.
Verdict
We liked
The Seagate Seven made headlines for one thing and one thing only; its thickness. It has a gorgeous design, which does no harm, and other vendors should seek inspiration from the way Seagate packaged the product, as well as the cable design that came with it.We disliked
The Seagate Seven offers relatively poor value for money. It is expensive, and at 500GB doesn't offer enough capacity especially compared to the competition. It is squeezed at the lower-end by cheaper hard disk drives and by SSDs at the upper-end of the market. It's also a shame that it comes with a mere two-year warranty.Final verdict
The Seagate Seven is a powerful statement of what Seagate's R&D can achieve. I don't expect it to span an entire portfolio given that the drive would lose its main appeal (the slim nature) if it goes to a two platter model. If you're after a hard disk drive that looks different from others, then go for it. Otherwise, look elsewhere, either in the classic spinning disk market or in the SSD arena. The super-sleek and way thinner Samsung T1 is also an intriguing option and one can expect SSD vendors to arrive with similar solutions over the course of 2015.
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Zelda Wii U won't come out this year after all
The Wii U's lack of flagship games - or many games at all, if we're being honest - is no secret to owners of the console and non-owners alike.
So it stung even more when Nintendo revealed today that the Wii U Legend of Zelda game has been pushed back into 2016.
There's at least a good reason for not putting the next Zelda game out in 2015 like Nintendo promised, and producer Eiji Aonuma went into detail about the choice in a Facebook update.
Bad news, good reasons
"The directors and the many members of the development team have been working hard developing the game to make it the best it can be," he says in the video. "In these last three months, as the team has experienced firsthand the freedom of exploration that hasn't existed in any Zelda game to date, we have discovered several new possibilities for this game."As we have worked to turn these possibilities into reality, new ideas have continued to spring forth, and it now feels like we have the potential to create something that exceeds even my own expectations."
He said he'd rather focus on making a good game than meeting a strict schedule, and therefore the Wii U's Zelda game won't arrive this year.
Nintendo of America added on Twitter that the game won't even appear at E3 2015, suggesting there's a major overhaul underway, and from the vague hints that Aonuma gave it seems the game could be legitimately fantastic.
Damaged reputation
But despite Nintendo and Aonuma's optimism about how hard the team is working and how good the next Zelda game will be, this is a blow for Wii U owners - the poor things - who are perpetually waiting for a new game to buy.This is hardly the first big Wii U game that's been delayed, and indeed, the challenges of HD development seem to have thrown a wrench in the development of every major Nintendo game since the console came out.
Over that time plenty of great Wii U games have actually been released, and the system now has a respectable library of solid Nintendo games, a considerable advantage that the Xbox One and PS4 obviously lack.
But the damage done to Nintendo's reputation in this time - especially among the company's most ardent fans - may be hard to overcome, no matter how great the Nintendo NX turns out to be.
- Here's what we're expecting at IFA 2015
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IN DEPTH: Creative much? How Surface Pro 3, not iPad, is Adobe's best canvas
Microsoft Surface Pro 3's Adobe Touch Workspace
Already five years old, Apple's innovative iPad is often dismissed as a device more focused on consumption than creation, despite the wide variety of apps available for photographers, designers, musicians, writers and other creative types.For all the things iPad may be capable of, the tablet isn't running a robust, desktop-class operating system like Mac OS X or Windows, meaning developers are often forced to reinvent the wheel when existing software launches on the device.
That gives Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 a major advantage for those who prefer fewer compromises, since it's already running a full version of Windows 8.1 powered by the same fourth-generation Intel Core processors found inside desktop and notebook computers – but with the convenience and all-day battery life of a tablet.
However, what works great with a keyboard and mouse doesn't always necessarily translate to the best experience on a tablet, which is why Adobe recently introduced touch-friendly updates for two of its classic design applications, offering designers the best of both worlds in a single hardware package.
Touch me, babe
Adobe calls this initiative Touch Workspace, available now free of charge to existing Creative Cloud subscribers and Surface Pro 3 owners with the latest versions of Adobe Illustrator CC 2014 and Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 installed. (Adobe also offers a free 30-day trial prior to committing to a monthly or annual subscription.)Designed for multi-touch gestures and pressure-sensitive stylus pen input alike, Touch Workspace streamlines the design user interface, making it more responsive to fingertips, while optimizing a number of new or existing software tools with touch interaction in mind.
Adobe has also implemented support for touch gestures already familiar on other tablet devices. Using two fingers, artists can pinch and zoom or pan around the digital canvas, rotating or scaling objects without a mouse or touchpad; one or more elements can be selected simply by dragging a finger around them.
For now, Adobe offers a more fully immersive Touch Workspace experience on Illustrator CC 2014, merely dipping their toes into the touch waters with Photoshop CC 2014, as well as recent updates to motion graphics and video editing solutions After Effects CC 2014 and Premiere Pro CC 2014.
Born to draw
To activate Touch Workspace on Illustrator CC 2014, tap the icon at the top of the screen, or select Window > Workspace > Touch. The user is presented with a streamlined UI that doesn't stray too far from the application's familiar look and feel, but pushes lesser-used tools out of sight to keep the focus on drawing and editing.An exit button in the upper right corner switches back to the classic UI, while the adjacent Touch pull-down menu can be used to jump directly into any of Illustrator's other full-featured workspaces.
Longtime iPad users will want to remember to use two fingers (instead of just one) while panning around the artboard – in Adobe's new workspace, a single finger gesture is used for drawing and selection tools, which takes a little getting used to at first.
Despite Adobe's best intentions, some traditional tools lend themselves to pen input rather than touch, which lacks the precision of a stylus. But in general, Touch Workspace does a good job of making Illustrator more finger-friendly.
Surface Pro 3 with Adobe: tools and retooling
The right tools
Among the new drawing tools Adobe introduced for Illustrator CC 2014 is Curvature, which allows artists to create smooth curves by tapping once, or corner points and straight lines with two taps instead. (The same trick can also be used on Windows or Mac desktop systems.)Likewise, the new Join tool makes it insanely easy to connect paths that failed to intersect or overlap while drawing. In addition to adding the necessary connections, Join is also capable of removing overlapping segments as well – tasks that previously required more advanced skills on the desktop.
Adobe also incorporated a couple of new features that first debuted on the company's iPad apps, and they're quite cool. Using the Shapes Ruler and Stencil tool, artists can make short work of straight and parallel lines, angles or even complex French curves by controlling a virtual ruler on-screen with two fingers.
Going one step further, the Shape Builder tool allows artists to combine or remove shapes from an object with ease, turning a cluster of seemingly random lines into a much cooler lightning bolt, for example.
Baby steps
By comparison to Adobe Illustrator CC 2014, legendary image editor Photoshop CC 2014 takes a somewhat smaller step into the future. Rather than introducing a dedicated Touch Workspace for the legacy application, Adobe has instead introduced little enhancements all over the existing UI, making it easier to use on touch or pen-equipped devices like Surface Pro 3.One of the bigger improvements involved increasing the size of icons and touch targets by 200 percent over the previous version, which makes tools and buttons far easier to tap on. Drawing lines or strokes with a pen is also more accurate and natural, thanks to a combination of higher frequency sampling on hardware and software alike.
Of course, the biggest advantage of the Touch Workspace and Surface Pro 3 combo is the ability to place a crisp, colorful 12-inch display right into your hands or lap. Designers are no longer chained to the desktop or encumbered by a notebook keyboard and trackpad separating them from the work.
A few caveats
Unfortunately, the Touch Workspace experience hasn't been totally streamlined with this initial release. For starters, opening an existing Illustrator document throws the user straight back into the Desktop's trusty old open and save dialog box, rather than the more Modern (formerly "Metro") environment found on Windows 8.Other niceties like Save As are also missing from Illustrator CC's Touch Workspace mode, so artists will need to temporarily switch back to the classic user interface whenever they want to save alternate versions of the currently open document.
Despite these few UI nitpicks, Touch Workspace makes for a compelling addition to Adobe Creative Cloud, and makes Surface Pro 3 a must-have for anyone who spends time drawing or painting with Illustrator CC. (For the moment, Photoshop CC users have less reason to cheer, but the additional features do make the application easier to use while disengaged from a keyboard and mouse.)
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Better PowerPoint collaboration expected with LiveLoop acquisition
Microsoft has signalled its intention to further diversify the Office productivity suite after acquiring LiveLoop for an undisclosed fee.
A spokesperson for Microsoft confirmed the acquisition to ZDNet, and the LiveLoop for PowerPoint program is expected to be the first to play a part in the Office of the future.
"Microsoft is excited to welcome the talented team from LiveLoop to help build great collaboration across Office applications, as part of our strategy and vision to reinvent productivity," confirmed a spokesperson from Microsoft.
LiveLoop for PowerPoint, its primary offering, is a program that allows teams to work on presentations inside PowerPoint at the same time as fellow employees in a similar way to Google's Slides program. It eliminates the need to use a separate meeting program, such as GoToMeeting, as you can simply share the URL and kick a meeting off from there.
A message on the LiveLoop website confirmed that it will be shutting down permanently as of April 24, 2015 and all data, including presentations, must be removed by then or face being permanently deleted.
Another acquisition
LiveLoop is just the latest in a number of smaller companies that have been bought up by Microsoft including email company Accompli and calendar specialist Sunrise, Accompli basically becoming Outlook for iOS and Android.
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PC Gaming Week: What it takes to run the biggest space MMO
Meet Tranquility
Like some grand old dame, her youthful charms supplanted by the calculated sophistication of age, Eve Online is wading gently into her second decade. Created by Icelandic developers CCP Games, the massively multiplayer online game is set within the distant universe of New Eden, a place of immortal space pirates and larger-than-life politics, of players who think nothing of setting 6 a.m. alarms to patrol the lawless galaxies.Eve Online isn't an easy game to get into. It comes packaged with heavy expectations of commitment. Skill and ISK (the in-game currency) need to be accumulated gradually through weeks of mining, trading and player-on-everything combat. And there's a lot of everything given that the online world is a thriving galactic jungle swarming with more than 500,000 citizens.
From a year-long war to elaborate Ponzi schemes, none of Eve's intricate happenings would be possible without the appropriate hardware. Eve Online's massive world is built in the bones of Tranquility, a centralized server cluster based in London.
The technical specifications are unsurprisingly hefty. In a 2013 interview, CCP Chief Technical Officer Halldor Fannar revealed Tranquility featured 3,936GB of RAM and 2,574GHz worth of processing power. To put that in perspective, that's like having the computing power of 858 high-end processors or roughly 1,838 iPhone 6's combined into one block.
But even that isn't enough to fully accommodate the strenuous loads that Eve Online's growing number of players puts on Tranquility.
In the heat of battle
To keep this massive online realm running,, there is constant co-operation between CCP Games' operation and development teams as they monitor the nodes for activity levels and migrating solar systems when necessary. One example of this was the Bloodbath of B-R5RB, which saw more than 5,000 total combatants and losses amounting to $300,000 (about £201,213, AU$385,822) in real-world value.
During the event, developers relocated unrelated systems away from the affected node, freeing space for the carnage and temporarily disconnecting anyone not otherwise related to the fight.
"It's a choice we need to make," shrugs Senior Virtual World System Administrator
Guðmundur Jón Viggósson when I spoke with him at the 2015 Eve Fanfest. "We have a battle of 5,000 players. Let's disconnect 100 players so the battle can continue."
Compromise is a familiar theme in the day-to-day operations of Eve Online. The game was never designed for 500,000 players: it began life on a handful of computers.As such, CCP is still figuring out how best to adjust to the needs of its user base, and problems still arise whenever unexpected giant fleet fights break out.
Given sufficient notice, the operation team will transfer the conflagration to a node dedicated to such purposes. But that doesn't always happen, resulting in disconnected players, population caps and lag.
Time Slippage
Lag is a nuisance in any online game but the company's most ingenious solution so far is something called "time dilation." Introduced in 2010, the code adjusts the passage of time incrementally depending on the load, scaling up and down in symphony with the action.
It keeps constant tabs on itself, the size of the execution queue, and other variables within the game environment. Although its presence is most vividly felt during fleet battles, its function isn't unique to combat and can activate even when a player is merely moving items around.
Fascinating as it might be, CCP Senior Development Director Erlendur Þorsteinsson describes time dilation as a "band-aid," a temporary answer as opposed to a true resolution.
"We're not really solving the underlying symptoms. What we're sort of doing is extending the range with which we can accommodate people," Þorsteinsson declares. "There's a certain range, maybe up to 1,000 people roughly, that we can solve without time dilating. After that, up till 5,000 people, we're handling with time dilation. Beyond that? Things will simply queue up and you will experience what is known as lag."
The way forward
The CCP developer also touches briefly on a collaboration between the company and the University of Reykjavik, which is something of a research project that Þorsteinsson is quick to note is not actively being worked on.He explains that the related professor and his students looked into whether it was possible to predict an encroaching fight by examining logistics movement and counter-fleet movement. The experiment was reportedly quite successful for a university project, although CCP chose not to embed the idea in their code.
"What we did instead is, based on the discussion we had around this project, was change how we map solar systems. We did it in a different manner that we think now balances the load throughout the cluster, which makes the cluster better able to take on unexpected loads. Then we allocated more hardware to nullsec, so that unexpected load will have much more room."
While CCP iterates on the software that keeps Eve Online functional, the operations team continues the Herculean task of keeping the single-shard (single-server) universe afloat. "It's a constant battle figuring out what hardware works with the game," explains Viggósson. "The market is slowly trending into reducing clock speeds and increasing cores. And it just doesn't really have much. We just need the power of the CPU."
That necessity for raw power is made abundantly clear in the existence of the Everest node, Jita's current home and the workhorse handling the most system-intensive processes.
"At the time when we bought it, only places like the New York Stock Exchange had it," chuckled Viggósson.
Purchased from IBM four years ago, the computational behemoth sports a 4.12Ghz processor and 64gb memory. According to Viggósson, Everest was not available commercially at the time and it contained CPUs that were overclocked by IBM itself. The warranty was only applicable for 12 months; Viggósson postulates it was because the technology company's staff had no confidence in it lasting longer than a year.
Nonetheless, Everest continues to persist, and with it Tranquility. The two sit tethered together by a patchwork of old code and new ideas as a work in progress. In some ways, this is reflective of CCP's approach as a whole: tackling problems head-first, without allowing the impossibilities of a dream dissuade ambition.
- Check out what the TechRadar staff uses for our PC gaming
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Blip: Go play Super Mario 64 in your browser right now
If you grew up in the '90s, Super Mario 64 was your jam, no exceptions. But not everyone still has an N64 lying around.
Good news today, then: you can now play the Nintendo masterpiece in your browser.
It's just the first level, Bob-Omb Battlefield, and it's missing some things, like a few moves and the area's red coins. But what's there is a beautiful (peep those HD graphics!) and mostly-faithful recreation.
If trying to play with your browser's Unity web player slows your computer to a crawl, you can also download versions for Windows, OS X and Linux from developer Roystan Ross's website.
More blips
Princess Peach baked you a cake, but you'll have to read more of TechRadar's blips - and find 70 Power Stars - before you can have a slice.- What the creator of cyberpunk said when he tried Gear VR
- Can hatching chicks reveal who will win the Game of Thrones?
- Looks like there won't be a live-action Zelda series after all
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SanDisk's, Toshiba's flash tech could bring huge SSD capacities
Following Intel's and Samsung's flash storage announcements, it's now Sandisk's and Toshiba's turn to announce details of their 3D NAND chips, known as BiCS. Pilot production for BiCS will kick off in the second half of 2015.
"We utilised our first generation 3D NAND technology as a learning vehicle, enabling us to develop our commercial second generation 3D NAND, which we believe will deliver compelling storage solutions for our customers," said Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive VP of memory technology at SanDisk.
BiCS is the world's first 48-layer 3D NAND flash memory chip, and it is a two-bit-per-cell 128GB (16GB) device. The companies claim that the stacking process employed in BiCS will enhance the reliability of write/erase endurance and also boosts write speeds. The chips will be suitable for a vast range of applications, although is primarily geared towards solid state drives (SSDs).
Dedicated plant being built
Intel and Micron, and Samsung have both already announced separate 3D NAND offerings, although they only used 32-layer designs. In that sense, they are already a couple of steps behind the Toshiba and SanDisk partnership. Intel, in particular, claimed that 75% of a terabyte can fit in a fingertip-sized package in its 3D NAND memory and thus lead to speculation that 10TB SSDs will become a reality.SanDisk plans to employ the 3D NAND technology across a range of solutions, from removable products to enterprise SSDs. SanDisk expects to see commercial production kick off in 2016 at a site specifically built for 3D flash production.
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