Cry Engine 3 Destruction
We have been blasting you guys with tech demos lately and you seem to be loving it, well, here's something new from Crytek, the guys behind the original Far Cry and Crysis games. Cry Engine 3.
Cry Engine 3 allows game designers to control pretty much everything and distribute it to all first-tier platforms at once (360, PS3 and PC). The biggest thing here for me is what they call "procedural damage" in that you can actually deform the shape of metal objects like cars.
On top of all that is real-time destruction, incredible ai and facial animation as well as the other boons of colour grading etc. But this is really about the destruction for us.
Deforming Environments
Continuing the trend of technology based gaming advances, an engine called Atomontage uses what's known as voxels to display graphics. Voxels are essentially vectors instead of polygons, I know this might confuse most of you so I thought it's just better to show a video and link to the appropriate Wikipedia articles.
In this video you can see the tyre tracks are actually pushing the sand around rather than just drawing a graphic or shader on top of it. There are some games that have done this using polygons and displacement maps or some other method but this is effectively altering the surface of the ground permanently and it doesn't affect things like the rocks.
Unlike the Unlimited Detail, this would require a monster graphics card.
Unlimited Detail in games
Came across this new computer graphics rendering technique yesterday called Unlimited Detail. Since then I have been thinking of various possible uses. I hope it takes off in some form, so much potential - fully destructive environments with unlimited graphics detail, real materials, carving 3d models like an evolved Zbrush etc
Looking forward to finding out more and seeing where this goes, just wonder why I have only just heard of it. Watch the video to see what im talking about.
GPU giants have been trying to block this technology advance because it's diffuses the aggressive research and funding behind traditional polygon developments rendering their research pointless.
If you're a game developer, industry giant or investors then please look at Unlimited detail at their website and get in contact with them.
Source Unlimited Detail Technology via Game Trailers
Alan Wake X10 Trailer
Alan Wake is an incredible thriller game due for release soon on the XBOX 360. Developed by Remedy, the guys that originally brought us the Max Payne series it's looking like an incredible game.
A lot of people don't know exactly what the game is about or where the game is getting released because of the games long development cycle and buyout by Microsoft. I can tell you that it's a 360 exclusive and the PC version has been canned as far as we know.
What that means is Remedy have been able to focus on pushing the 360 to its absolute limits, the results are absolutely tremendous. 2010 is certainly a year for gamers and this is just one of the top titles you can expect to see released. Due to hit the shelves in May, Alan Wake is one thriller game we won't be missing out on.
Check out the latest trailer from Microsoft at the X10 event, kudos to Remedy for having the staying power on getting this game complete. I can understand that this must have been hard to accomplish since Alan Wake was announced around the time of the 360 launch, almost 5 years ago.
Windows Mobile 7 for gaming!
So here you can see that Microsoft has unveiled the new mobile phone OS that Windows Mobile users have been speculating on for years.
It's evident that Microsoft have taken a fresh approach to this iPhone copy-cat market and like Palm they seem to have come out with the support of the overwhelming public.
What does it mean? It means that Microsoft are in-line with Apple, Palm and Google with their mobile software at long last and with the inclusion of XBOX Live gaming ability it means you will get some beefed up games running on mobile hardware.
For us that's exciting we're big fans of mobile gaming and this shows that Microsoft is as serious about it as the rest of the industry — I'm glad they took the time to do it right and differentiate themselves.
God of War III New Trailer
We over at JTS have been looking forward to this game for a while now, but this trailer makes me think we wont be let down when the game is finally released. Recommend you watch it in HD
Learning Exclusivity
High Speed Chase 2 is fresh out of development and it's live for everyone to play, on this site and on a ton of other sites. But what's different about a player out there on the internet and a registered player at Johnny Two Shoes?
Before we launched High Speed Chase 2 we had a number of ideas for how we could reward players for being part of the community, it started a very long time ago when all of our games were released exclusively to Johnny Two Shoes, a lot of them remain that way today, most recently Banana Dash World 4 was released as an exclusive.
We realised to build a proper community we need to integrate feedback and player interaction but we also need to make the experience at Johnny Two Shoes unique. At first that was comments on games, but that was pretty basic (and not very unique) so we re-designed the entire site from scratch with the community at the core. Johnny Two Shoes 2.0 launched almost 2 years ago — we had medals, high-scores, player accounts, profile pages and a blog.
Things have changed since then, but it's been more of an evolution of that basic idea and an evolution of our design. We did have to start make games with other companies because we simply ran out of money — it was a hard decision to make and it lead to about 18 months of incredibly hard work, the worst part was that we were incredibly distant from the community during that time.
In October 2009 we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we were coming to a period when we could re-think what the community meant and how we would release our new games. We gave you Banana Dash World 4 as an exclusive, something we were very proud to do! We even tried throwing in a bonus level to see if it changed the reaction to the release.
The positive feedback we got from that bonus level set off a chain reaction with us. We worked out so many different ways to engage with the community and ways to boost the size of the community — we had High Speed Chase 2 half finished collecting dust so we busted open the files and tried to apply some of those ideas to:
- Promote High Speed Chase on the iPhone
- Engage new players
- Encourage player registration at Johnny Two Shoes
- Reward the existing community
So this is where we are now, a new blend on an existing mentality — another way to reward the community and a new way to drive new player registrations. As I write this, we're having a soaring number of new registrations when High Speed Chase 2 has been in the wild for around 24 hours.
So, what does this mean for the future of Johnny Two Shoes? You can bet that it means more community features, new ways to interact with each other (stuff you won't have seen anywhere else before) and a ton of new experiments that you can all get involved with.
This is an exciting time to be part of Johnny Two Shoes. We want to say thanks for sticking around and we're really looking forward to the rest of 2010 with you all!
Want to be a SPY?
This has just come in from an ex-MI6 agent, we're not sure exactly what he's trying to get across in that get-up but he certainly likes a little game called High Speed Chase 2.
You know, it's on iPhone and will be on the web in a few hours, stay tuned on our twitter.
High Speed Chase 2 Beta
My good friends of Johnny Two Shoes, the much anticipated release of High Speed Chase 2 is nearing. The heat of this release is pretty darn hot, so roll-up roll-up, leave a comment to be considered for a beta invite.
Please note, we don't invite everybody to the beta, but if you don't try, you'll never know. We will start the beta small and grow and grow until it's bursting onto the web.
Tell your friends and your friends friends. Good luck.
More about Joe Danger
There have been a few videos released of the Hello games team talking up Joe Danger, not that they need to. It speaks for itself and certainly looks a treat.
Have a little peek for yourselves.
Thanks to thedavidcarney for pointing this out.