Sunday, February 28, 2010

Transformers 3 Update

Yeah, we got an update of the upcoming Transformers 3. While appearing on Starz' "In the House" last night, the director Michael Bay teased his plans for Transformer 3, why he decided to forego his planned year break from the franchise and confirms that the movie will be in 3D. From MTV:

 




"The true story is we went to Vegas to celebrate ['Revenge of the Fallen'] crossing the $400 million mark domestic. I said I'm excited to do my small little movie. They said, well we're here to talk about that. I've become friends with these guys that run Paramount and they [told me,] 'We're going to get fired if we don't have a 2011 franchise,' so I'm like you can't let these guys down."

"The economy's been so rough, it's kind of important. When you say yes to movie like this you automatically give 3000 people jobs. 1000 for the toys. 2000 for the filmmaking. I'm going to put [the small film] on hold and do it right after ['Transformers 3']."

"You can't just rehash the old," he explained. "We're adding a lot of new elements. We're adding new characters. We're adding a lot of twists."

So for now, Bay is focused on bringing us more of that Autobots vs. Decepticons conflict. When giant robots fight, Earth is the only guaranteed loser. But we audiences get to see tons of s--t explode, so it's cool. Bay's plans to keep things fresh include one simple idea: more.

Of course, it wouldn't be a chat about an upcoming effects-heavy blockbuster without some discussion of 3-D. Anyone who doesn't think "Avatar" changed the game needs to pay more attention: everyone's been talking about it, considering it, putting plans into action, Bay included.

"It's a process we're testing with some 'Transformers' scenes," he said. "How successful it is with my movie in terms of a lot of real stuff coming out of the frame, real dirt, real complicated little particles coming towards the lens, because hopefully that process will work. I've seen some tests that look great on other movies. I just want to see how it looks on my footage."

Saturday, February 27, 2010

War for Cybertron Gameplay Reveal Trailer

Ok, we have seen the reveal trailer of the upcoming video game Transformers: War for Cybertron. Today, another trailer has been released:  the gameplay reveal trailer! This trailer is quite cool, showing the first gameplay of the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons in the advanced city of Cybertron.

Here is the trailer:

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

It's My 20th Birthday!

Yes, today is my 20th birthday. I'm 20 years old now, no longer a teenager. Honestly to say, even though I've grown up becoming a young adult, I still have the act of a teenage child: interests with robots(now you know why I love Transformers), love 'mecha' animes, addiction with computer video games and like to make unserious jokes (why so serious?) with my friends. Well, you may say that I'm still childish. I don't mind about that because that makes who I am and it gives a (unique, maybe?)personality to me. Maybe the environment where I grew up made me like that. Anyway, I'm 20 now and should be more serious about my life's future.

Today, during my lecture class, I got happy birthday wishes from my coursemates. They secretly make these wishes without my knowledge until a best friend of mine give me this:


Coool wishes!


I want to thank you to all of you who wishes my birthday today. Maybe I'm a quiet student in the class, but I do take care all of you and the above wishes proves that you all also take care of me too. Thanks, I really appreciate it. I love you all, guys! You are my best coursemate ever! Our batch is the best!

By the way, after the class, I went to the chancellor complex because a close friend of mine want to buy something for me. He bought me a delicious ice-cream and fried mushroom(my favourite food!). Unexpectly, I got a free piece of cake from the seller of a food stall where my friend bought from as my friend told her that it's my birthday.

 Haha, unexpected gift!

 

Thursday, February 18, 2010

More Crysis 2 Info + Screenshots

There's many gaming magazines out there that features previews of Crysis 2. So, there's a lot of information and screenshots featured in those magazines. Here's another info and screenshots, plus magazines cover (taken from inCrysis):




** SPOILER ALERT **

* 2023, three years after the event of the first game, aliens have turned huge parts of the world into a battlefield - e.g. Rio, London, Tokyo, NYC were attacked and depopulated.
* Aliens shoot probes (see the PC Gamer screenshot) into the cities and patrol the sky with spaceships.
* New York shall seem familiar but deformed to the player.
* Crysis 2 will have a much tighter and more compelling story.
* Good mix of arranged story snippets and information the player must collect himself - cutscenes, talks among the characters, tape recordings as in Bioshock and scanning corpses.
* Crysis series is meant to become a universe on its own, with its own backstory and many little details.
* Demo level: The level begins with two military helicopters chasing a bug-like alien spaceship, hitting it with a missile and causing it to crash into a skyscraper leaving a big hole inside. Demo mission objective: collect a DNA sample of the aliens at the crash site. Player fights his way through Manhattan Financial District. Destroyed city resembles New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Player approaches the crash site, sees it swarm with enemies and jumps up the collapsed stairway of a nearby building. Player marks the positions of the soldiers, draws nearer in cloak mode, smacks the gunner of a military vehicle in power mode, rips off the mounted gun and kills the rest of the foes. Debris blocks his way to the objective, so the player jumps down an old elevator shaft into a tunnel. In the semi-flooded tunnel's water there are indeed rats and corpses floating around. The tunnel ends at the center of the crash site in a small cave. The mood changes, colors are sparse and grey, building parts are scorched up to the steel frame, music and noise gets more threatening. As the player picks up the DNA sample, hell breaks loose. The protagonist is ordered to retreat as fast as possible, tries to escape through a side corridor, but gets stuck in a dead end. Through a window he sees enemies who are searching for him being taken down by an alien appearing behind them with frightening ease. The alien is standing on two legs, has a clearly defined outward appearance, some sort of armor and weapons, dangling dreadlocks and a ferocious-looking head. When the alien grabs one of the soldiers and throws him into the window pane with great force, the presentation ends.
* Prophet might be the protagonist of Crysis 2, at least, people in New York believe the player to be Prophet.
* Still four nanosuit modes: armor, power, tactical and infiltration.
* New nanosuit mode "tactical" allows collecting of information about enemies, corpses or weapons, you can mark enemies or weapons that appear on your radar from then on, so you get to know patrol routes and remember "where that cool weapon was located".
* "Strength" mode and "speed" mode have been combined into "power" mode.
* "Infiltration" mode is the stealth mode and makes the player move quieter and more cautious.
* Infiltration is a passive mode, you can manually switch on the familiar cloak mode as an active function and only then this mode drains your energy.
* Crytek always wants to make the player aware of which mode he's in.
* Tactical mode: ambient noise is suppressed so you can overhear even the most distant conversations.
* Armor mode: you hear the hardening of nanosuit's skin, moving sounds become much heavier and the hitting noise of bullets is different.
* Power mode: player uses his fists instead of the weapon's butt.
* Crytek still experiments with different HUDs to highlight the differentiation even more.
* Developer's answer towards question about civilians: "Every catastrophe has lunatics that ignore all warnings and stay".
* Streets seem to be deserted though, except for paramilitary troops patrolling.
* When targetting the enemies, they show up as "Crynet Ops Infantry" - Nathan Camarillo says, the name is not final.
* Nevertheless there's a third faction attacking the player as well as the aliens and this time they're not North Korean.
* Nanosuit modes can be modified with extra modules which extend your abilities. It is yet unclear how the modules are integrated into the course of the game, as part of a RPG-style leveling and upgrade system or by finding them during your playthrough e.g. tactical mode shows the direction from where you are shot, power mode reflects some of the shots you take and infiltration mode shows the silhouettes of enemies through walls.
* Player should be able to choose more freely how to approach a situation.
* Camarillo: "In the first Crysis, there were three ways to play: going rambo, stealthy or causing mayhem." Now, every attack shall be a new challenge for the player.
* New vertical gameplay: when in Crysis, you could only climb a car or a small hill, but now you've got more possibilities how to act.
* Not only you, but also the enemies use the different levels of the environment, shooting you from below or above.
* Camarillo tells us, that we "can assume that we will send the player to very well-known places in New York".
* The demo level was presented again directly afterwards with a quite differing course.
* The magazine editor states in his conclusion, that even though he "only" was shown Crysis 2 on an Xbox 360, he thinks that it is going to be one of the best looking games of all time on all platforms.


Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Crysis 2 Latest Details!


From inCrysis, here's the latest on Crysis 2, the sequel to my all-time favourite first-person shooter PC game, Crysis, compiled to a one long handy news post, for your convenience.

In their latest investor call publisher Electronic Arts confirmed that Crysis 2 will be out this year, between October 1st and December 31st. Who knows, perhaps Crysis 2 will be released exactly 3 years after the first one; in the 16th of November.

IGN reports that EA's Chief Operating Officer John Schappert has stated that every one of EA's games released between April 2010 and March 2011 will have both downloadable content (DLC) and online play. This seems to strongly suggest that Crysis 2 will receive DLC updates.

And here is some of the first screenshots of Crysis 2 taken from Gamereactor magazine (click to enlarge):


















Gamereactor - Cevat Yerli Q&A
Here is list of all of the relevant stuff from the featured interview:

- You play as Jake 'Nomad' Dunn.
- Compared to Crysis there will be more freedom, larger gameplay areas and more tactical warfare.
- Nanosuit 2 will give players more freedom in how to tackle situations in the battlefield.
- The different aspects of nanosuit 2 are designed to further encourage experimental and fit-for-your-own-style usage of nanosuit's features.
- Cevat thinks that the weakest parts of Crysis were 1) the story, which lacked originality and details 2) the on-rails gameplay style in the end and 3) that there were no console versions.
- Compared to the majority of console games, the console gamers will see Crysis 2's freedom and openness as a new and interesting gameplay style.
- The player has again the freedom of choosing what weapons to use and how to use them, or how to take advantage of the environment.
- Crysis 2 will again feature the familiar "Veni Vidi Vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered) gameplay style.
- In Crysis 2 Crytek will, of course, try to surpass the previous Crysis games in graphical splendour and technical features.
- Setting the events of Crysis 2 to New York City was a result of a long thought process; Crytek did not choose New York City because of "console limitations".
- With three previous games set in the jungle Crytek decidedly wanted to avoid making a fourth "jungle game".
- New York as the setting was chosen in the early stages of development; Crytek wanted to see Nomad in a metropol and make the area as a huge sandbox for the player.
- Compared to jungle, urban environment offers more opportunities for gameplay based on vertical differences and the player will have more freedom to choose how to progress and plan out attacks.
- Player will be able to, for example, jump between floors and buildings, and roll down along a crater wall.
- Cevat did not want to share details on Crysis 2 multiplayer... yet.
- The transition from one nanosuit ability to another will be "softened" in Crysis 2: for a short while before speed changes to power, the player will have both abilities in his possession.
- In the battle against the aliens, New York City will offer plenty of architecture that the player can destroy, protect, climb on and take advantage of.
- Fighting against the alien invasion will be "catastrophically beautiful".
- Crytek have tried to actively avoid of using dark dystopian colors and tones that have been plaguing many games these days.
- Details on the story will not be revealed until summer.


PC Games - Nathan Camarillo Q&A
Source: Interview at PCGames.de (German)

PCGames: What's the background story of Crysis 2?
Nathan Camarillo: Crysis is set in New York, three years after Crysis. It's about surviving - the player must survive in order to save himself, New York and mankind.

PCG: Why did you choose New York as the setting?

NC:
We asked ourselves: What will happen next in the story? What happens next in the Crysis saga? After Crysis' story ended with a big bang, of course there were rumours about the catastrophe; obvious that these rumours would get to the big centres of the world. So we looked at the places in the world, where the player would like to go to with the nanosuit. And of all these places, New York came out ahead for several reasons.

PCG: Which reasons were crucial?

NC:
When you're asking people where they'd like to go on holiday, there's mostly New York on the top of their list. It's one of those places you'd like to have seen before you die. The history of New York is formed by more recent events than the one of other cities, for example in Europe. It's younger, it arose as America arose. And due to the progress in science and architecture, New York has become an entity on its own, with its own personality, its own life, its own character. And this on a terrain, that was just open space - before people populated it. New York is a symbol for the accomplishments of mankind in the past one hundred years. The settlers have created so much on a so small piece of land and when they had no space left, they built everything higher and bigger. New York has many advantages over other cities.

PCG: Which advantages in gameplay does New York have as a setting?

NC:
Of course, the urban environment has its own imagery, concerning things you can do and objects you can interact with, e.g. how players can use cover or vehicles. You know what you can throw towards the enemy and what objects he may use as cover.

PCG: Which famous New York locations we will be seeing in Crysis 2?

NC:
You can assume that we will lead the player to very well-known places in New York. We can neither tell about nor show all of them because we want to reveal them during the marketing campaign. About some we'll keep you in the dark as a surprise for the release.

PCG: Will there be different environments like ice worlds or trips into space?

NC:
Crysis also didn't solely play in the jungle. There were alien environments and the frozen paradise. For Crysis 2, players can expect corners of New York that are influenced by the events durin the game. And of course there will be unique environments that we won't mention right now. There will be more than one city scenario, once at night and another time in daylight.

PCG: To what extent has the nanosuit been enhanced? Which new functions does it have?

NC:
The new nanosuit is tougher, stronger; it looks as if it could actually be used. The hands look strong and brutal for melee attacks, as well as the legs. In Crysis there were different suit powers but people mostly played the game in one way; as commandos who blew everything up, as strategists, as snipers or as a cat-and-mouse game, where they hid over and over again to emerge and cause mayhem. With the new nanosuit, we want to support these ways of playing and make them better. We have a mode that enhances agility and combines the strength and speed mode from Crysis: sprint, be very fast and then jump on or over something - in Crysis you needed to change suit modes for this, just for one idea.

We have another mode, that is completely designed for infiltration and camouflage. Although we're not developing a sneaking game, we know that sometimes you'll want to get through an area unseen or set up a trap for the enemy. Or to reach higher ground without being noticed.

And then we have armor mode for all those who love to shoot and blow up stuff. Here, naturally, survival is in the focus.

Tactical mode, finally, is about collecting information. People can mark persons or positions, where a rocket launcher or a machine gun nest is, to find it quicker later. Plus, you can scan items or find out who is the leader of a group of enemies. Maybe it will help in the later course of the game, to eliminate this leader first. Some plans work, some don't.

PCG: How do you try to embed vertical gameplay?

NC:
In an urban environment there are certainly more possibilities for vertical gameplay than in the jungle. In a city you can jump onto buses, onto trucks, into the first floor, into a crater - there are many different levels. Players can even jump from one building onto another, where there are interesting things to discover. The fight however must take place within certain bounds. Building roofs are very useful to plan your actions and to give you an advantage.

PCG: We have seen enemies called Crynet Ops. What is this about?

NC:
We have yet do decide about a final name for these enemies. They are no US marines, they belong to a different faction; paramilitary or something similar. No North Koreans.

PCG: In the demo, the player was addressed as Prophet. Do we play as Prophet?

NC:
The people think you're prophet. We didn't think of this audiofile still being in the presentation demo. This raises false expectations. We should have taken that out. You do not necessarily play as Prophet. Of course, everybody pecks at it now. *laughs*

PCG: In which way is the Crysis 2 story told?

NC:
We have set a high value on the story in Crysis, but unfortunately a lot of that didn't even make it into the game. Precisely because Crysis didnt't focus on long cutscenes or the like. For example, you didn't really know why the jungle was eventually frozen. Some players wondered about this and tried to make connections. In any case, there were more thoughts put into Crysis from our side than the player ultimately noticed in the final product. In Crysis 2 we tell a deeper story - but we want the player to discover details on his own. There are many ways to obtain information in the game world, for example through scanning objects or through eavesdropping on conversations.

PCG: How long will the campaign of Crysis 2 be?

NC:
We do not talk about that yet.

PCG: To what extent are the two games connected?

NC:
We don't want that people need to have played Crysis to understand Crysis 2. But we will answer a lot of open questions for the players of the first game. And much information will of course be consistent in all Crysis products.


Prime: Man, I can't really wait for Crysis 2. Give it to me now! :p

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

NVIDIA Optimus

Let's face the fact; We know that Optimus Prime is the name of the everyone's favourite Autobot leader. Then, what about NVIDIA Optimus?

MOBILITY MEETS PERFORMANCE!
NVIDIA® Optimus™ technology is a new technology developed by the visual computing giant, NVIDIA that intelligently optimizes your notebook PC, providing the outstanding graphics performance you need, when you need it, all the while extending battery life for longer enjoyment.

Key Benefits:
* Optimus technology is completely automatic allowing you to experience longer battery life and amazing visuals without having to manually change settings.
* Behind the scenes and with no interference to what you’re doing, Optimus seamlessly figures out how to best optimize your notebook computing experience.
* NVIDIA graphics you’ve come to expect, with more than 10x better performance (GeForce G210M compared to Intel Integrated GM45) with NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology, allowing you to enjoy your applications and games without interruption or worry.
    For now, only the following Asus notebooks are  powered by NVIDIA Optimus technology:
    ASUS UL50Vf, N61Jv, N71Jv, N82Jv, & U30Jc.

    For more info, visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html


    Prime: Be Optimistic!

    Tuesday, February 9, 2010

    First 50Mbps Internet in Malaysia

    Time dotcom (TdC) recently introduced the fastest Internet speed available to consumer today, the Time Fibre Broadband that offers speed of up to a whooping 50Mbps. Unlike wireless technology or copper centric or hybrid networks, fibre optics technology can offer a more stable and secure Internet connection and is able to carry more than 1000 times more information than the same sized copper cable.

    “We are focused on delivering the first and only pure fibre optic broadband network while others work on packaging services around existing or hybrid infrastructure. Simply put, TIME Fibre Broadband is the answer to the long awaited needs of Malaysian Internet users, providing the highest speed and bandwidth capacity available in Malaysia.” -- Afzal Abdul Rahim, Chief Executive Officer, TIME dotCom Berhad.

    This service is currently available in Mont Kiara, with coverage expanding progressively over the next few months in the Klang Valley area. There will also be a value-added service that allows users to Boost the internet speed up to 50Mbps on demand. Time Fibre Broadband is ovvered at competitive rates ranging from RM149 to RM329 for 2Mbps to 10Mpbs.

    Pricing
     Time Fibre Broadband
     Price per month
     2Mpbs  RM149
     5Mpbs  RM199
     10Mbps  RM329
     
    The high speed Internet access packages range from:
    Time Fibre Broadband
     BOOST
    (Free)
     Additional BOOST @ 50Mbps
    (Over monthly free limit)
     2Mbps  10Mbps
     10 hours/month
     RM10 for 2 hours
     RM18 for 4 hours
     RM35 for 8 hours

     5Mpbs  50Mbps
    15 hours/month

     10Mbps  50Mbps
    30 hours/month



    For more information, visit http://www.time.com.my

    MALAYSIA BOLEH!

    P/s: Sadly, the coverage area is very limited, folks including me in other parts of Malaysia are left in dust. Another thing is the pricing is way too expensive for average folks like me. :-(

    Monday, February 1, 2010

    War for Cybertron Optimus, Megatron & Starscream

     As you can see in the trailer in the previous post, Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream and the other Transformers have completely new designs in Transformers: War for Cybertron but still mantain some Generation 1 looks. Below is the clearer image of the new Optimus and Megatron (click on each image for a larger version) :



     Optimus Prime robot mode 

     Optimus Prime vehicle mode



    Megatron robot mode


      Megatron vehicle mode



     
     Starscream robot mode
     

     Starscream vehicle mode



    Below are the confirmed characters so far in Transformers: War for Cybertron:
    AUTOBOTS       : Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide, Omega Supreme.
    DECEPTICONS : Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Thundercracker, Trypticon.
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