Ubisoft Hands Out Nexus 7 Tablets At a Game's Press Event

April 16th, 2014, 00:01 Posted By: wraggster

With Watch Dogs launching next month, Ubisoft is ramping up the promotion. That includes holding press events to show off the game to journalists, many of whom will end up reviewing Watch Dogs. One such event was held last week in Paris, and it has been revealed by attendees that Ubisoft decided to give everyone who turned up a Nexus 7 tablet. Why? That hasn't been explained yet, but in a statement on Twitter, Ubisoft said such gifts were 'not in line with their PR policies.' You can see how it would be viewed with skepticism; after all, these are the individuals who will give Watch Dogs a review score, which many gamers rely on to help them make a purchasing decision.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/0...es-press-event

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Oculus Rift total sales around 85,000, dev kit 2.0 at 25,000

April 15th, 2014, 23:55 Posted By: wraggster

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Anyone can sign up to buy Google Glass tomorrow; will you?

April 15th, 2014, 00:51 Posted By: wraggster

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Reviving a Commodore 64 Computer Using a Raspberry Pi

April 15th, 2014, 00:14 Posted By: wraggster

A group of Commodore fans are working on a new emulator with the ability to turn the Raspberry Pi £30 computer into a fully functioning Commodore 64 fresh from the 1980s. Scott Hutter, creator of the Commodore Pi project, together with a team of developers on Github, are seeking to build a native Commodore 64 operating system that can run on Raspberry Pi. 'The goal will be to include all of the expected emulation features such as SID sound, sprites, joystick connectivity, REU access, etc. In time, even the emulation speed could be changed, as well as additional modern graphics modes,' he writes on his website.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04...a-raspberry-pi

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Hollow souls: why today’s football games can’t simulate the spirit of the beautiful g

April 14th, 2014, 21:22 Posted By: wraggster

EA Sports’ official World Cup 2014 game is released later this week. But where is the current generation’s Sensible Soccer?

While the crazy money at the top tiers of professional football can make a man weep, there’s no doubting what comprises the enduring appeal of the world’s most popular sport, followed by an estimated 3.5 billion people. Or: half the globe’s population.It’s not the glamour or the sports cars, or even the montage of wonder strikes rounding off any given tournament. It’s that anyone can enjoy it. Anyone can play, however impoverished or affluent they might be. Get together with friends, grab something spherical to kick, and you’ve got football.Its essence is something that can be appreciated for its purity. You look, you shoot, you score – a chain of events set within a miniscule time frame and connected by symbiotic motions, a flick of the eyes to assess the position of the keeper coinciding with the drawing back of a boot, strike direction determined by neuronal feedback travelling at 100 metres a second. This isn’t chess, where forethought and an appreciation of the long game inform every equation. It’s pure instinct.Just before Christmas 2013, I found myself in possession of the two biggest football games on the console market: Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 and EA’s FIFA 14. I played them both, at length. But as great as they were, neither left me feeling particularly close to the sport they simulate.These are amazingly comprehensive titles offering fans of ephemeral features – season-specific statistical accuracies and flawless stutter-step animations – depth enough to spend a full 12 months luxuriating in, until the next iteration of their chosen series rolls around. Each new release is an interactive parallel to a perception of football realism framed by contemporary television presentation: intimidatingly loud, incredibly analytical, and probably featuring a spinning graphic or seven. They deliver Super Sunday any day of the week.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...eautiful-game/

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Neo Geo Arcade Gets Second Life with a Raspberry Pi

April 14th, 2014, 21:17 Posted By: wraggster


An old Neo Geo Arcade, a Raspberry Pi, and some time were all [Matthew] needed to build this Pi Powered Arcade Emulator Cabinet.
Neo Geo was originally marketed by SNK as a very expensive home video console system. Much like the Nintendo Play Choice 10, SNK also marketed an arcade system, the MVS. The Neo Geo MVS allowed arcade operators to run up to six titles in a single cabinet. The MVS also allowed players to save games on memory cards.
[Matthew's] cabinet had seen better days. Most of the electronics were gone, the CRT monitor was dead, and the power supply was blown. Aside from a bit of wear, the cabinet frame was solid and the controls were in good shape. He decided it would be a good candidate for an emulator conversion.
We’ve seen some pretty awesome arcade conversions in the past, such as this Halloween rendition of Splatterhouse. For his conversion, [Matthew] stuck to the electronics, leaving most of the old arcade patina intact. The CRT did fire up after some components were replaced. [Matthew] ran into some refresh rate issues with the Raspberry Pi, so he opted to swap it out with a modern LCD monitor. Controls were wired up with the help of an I-PAC board.
[Matthew] had to write a driver to handle the I-PAC, but he says it was a good learning experience. Aside from the LCD screen, the result looks like it could be found in the back of an old bowling alley, or a smokey bar next to Golden Tee. Nice work, [Matthew]!

http://hackaday.com/2014/04/14/neo-g...-raspberry-pi/

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Jade Raymond's sick of games treating "gamers like idiots"

April 14th, 2014, 20:58 Posted By: wraggster

Ubisoft Toronto studio head Jade Raymond says she's tired of video games treating "gamers like idiots."
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"I don't like the assumption that all people who play games want big chain saws and women in bikinis," Raymond said. "It's like, really? Not all gamers are teenage boys, and even teenage boys want more than that."
Video games are doing a better job of depicting interesting characters, but they still have a ways to go, Raymond said: "There still isn't a game where you get to play an old lady. That's my dream."
"Look at movies. I really love traditional action movies - I almost don't care how bad it is if there are big things exploding - but even those films have become more interesting in terms of complex leads. Look at Iron Man."
Raymond said in March that Ubisoft Toronto is working on five projects. At least one of those is likely Assassin's Creed Unity or Assassin's Creed Comet.
Ubisoft announced on Monday that it will host an E3 2014 media briefing on June 9.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...s-like-idiots/

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Oculus Rift dev kit sales hit 85,000

April 14th, 2014, 20:57 Posted By: wraggster

Oculus has sold about 25,000 DK2 Rift headsets, reaching a total of 85,000 developer kits sold so far.
Gamasutra shared the figures on Monday which reveal healthy interest in the VR company's latest test version. DK2 incorporates a high-resoltion, low-persistence OLED display and head tracking with a USB camera accessory. It costs $350 with delivery estimated to begin in June.
Though DK2 brings Oculus closer to its goals for a consumer release, the company says it still needs more refinement before it's ready for large-scale consumer release.
Facebook announced in March that it had purchased Oculus Rift for $2 billion in total assets. Oculus CTO John Carmack has responded to criticism, saying the VR start-up now has the resources it needs to "make it happen".
Also last month, Sony officially revealed that Project Morpheus, an upcoming PS4 virtual reality headset, has been in development for three years.
Microsoft said in early April that it's continuing to explore the possibility of entering the virtual reality market.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...les-hit-85000/

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UK chart: Titanfall back top thanks to Xbox 360 version

April 14th, 2014, 20:56 Posted By: wraggster

Titanfall has been boosted back to the top of the UK all-format charts thanks to the launch of the game's Xbox 360 version.
71 per cent of Titanfall copies sold last week were of the new last-gen version, UK numbers company Chart-Track reported.Lego: The Hobbit arrived in a respectable second place, although Xbox One exclusive Kinect Sports: Rivals fared less well - it turned up in 14th.Back in the top 10, FIFA 14 was third this week, South Park: The Stick of Truth was fourth and Call of Duty: Ghosts was fifth.Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, The Lego Movie Videogame, Assassin's Creed 4 and Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes rounded out the rest of the top flight.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ox-360-version

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David Attenborough is making an Oculus Rift nature documentary

April 14th, 2014, 20:52 Posted By: wraggster

The latest series from legendary documentary maker David Attenborough is being filmed for Oculus Rift.Not the Oculus Rift.

Conquest of the Skies will take viewers to the jungles of Borneo using a special 360° camera setup that captures panoramic views."We're now filming for the Oculus Rift so when we filmed our recent flight in Borneo, we filmed with an eight-camera rig," Atlantic Productions' John Morris told Real Screen. "You got the full 360° experience."Attenborough has previously partnered with the company for other ventures which have premiered on Sky 3D.There's no word as yet on how it will be made available to Rift owners.Oculus Rift was last month bought by Facebook in a deal worth a truly eye-opening $2bn.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...re-documentary

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rpix86 version 0.17 released!

April 12th, 2014, 00:46 Posted By: wraggster

Here is the latest version of rpix86! Not a lot of changes, as I still have not had all that much time to work on rpix86, but there are a couple of changes that you might find useful.


Changed the joystick event file handling to use /dev/input/js? files. Note that before this version you needed to give the event file number using the -j parameter, now you need to give the js file number (which I believe always start with zero, so you would normally use -j0) to have rpix86 use your joystick. Also note that prior to this version rpix86 attempted to automatically enable joystick support. In this version you need to give the -j0 parameter to enable joystick support. This change hopefully makes rpix86 more compatible with various joystick types.
Added support for a secondary joystick, with -j1 command line parameter. If you give both -j0 and -j1, rpix86 will take the first two joystick axis from the first joystick and the other two axis from the second joystick. Both joysticks will also have two buttons allocated to them, since DOS joystick support has 4 analog channels and 4 buttons total.
Added support for the freeware game StarGunner by Apogee. The setup program used some JPO and JPE opcodes, which always need game-specific handling. It also used a REP MOVSD operation from protected mode, to move the screen image to the VGA 640x480 16-color graphics mode. No other program has until now used that operation, so I had not yet implemented that. After fixing these issues, both the setup program and the game itself seemed to run fine, although rather slow. The system requirements mention a Pentium processor, which is quite a lot faster than what rpix86 can emulate.


Sorry I have not had time to work on more enhancements. I hope you enjoy this version, and let me know of any bugs you encounter!

http://rpix86.patrickaalto.com/rblog.html

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Wargaming: Free-to-play on Oculus Rift needs 10m users

April 11th, 2014, 22:51 Posted By: wraggster

CEO Victor Kislyi says that once Oculus hits the right numbers, he'll be there
[h=3]Wargaming.Net[/h]wargaming.net


Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi believes the Oculus Rift will need to sell between five and ten million users to be a viable platform for free-to-play developers.
Speaking to CVG, Kislyi explained that, due to the "small proportion of people" actually spending money in free-to-play games, new platforms like Oculus require unusually large customer bases to merit developer support.
"75 per cent of our players will never, ever pay us a penny. For other games this percentage can be even bigger, up to 90-95 per cent," said Kislyi. "For free-to-play, five or ten million is a good user-base. So if Xbox One or Oculus reach those numbers, we're there," he added.
Ever since its initial success on Kickstarter, the major question around the Oculus Rift was the likelihood of it reaching a large enough audience to make VR gaming a viable market. However, Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of the company has put Kislyi's target very much in reach.
Kislyi also expressed excitement about the potential of not just the Oculus Rift, but other upcoming platforms such as Google Glass and Steambox.
"Whatever technology gives us a year, two years, five years from now, if it's big, if it's global, we're going to be there."
Over the last three years, Wargaming.net has amassed 75 million registered users, with more than one million concurrent players.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...uires-5m-sales

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The experiments that are pushing Oculus Rift beyond gaming

April 11th, 2014, 22:44 Posted By: wraggster

Oculus Rift may not be available to the public yet, but a rich subculture has emerged of modders, hackers, and developers who are using the development kit to experiment with the possibilities of virtual reality beyond gaming. The open nature of the platform means developers have been able to let their imaginations run wild, going so far as to augment the Rift with other hardware.In Salted Perception, an experiment by German augmented reality developer Undev, a Kinect is strapped to the Rift headset with cable ties. When the software is activated, it relays the camera feed back to the Rift with colourful psychedelic filters applied. The resulting image is abstract and distorted, but you can pick out human movement. The weight of the Kinect means this retrofit isn’t exactly elegant, but hints at the AR possibilities if future Rift models were to incorporate a front-facing camera.BeAnotherLab’s fascinating Gender Swap experiment also uses headset-mounted cameras, allowing two people of different sexes to see through each others’ eyes. The feeling is amplified by having both people agree to mimic each others’ hand movements. The Spanish studio behind the project says the idea is to use the Rift to teach empathy, and planned uses for the technology include giving people in wheelchairs the experience of being able to walk.Frequency Domain’s surreal landscapes are generated entirely by music. It was created in Unity 3D by Sagar Patel, a computer engineering graduate turned indie game developer.

Indie developer Sagar Patel, formerly of Q-Games, has developed an experimental game for the Oculus Rift called Frequency Domain, which generates surreal landscapes with music. Import an audio file and the waveform of the track forms abstract polygonal mountains and canyons around you. Patel says seeing music visualised in this way has revealed intricacies in songs he never noticed before: “Seeing the sound in the game helped me focus on it, and actually hear it through the rest of the sounds.” In a future build he plans to implement the Leap Motion controller to introduce an additional element of interaction. “The Rift really is a whole new frontier, and I can’t wait to see what new methods of interaction people come up with, especially when combined with other types of devices.”In Chaotic Moon’s , a Leap Motion controller is attached to the front of the headset. This USB stick-sized device is designed to be placed flat on a desktop, allowing you to control software and play games with hand gestures. But by placing it vertically on the Rift, you get the sensation of ‘seeing’ your hands. SharkPunch is a fairly simple game, whose premise you can probably guess, but it’s a clever use of the gimmicky Leap Motion hardware. Razer’s Hydra is another way to simulate arm movement in VR, but having to hold two controllers isn’t as convincing as using gestures.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...beyond-gaming/

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Future Airline Safety Instructions Will Be Given By Game Apps

April 11th, 2014, 22:32 Posted By: wraggster

hey revealed the existence of their project only to aviation safety specialists at the recent FAA Conference on Cabin Safety in Philadelphia (PDF). Now a team of Italian researchers from the HCI Lab of the University of Udine has publicly released the first in a set of aviation safety apps on which they are working. Their mission is to propose novel, first-of-their-kind solutions to a well-known problem in aviation safety: passengers lack preparedness about what to do in aircraft emergencies, and do not pay attention or do not clearly comprehend the pre-flight briefings and safety cards used by airlines to instruct them about safety. So the project is re-inventing safety cards and briefings with new media, turning them into games and apps. The first game they decided to release focuses specifically on the 'Brace for impact' position: players can pose the body of their avatar in the 3D airplane cabin and get a personalized simulation of a crash landing . To win the game, you must save your avatar (and yourself)."

http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/0...n-by-game-apps

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NYC Considers Google Glass For Restaurant Inspections

April 11th, 2014, 22:31 Posted By: wraggster

NYC is now considering equipping its Health Department inspectors with Google Glass to provide a record of restaurant inspections. 'A yearlong pilot program would require 10 percent of the 160 health inspectors to wear video devices — including, possibly, the much-maligned Google goggles — under legislation to be proposed Thursday. "I think it would limit the abuses on both sides of the table, and it would allow for a more objective view by the judge on the violations that have been cited," said bill sponsor Vincent Ignizio.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04...nt-inspections

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Google Glass goes on general sale - for a day

April 11th, 2014, 22:19 Posted By: wraggster

The company’s explorer program will expand in a special one-day promotion in the US only.
Tech addicts in the US will be given a special treat next week, as Google will be releasing the long awaited Glass for general sale, for one day only.
It explorer program - which was launched to send the wearable tech out into the world for a select number of people – will be extended for a single day, meaning everyone and their dog can sign up to get the device.
That’s if you can afford to shell out the $1500 asking price…
The offer will begin at 6am PDT on Tuesday 15^th April, with the devices coming in a variety of colours and frames.
Unfortunately if you live anywhere but the US, you’re out of luck.
Google commented in a blog post: “To everyone outside the US… we know. Sorry. We’re just not ready yet to bring Glass to other countries.”
Sure, there will be hoards of people desperate to get their hands on a device, however LoveMyVouchers.co.uk recently revealed that 68 per cent of people said they are too ashamed to wear Google Glass.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/devices/go...r-a-day/043379

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Video Gamer Aggression Result of Game Experience, Not Violent Content

April 10th, 2014, 23:58 Posted By: wraggster

A new study published in the March edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that a gamer's experience of a video game and not the content of the game itself can give rise to violent behavior. In other words, 'researchers found it was not the narrative or imagery, but the lack of mastery of the game's controls and the degree of difficulty players had completing the game that led to frustration.' Based on their findings, researchers note that even games like Tetris and Candy Crush can inspire violent behavior more so than games like World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto if they are poorly designed and difficult to play

http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/0...iolent-content

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Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton: How We're Turning Everyone Into DIY Hackers

April 10th, 2014, 23:57 Posted By: wraggster

Eben Upton is the CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's trading company, where he oversees production and sales of the Raspberry Pi. In a lengthy interview with ReadWrite, Upton shares how he invented Raspberry Pi, and what's coming next for the $35 microcomputer. Quoting: 'There's a big difference between [just] making a platform like Raspberry Pi available and offering support for it. I think if you just make it available, you'll find one percent of eight-year-olds will be the one percent who love that sort of thing and will get into it, regardless of how much or how little support you give them. ... [S]ince we can afford to pay for the development of educational material, we can afford to advocate for good training for teachers throughout this. There's an opportunity to get more than one percent. There's an opportunity to reach the bright kids who don't quite have the natural inclination to personally tackle complicated technical tasks. If you give them good teaching and compelling material that's relevant and interesting to them, you can reach ten percent, twenty percent, fifty percent, many more. We look back to the 1980s as this golden era [of learning to program], and in practice, only a very few percent of people were learning to program to any great degree. ... I think the real opportunity for us now, because we can intervene on the material and teacher training levels, we can potentially blow past where we were in the 1980s.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/1...to-diy-hackers

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The Raspberry Pi Compute Module

April 10th, 2014, 23:51 Posted By: wraggster


Raspberry Pi cluster computers are old hat by now, and much to our dismay, we’ve even seen Raspberry Pis crop up as the brains of a few ill-conceived Kickstarter projects. The Pi was never meant for these applications, with the very strange port layout and a bunch of headers most people don’t need. The Raspberry Pi foundation has a solution for the odd layout of the normal, consumer Pi: The Raspberry Pi compute module, a Raspi and 4GB flash drive, sans connectors, on an industry standard DDR2 SODIMM module.
This isn’t something you can plug into your laptop (yet; that’s just a BIOS hack away, right?), but the new format does allow for some very interesting projects. All the normal Raspi I/O – CSI and DSI ports, USB, HDMI, JTAG – and a whole bunch more GPIO ports – are broken out onto an I/O board for development. The idea is that anyone can develop a product for the Raspberry Pi, create a custom board with a SODIMM connector, and use the compute module as the brains of their project.
The compute module should cost about $30/piece in quantity 100, available in June. No word yet on how much the I/O board will cost, but we expect a few open source expansion boards to crop up shortly so anyone can create a very cool cluster computer based on the compute module.

http://hackaday.com/2014/04/07/the-r...ompute-module/

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An Emulated Commodore 64 Operating System for the Raspberry Pi

April 10th, 2014, 23:48 Posted By: wraggster



It’s no secret that Commodore users love their old machines with the Commodore C64 being chief among them with 27 Million units sold worldwide. Speaking as a former Commodore Business Machines (CBM) engineer the real surprise for us is the ongoing interest and devotion to an era typified by lumbering 8 bit machines and a color palette consisting of 16 colors. Come to think about it, that’s the description of Minecraft!
Jump forward to today and it’s a generation later. We find that the number of working units is diminishing as age and the laws of entropy and physics take their toll.
Enter the Commodore Pi, an emulated Commodore 64 operating system for the Raspberry Pi. The goals of the project include an HDMI and composite compatible video output, SID based sound, Sprites and other notable Commodore features. They also plan to have hooks for more modern technology to include Ethernet, GPIO and expansion RAM.
A video demo of the emulator can be found below. If you’re just warming up to theCommodore world, you’ll definitely want to know the real story behind the C128.

http://hackaday.com/2014/04/09/an-em...-raspberry-pi/

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