Intel Says Raytraced Games In 2-3 Years

Everyone (well, most people) fancy Ray-traced games. Ray tracing will be the ultimate photo real leap for video games, unfourtunately, real-time ray tracing is not possible even with today’s hardware. According to Intel, we may see ray traced games in next 2-3 years. Interesting stuff.

PCGH: Are there game developers that already want to work with Raytracing?

Dr. Michael Vollmer: We keep in touch with companies all over the world - I dare say that in two to three years time we will see something. There already are some individual approaches, especially in the science sector, which show that Raytracing algorithms are scaling very well with the numbers of cores. But the migration to a new programming technology takes years; Raytracing is still in an early stage.

T-Entertainment Licenses Unreal Engine 3

More licensing revenue for Epic games as a Korean developer has bought a license for their upcoming MMO; L2.

Press Release:  

Seoul-based T-Entertainment today announced that it has licensed Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 for an upcoming project codenamed L2, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

While staying true to the roots of T-Entertainment’s previous MMORPGs, Laghaim and Last Chaos, L2 draws on elements from role-playing (RPG) and real-time strategy (RTS) games, and can be described as “futuristic fantasy with a taste of space opera.” L2 is being developed for PC, and is scheduled for a worldwide release in 2010. Read more

Venetica Announced Plus 4 Screenshots

Deck 13, A German games developer, has announced it’s latest project; Venetica. A Roleplaying game featuring clevage-showing heroine and some random amazing fantasy plot…

Press Release:

Deck 13, one of Germany’s most successful game developers, has teamed up with dtp entertainment to present Venetica, a visually stunning role-play game with a cryptic storyline. Venetica mixes emotions and action in a unique free roaming and living sixteenth century world full of surprise.

In the era of Venetica, Death walks among the living as a flesh & blood being, carrying out the deeds of an ancient council known by a few as Corpus. Each generation of the Corpus is set with the task of selecting the next predecessor of the bringer of death. Unfortunately, the most recent council had unwittingly selected a crafty necromancer who is determined on bringing death and destruction to the world. Read more

LucasArt’s Cameron Suey is clueless

VideoGamer.com had a go with Cameron Suey of LucasArts. The main focus was LucasArt’s upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed title, which amazingly, is coming to every other platform except PC. Ofcourse, one expects a decent explanation for that, but if you go by the interview, you’ll get the exact opposite impression. Undoubtly one of the most bullshit interviews you’ll ever come across. Read more

EA Extends Deal with Epic Games, Plans to Use Unreal 3.0 Engine In More Than 5 Upcoming Titles

Electronic Arts Inc. and Epic Games, Inc. today announced that they have expanded their current license agreement. Under the terms of the new agreement, EA will have the right to incorporate the Unreal Engine 3 in more than five upcoming titles currently under development. EA’s original Unreal Engine 3 license agreement was signed in 2006, and this new agreement reflects EA’s confidence in the Unreal Engine by providing EA development teams with industry-leading tools and technologies to best serve the needs of each game.

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Make Something Unreal Contest

Epic games is back their “Make Something Unreal” Mod contest. The contest is sponserd by Intel and the grand prize is $1 million dollars. More info below:

Epic Games, Inc., the award-winning developer of multimillion-selling games and the world’s leading game engine, Unreal Engine 3, today announced plans to follow up the original “$1 Million Make Something Unreal Contest” with an all new competition to include esteemed sponsor, Intel Corporation. Winnings exceed $1 million in value, and consist of one coveted Unreal Engine 3 license as a grand prize and other cash awards and prizes, including Intel® Software Development Products and Velocity Micro PCs based on the Intel® Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform with two Intel® Core™2 Extreme quad-core processors. The 2008 “$1 Million Intel Make Something Unreal Contest” will be judged in four preliminary phases and a grand final. Judging will begin in June 2008 and will conclude, with the grand final prizes being awarded, in fall 2009. Read more

PlaySpan Expands Open Beta with K2 NETWORK

PLAYSPAN Inc. and K2 Network (www.k2network.net) announced today that players of Global MU Online, a globally popular MMORPG published by K2 Network through its game portal, GamersFirst (gamersfirst.com), can join the expanded open beta for PlaySpan’s innovative in-game commerce platform. Read more

World of Warcraft v2.4.0 Patch

Blizzard has released a new patch for their insanely popular MMO, World of Warcraft. The patch is dedicated in the memory of Gary Gygax.

Blizzard Entertainment would like to dedicate the patch in memory of Gary Gygax. His work on D&D was an inspiration to us in many ways and helped spark our passion for creating games of our own. As avid D&D players and fellow game developers, we were all saddened by the news of his passing; we feel we’ve lost a true adventuring companion. Thanks for everything and farewell, Gary. You will be missed.

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Red Orchestra Adds Steamworks Matchmaking and More

Tripwire Interactive has updated the WWII multiplayer classic Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 (RO) with support for Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools available free of charge to game developers and publishers. In this Steamworks update for RO, Tripwire has leveraged the online matchmaking services offering, including integration of the Steam Server Browser, the Friends’ “Join Game” functionality (for use in and out of game), as well as support for player and server stats viewable on www.steamgames.com. Read more

Stardock’s Take on Piracy

With everyone throwing their two cents about piracy nowadays, it was just a matter before Stardock said it’s fair share too. One of Stardock employees made a post regarding Piracy and their recent RTS Sins of a Solar Empire:

Recently there has been a lot of talk about how piracy affects PC gaming. And if you listen to game developers, it apparently is a foregone conclusion - if a high quality PC game doesn’t sell as many copies as it should, it must be because of piracy.

Now, I don’t like piracy at all. It really bugs me when I see my game up on some torrent site just on the principle of the matter. And piracy certainly does cost sales. But arguing that piracy is the primary factor in lower sales of well made games? I don’t think so.

Full post after the break. Read more

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