A few days ago the ATI Cayalyst 7.11 driver version was released. After a large number of complaints and other compatibility issues list, the engineers from ATI fixed in this new driver a lot of conflicts which were also not necessarily related to the Hellgate game. But when it comes to this game, the problem of the game not running properly at all on DirectX 10 mode under the previous Catalyst 7.10 driver has been solved. So basically, if there was anything wrong on their end (in this case), the ATI people fixed it.

<-125x125 Button - left->The memory management system from the game engine hasn't been improved yet, but a small amount of performance boost is visible due to the new video driver. Among other tweaks and fixes, the new driver has improved performance and even has removed some glitches from Bioshock, Call of Juarez, Doom 3, Fable, World in Conflict, and Rainbow Six Vegas (for a full list check out the driver release notes).

Guitar Hero is a Playstation 2 series which lets you impersonate that star guitarist you always admired, in a display of skill to match the original talent while playing a guitar replica in game. Custom made guitars are made specifically for this game alone and fans love it. With the release of “Guitar Hero Encore: Rock in the 80s” and its wide scale success, bands love it as well, especially The Romantics who actually sued Activision for an unspecified amount because the in-game song “What I like about you” resembles their original too much.

Although this kind of remark is usually taken as a compliment, these four romantics mean business and claim nothing short of stopping Guitar Hero Encore distribution. In their own words, the game tune is “virtually indistinguishable” from the Romanics version. Fans might get confused when looking up the original and misleadingly think it’s something Guitar Hero cooked up. These Activision guys are so sneaky...

Activision signed intellectual property rights in order to secure songs for their own releases. In the case of the first and second Guitar Hero releases, cover rights were pursued as the budget wasn’t impressive, a deal which apparently changed in Guitar Hero III when most songs are originals. Songs are the same as the original classics, but sung by different bands. Some covers still made it into the final version, with The Romantics’ track being one of them, thus the story of “What I like About You” continues. The thing about copyright laws is that the artist usually has full rights to his intellectual property and might borrow or altogether sell some of these. It’s still unclear if Activision didn’t like the old version of the song for some reason, or simply chose the easy way of getting the song.

The Romanics might have a case yet, not in terms of music rights, but looks. The four permanent wearing romantics have the right to protect their image and likeness just like actors do. It’s one of the tools of the trade which needs to be specifically signed away in a contract before being used in a third party release like Guitar Hero. The Romantics were pretty popular in the early eighties, but their one-time hit wasn’t so big in the sales charts. Should you enjoy classic rock you might be familiar with the bands most memorable hit songs “What I like about you” and “Talking in your sleep.”

Attorneys didn’t put a specific figure on the potential financial rewards for the Romantics, but it’s safe to assume they will be based on the number of Guitar Hero Encore units sold. The other three Guitar Hero titles also topped US sales charts. The Romantics representative acknowledged “The sales of this game are huge. We're all for good commerce. We just want to share in it.”

Publisher and developer NCSoft is the largest game company in Korea but, in spite of its previously recognized market success, might drift away from releasing video games. Korea Times has the scoop as pointed out by Playnoevil. I found the news rather odd considering NCSoft’s latest activities, which included the acquisition of a new IP and the Tabula Rasa release. While City of Heroes/Villains just moved under the NCSoft wing completely as the new development studio is in-house, the player base is nothing spectacular. Lineage II shows signs of aging, as subscriptions aren’t what they used to be one year ago in Asia, where the game saw most of its success. This leaves NCSoft with the promise of rejuvenation through Tabula Rasa. The super hyped MMO still has to show its true potential, but thus far feedback hasn’t been outstanding.

Given the context there’s no wonder NCSoft and revenues are down by 16% in the last quarter. The problem is NCSoft stock almost halved in the last two months. Suffice to say such news will not go unattended in the upper hierarchy and Korea Times speculates on NCSoft’s interest in virtual worlds. The publisher released a series of social-networking services from Openmaru, an in-house software studio, with strong support from CEO Kim Taek-jin. The inside word is that investors are no longer happy with the perspectives of making money off online games and might steer the company into the online services sector. However, this niche has been taken care of by relatively new enterprises like Naver, Daum and SK Communications big portals operators. During a special lecture at the Seoul National University, NCSoft CEO stated that “After games, the Internet has become my new dream.” Fans won’t enjoy the new direction in which NCSoft is going and we might see less releases in the future.

Have you ever wondered how your gaming console (that is if you happen to own one) was made? What about the place where it was assembled? I know many people have this "phrase" that goes something like "these things were made on ships (on the sea, by inexperienced people)" - as to create an explanation for the possible malfunctions of the device. Well, here it is a proof that at least the assemblying job is not done really as most people think. From the pictures below you can see that there isn't exactly too much super extreme high-tech gear that moves constantly to produce these gadgets massively. Instead, a lof of work is based on manual mounting and on actual testing done by humans on the devices before packing and shipping.

  

We take things for granted many times, but if we were to pay a little attention to some objective details we could see things a bit differently. I think that these pictures could present some very realistic and actual production methods becaue it's not the first time I have seen what goes behind the scene: there's the collection of pictures taken at ShenZhen ESC motherboard factory last year, and published on the Bit-Tech website. At least it's nice to know that the products are checked before shipping.

One of the latest types of effects used in the newest game titles, like Unreal Tournament 3 is the advanced physics rendering of spectacular particle movement that can be seen especially in explosions. This is normally powered by an additional graphics card specialised in physics processing.

The catch is that people no longer need to buy a dedicated physics card with the chipset made by Ageia: if they own a system that runs with an ATI videocard, they can buy another one (with lower performances) and use that as a physics processor. So there yo have it - 2 options to get the full eye-candy in one of the games that sets the standards in the realm of the First-Person-Shooter genre. The good news that comes connected to the statement above is that the developers have created two maps designed to show the capabilities of the physics processing cards: CTF (Capture The Flag) Lighthouse and CTF Tornado.

The developers at Ageia said that they will release a PhysX Mod-Kit for Unreal Tournament III in December, that "will allow developers and modders to create completely new experiences in the game and customize existing levels to enhance game-play and interactivity."