Avrete sicuramente letto, l’ultimo articolo che il team leader degli sviluppatori di Aion ha diffuso sul web. C’è molta carne al fuoco ed un futuro di prospettiva molto…molto interessante. Leggend,o quel lungo intervento, ho pensato che più o meno sono le stesse cose che aspettano da due anni in Korea, terra patria di Aion. DX 10, housing, aree sommerse e nuove quest line. I problemi rimangono, il lungo grinding, il problema del cryengine.dll che fa crashare moltissimi player in possesso di sistemi con più di due giga di ram.  Ma si può essere fiduciosi?, forse se si ignora che il titolo di punta di NcSoft…quello che creò l’impero koreano degli MMO fu Guild Wars. Ci fù perfino una guerra legale con ArenaNet dentrice a suo dire di una parte dei diritti sul titolo. Uscirà entro il 2010 ed è lecito aspettare che questo sarà il titolo di punta, il titolo AAAAA da spremere a fondo…il World of Warcraft asiatico. I più attenti lettori della blogosfera che ruota intorno agli MMORPG non possono aver dimenticato T.E.R.A. il gioco che hanno assemblato in pochissimi mesi alcuni ex componenti del team di sviluppo proprio di Aion. Sarà disponibile tra pochissimo, sembra davvero che sarà proprio Tera (quindi Aion con un nome diverso) a ledere la posizione dominante in oriente di Aion.

DX es la parte mas importante de un Sistema Operativo en lo que a gráficos y sonido se refiere, gracias a estas librerías podemos tener enormes efectos de luces y demás en los juegos que tenemos en el mercado y actualizar, por tanto, estas librerías es MUY IMPORTANTE, para tener compatibilidad con lo que hay en el mercado actual, pero sobre todo con lo que está por venir.

DX11 ya viene integrado en Windows 7, de reciente aparición, la sorpresa fue cuando Microsoft anunció que estaría disponible tanto para Sistemas Operativos anteriores a “7″ (Por ahora, Vista y 2008) como para Hardware teóricamente no compatible con DX11, algo que esta vez no pasará, ya que aunque el soporte no sea del 100%, las Ati 4xxx (Desconozco si anteriores, también funcionarán) funcionarán con DX11, con lo que no obligará a comprar una generación posterior. Sin duda, una decisión muy buena que hace pensar, que podría haber pasado lo mismo con DX10, cuando dijeron que “no sería posible implantarlo en XP, por asuntos de programación”, algo que la mayoría de gente no se tragó.

Lo mejor, es que ya está disponible, tanto en versiones de 32bits como 64bits:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971512/ ( Descarga Oficial, REQUIERE AUTENTIFICACIÓN).

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Microsoft-Windows-Vista-DirectX-11-update-download-2418.html (Descarga alternativa, que agrupa 32/64bits).

[MUY IMPORTANTE]: Es vital crear un punto de restauración ANTES de instalar DX11, puesto que de no hacerlo, si luego hay problemas, es muy posible que se tenga que reinstalar Windows, por la cantidad de cambios que hacen las librerías. Crear un punto de restauración ocupa 15 segundos, instalar Windows y volverlo a dejar como estaba, podría llevar días si se tenían muchas cosas instaladas.

[NOTA]: A mi no me ha dejado instalar DX11 en Vista x64, eso no quiere decir que a vosotr@s no os deje, además he leído en algún que otro foro que después de instalarse, da problemas, así que me reitero en la advertencia de crear un PUNTO DE RESTAURACIÓN, si no sabéis como, usar el sistema de comentarios, también me interesa saber si habéis instalado y no habéis tenido problemas.

Direct X9 muito importante para jogos e aplicativos atuais

Aew galera, tow disponibilizando ake o DX9 pq apesar de vir nas
versões mais novas do xp, muita gente anda me pedindo, essa instalação
funciona assim…

win xp >> no windows xp ela instala o DX 9 normalmente
Mais recentes >> em sistemas mais recentes ele instalará o DX 10

versátil não ???

então aproveitem ao maximo !!!!

Baixe Já

Thats why I love sites like Tomshardware. They just keep publishing  super-usefull articles on the web.

For all those who wanted to try DX11 but have a Windows Vista based PC fear no more. Tomshardware published a step-by-step guide on how to update already to DX11.

If you  know Windows 7, you should already know DX11 API is one of the mayor changes on it. Many users wanted to try DX10 on Windows XP but this didn´t happened. Now with Win 7 launch 2 days ago,  we discovered  DX11 CAN be installed on Windows Vista, so please, if you  want to try it have a read at Tomshardware guide.

After all, I really recommend changing home to Windows 7, since it seems to be a much better Windows Vista optimized. You should certainly look for bargains and special promocions for students (if you are). Here a shot from THW with DX11 on Vista installed.

Bugünlerde nVidia PhysX‘ e iyicene gıcık olmaya başladım. ATI ekran kartı kullanıcısı olarak düşüncem şu oldu: “Biz de para verdik bizimki niye desteklemiyor”. ATI‘ nin bu duruma acilen el atmasını temenni ediyoruz çünkü kartımdan memnunum -2.5 yıllık orta seviye bir kart olmasına karşın (X1600, üstelik dizüstü bilgisayarda) yeni çıkan oyunları bile düşük seviye de olsa oynatmamazlık yapmadı- ve nVidia‘ ya para yedirmek istemiyorum. Aynı zamanlarda alınan ve yine nVidia‘ nın o zamanki orta seviyesi olan 7600‘ ların şimdi dökülmesi durumun nasıl olduğunu anlatacaktır, üstelik daha pahalılar.

nVidia neredeyse tüm oyunlar tarafından sahip çıkılıyor, ATI ise bildiğim kadarıyla sadece HL(Valve) tarafından destekleniyor. Bu çok adaletsiz birşey; nVidia süper ekran kartları yapıyor da ATI-AMD‘ nin kartları yerlerde mi sürünüyor. Tam tersine ATI f/p oranı en iyi kartları kullanıcıya sunuyor. Yani kullanıcı ATI daha kullanıcı dostu. Demek ki nVidia oyun şirketlerine daha fazla para yediriyor. Sonuçta oyun geliştiren ve özellikle dağıtan şirketler nVidia‘ yı kara kaşı, ela gözü için desteklemiyor. İşin içinde milyarlarca $ para dönüyor böyle olunca da nVidia reklamın kralını yapıyor.

Bu oyunlardaki reklamları gören kullanıcı da dolayısıyla nVidia‘ ya yöneliyor, bu da yetmezmiş gibi ATI‘ ye dandik şirket muamelesi yapılıyor. Yani bir şirketi destekliyeceğim diye diğerini itin bir tarafına sokmaya gerek yok.

Benim taraflı olarak bu yazıyı yazdığımı düşünebilirsiniz ve haklısınız da; Evet, taraflı yazdım. Her ne kadar babamın oğlu olmasa da ATI‘ ye böyle bir haksızlığın yapılmasının yine en çok biz kullanıcıları vuracağını söylemeliyim. Sonuçta nVidia rekabet için fiyatları düşük tutmak zorunda. Aynı şey tabi ki ATI içinde geçerli; nVidia olmasaydı herhalde ATI‘ de aynı şeyi yapar, fiyatları yüksek tutardı.Hatırlarım da; eskiden (yaklaşık 3-4 sene önce) bu şirketlerin üst düzey kartları 500$ dan başlardı. Şimdi üst düzey kartları 250$ dan başlıyor.

Yakın zaman da iki şirket de DirectX 11 kartlarını görücüye çıkarıcak ve ilk çıkaran DX10 da olduğu gibi yine ATI olacak. Bu ATI‘ nin lehine mi olur bunu zaman gösterir ama yeni kartlarında f/p oranıyla yine benim gibi ATIcilerin ve olaya tarafsız bakanların gönlünde taht kuracağını tahmin etmek zor değil.

Bu kadar yazdık, eleştirdik, taşladık; kesin bir yerde yanlışımız vardır. Buyrun, sizde görüşlerinizi yazın.

That stampede of thundering hoofbeats you hear is the crowd of armchair aviators rushing to Aerosoft to get their Catalina. Yep, hard as it may be to believe, they finally pushed the kitty out the door. From the looks of Nick Churchill’s gorgeous screenshots, it’s another masterpiece. Stefan Hoffmann, the talented gent who brought us the Hughes H1 racer, was the lead on this one. That’s all I need to say.

Una de las cosas que mas se temen cuando llega un nuevo Sistema Operativo es el echo de la integración de un nuevo DX7/8/9/10… y el tener que comprar nuevo Hardware si queremos una compatibilidad total con el sistema, bien, eso podría cambiar desde que Windows 7 entre en escena, ya que Microsoft planea incluir en DX11 los Shaders 4.x y está claro, que de modo nativo, DX11 añadirá Shaders 5.x, pero lo positivo es que ambos Shaders trabajen en conjunto.

Con ello, los que tengan Hardware de gama alta y reciente, podrán instalar Windows 7 aprovechando gran parte de la tecnologia DX11, pero no toda, por que DX11 tendrá mayores ventajas y es que claro, compartir ambas tecnologías trabajando igual de bien en todos los casos puede llegar a ser complejo, pero aprovechar las gráficas actuales es una buena noticia.

• ¿Que nos perdemos con Hardware DX10 teniendo Windows 7 y DX11?

“Los Compute shaders 4.0/4.x tienen ciertas limitaciones en comparación con CS 5.0, incluyendo un número máximo de hilos pro grupo de 768, la mitad de memoria compartida por hilo, 16 KB, y la ausencia de operaciones atómicas, append/consume y algunas más. CS 5.0 por su parte ofrecerá una mejor interacción con el pipeline gráfico, double precision, etc”

Visto en The Inquierer.

Age of Conan reaches its 1 year birthday in about a month’s time. There are those who have said that it would not last a year, and many more who have said the game was launched 6 months too early. Age of Conan, after 11 months, has finally started to look like a polished product, the real deal. However, it has had to make some major decisions in the last few months to get to this point.

Server Merger

Server mergers were in the cards almost from the get go. Within the first 4 months of the game, everyone realised that they launched with too many servers, and the population was falling fast. Server merging, in the brief history of MMOs, have usually been the sounding of the death knells, some argue that the server merger in Vanguard spooked even more players. By the time they merged servers in Age of Conan, every last one of the players were aching for a merger, as a final attempt at saving the game.

I believe that the North American cluster had 12 PvE servers and 9 PvP servers, one of which is RP. Everyone expected that they would merge 2-3 servers together and end up with maybe 4-5 servers of each type, but FunCom surprised everyone, especially people speculating about player numbers when they merged all the servers of each type into one server, with some exceptions.

It was mostly fine and dandy for the normal servers, all the PvP servers merged into Tyranny, and all the PvE servers merged into Set. But making such a drastic move but keeping one of the original server names meant that there was a long period of server snobbery. Original Tyranny players felt that they were first class citizens since they kept the server names. The server has since devolved into immaturity, they put all the bad apples in the same basket, and the whole basket was getting rotten.

However, it was the exceptions that suffered the most through this merger. The first announced server merge was between Bloodspire  and Hyperborea, and it proved a disaster for the player base of both servers. A little history is in order here. When the server list was announced before and during Early Access, the community started “tagging” the servers. Some were tagged for Eastern Time, some for Pacific Time, etc. Bloodspire was tagged for Oceanic time. and Hyperborea the Oceanic RP-PVP server. However, come launch, and for a full 8 months of the game, there was zero mention anywhere that Bloodspire was the prefered Oceanic server. The result was obvious, when Oceanic timezone players join the game, they went to whatever server name that struck their fancy, and hence the Oceanic playerbase was seperated.

When the server mergers were announced, FunCom stated that Bloodspire and Hyperborea were to merge because they were both Oceanic, despite never acknowledging their Oceanic status. And not considering the fact that they were different rulesets: one was PvP and the other was RP-PvP. Of course, try as some did, the marriage was a disaster, and when the server transfers came about, the entire RP player base from former-Hyperborea fled within a day, joining Cimmeria, the official RP server. The logic was simple, any new player who wants to RP would go to the official RP server, and so RPing was doomed in Bloodspire. At this point, FunCom finally acknowledged Bloodspire’s Oceanic status by putting a tag behind it in the character creation screen.

Server Transfer

FunCom broke the mould by allowing character transfers across rulesets. So PvP characters can transfer to PvE servers, etc. They allowed one free transfer per character within a one month period. This included new characters created within that month, which proved to be an exploitable mistake.

Just as all the former-Hyperboreans transferred off Bloodspire to Cimmeria, there was many major movements as well. A handful of Oceanic players transferred to Bloodspire, from their lonely existence in other servers. And a large number of players in Bloodspire transferred to Tyranny, because it was highly populated.

This left the remaining players in Bloodspire with a very difficult choice. They were seeing the server die before their eyes. Many of the large guilds had decided previously to wait and see what happens. But the few Oceanic players transferring in was not enough to replace those leaving. In the end, all the large guilds left, of all places, for Cimmeria, the RP-PvP server.

This might seem like an odd choice for PvP players, but at that time of the game, Tyranny was getting a very bad reputation. The PvP was getting bad, and it affected people trying to get their PvE gameplay done. Raids were getting spawn camped, and certain zones were complete no-go areas unless you had an army at your back. It made the game one-dimensional, and many people opted for the higher level of maturity they perceived would be in Cimmeria. Also the fact that a fair number of Hyperborea players were Oceanic timezone and have already moved there.

Over about a span of a week, Bloodspire was complete emptied. At peak times, evening Sydney time, there were 20+ players on the server, and it remains so. The few poor guys who transferred to Bloodspire hoping to finally play with Oceanic players were thwarted again. I hope they managed to petition for another transfer, or have put their money with another company who actually does care.

All this too, has changed the dynamics in Cimmeria. With a large influx of regular PvP players, the RP aspect of the server has been diluted. There were RP players going around petitioning non-RP names, and non-RP behaviour on the chat channels. However, it is a server where all aspects of the game can be enjoyed. There is PvP, but not excessively so that it affects PvE gameplay too much. RP events suffered from the whole ordeal, but are still held in some instances. With a bigger player base, everyone is finally enjoying the game again.

The transfers also allowed a slight economic exploit. Some materials and recipes were significantly cheaper on certain servers than others. So people transferred characters around with gold and materials and made very tidy profits. Also, game gold was cheaper on PvE servers, so some people made use of that aspect too.

I would say that the server merger and transfers, have successfully kept the remaining players’ interest in the game. Nothing kills an MMO quite like low server populations, and their bold move to merge all servers of each ruleset into one has paid off. People have left since the merger, but I doubt most did it because of the merger, but because the merger did not solve some game issues they have. People are also renewing their subscription.

Slaughterhouse Cellar and Xibaluku

I have always thought Thunder River was a zone that did not live up to its potential. It is a large and beautiful zone, but there was too few mobs in it, and not a lot of reason to be there. Well, FunCom finally added some new reasons to go to the zone, in the form of a new single player dungeon and a 6-man group dungeon.

The Slaughterhouse Cellar is quite a simple solo dungeon. It has a mix of comic relief, gore, some interesting traps and bosses. A handful of quests give you quite a bit of gold, if you choose to farm it. It is basically a larger version of a Villa. You need to do a quest in Slaughterhouse in order to unlock the entrance to the 6-man dungeon Xibaluku.

Another way that they integrated the two dungeons is that a drop from one of the bosses in the Slaughterhouse can be used to summon a boss in Xibaluku, which drops a rare mini-pet.

Xibaluku is large, but not overly populated. It has a a total of 12 different bosses, but only 8 spawns at any one time. The bosses that spawn seem related to the time of the day, which sucks because it means you cannot experience all the bosses if you only play in the evenings, for instance. Anyway, the bosses all have interesting mechanics and are good fun overall. The drops are pretty decent, a slight upgrade from dungeon drops elsewhere. Besides unique boss fights, this dungeon has interesting environmented encounters, like being hit by a swarm of bats. The rare drop is a mini-pet: a ghost or human companion that does a bunch of emotes.

One of the bosses is particularly tough because you have to active some orbs to create platforms in which you jump across to activate another orb to weaken the boss. You have to kill this boss to continue with the dungeon, it seems a compulsory boss that always spawns. With the issue of 300 ping from the US servers, and 150 ping to Australian Ventrilo servers, it is not quite so easy to coordinate the pressing of the orbs, with the jumping of the platforms. A nice idea, but the implementation makes it harder for some people. A lot of time is wasted on this boss.

Cradle of Decay

FunCom released this level 40+ dungeon into Field of the Dead. It is quite big, and the boss encounters are fun to work out. The first boss is a plant that mind-controls one of the players. Funnily, when the boss dies, the mind-controlled player dies of heart ache too. One other boss involves working with stuff in the environment, pulsing hears in a pool of blood, and another boss requires you to manage the adds and kill them before they heal the boss. All of these are training fights for similar encounters the players will face when they are level 80. FunCom can make fun dungeons, and they have demonstrated it again here.

DX10 Test

It is on the game box, and it is not likely to be featured in the game after 1 whole year. It is DX10. They finally released a test version onto the live servers. So far, the verdict is that it needs work. Its all nice and dandy, except it drops your FPS in half and for the majority of players, this mean gaming in the mid-20 FPS, unacceptable. It works fine if you’re on a 280 or a 4870×2, but not everyone will have that. DX10 seems to run 5 degrees celsius higher according to GPU-Z. They need it to consistently run above 32 FPS on an 8800, I reckon.

DX9 with max settings 56.4fps

DX10 with max settings 22.5fps

DX9 with max settings 85.1fps

DX10 with max settings 25.0fps

Underwater effects in DX9 with max settings 88.8fps

Underwater effects in DX10 with max settings 25.0fps

Here are my machine specs in case anyone is interested:

Core2Duo e8400 @ 3600
4gb DDR2 PC6400 @ 800
GF8800GT @ 660/990/1650
17″ @ 1280×1024

My character is wearing full raid epic Dark Templar, a mix of Tier 1 and Tier 2 pieces.

So yeah, I am still playing the game. I think the general view of the players is that once a good MMO is released, many people will ditch Age of Conan. So FunCom have to work hard to polish its game further to retain its players. I am personally looking at Aion, it has spent a year in Korea and so hopefully most of the bugs would have been solved by the time the English version is released. Then perhaps it will be back to Guild Wars 2. One lesson that I have learnt through my experience with FunCom and Age of Conan, is never to underrate the value of a good developer. The romantic in us wants to give the small companies a go, but the game market has evolved quite a bit. US$10 million – US$15 million does not an MMO make. From a designer’s point of view, it will stifle creativity, but from a consumer’s point of view, reliability is key.

EDIT: I have just realized that the Windows 7 results were processed with 185.20 leaked drivers while the XP installation is running the 180.84 beta drivers. I shall post up some updated results tomorrow of XP using the 185.20 drivers. Although it may just make things worse for poor 7,  as allegedly there are 4-6% performance increases with the new drivers.

And the doctor ain’t happy. Up to now we got to talk about happy things for the beta, that old Microsoft would logically focus upon the user experience in installing and using the OS as opposed to fine tuning and enhancing the minutia of video game performance. But still there are some massive performance losses in here, in some cases related to enhanced visual effects featured in DX10 and in other cases just because of the OS difference. This here, is probably the reason why gamers will drop Windows 7, which is otherwise an extremely usable OS.  Today I’m going to post the details regarding how each of the tests were conducted but mostly let the numbers speak for  themselves. Also there are a few interesting caveats in the numbers I feel obliged to point out. So, without further ado, Windows 7 vs. XP benchmarks.

Ok, lets go through these things one by one.

Left 4 Dead: This was a difficult one, due to the changing nature of the game’s content. To offset this I ran three one minute benchmarks and averaged them. Although it wasn’t perfect, especially since I found myself reaching further in the later (XP) benchmarks, however I’m hoping the visual fidelity outside the apartment is not that different from that within. Map used was the first part of No Mercy.

Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts:       I just used the included ‘performance test’ for this one. I’m assuming that the test will have been optimized for XP and Vista as they were around at the time of it’s creation, so that may have given XP a bit more of a boost.

Bioshock Static: 1 minute benchmark taken from a standing position. Looking at the minimum rates for Windows 7 DX9 one can only surmise that something came across the screen causing the drop or something triggered on the computer during this time, so it’s probably an anomaly.

Bioshock WATER MOVE: The important thing to note here is that the main benefit of DX10 in Bioshock is much greater water ripple effects, so a speed drop of this would be indicative of only water areas (of which there are more than a few) rather than speeds as a whole. Still, the DX10 water does look stunning compared to the DX9 water. 1 min benchmark of me walking and jumping in water and watching my own rippling trail.

Fallout: 1 min benchmark of me standing with my back to the Megaton main entrance. Some characters walked across in all incidents. There is a substantial drop between Windows 7 and XP, especially surprising considering that the engine has no DX10 capabilities. On the AA settings I enabled 4x AA and 8x AF. It’s interesting to see that the framerate didn’t even drop by a single frame on average with AA enabled in Windows 7.  Regardless, the FPS of AA enabled XP was still about 5 FPS faster, so no contest.

To conclude, the Windows 7 beta has been optimised (rather sensibly) for everyday use instead of hardcore gaming. Which I expected. And frankly, I should be glad that games work at all without any major graphical flaws. But to be honest, seeing as how Windows 7 is such a straight up port of Vista with a new UI I expected all the major changes to be under the hood, reulting in a faster OS. But it’s clear that if this is the case, it’s certainly not in the beta. Which is totally understandable. Yet I still come off a bit disappointed in Microsoft, who haven’t made a magic OS  which is all things to all people. I feel so dejected, that my round up of Windows 7’s non working features will be left for tomorrow because I fear that if faced with more negativity about the OS I might uninstall it, crying.

Got some time tonight to give LOTRO a few hours of my attention. It has gained some points in my book, and I’m not as down on it as I was after last night’s session.

I got my Warden to lvl 8 tonight and realized I get distracted by how beautiful the landscapes look in DX10 graphics, so much so that it distracts me from the small font/ui that bothered me so much initially. I probably played for 2 hours at least, and I’ll say i thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m trying my darnedest to get to 10 without dying, so I can get the title of “Jameseo the Undefeated.”(!)

On a side note, I got a 21-day EVE Online trial loaded up. I’m debating if I should open it up or not, for fear that it will suck me out LOTRO and cancel any momentum that LOTRO had gained on keeping my attention.