Via :

TransGaming and Nvidia team up for high-end games on the Mac - Joystiq:

Cider is TransGaming’s Intel-based Macintosh portability engine intended to enable (not to mention expedite) the “porting” of games from the Windows platform to the Mac OS X platform.

Read the posting for the full text. This is very good news, assuming it comes to fruition. TransGaming has put a lot of effort into their Cider engine, which is a follow on to a similar engine they developed for Linux. Check out the Cider FAQ.

Even people who don’t play World of Warcraft will probably be impressed by how good the cinematics for the game are. Specifically the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Cinematic Intro and the orginal intro (also downloadable from the Blizz site.)

If you’re not impressed, you don’t know a damned thing about computer graphics. These cinematics are better than (almost?) any fully CGI-rendered feature film. I can’t think of a single release that tops them. The Final Fantasy movies PALE in comparison.

So, on that note, I have to say it’s a tremendous shame that the WoW movie won’t be done by them. It will be live action. My Blizz connection says, “The Blizzard Film Department will stay focused on in-game stuff.”

feh.

Multiverse Network is a company that focuses on creating an MMO engine on which other developers can build online games. The benefit here is that they provide all of the heavy lifting when it comes to coding the servers and clients, and then the development company can create the content and the rules of the game. It’s not a new concept in the gaming world, first person shooters have been doing this for years, but it is new to the MMO genre and may lead to some interesting developments. Games that might not have otherwise been made because they don’t have the mass appeal to warrant the undertaking might actually make it. It’s a company I had intended to watch…

However, they now have my undivided attention.

Today, Multiverse issued a press release stating that they had signed a deal with Fox to create a Firefly based MMORPG. <fanboy>OMG OMG OMG</fanboy> It looks like Multiverse is intending Firefly to be it’s flagship game and is hoping it will draw attention to it’s product and the plethora of games being developed on it.

Certainly worked on me. Please proceed… I’ll be watching very closely now.

My favorite podcast, Geekdrome, is officially over. It had a good run, as podcasts go. 53 weekly episodes and most of them video. Podcasts run by hobbyists (as opposed to something like Keith and the Girl where it’s a business) tend to end “too early”, but I thought we had a few more months anyways.

There’s a very large community surrounding this particular podcast, and we’re trying to figure out how to maintain it post ‘drome. Who knows if it will happen, but even if the community dissolves, I know there’s a few people I’ll still keep in contact with. So, that’s cool.

However, in addition to a very entertaining show, it was also a great source of geek news and info. In one show, I was able to get movie, comic and gaming news for a couple of guys I learned to trust, or mistrust depending on the topic and now I am starting over at square one. Dammit.

I’ve been using the online bartering service, BarterBee, a while now and I thought I’d share my experiences. (In the interest of full disclosure, that link tells them that I sent you and I should get 5 points for each person that joins and requests an item. You get 5 points just for signing up.)

The way it works is that you sign up and list what Games, CDs and/or DVDs you have to trade. You assign a point value to each item and people use their points to buy them from you. When someone requests the item, you drop it into a Barterbee envelope, sans case, and send it off. When they get your item, you get your points.

Points, the currency of Barterbee, are worth about a dollar each. (In fact, you can actually buy points from Barterbee at that price-point. So I guess it’s exactly a dollar each.)

Thus far, my experience has been nothing but great. I’ve sold/traded off about 18 games and movies and have 4 more in transit. In every transaction I have received more value (i.e points/dollars) than I ever would have if I had I tried to sell the items to a used shop or via eBay. Sometimes as good as a 5-to-1 ratio. Often about 3.5 to 4 on PS2 games.

I’ve only requested DVDs so far. There’s a good selection of XBox games, but hardly any Xbox 360 games. No surprise there, though, the system is too new. There are also tons of games for other platforms. Even Atari 2600 games.

I haven’t used the service for Music CDs or PC/Mac games yet. I think LaLa.com, which Annette uses, may have cornered the market of the former. I plan to make use of Barterbee for the latter, whenever I can work up the energy to dig the games out of boxes.

Speaking of LaLa.com, Barterbee could learn a couple things from LaLa. I’ve watched Annette do the LaLa transactions a few times and it slighlty less cumbersome than BarterBee.

Miss Video Game is now accepting contestants. Check their criteria:

Be Miss Video Game
Requirements
1. Must have Personality
2. Must be a female? (No wigs and makeup guys)
3. You Play Video Games like its your job.
4. Loves the beach

In particular, I like that #2 is a question and I think #4 is just evil and wrong. It’s kind of silly (kind of?) but there are some cute (and, uh, not so cute) girls there and no wonder, the prize package includes a thousand dollars, a trip to Cabo and a new game console. Oh, and the biggest prize of all: “Featured in an upcoming video game title”.

Of course, the game will probably be called “Miss Video Game 2006″… and they’ll just stick your head on DOA Beach Volleyball girls or something.

I wouldn’t have found out about this if my dromette buddy Buxomia (aka Jenny) hadn’t entered. When voting opens up, vote for her.

AKA Lazy Geeky Sunday.

Leaving your Sunday alarm set for the horrid hour of 08:30 has one benefit, if you’re willing to resist turning it off and rolling over. After a couple of snoozes, I realized if I got up early I’d be able to get a lot more done today. Crazy theory, I know.

So shower n’ shave and head out the door, I go. After a trip to Pete’s to caffeinate, I realized I should have gotten dressed too. So, I rectified that and headed to the local Rasputin Music and Tower Records to hunt down an mc chris (more about him in an upcoming nerdcore post soon) record that iTunes doesn’t have. No luck, but no surprise either since it’s still sort of under ground (I guess? how does one tell in these days of the internets?) Did end up with a Dropkick Muprhy’s disc I didn’t have though. So, I decided I’d try CD Warehouse, across town.

On the way, I hit up my local comic shop, Little Shop of Heroes (best comic book shop name evah, btw) to pick up a couple of issues of a book I was missing which was preventing me from reading the series.

Then I swung by EB Games to peruse their used X-box game section. Having never owned an X-box, I find the plethora of games out there that I’ve never played to be a wondrous thing. All at very likeable prices, btw. Crimson Skies for $5? ysplskthx

I took a moment to cheer up the dude at the cash register who just got burtally lambasted by the previous customer over some stupid store policy matter. I cracked wise, in more ways than one. He laughed and so I felt like I did a good deed and I leapt into the batgeek-mobile and sped away.

I was on my way home when I pulled up next to a “Geek Squad” car. I don’t appreciate them frontin’ and perpetratin’ like they’re true geeks, so I whipped out the nine-mil and blasted ‘em O.G. style.

Then I picked up some beer, got home, ordered a pizza and called my mom. She says hi, by the way.

I checked my mail (bills and a thank you note from a guy named Bill), then my email, and hey look… some new chick wants to be my friend on MySpace. Don’t they all? Her name is Angel (of course it is) and she “just moved here from college (I dunno where that is) and a horrible relationship (awww)”. I look at the picture. I blink. I look at the rest. Holy shit, I think this chick is a real doll (realdoll.com (NSFW) for those not in the know). Decide for yourself. Look into those eyes, man. Nothin’ there.

Ok, now I need to wrap up some chores, see if I can’t fix a perl script for work, crack open another beer and maybe get a little 360 in before it’s time to hit WoW with the gang. Ok, another beer. Check. One out of four down.

This blog posted is based on a true story. Some events may have been exaggerated to enhance the drama.

So, I broke down and got an Xbox 360. I’ve been debating it for a while, but the excellence of the system, the Xbox Live marketplace and the fact that I have more than a few friends who have it all eventually tipped the scales. I spent a week or so pressing my 360 owning friends for reasons NOT to buy, but fell short.

And I am stoked.

The system is fantastic. The graphics are awe-inspiring on my 42″ plasma TV, especially the HD games that support 720p. (Burnout 360, for example, is pure adrenaline in high-def.) The wireless controllers are awesome. Coming from the PS2, it took a little getting used to the change, but the learning curve was over in minutes.

Xbox Live Marketplace is also killer. Being able to download cool little games like Bejeweled (which Annette is now addicted to), Geometry Wars and Texas Hold ‘Em is pretty sweet. The ability to download game demos directly to the Xbox is one of the smartest moves ever. (Of course, PC/Mac games have had this feature for a long time. Consoles were relegated to game demos on disc for a long time, though. This is a major step.)

I’ve only got a handful of games so far (of which, surprisingly Rockstar’s Table Tennis is probably eating most of my time) but there’s some good stuff our and great stuff on the horizon. If you’ve got any must-have games, let me know.

So, anyways… if I haven’t already hit you up for your gamertag, go ahead and friend me. I’m r3vZERO. (Stupid 3+ character minimums in usernames.)

Sony: -1, Microsoft: +1

What do Bruce Willis, Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett all have in common?

They supposedly look like Zero Division according to MyHeritage.com’s face recognition and matching system. Ok, there were some less fun names that matched too, and I threw it a curve ball by giving it a snapshot that had shades on, which is why Tommy Lee Jones got matched, I think. However, Zero Division could be the love-child of Cate Blanchett and Bruce Willis. Scary.

Judge for yourself here.

Also, check it out. Big Brother (Rummie himself) is stalking me in Second Life!

For those of you who 1) Don’t read Boing Boing everyrday and 2) are interested in Second Life, I felt the need to re-distribute this post of Cory’s. My commentary is below.

Via Boing Boing:

User creates virtual ecosystem in Second Life: Cory Doctorow:
Wagner James Au sez, “While taking a break from the UK game industry to raise her child, a programmer created a self-contained ecology on a Second Life island, with numerous species and natural phenomenon that must work together to keep the system function: clouds rain on the land, nourishing the plants (which also respond to sunlight), bees spread pollen to help the plants reproduce, birds eat seeds to keep the plants from growing out of control, and so on.”

If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours,” Laukosargas Svarog tells me. “Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated. And it’s the transfer of pollen that signals the plants to drop seeds. The seeds blow in the wind, and if they land on good ground according to different rules for each species, they grow when they receive rain water from the clouds. It’s all interdependent.

Link

(Thanks, James!)

Wow. Simply fucking wow. The SL engine that Linden Labs has given it’s users to play with is amazing. I’ve taken a look at their scripting language and it’s pretty impressive. There are lots of things I can imagine doing with it, but what Laukosargas Svarog has done is beyond… well, just you know, beyond. (And no wonder. She’s an ex-game designer who worked on Black & White, which was quite revolutionary.)

I haven’t checked it out in person (or is that “in person”) yet, but plan to very soon. If you SL, then here’s the SLURL.

Anyways, it’s a bit inspiring. I need to spend more time in Second Life. And I should read New World Notes more often.

Cya in the metaverse/grid/matrix/SL/whatever… Look for Zero Division.