Sins of a Solar Empire Interview

Published by Alien 0

Bit-Tech published an interview with the owner of Stardock, the developer behind Sins of a Solar Empire. In the interview, they discuss piracy, DRM, online distribution and more.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two Interview @ GameSpot

Published by Regeneration 0

Almost a full year has passed since Valve released Half-Life 2: Episode One, the first of three promised episodes that will continue the saga of the blockbuster first-person shooter franchise. Episode Two was originally scheduled for release late last year, but Valve pushed the release date back to later this year. When it does arrive, it will feature not only the continuing story of series protagonist Gordon Freeman and partner Alyx Vance battling the alien Combine, but also the multiplayer action game Team Fortress 2 and a 3D puzzle game called Portal. To learn more about what's going on in Episode Two, we caught up with Valve project manager Erik Johnson. A warning to those who haven't played Episode One yet, as this preview contains spoilers to major events.

In The Hot Seat: ATI's Phil Rogers

Published by [NT] 0

Phil Rogers joined ATI Technologies in 1994 as manager of the 3D drivers group, and led the development of the D3D, OpenGL, and Mac Rave drivers for the Rage series of graphics chips.
In 1999, Phil moved to an architectural role and has been responsible for 3D driver architecture and 3D performance optimization for the Radeon series of GPUs. An important part of that role has been to work closely with Microsoft on the evolution of the Direct3D API/DDI and on the development of the Windows Display Driver Model for Windows Vista. Phil plays an active role helping Microsoft make software architecture decisions that work well with all AMD graphics hardware and drivers. In 2006 Phil was promoted to ATI Fellow with broad architectural responsibility for all graphics software at ATI, and now AMD. In this role Phil has guided development of AMD's Vista drivers, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray playback drivers, a new driver architecture for Dx10, and the Crossfire architecture for MultiGPU. In his spare time Phil directed development of the new 3D preview for Catalyst Control Center, which just released on Vista. Phil is currently the lead software architect for the R600 drivers and is ramping up on his next challenge, which will be the software architecture for Fusion (AMD's combination CPU/GPU, scheduled for release in 2008). Read the interview here

Nvidia Interview: Direct3D10

Published by [NT] 0

PCGH: How many games are currently in the works with the TWIMTBP program that uses DX10 features? Darryl Still: In Europe alone we are working with 155 different PC titles for release over the next 24-30 months from territories as diverse as Iceland, Slovakia, Belarus & Croatia, as well as the usual UK, Sweden, France & Germany. 38 of those are already confirmed as DX10 but over the coming months I would expect many more to move in that direction. Add to that a similar number from our US and APAC divisions and we are probably at close to 100 confirmed with double that number again a possibility. PCGH: What do you expect: How many TWIMTBP with DX10 features will be ready for the market let's say in Q1-2007? Read on at PCGamesHardware

The Future of Physical Hard Drive Security

Published by Newsfactory 0

Earlier this month, LaCie revealed another one of its SAFE desktop hard drives with biometric fingerprint reader (scan to get access), internal drive lock (lock the drive inside the case), secure password protection (only authorized users can lock or unlock the drive) and external chain lock (securely and physically lock the drive in place).

Settlers II: 10th Anniversary interview - Thomas Friedmann

Published by Newsfactory 0

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of Settlers II, developer Funatics are releasing a completely rewritten from the ground up remake of this classic title. Elite Bastards talk to the Project Manager for the game, Thomas Friedmann, to get the low-down on Settlers II: 10th Anniversary.

EliteBastards

Pose your questions to FutureMark

Published by Newsfactory 0

In the coming few weeks, some members of the Elite Bastards team will be spending a day at FutureMark's headquarters and research and development office in Espoo, Finland, where they'll get to take a look around and talk to the brains behind such hugely popular benchmarking tools as PCMark, SPMark and, of course, the ubiquitous 3DMark.

Steal This Computer Book!

Published by Newsfactory 0

Here is an interesting interview with seasoned computer author Wallace Wang. His most recent work, "Steal this Computer Book 4.0" gives readers an insight into the history of hacking, some of the threats which exist today, and much more. The can be used by people at any level as a guideline on how to protect themselves and also looks into the hacker mentality. In the interview Wang talks a lot about the book, but also touches on privacy, hacking, and how to protect yourself on the web.

AMD-ATI Acquisition Interview

Published by Newsfactory 0

With today's dramatic announcement that AMD would be acquiring ATI for $5.4 billion, we were eager to hear why AMD felt this move was necessary, particularly with ATI. Over the course of the interview we got quite a few interesting responses.