Game Tech News

The clue that there was something wrong should have been that I was writhing around on the floor, sobbing. Yet at the time it made perfect sense. When you’re ambushed by approximately half a million Tetris-style bricks that won’t stop haunting you and taunting you even as you start hitting them and screaming at them to go away, this kind of thing happens. Sometimes you just want to be left alone, safe from the torment, and be allowed to once again live in a manner close to the way you see fit. So the sweat that was pouring and the tears that were flowing just didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Scratch that: They weren’t a big deal at all.
It’s only now that I can look back on this that I realize I had a problem. A big problem. I was addicted to Blow. Or, maybe more accurately, I was hooked on doing lines.

Lines aligning

Looking at it from a distance, The Witness is not hard to unpack on its most elemental level. You begin in a dark tunnel, trudging ever forward toward a glimmer of light that eventually resolves itself as a simple shape: a circle with a short horizontal line connected to it. By selecting the circle and then dragging the pointer you fill the complete shape, and then something happens. In this case, a door opens and you move on, before long facing something that’s slightly more advanced (a line with a 90-degree turn). Solve that one and before long you’re in the broad, bright, beautiful island, à la Myst, where you’ll encounter literally hundreds of puzzles like these.



They get a lot harder very quickly, of course. Sooner than you might expect, you’re progressing from basic mazes to challenges involving separation (there must always be a line between all the black and white squares); symmetry (your line is matched, in mirror image, on the other side of the board); color pairing; connect the dots; my personal ligne noir, shape matching, in which the figures you draw must outline one or more geometrical forms you’re provided (in theory—though the difficulty I had solving these left me seriously wondering); and plenty more.
But even though its riddles rapidly evolve from mild to maddening, The Witness is structured so that you always have the essential tools you need to solve them: Built-in tutorials guide you gracefully through new concepts over half a dozen puzzles, for example, and when ideas are combined, you get a chance to acquaint yourself with the new relationship before things start getting really nutty. Blow may be a gleefully evil sadist, but he’s a fair gleefully evil sadist.



He’s not necessarily an overly obvious one, however. During the course of your time on the island, you’ll discover what appears to be a story: a community frozen in time, with people changed into statues while doing ordinary, everyday things. Who are they? Why are they here? And can you help them—or is your destiny to become one of them? These questions are not easily answered, even if you discover many of the audio and video recordings scattered around that investigate the scientific and spiritual relationships that seem to underlie the land’s logic. Even so, you’ll ponder them as you move from one section of the island to another, either trying to track down the next hint you need or giving yourself a respite from your present frustrations by doing something easier for a few minutes.


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Modern laptop technology has advanced enormously in recent years, as systems have gotten thinner, lighter, and more power efficient. Unfortunately, mobile gamers have been left out of most of these trends. The laws of physics aren’t kind to people who try to stuff 45-80W GPUs into ultrabook chassis. Gamers today mostly have to choose between ultraportable systems with lower-end graphics or larger desktop-replacement class hardware. There are a handful of 15-inch laptops that attempt to straddle this divide, but reviews show that they tend to run hot and noisy — an unavoidable consequence of their configurations.

AMD has a plan to solve this problem through the use of a standardized external GPU interface that would allow customers to attach a desktop graphics card via an external chassis.



AMD’s Robert Hallock posted the following to Facebook, alongside a photo of the Razer Core:

Gaming notebooks are great for gaming, but nobody in their right mind wants to carry one all the time. Ultrathin notebooks are awesome to carry, but nobody in their right mind would confuse one for a gaming notebook…
External GPUs are the answer. External GPUs with standardized connectors, cables, drivers, plug’n’play, OS support, etc.

Given that he posted this next a photo of the Razer Core, I think we can assume it’s the first chassis to implement AMD’s new idea. Since we know that device is equipped with Thunderbolt 3 and a USB-C connector, it’s fairly easy to guess what AMD has implemented.

Don’t we already have docks?

Enthusiasts have been building their own external docks for years, and we’ve covered some of those efforts on ExtremeTech. The earlier solutions used older versions of Thunderbolt, however, which means they wouldn’t deliver as much bandwidth to*a high-end GPU. A Thunderbolt 3-powered solution has four lanes of PCI Express 3.0. That may not sound like much, but it’s significantly more than previous external solutions. Single-GPU bandwidth needs tend to scale only modestly upwards; you need high-bandwidth connections for multi-GPU hardware, but one card should be just fine on Thunderbolt 3.



AMD’s 2008-era solution was ATI-specific and much, much larger than Thunderbolt 3 running on USB Type-C.

Once you start poking around at existing dock solutions, some problems emerge. Alienware’s Graphics Amplifier doesn’t allow a laptop to hibernate, is only compatible with Alienware hardware, and is frankly rather large.
AMD’s phrasing in this announcement implies that their new solution is based on a standard implementation for everything, including drivers, OS, connectors, and cables. Razer, meanwhile, has already advertised the Core as being compatible with both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

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When the film studios and gaming industries began their brief flirtation with 3-D technology a few years back, there was a small (but occasionally raucus) debate over whether or not 3-D glasses and technology were somehow bad for people. Now with VR technology rapidly maturing, we’re seeing similar warnings and discussions over safety. As with 3-D, some of this is common sense, and some of it’s a bit goofy.

HTC’s recommendations for using its Vive headset land are a bit on the silly side, as Ars Technica reports. The company actually recommends that you only use its equipment when you have a partner nearby to spot you. Don’t try to run from encounters or dodge enemy fire by actually throwing yourself across the living room, always use the handheld controllers with their safety strap around your arm, lest you accidentally knock grandma’s teeth out, and perhaps most notably:



This chair is not real. Please don’t sit in it.

“It is important to remember that simulated objects, such as furniture, that may be encountered while using the product do not exist in the real world, and injuries may result when interacting with those simulated objects as if they were real, for example, by attempting to sit down on a virtual chair.”

There’s a kernel of truth to all of this, of course. If you’re wearing a face computer, it’s probably best not to try juggling at the same time. Clearing your gaming area and making sure there aren’t any objects on the floor that could trip you up is a smart move, and truthfully, there are certain aspects of VR design that aren’t exactly intuitive. VR designers have been advised to not include certain types of environments, as they make people prone to vertigo or even falling over. While the risk of sitting down on virtual furniture and accidentally smashing grandma seems small, certain environments that are common in first person shooters, like stairs, have been known to cause vertigo. When you walk up or down stairs, your body instinctively positions itself to do so — which means not actually encountering a stair can throw your balance off. If you’ve ever expected one more step down than you actually had, you’ve felt this type of sensation.



The HTC Vive.

If you’re jumping on the VR train, do practice common sense. HTC has created a “chaperone” system that lets you map the boundary of a safe area, but it doesn’t suggest relying on it for protection. Treat it more like a guideline, and you’ll have a better chance of not throwing a motion controller across the room or tripping and falling.
And don’t sit on the furniture.


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The Windows Store and the restrictions it places on games and game settings*have been rising over the past week, ever since the release of Ashes of the Singularity and Gears of War Ultimate Edition. We’ve reached out to Microsoft in an attempt to clarify some of these issues, specifically those related to V-Sync, WDDM 2.0, and the current limits that lock down Windows Store titles. Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games and lead developer on the Unreal Engine, recently blasted Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform, UWP, and called for a complete boycott of the platform.

In an op/ed for The Guardian, Sweeney describes Microsoft’s actions as an aggressive attempt to lock down the Windows ecosystem, thereby monopolizing both application distribution and commerce. He writes:

Microsoft has launched new PC Windows features exclusively in UWP, and is effectively telling developers you can use these Windows features only if you submit to the control of our locked-down UWP ecosystem. They’re curtailing users’ freedom to install full-featured PC software, and subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers.

Sweeney states that he has no problem with the Windows Store as such, but takes issue with the way Microsoft has locked down the platform. Because Microsoft controls the only distribution point for UWP applications, no other company can offer equivalent software. Side-loading can be enabled, but it’s off by default and could be removed entirely in a future Windows Update.



Epic Games founder and Unreal engine developer, Tim Sweeney

Sweeney calls on Microsoft to allow UWP applications to be distributed just as Win32 applications are now, for any company to be allowed to distribute UWP applications, including Steam and GOG, and that users and publishers should be allowed to directly engage in commerce with each other without paying a 30% fee to Microsoft. It should be noted that Valve, which owns the vast majority of digital distribution on the PC, also charges a 30% fee.

This true openness requires that Microsoft not follow Google’s clever but conniving lead with the Android platform, which is technically open, but practically closed…
The ultimate danger here is that Microsoft continually improves UWP while neglecting and even degrading win32, over time making it harder for developers and publishers to escape from Microsoft’s new UWP commerce monopoly. Ultimately, the open win32 Windows experience could be relegated to Enterprise and Developer editions of Windows.

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Virtual reality has the potential to transform PC gaming in ways not seen since 3D acceleration became affordable in the late 1990s. While we don’t recommend pre-ordering either an Oculus or Vive until reviews and performance data are both available, we’re still excited about the long-term potential for the medium. For now, however, that medium is going to be Windows-only.

ShackNews caught up with Oculus CEO Palmer Lucky and asked him a question at least a few Mac fans had to be wondering about: Would Oculus Rift support the Mac?

“That is up to Apple,” Palmer said. “If they ever release a good computer, we will do it.”

Perhaps realizing he’d just written headlines across the entire tech industry, the CEO went on to clarify his thoughts: “It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs. You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top of the line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended specs. So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac. But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it.”

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Nostalgia is a hot-ticket item in the gaming industry, and a new game console that would run any second-through-fifth generation games via FPGA-powered emulation was a major news item last month. The company behind that announcement, Retro VGS, had been trying to crowdfund a project for months with limited success, but announced a major licensing deal with Coleco in December 2015. In February, Retro VGS displayed the so-called Coleco Chameleon, claiming that the platform could run any second-through-fifth-generation game (that’s the Atari 2600’s generation through the Nintendo 64) through FPGA (field programmable gate array) emulation of the original hardware.

Suspicions were raised, however, when photographic evidence appeared to show nothing but an SNES Jr. motherboard jammed into an Atari Jaguar plastic case. Granted, Retro VGS had already disclosed that it intended to use the old Jaguar molds for its final hardware. Then the “custom FPGA hardware” turned out to be nothing but an old PCI capture card. Coleco, which had agreed to lend its name to the project, demanding that prototype units be investigated by independent engineers. Now that the results of that investigation are in, Coleco has withdrawn from the program and Retro VGS has gone dark altogether.

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Ever wonder what your favorite NES games would look like in 3D? No, not a 3D remake — actual NES games rendered on screen with a z-axis. Well, if you’re running a recent version of Firefox, you can see for yourself by loading your very own ROMs into a WebGL-based emulator called 3DNes.
Earlier, this story from Kotaku caught my eye, and suddenly everything ground to a halt. I had to try this emulator for myself, and see some of the best games of my childhood in a rough approximation of three dimensions.



By default, the emulator is populated with a link to Thwaite — a homebrew Missle Command clone. Unfortunately, this is the only ROM I can get working in the emulator as of publication. It’s very simple, and the 3D effect makes everything look extruded — not a particularly exciting aesthetic. Still, there’s something inexplicably novel about manipulating a straightforward 2D game on the fly to see everything from a different perspective.

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When it comes to gaming, laptop owners have always been stuck between a rock and a hard place. Thin and light systems often portability and convenience, but limited gaming performance. Larger, desktop-replacement systems offer more than enough firepower for gaming, but are typically heavy and fall into the category of “transportable” rather than portable. The handful of external chassis that have been built by various vendors tend to have their own limitations and often require a reboot when changing the graphics mode, or don’t support laptop hibernation. They’re also typically tied to either a specific product family or even a single product SKU.



AMD wants to offer mobile gamers a more flexible option, and it’s partnered with Razer and Intel to make it possible. XConnect is the name of AMD’s driver support and implementation using Thunderbolt external graphics.

AMD XConnect: External graphics done right?

Since we’re talking about the efforts of three different companies, let me break out which manufacturer contributes what.



AMD wrote drivers for its own Radeon GPUs in order to support an external graphics chassis. Radeon cards running Radeon Software 16.2.2 or later are capable of plug-and-play configuration with an external chassis. The new software can monitor which applications are running on an external GPU and offers the option to close current applications and prep the system for safe removal. Unlike previous solutions, you can connect or disconnect an external dock without rebooting the system.




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In 1994, the critically-acclaimed and critically overlooked game System Shock shipped from Looking Glass Studio. It was based on a refined version of the same engine used for Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld II, and it offered a more sophisticated engine than either Doom or Doom II. System Shock cast you as a solitary hacker, tasked with shutting down the insane computer AI Shodan, which had taken control of the Citadel space station.

While the original game didn’t sell well, it spawned a second fan favorite — System Shock II, in 1999, and inspired aspects of both Deus Ex and the BioShock universes. Last fall, Night Dive Studios announced they would be bringing a rebooted System Shock to PC and Xbox One, and this week at GDC they actually demonstrated pre-alpha footage of what they’re working on.


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After months of waiting, Sony has finally spilled the beans about the PlayStation VR’s retail release. It’s shipping sometime in October 2016, it’ll cost $399, and the PlayStation Camera won’t be bundled in the standard SKU. Based on current Amazon prices, that puts the total cost of the PS4, camera, and PSVR at about $792 — roughly half the price of a PC and Oculus bundle. Is this significantly lower barrier to entry enough to propel PlayStation VR to the top, or is this headset doomed for a dusty shelf?

Over at the PlayStation blog, you can see for yourself just exactly what $399 will buy you. You’ll get the helmet itself, a set of earbuds, the infamous breakout box, and various different cables. Sadly, the mandatory camera is nowhere to be found. However, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. While the camera’s list price is $60, it almost never sells for that price in the real world. Amazon is currently selling it for $44.08, and I got mine on sale for just $30.

Also worth noting is the lack of bundled controllers. The PS4 itself comes with a DualShock 4 with a built-in light bar, so that will work with a wide swath of VR titles right out of the gate. However, some games will take advantage of the PlayStation Move controller. If you want that experience, you’re probably going to need to drop about $29. However, I wouldn’t rush out and buy one just yet. We’re still not sure if it’ll be mandatory for any specific title. And truth be told, I don’t expect the Move controller to get much traction.

Besides retail info, we also saw confirmation on the final specs. The screen inside the helmet is a 5.7-inch OLED display with a 1920×1080 resolution (960×1080 per eye). It supports the same 90Hz refresh rate that other helmets seem to be standardizing on, but it also supports 120Hz so that 60Hz games can be reprojected at twice the native frame rate. The field of view is, oddly, listed as “approximately 100 degrees,” so the real number is still up in the air. Latency-wise, Sony is still keeping it vague with “less than 18ms.” How much less? Who can say? We probably won’t know until we get the PSVR in our own hands for testing. And as for tracking, the helmet sports nine LEDs that allow the camera to detect your position even when you’re facing away.


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