The Perfect General

IGN World at War Hands-on Preview

IGN has also posted up their preview for Call of Duty: World at War today. They have also included some new footage. Check it out:

The action starts off quietly, though, as the squad infiltrates through the swamp, only to come upon a crashed US Navy plane. A squad member climbs up to the cockpit to check the condition of the pilot only to discover that the body is booby-trapped with a grenade. As soon as it explodes Japanese soldiers, heavily camouflaged with branches and leaves, erupt out of the brush and the fight is on. There's lots of running people through with bayonets, point-blank gunfire, and chaos.

Get through the ambush and it's time to move out of the swamp into the grassland. The flamethrower comes in very handy at this point, since there's plenty of tall grass for Japanese soldiers to hide in. No problem; just burn it down. Also take out those trees where snipers like to camp. If you have two players, you can both have flamethrowers, which makes quick work of the jungle, but you have to be careful of where you point that thing. The flamethrower makes short work of grunts, and it is a bit disturbing how realistic it is. Guys melt when you torch them.

To read the rest of this new hands-on preview be sure to visit here.

Source: TotalCOD

Chipmaker Hydra's Stunning Work May Render CrossFire, SLI Obsolete

New chips open the door to gaming rigs with a mix of ATI and NVIDIA cards

NVIDIA is busily plugging away with its 200 series and marketing various SLI solutions in the form of anything from a pair of 8000 or 9000 cards to its top end -- a pair of 280 GTXs. AMD is similarly pushing its 4850/4870 CrossFire solutions along with CrossFire for its new dual-GPU 4870 X2 cards. The key thing is AMD/ATI cards are not compatible with NVIDIA cards -- CrossFire and SLI are two different technologies. Furthermore, most motherboards either support SLI or support CrossFire -- most don't do both.

Enter Lucid, also known as LucidLogix, a fabless semiconductor designer (meaning it outsources its chips to other company's fabs, such as TSMC). Lucid is far from a known name in the graphics industry, though that may soon change. With the help of Intel Capital backing and over 50 patents, it has developed a technology that seems poised to rock the graphics industry.

The groundbreaking technology is titled the HYDRA Engine. The accomplishment of the engine is nothing short of unbelievable to those who follow the graphics industry. It uses hardware and software to allow virtually any AMD/ATI and NVIDIA GPU to work together and share workloads with the CPU, scaling programs almost linearly. You could probably call the HYDRA Engine CrossFire-SLI, though you might run into a spot of legal trouble in trying to do so.

Lucid isn't just redeploying existing technologies -- it's improving on them. AMD/ATI and NVIDIA use two technologies for their multi-GPU solutions. One is split frame rendering, in which each card renders a part of the frame. The drawback of this is that it requires synchronization of all texture and geometry data on both GPUs and thus memory bandwidth limitations from a single card remain. The other solution commonly used is alternate frame rendering. This approach also has a significant downside, in that it introduces latency in the time it takes to switch between GPU connections.


Compare this image, with the image on the right. Note the missing components, and how they are present in the image on the right. These images will be combined to form the final image. This division is based on how fast each GPU is, and allows for near-linear scaling. (Source: PC Perspective)

On the left the full screen is displayed, on the right one of the GPU's workload. Note the scene on the right is missing the floor, which is being rendered on the other GPU. (Source: PC Perspective)

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The Heavy Update Has Arrived!

If you're a diehard Team Fortress 2 fan, you're already downloading the update. For those of you who haven't started it yet, restart your Steam clients to get the largest TF2 update to date!

Changes
• Added server map timeleft to upper right of scoreboard
• Added new firing sounds to The Backburner
• Removed the Custom Tab in the serverbrowser, and added the Tags field to the base Internet Tab
• Increased The Kritzkrieg's uber-charge rate bonus from 10% to 25%
• 32 player servers can now support an extra slot of SourceTV
• Made the freezecam item panel description easier to read
• Players now broadcast whether they chose a team directly or use autoteam
• Added proper handling of cart blocking recognition to Payload maps

Bug fixes
• Fixed bug where switching from flaregun-wielding Pyro to another class meant you didn't get a full ammo loadout on first spawn
• Fixed Spy watch arm not using team skins
• Fixed weapon switching preventing you from using secondary attacks for a 0.2s window after the primary became available
• Fixed players getting stuck in a bad animation state when class switching while spinning the minigun
• Fixed a loophole that allowed players to pickup weapons of other classes

more bug fixes, heavy class updates, and arena mode

• Fixed a bug that resulted in players earning more crit chance bonus in large, single damage events than they are supposed to
• Fixed an issue with the floating HUD +X health indicators that resulted in them appearing incorrectly
• Fixed a bug which caused the minigun spinning & firing sounds to occasionally stop while the Heavy was still firing
• Fixes the Loadout player model panel causing the in-game player facial animation to perform incorrectly
• Fixed spectators not having the target ID labels display correctly
• Fixed the cart alarm sound occasionally getting stuck on in Payload maps

Added 3 Heavy unlockables
• Natascha, The Sandvich, The Killing Gloves of Boxing
• Added 35 new Heavy achievements

Added Arena game mode
• 5 arenas: Lumberyard, Ravine, Well, Granary, Badlands
• Added cp_steel, a community map by Jamie "Fishbus" Manson

Get ready for a world of nothing but Heavies once you manage to get into the game!

Source: TotalHL

World at War Website Updates With New Screens

The official Call of Duty: World at War website has been updated today with some new screenshots. There are six new shots to see but two of them you have be a rank of Private First Class on the COD site to view. So here are the four available to all:

To check out the other two be sure to visit the official website.

Source: TotalCOD

Battlefield Heroes Character Art

EA recently released four brand new screenshots for Battlefield Heroes showing off some character art. Check them out below:

Source: TotalBF

New Customization Gameplay Trailer

GameTrailers has posted up a new trailer today for Battlefield Heroes that shows off some new footage from the customization portion of the game. Check it out below:

Source: TotalBF

1.2.0 Patch Status

The newest update on the Frontlines Status page has some information about the next PC patch along with a list of features. Take a look:

We are currently in the final stages of development of PC patch 1.2.0 and will start testing it shortly. We expect to release the patch in September.

The patch will include the following features:

• DLC1:
-- Boneyard Map
-- Conquer Mode
• Server Browser - Phase 2
• Joystick support
• PC Leaderboards - Unranked
• PC Leaderboards - Ranked
• Dedicated Server Tools

Stay tuned for the latest news regarding this patch and see this update here.

Source: TotalFrontlines

Team Fortress 2 Heavy Update #4 - Natascha

The fourth reading for the Team Fortress 2 Heavy update has been posted today showing off a new unlock, Natascha. Check it out below:

The Heavy's second unlockable, Natascha, slows enemies with her bullets. Anyone damaged by her will move slower for an instant, encouraging them to find cover or turn and face the Heavy, mano-a-tiny-itty-bitty-mano. Unfortunately, Natascha is slightly weaker than Sasha, so she takes longer to finish off a victim. As a result, Natascha's great against fleeing cowards, such as Scouts & Medics, and less great against anyone actively trying to kill her master. Heavies that like to jump around corners and surprise groups of startled enemy crybabies will also find her very useful, although they should look for a Sasha-wielding enemy Heavy before they leap.

To check out the original page for this update visit here. Be sure to check back tomorrow for more info on the Heavy update!

Source: TotalHL

1UP World at War Preview + Video

1UP has posted up a new preview of Call of Duty: World at War today which includes some new screenshots as well as some new footage. Take a look:

In typical Call of Duty fashion, World at War is split into two campaigns: the U.S. Marines fighting the entrenched Japanese in the Pacific islands, and the Russians pushing the Germans back to Berlin toward the end of the war.

The first mission I get to check out is part of the Battle of Peleliu. Here I'm introduced to both my commanding officer, Kiefer "Jack Bauer" Sutherland, and the new battle tactics employed by the Japanese. After discovering a downed P-51 in the jungle, an NPC squadmate checks out the pilot's body hanging out of the cockpit. Everything appears to be normal, until he finds a live grenade tucked under the corpse -- it goes off, and suddenly, the squad is ambushed by Japanese troops hiding in the brush. A big part of the Pacific campaign features ambushes like this as well as unpredictable banzai charges from enemy troops.

To read the rest of this brand new preview be sure to visit here.

Source: TotalCOD

COD:WW Developer Blog: PC MSR + PunkBuster

A new developer blog has been posted today over on the Call of Duty website that talks about PunkBuster for Call of Duty: World at War as well as lists the minimum system requirements for the game. Take a look:

We’re pleased to announce that Call of Duty: World at War will be sporting PunkBuster out-of-the-box for PC fans!

Anti-cheat is an important addition to competitive multiplayer games on the PC platform, and we’re partnering with Even Balance to get it right. We’ve had Even Balance technicians out at Treyarch on multiple occasions aiding in the implementation of PB into CoD:WW.

Through this collaboration, we’ll be providing the best anti-cheat solution on the market to keep those hackers at bay.

Also, we think we have our minimum PC system requirements nailed down. Please reference below.

Processor:
- AMD 64 3200+/Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz or better
Memory:
- 8 GB free hard drive space
- 512MB RAM (XP)/1GB RAM (VISTA)
Graphics:
- Shader 3.0 or better
- 256MB Nvidia Geforce 6600GT/ATI Radeon 1600XT or better

Be sure to stay tuned for more news or you can check out previous blog updates right here.

Source: TotalCOD