Fixed glitches, Minecraft

First things first, I fixed the graphical glitches which were occurring in my last screenshot - the depth buffer hadn't been set up correctly. The renderer can now project and transform objects, and essentially also supports textures. Still to add are normals, displacements, scene manager, skeletal animation, blend shader and lighting - but the heart of the deferred pipeline is now fully functional, which is always nice. In a couple of days I might be able to get a copy running in a web-browser, this post will be edited if I manage.

Redness represents X axis, Green Y-ness, and Blue Z-ness. It's also possible to "fly" around the cube.

Secondly, I started playing Minecraft Classic for a bit, then fell a little in love with the game. I purchased the Beta at about midnight, and have been playing it solidly since. It's absurdly addictive, but also brilliantly simple, and the DRM-free, play-wherever, indie quality of the game makes it all the better. It's also written by one man, in Java and using OpenGL (exactly the same as that ^^).

Minecraft? More like mindcrack?
Charlie

One of these days, I'll post *before* the deadline

Speaking of deadlines, as I write this, the clock's counting down to Portal 2:

http://aperturescience.com/glados@home/

Yes, it's 2011 and I'm still using XP. My Linux machine's taking a nap, and I didn't want to wake it.

I thought that was a pretty clever way of supporting the indie games industry. Major credit to Valve for this.

Onto the main body of the post: Scream 4 (Scre4m).

I ended up seeing Scream 4 on Saturday along with a group of friends. The film is centred around a masked, robed attacker with a fondness for large, sharp knives and the illicit use thereof. Several threatening phone calls, gratuitous stabbings, murders, worryingly-open windows and chases later, the film reaches a clever-but-not-entirely-unexpected-and-somewhat-but-not-entirely-predictable conclusion of sorts.

My feelings about the film were mixed - it felt well-made and genuinely entertaining, with a decent storyline and pacing, and some fairly amusing moments. It was pretty gore-heavy, but not un-watchably so. On the negative side, there weren't any moments which stood out as particularly tense or suspenseful either, and at no moment was I truly scared (unlike how I felt playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The first bit with the water. Seriously.) .

I can't comment on how it compares to the originals, since I haven't seen them, but can certainly recommend the film, not as an amazing or deep one, but as an entertaining one.

That's all for now folks. Expect more terrible pseudo-reviews and Portal 2 raving soon...

What's your favourite scary movie?
Charlie

Happy Birthday!

... as of 4 hours ago, Benji is now 17. If you haven't checked out his blog yet, click here - it's quite simply awesome.

I'm afraid I'm a terrible person, and so this is going to be the mother of all cop-out posts.

Giant armed alien robots in New York? Standard

I'm going to put it simply - Crysis 2 is probably the best game of the year so far. Graphics are suitably epic - the game uses lighting and shading to an even greater extent, but also feels faster in terms of framerate - I've not checked the numbers yet though. Gameplay is much improved - the suit has been made simpler without losing any of its core functionality. My main complaint is that it feels more like a multiplayer game even in the campaign, with purchasable upgrades offering slight bonuses like reduced footstep sound or bullet traces. Useful but hardly game-changing, and all adding complexity. I'm currently in Grand Central station, struggling with a Pinger (which looks even better than in the pre-release picture above). More pictures will follow at some point later in the day. 

It still remains to be seen whether Portal 2 will steal the crown from Crysis 2 or not. Crysis will certainly take quite some beating...