http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/painkiller/

[Artas1984]

LOL! 100 souls must be obtained to morph into demon? Or is it a new feature on Xbox? Maby a mistake?
http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/painkiller/

All members in DC!

What do you think about the Painkiller HellWars preview?

What i liked is that it was compared equaly to Half-Life2 and Doom3!
http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/painkiller/673579p1.html

OMG! Who is that lol, that wrote an article in GameSpy about PK!??
Such people get money for saying their own fantasy (bananas, Bosch and lots of schit) in the official site?

[RichmanRush]

Pending price and what this new weapon is, I might get it. Also, it wouldn't hurt to make it compatible with x360 (if/when I ever get one). ;)

[Frag Maniac]

Pending price and what this new weapon is, I might get it. Also, it wouldn't hurt to make it compatible with x360 (if/when I ever get one). ;)The 360 is definately worth a shot, as I've said elsewhere, I've seen it play Call of Duty 2 on a Samsung LCD HDTV, and it was truly lifelike, with no detectable LCD motion blur.

Just because He11 Wars does not show on the current list of titles emulated for 360 does not mean it won't be added to that list.

"We’re working hard to determine the next batch of backward compatible titles, and would love to get feedback directly from gamers as well. We’ll have a place on Xbox.com where gamers can tell us their thoughts as we get closer to launch."

So get together with anyone you know that wants to play He11 Wars on 360, perhaps even other PK forums abroad, and let them know to go to Xbox.com and give their opinions.

Other good news is this:

"Xbox.com: Will there be any benefits to playing original Xbox games on my Xbox 360 console?

Todd: Absolutely. One of the great things about gaming on Xbox 360 is the satisfaction of knowing that every game will be playable in high definition. We are now proud to reveal that this extends to the original Xbox games as well. Every original Xbox game will be upscaled to 720p and 1080i, and will take advantage of Xbox 360’s anti-aliasing capabilities, delivering a picture that is clearer and crisper than anything available on Xbox."


Of course that only applies if you use an HDTV, but they are getting more affordable all the time.


All the above quotes were taken from the xbox360.com site, here's the full page on backwards compatability.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilityqa.htm

I also found out about a great product that externally converts all Xbox titles to keyboard/mouse on the original Xbox, hopefully there will be an Xbox 360 version soon.

http://www.smartjoy.com/

I almost wept when I saw they call it the SmartJoy "FRAG". Even their nice looking T shirt matches my "...bring it on!" signature!:cool:

SmartJoy even has a forum, with videos showing the FRAG in action on Halo and a few other titles.

[Frag Maniac]

Here's a good read on the CPU of the 360. Some have doubted it's design, but apparently it's weaknesses in game control, AI, and physics (executions which require single threading) are not as weak as it's main competitor, the PS3.

What I get out of this conclusion is that as long as the devs pick up the ball and write the games to utilize "profiling and optimizing branchy game control, AI, and physics code using every trick in the book",...as well as "take heavy advantage of prefetching to overcome the Xenon's cache size limitations", the limitations of the CPU may not even show in the games.

You might say, not all devs are going to want to put that much effort into writing the games for the 360, buit isn't it just as hard if not harder to write PC games that have to work on a myriad of CPUs?

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-2.ars/7

[bjanga]

That was a good read, Frag. You read Blue's news?

[Frag Maniac]

That was a good read, Frag. You read Blue's news?No, I don't, but much of this article I did not read because some of it was very techy and over my head.

He does tend to sum it up in fairly understandable text though, but I think it's best to hold off on buying an XBox 360 until we know the bugs are worked out in the hardware, and the games are written well. I've not heard of any complaints about the game control, AI, or physics of the current 360 games though.

So far it seems to be a mixed bag of how well the unit works. There are some that say it crashes every half hour (claiming heat is the reason), and those that say it plays fine for long sessions without overheating.

I don't know if it's the reason or not, but one person on the Xbox Team forum where there's a lengthy thread on the subject implied the reason for some if not many of the crashes may be due to not setting the date properly on the unit. Supposedly it is limited to half hour sessions when the clock is left set to Nov 22 or earlier, which was the release date.

Some have said playing with it in the vertical position helps keep it cooler, but I'm not really sure if heat being the reason for the crashing that has been reported is the actual cause.

My first inclination when I heard some units may be overheating, was that perhaps some of the water cooled heatsinks had defects, or the computer controled fans were not working properly. The rest of the cooling system is simple by comparison.

The heatsink has water in it under negative (vacuum) pressure, which is how it is able to cycle between water and steam. The vacuum allows the water to boil at much lower temps, and when the steam rises, it pulls heat with it away from the CPU into aluminum cooling fins, then condenses and settles at the bottom to start the process over again.

If the vacuum water chamber is not made right (ie: correct neg pressure & water content), it could malfunction. It's a delicate balance to get such a heatsink to make steam at the right temp.

There is also the possibility the fan speed control sysem is malfunctioning in some, but much less like I think.

It could also be something as simple as the power supplies in some units not keeping the voltage steady enough, as the power supply has been mentioned as a problem.

I feel most of the problems may be user error, and some of course are likey defects, it happens. Hopefully the clock setting is the cause of most of the crashes, but it seems odd they would limit the sessions in such a way and not make it obvious you need to adjust the clock.

[bjanga]

K, I saw the linkage to that article on Blue's News. You are right, it is pretty darn techy. I do not actually plan on buying a console, as ~$400 + a TV, or HDTV, is a pretty big sum. I think it will be interesting to see how the whole multithreaded thing will unfold. Specifically, I believe that we will see 360 titles that will look better than PS3 titles and vice-versa, depending on the skills the individual developers has writing the code to take advantage of what each system has to offer.

The Revolution could be very interesting if it is dirt cheap.

[Frag Maniac]

I do not actually plan on buying a console, as ~$400 + a TV, or HDTV, is a pretty big sum. I think it will be interesting to see how the whole multithreaded thing will unfold.Keep in mind, although the HDTV deadline (in the US anyway) has been pushed back to 2009, there will eventually be many more people buying them, and the price will drop, it already is in fact.

These new consoles are made future ready, accounting for the fact that many if not most TV users will prefer to convert over to HDTV by '09, rather than use a $50 adapter to watch TV.

Obviously the value one sees in HDTVs is largely dependant on whether they actually watch TV or not, and whether they play DVD movies on it. I look at HDTVs like I do my computer, it's a versatile piece of equipment that's worth having, especially if you can get a good price on one.

A good alternative for those that don't want or need anything bigger than 23" in widescreen, and don't care about watching HDTV, is the HP and/or Sony FW900 monitor, which can be had at ebay for $225 with a two year warranty.

It's a 24" (22.5" viewable) 16:10 monitor made for pro level work, they sell as high as $1800 or more brand new. Both the HP and Sony are made by Sony.

One advantage of going this route is the space saving of having one fairly small unit you can use for both games and movies. You can even add an HDTV tuner card to your PC for about $90 - $175, but they seem to be hit or miss on how they compare to good built in tuners in HDTVs. If you live in an area with good TV reception though, it's worth looking into.

A big advantage of going the HDTV tuner card route, is that you can record programs with it, most come with software to do so. HDTV reception is a different animal that analog, you only need to get 51% of the signal to pick it up, but multipath and RF interference can ruin the picture, and cause constant video and audio loss (dropouts).

It's all about signal purity with HDTV, not signal strength, which means the signal strength meters built into most HDTVs tells you very little. I bought a Terk HDTV indoor antenna for mine to see if I could pull in ABC a bit better when the reception with our roof antenna is bad. The Terk I bought is one that is highly directional, with a fishbone type Yagi design.

On each HD broadcast, the signal strength was increased by 50% with the Terk, but being as it was placed indoors, and perhaps for some design reasons of the antenna as well, the reception of ABC AND CBS got noticably worse, much of it caused by multipath reflections coming off my apt building I suspect.

Fortunately Radio Shack fully understands the need to try various methods with things like TV reception, and had no problem taking the Terk back.
__________________________________________________ ______________

Multithreading WILL be common soon, that's why all CPU manufacturers now make multicore procs. My next upgrade on my PC may NOT nclude a multicore proc though. I feel it's too soon to get a proc based on multithreaded apps and progs which there are few of at this point.

One year down the road though, it may be an entirely different story. If sales on single core procs drop off due to more people wanting future readiness reguarding multithreading, the price and speed on the multicores will no doubt get better.

Currently, the multicore procs are ramped down in speed considerably in comparable price ranges when compared to single core, making them actually slower for most games.

There's a guy in a local PC store that always defends his decision to go multicore (mid price level), often arguing even with his fellow employees on the subject. Every time he brings it up, there are only a few games he uses as examples of dual core ready games.

None the less, I feel the 360 offers a lot for it's price, and I'm sure the devs writing for it will soon learn how to juice the most out of it, some may have done so already.

[bjanga]

I just read something about id's BETA patch for Quake4 (PC) that has lots of performance improvements for multicore CPUs. Seems like an x360 update is in the works, as the 360 has multiple cores and the Q4 performance on the 360 is aparrently dismal.

The new consoles will be forcing developers to write multi-threaded code I imagine, so we will probably see some console -> PC ports/adaptations that utilize hyperthreading etc.

[Frag Maniac]

Seems like an x360 update is in the works, as the 360 has multiple cores and the Q4 performance on the 360 is aparrently dismal.There's one big problem with that, they made the 360 two ways (core and full system) to account for those that want to or have to play offline. Coming out with an update for the 360 means they would have to admit not testing properly, and those with core sytems would have to buy addon HDs and get a net connection just to upgrade it.

The only other way to do it would be to take it in to a shop that might be able to firmware upgrade it for you, if in fact they accounted for such things in the design, but I doubt it, such upgrades are generally software driven.

I think it would be a nice idea to have Xbox stores, much like Apple has their Apple stores. They could sell the games (preferably both new and used) and offer repairs, parts, accessories and upgrades in one spot.

They could even make them double as online console cafes and LAN parlors for those that can't afford or don't have means to get broadband connections.

There will no doubt be chip mods made for the 360, solderless ones were common for the original Xbox. Some of the mods I think were designed to allow you to use a PC for storage and patch/mod install, though you still get back to the same problem for those looking to go cheap and unconnected.

[bjanga]

Well, Halo2 got an update over Live, yes? Have other games gotten updates?

[Frag Maniac]

Seems like an x360 update is in the works, as the 360 has multiple cores...This is why I thought you meant a hotfix for the 360 itself, vs a patch for the game, though there remains the problem that those with no HD or net connection cannot access it.

I think the games that have poor performance are likely the cause of some devs not being fully aware yet of how to get the most out of the Xenon CPU.

It would be nice if they'd admit that and make a new disc version of the game that is already patched, and at least offer trade ins for those that bought the original disc. It might be a more affordable option for those that have no HD and ISP.

Seems like it's common anymore that a CD version is made, then a patched DVD version, just to keep sales going if nothing else.

[flu]

In xbox 100 souls must have been eaten to turn demon?

hOW IS IT?