PS3 Fanboy

Okay, so you won't actually be able to recreate Uncharted without thousands of dollars worth of software, a PlayStation 3 dev kit and a considerable amount of talent. However, for anyone who is interested in various aspects of how the game was put together, Naughty Dog has very kindly placed their GDC powerpoint presentations up on their website for anyone to take a peek at.

Topics covered include a post-mortem of the game (which everyone should see), a look at Uncharted's animation pipeline and Naughty Dog's use of the high-detail modeling package, Mudbox, and how it integrates into other modeling software. Some of these will be very technical and might not be particularly interesting to everyone. Animation and 3D modeling students, however, have some new game-specific reading material to sift through. Get stuck in!

[Via PlayStation.Blog]

The latest version of the Home Developer Kit was detailed at a GDC session last week and Joystiq has all the juicy details. Finally developers are able to create assets for Home, including trophies, games and environments. This is great news for everyone waiting for the Home open beta; the more content developers create, the sooner a populated and functioning service can be released to the public.

The Joystiq article also includes a good number of photos taken during the session. These show various aspects of Home that we may or may not have seen before. Included is a shot showing a stress test of the new Home Items feature, which allows people to use various objects within the world - in this instance we can see a large number of people dancing around their bubble machines. Speaking of the bubble machine, it was one of the added features in the new Home beta upgrade which goes live this week. Between the improved beta and the almost-fully-functional developer tools, it can't be too long until we finally see Home in the flesh. So to speak.

At a GDC lecture Haden Blackman, the project lead on The Force Unleashed, stated that Lucasarts has now learned a valuable lesson from its development of the game. All future multiplatform projects will prioritize development on the PS3 before being ported over to the 360. This is a direct result of problems and delays during the development of The Force Unleashed caused by trying to port the 360 version to the PS3. The game is now, thankfully, on track, despite these delays.

A live demo of The Force Unleashed was also shown and, from what we've heard, it looks absolutely stunning. We can't wait for its release this summer.

[Thanks Paul]

Steinburg reaffirmed Sony's attractiveness for small developers to bring their games to the PlayStation Network over Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade. "We don't charge for our online service. We make it available for everybody," he said. "So, the accessibility of somebody's content who decides to make a game that is maybe smaller, more affordable for consumers to buy ... I think if a small, start-up company wanted to have global access to their content, and have global commercial potential for their content, Sony is by far the best platform."

When asked how Sony will counter Gears of War 2's release in November, Steinburg chose to first explain this year's healthy lineup of games throughout the entire year before finally arriving at what it has in store for the end of the year. "I think one of the biggest games for us will be Resistance 2. We expect that, in November, to go toe-to-toe against Gears of War 2. It will be our third-generation PS3 product," he explained. Steinburg did a great job providing Sony's stance and position in the industry without spewing ridiculous assumptions that have been a stable of Sony execs in the past. We just now hope that Sony can follow through on all the great things he said.

Dylan Jobe, in an interview with 1UP, confirmed that Operation Broken Mirror, the rumoured Warhawk expansion, is currently in production. The booster pack will feature a new battlefield (that'll be "Vaporfield Gl..." then) as well as a new vehicle - an Armoured Personnel Carrier that will function as a portable spawn point and equipment producer. Sounds exciting. We're looking forward to seeing more. No doubt Jobe will have a post up on the PlayStation.Blog within the next couple of weeks. He just can't seem to stay away from it.

Jobe also stated that new booster packs will be released "as long as the community exists". New game modes and features will continue to be released in free patches (much like the v1.3 patch that should be hitting the PSN before too long). Splitting content between patches and booster packs means "you can always get free stuff and you always have to option to buy certain content", which we consider to be an excellent philosophy. Finally, Jobe denies that Single Player expansions will ever be released for this iteration of the game, but is definitely something they want to look at for future titles. Whether that's the next Warhawk game, or an entirely different franchise, we look forward to seeing it.

Bionic Commando Rearmed, the PSN remake of the original NES game Bionic Commando (which is receiving a sequel on the PS3 later this year, also entitled Bionic Commando - confused yet?) is pegged to be unleashed onto the PSN Store this May. The news comes out of various interviews during GDC with Capcom representatives. This is a lot earlier than we expected to see it, but we're certainly not complaining!

1Up is also reporting that the PSN version of Rearmed will feature higher-resolution textures than the Xbox Live version. This is due to Microsoft's 150MB limit for games on Xbox Live Arcade putting restrictions on the file size of the game's textures. It's nice to know that Capcom won't have to compromise the quality of the game for the PlayStation Network. We just wonder whether the game will feature a 5GB install ...

Read - "Xbox Live Arcade Size Limits Limiting Capcom Games?" @ 1Up
Read - "Bionic Commando Rearmed aims for May" @ Joystiq

Insomniac Games, developer of Resistance: Fall of Man, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and the upcoming Resistance 2, has today unveiled the Nocturnal Initiative. This project is a collection of developer tools, libraries and code that Insomniac hopes will be used "for addressing common challenges in game development". The initiative was shown off at the Sony PlayStation blogger's lounge at GDC today (photos of which can be seen at the official PlayStation Flickr page).

The Nocturnal Initiative is essentially an open-source collection of solutions to problems that can be encountered during video game development. By sharing these solutions across company boundaries Insomniac hopes to "allow studios to focus more on what sets their games apart and less on the basic building blocks necessary to create a modern game." As a result games will be made faster and to a better quality. We're excited to watch this initiative grow and hope to see it make a big impact in the game industry.

[Via Joystiq]

Logitech has today unveiled the Logitech Driving Force GT, the "official wheel of Gran Turismo". Available in May in both America and Europe, the completely over the top (but totally cool) steering wheel will retail for $149.99. There's no suggested European price, but don't expect it to be much less than £100. It'll be totally worth it according to Logitech's Director of Marketing, Ruben Mookerjee, who says that "with the Logitech Driving Force GT, you're not playing games anymore – you're racing!" Hilarious!

The Driving Force GT is built especially for Gran Turismo 5 and Prologue, but will also work great with Gran Turismo 3 and 4 on the PS2. It has full force-feedback support and if you want to see what the wheel looks like from all sides, be sure to check out our gallery below. We'll have some hands-on impressions up for you from GDC before too long.

We know that, like us, you're just itchy to watch somebody play a couple of levels of upcoming mindbender, Echochrome. Thankfully a couple of videos have snuck out of GDC showing some gameplay, as well as detailing the five laws of perspective that the player will need to learn in order to get anywhere in the game. The game player in the video doesn't seem very good, but let's cut him some slack. This game makes our brains hurt just from the pure puzzling potential.

Confusingly, the PSP version of Echochrome hasn't been announced for the Western world. We're hopeful that it will be, since it features a huge amount of extra levels. Of course, the trade off is that the PSP's graphics will be much lower quality than those seen in these videos (plus it'll be about twice as expensive!) Still, that's a trade off we'd probably be willing to make.

It would seem from these videos that the avatar can be sped up at will, which will surely cut down on waiting times for the game. The camera also seems to move freely, adding an element of precision to an already brain-melting concept. Nevertheless, we can't wait to get our hands on it. The second video can be seen after the jump - see you there!

It's really quite impressive how much Q Games' reputation has improved over the last month or so. PixelJunk Racers was an attempt to bring back arcade-style 2D racers, but ended up an eyesore. Their second PixelJunk title, Monsters, was received much better and has become a staple download by many PS3 owners. So what's next? You've seen the Eden trailer -- what's Cuthbert and crew got coming?

The Independent Games Conference had Cuthbert as a speaker and talked a little about Q Games' philosophy: games that are simple, familiar, and original running in 1080P HD at 60Hz. PixelJunk is a brand, not a game title -- it's meant to teach consumers that while the games are different, they'll know what to expect somewhat. He showed off a sketch of the fourth title to be released after Eden -- PixelJunk Dungeons. It's going to be a top-down dungeon crawler. We're excited for that.

That's the end of the first "series" of PixelJunk games. The next round, Cuthbert teases, may use some 3D styles in ways we don't expect. He said that they would, maybe, "take some of the old 3D looks and bring them up to the full HD kind of style." There's so much more to read over at Gamasutra's coverage of the speech -- if you like the PixelJunk games, we recommend reading up on Cuthbert's plans, philosophies, and ideas.

It's at this point that we truly forgive Q-Games for the travesty that was PixelJunk Racers. PixelJunk Monsters had an awesome graphic style to it, not to mention its rock solid (and rock hard) gameplay and now the latest game in the series, PixelJunk Eden looks to follow suit. The aesthetic quality (or, at least, what we can see of it from the low-res video above) looks like something you'd see on the cover of a Computer Arts magazine. Don't worry, that's a good thing, in our opinion.

Gameplay-wise, the video keeps its cards close to its chest. It's clearly a physics based inertia and momentum simulator that requires you to navigate a constantly morphing landscape in order to collect various items littering the environment. Sounds fairly simple, but hopefully Q-Games will be working their magic and putting some depth into the game. We're looking forward to seeing how this one develops and we simply can't wait until we get our hands on some high-def screenshots. That art style is hypnotic.

GDC takes place this week and, while we'll be reporting everything we possibly can, sometimes it's nicer to hear things straight from the horse's mouth. It seems Sony is aware of this and, on top of having numerous posts planned for the next seven days on the PlayStation.Blog, you can have Sony news sent straight to your mobile phone via Twitter. If you're new to the service, simply sign up and start following the PlayStation.Blog Twitter feed. If you attach your cell phone number to your Twitter account, then it will allow you to receive your friends' updates via text message.

Jeff Rubenstein, of the PlayStation.Blog, will be asking questions of various developers during the show and relaying their responses via the blog and the Twitter feed. Plus, who knows, if there are any interesting announcements made then you may hear about them without being anywhere near your computer. Just make sure you keep checking back here for all the latest PS3 news from GDC 2008.

While it's true that GDC is one of the three main podiums for the Big Three to make their announcements, it's also a place of learning. One of the lectures this year is going to be a walkthrough of how developers can create content for Home. Specifically, creating a Home space, developing 3D-mini games for those spaces and playing around with the "Interactive Item creation".

No doubt the examples used during this lecture will trickle onto to internets, so we can all see they type of thing we should be expecting when Home is finally released. Sony have never been shy about showing off the latest developments with their upcoming online platform, so expect to see quite a bit of new info coming out of GDC this year. Especially since this year's GDC marks a year since Home was first announced.

[Via NeoGAF]