Uplift of Enlightenment

This is the most awesome Speedrun I have ever seen: Portal in 9m 25s (World Record)! The guy is just blazing through the levels in a way where – even if you played the game – at many points you will have no idea where he is. Of course this is mainly due to the fact that he is exploiting the even craziest glitches in the game engine. He literally broke out of the intended game path, like the test subject broke out of glados’ test path during the portal storyline. He even presents some of them that are not required for speed at all, but just to show off his skills and the possibilities with the engine (for example how to reach the room with the cake)…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1U5RUVENNE

Even more amazing though i found the commentary videos that he provided (making the speedrun even more awesome). In those he explains exactly which glitches he used and demonstrates live (and proofing no hacks used), how difficult it must have been to do the levels and find the glitches. You can watch him trying 100s of times while recording for the commentary video. Man, I admire his patience!! A definite must watch for anyone into computer games, game engines (or game development in general) and portal geeks of course: First part of the commentary (1 of 15):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziuj8KW_XQ0

Some dude actually applied genetic algorithms (searching an optimal solution to a problem by evolution) to find the best build order to a Rush on Starcraft 2. And its amazing that the algorithm actually revealed such a tactic, that more astonishing “violates several well-known (and well-adhered-to) heuristics used by Starcraft players when creating builds” – which means it has not been that much investigated by players yet. Why is this amazing? Because in a quick video the tactics shows to be extremely effective – making the player win 17 out of 20 within the first few minutes…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH1ucvJomlY

[via lbrandy.com]

I was kind of surprised to find this video the other day. Of course i have been dreaming about a multi-screen setup for my pc since i can click a mouse button, but i always hesitated to actually buy myself the equipment. To be honest, it is just kind of expensive to buy more than one up-to-date graphics card, not to mention a second computer. The monitors itself are not a problem anymore since the 24″ are getting kind of cheap. Now i didnt know about the feature this guy in the video is presenting. Xbox 360 seems to have the ability to connect up to 5 consoles and have the same game running and being displayed on 5 screens. Now that scheds a completely new light on my opinion on gaming with a console. Especially since those are not that expensive…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96LKRtJvIQw

Thiago Costa (Lead Technical Director at Ubisoft Digital Arts) released a teaser on his blog about his latest project: The Lagoa Multiphysics Engine 1.0 – and i really hope this is what gaming will look like pretty soon too! There are also a few other projects on his blog that are worth having a peek at… for example if you did not have a chance to see Assassin’s Creed Lineage yet – a short movie about the story just before the beginning of Assassin’s Creed 2 – you should definitely have a look.

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 – Teaser from Thiago Costa on Vimeo.

via www.noob.us

After i saw the teaser at AUSSERTECH.labz i looked for some more info on the Portal 2, which has been announced for 2011. I loved the first one so immediately went hunting the netz for more info and I found the E3 Demo on Youtube. Some of you might know the indie game TAG and will recognize some inspiration for portal 2’s new puzzle gimmicks.