Bridger tips news that NCSoft's Tabula Rasa, created in part by Richard Garriott, is running an unusual promotion right now. Garriott is going to the International Space Station on October 12th, and he'll take with him a digital record of the DNA of various players and celebrities. The basic plot of Tabula Rasa is that Earth was attacked and humans almost completely wiped out. Garriott's promotion is playing on that idea; the hard drive with the DNA data will be left in orbit "just in case" something happens to humanity on Earth. NCSoft has been running a variety of polls and contests to include further data about humans on the hard drive. The deadline for joining the project has recently been extended to September 29th.

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GameSetWatch is running a feature about the evolution of game characters' physical presence. In many games, you can look down and not see your feet, or pass right through other players or NPCs. Other games rely on a believable model that can animate and collide with its surroundings. Tom Cross examines some of those scenarios, and also games that raise the bar for having a physical presence, such as the new Alone in the Dark. "Edward Carnby's body is a distinct factor in everything that the player does. Your inventory is carried inside Carnby's leather jacket. To use, drop, or combine items, you must open it wide and look down at your own chest. The healing mechanic, too, reinforces the oft-forgotten fact that you have a body. To heal yourself, you must look at the parts of your body (arms, leg, chest) that are wounded, and then spray them with first-aid liquid. Likewise, when you equip an item, Edward reaches for it, palming it and then switching back to the stock third or first person view."

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CVG spoke with John Carmack about the in-development browser-based version of Quake III Arena called Quake Live. He discusses the development team's reasons for the new project and mentions that current mods will not work. However, he adds, "We're in no way shutting down the original Q3A scene, so anybody who wants to build things with the open-source code is still more than free to do so. That may even become a proving ground for moving things into Quake Live." Carmack also says Quake Live will be fully ad-supported to start, but "it's not out of the question that eventually we'll have some kind of a premium service. But we don't know what it's going to be yet, and we're certainly going out with the completely free-to-play model." We've looked at video clips from Quake Live in the past.

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EA Redwood Shores' Dead Space seems to be one of the few games that has its release constantly moved forward. Shortly after news that the game's European debut was moved up to Oct. 24th, the company announced that the US launch date would be moved up to October 14th. Unfortunately, EA's Ben Swanson also said the game has been banned in China, Germany, and Japan. (Announcement here, sound toggle to the upper right of the page.) Previews of the game are available from Ars and Gamespy.

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VentureBeat has a lengthy story about the situation surrounding the Xbox 360's "Red Ring of Death." It starts with the developmental phases for the 360, looks at the marketing decisions that drove Microsoft to aim for a release ahead of the PS3, and talks with sources and engineers within Microsoft about what could have been done to prevent the problems. Quoting: "Leading up to the launch in the fall of 2005, the number of defective units would soon grow to tens of thousands. Any other consumer electronics company would likely have postponed a launch with such low yields. But Microsoft had more money in the bank than anyone else. The decision this time would fall to Bach and Moore. The costs of launching with low yields -- where you take big losses on every product sold -- could bankrupt other companies. But Microsoft could afford to do so. Microsoft did delay the launch date from October until November. But some inside the company still believed returns would be out of control."

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phanboy_iv writes "Fans of both of the Raven classics, Heretic and Hexen, have been trying for almost a decade to convince Raven Software to release engine source code for the games under the GPL, much like the DOOM engine on which both of them are based. Well, they finally did it! Source code is available at Sourceforge. Both of these games have had the source available for a while, but under a restrictive license that hindered ports and modifications. Now, thanks to dedicated fans, that's no longer a problem."

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SlappingOysters writes "Gameplayer is running an article that examines the key technology developments of the next-generation of gaming. They go into plenty of detail as to why they believe each piece of technology is helping to take gaming on the PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii to more spectacular heights. They also have a related story which takes a look at the best game engines of next-generation games."

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The extent to which a game's sounds and music can affect a player's enjoyment is often overshadowed by other characteristics, such as graphics or gameplay. That said, I'm sure most players have had an experience where the audio really contributed to making the game great, whether it was an epic soundtrack, excellent narration, or just intuitive sound effects. Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running a feature discussing the state of game audio in today's market, discussing how far it has come, and where it's going. "Games present some unusual problems, like the mix having to adjust itself to suit a situation created by the player, rather than the static vision of a single director. Game designers have to have a flexible attitude towards factors such as the amount of time spent listening to the same piece of music and the potential for sonic overload if too many game sounds are played simultaneously. ... CryTek's Florian Füsslin explained that Crysis' lavish soundscape was defined primarily by what information the player needs to hear. 'We often went for the concept "less is more" or let's better say "important things first." We used a pretty solid priority system which cuts quiet or unimportant sounds in an audio busy situation like combat. Together with the right mix we were able to provide a dense soundscape in all situations players might run into.'"

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Zonk brings word that Multiverse, the developer who in 2006 acquired the rights to make a Firefly-based MMO, has announced that a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer MMO is now under development. An interview with Corey Bridges from Multiverse seems to indicate that the Firefly MMO, though delayed, is not dead. He also provides a few details on what the Buffy game will be like. Quoting: "What we're doing with the Buffy game then is releasing it in stages. It will first be a flash-based virtual world, with the full Multiverse server behind it. ... So it will start as a 2D flash-based MMO where you can go on missions and interact with other players. This will extend even once we have the 3D client working, where you can both interact with players using the other point of view. We're going to have these shared spaces where 2D and 3D people can interact. All of this will come out in phases, with staged gameplay coming out. We're sort of blazing a path with this concept, and we're really interested in what this might mean for players of the two versions. ... I'd love to get [a public beta] out to players by the end of the year."

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Edge Magazine is running a piece about Heavy Rain, a thriller by Quantic Dream that's been in development for a few years now. Edge spoke with David Cage, the game's writer and director, about using graphics technology not simply for breathtaking landscapes or realistic lighting, but to bring the characters to life and make them more believable. Cage walked the folks at Kotaku through a demo, and they provided details on how the controls will work. From Edge: "'We worked very hard on motion capture, especially facial motion capture,' explains Cage. 'As you know, eyes are incredibly hard to do: the minute movements they constantly make mean you can tell whether something is human or not. We created a technology to motion-capture that from actors.' The shaders applied to the lead character's eyes and the skin that surrounds them also conspire to nudge Heavy Rain's characters closer to believability. The 'deadness' that so often afflicts such digital mannequins has been significantly chipped away, and we are presented with Madison, a character whose facial features, though attractive in an expectedly unnatural sort of way, also carry blemishes that succeed in breaking down her artificiality."

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Kotaku notes that the suspected price cuts to the various Xbox 360 systems have been confirmed. Xbox Live's Major Nelson posted the new prices ($199 for the Arcade, $299 for the Pro, and $399 for the Elite) and pointed out a BusinessWeek story discussing the changes. The price cuts will take effect on September 5th.

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The folks over at DIII.net combed through information from Blizzard employees about the revamped Battle.net that is slated to debut with Starcraft II. New features will include Achievements for various old and new Blizzard games, improved communication and community features, and better replay and spectating functionality.

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Ciaran_H writes "Command & Conquer: Red Alert 1 was released as freeware on C&C's 13th anniversary. The Soviet and Allied CDs are available for download on EA's site. With the freeware release of the original Command & Conquer: Tiberium Dawn having taken place last year for the 12th anniversary, two of the most popular RTS games are now available completely free." EA is also offering a free download of Red Alert 2 with a pre-order of the upcoming Red Alert 3. The above link has a trailer for the new game, which includes appearances from George Takei, Tim Curry, Jenny McCarthy, and others.

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Gamasutra is running a feature from Game Developer magazine in which Bioshock's project leader writes about what went right and what went wrong making last year's award-winning shooter, Bioshock. He talks about what the developers learned from fans and focus groups, how long it took them to firmly define what the game was supposed to be, and how they tried to reconcile their ideas with their capabilities. Quoting: "...just after the first beta, the entire design team plus a contingent of 2K producers headed off to see how a group that knew nothing about our company or BioShock would react to the first level. It was brutal. The first level, they said, was overly dense, confusing, and not particularly engaging. Players would acquire new powers but not know how to use them, so they stuck to using more traditional weapons and became frustrated. They didn't interact with the Big Daddies, and they didn't understand (or care) how to modify their characters. They were so overwhelmed by dialogue and backstory that they missed key information. A few of the players did start to see the possible depth of the game, but even they were frustrated by the difficulty of actually using the systems we had created."

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knypha writes "Several sites are reporting that the much anticipated SPORE has been released 5 days ahead of the scheduled release date in Australia. I can confirm that SPORE is sitting on shelves in retailers and for the tidy sum of A$95.95 it can be yours. Why the early release exactly seems to be a matter of contention. No news if the game can actually be played yet or if the lucky early punters will still have to wait till the official release when EA allows for any validation process to occur. I guess EA could possibly be using the relatively small population to test the servers...or someone somewhere stuffed up!"

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