We're publishing a range of articles from our extensive magazine archive. This article was originally published way back in PC Gamer UK February issue 2010, but Sins of a Solar Empire is still awesome.Videogames have made certain fantasies their own. Grand or weird escapades of the imagination inaccessible to books or film. Conquering the galaxy is one such fantasy: taking on the enormity of space itself.Gaming doesn’t get any more grandiose than this. The genre which has traditionally handled space conquest, the 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate, probably best exemplified by the Galactic Civilization games) has normally been a turn-based affair. Indeed, how else would you handle the enormous complexity of trade, fleet-combat, diplomacy, and galactic infrastructure construction? Well, you could do it the way Sins of a Solar Empire does: in real-time.ReinstallReinstall invites you to join us in revisiting PC gaming days gone by. Today, Jim Rossignol commits Sins of a … [Read more...] about Let’s remember how great Sins of a Solar Empire was
Tennessee ernie ford how great thou art
Kaze and the Wild Masks: Designing a great pixel-art character – Unity Blog
Nostalgia can be very powerful, but historical limitations don’t need to curb your creativity. Vox Game Studio shares their experience of designing a 16-bit character that references classic 1990s platformers while also taking advantage of all the tools and options today’s developers have at their disposal. When the studio decided to develop a down-to-earth and straightforward side-scrolling game, they knew they needed an original character that would be more interesting than a standard walking-jumping hero. After some initial research, they settled on a female hare with long and powerful ears that help her glide, attack, throw and more. They named her Kaze. “Of course, we did a lot of exploration before we created the final character, so we want to share our design process to help other game developers with their decision-making,” says Rodrigo Spilimbergo of Vox Game Studio. Determining pixel size and colors While 1990s TVs and computers supported far fewer … [Read more...] about Kaze and the Wild Masks: Designing a great pixel-art character – Unity Blog
How great game explosions are made
This feature originally ran in PC Gamer magazine. To subscribe to either our US or UK edition and have great, exclusive features like this sent to your door every month, head here. Explosions are some of gaming's most dazzling effects. Ever since Doom's toxic barrels let players turn demons into soup, developers have striven to make explosions bigger, more spectacular and more dynamic. Today, explosions appear in all sorts of forms for all sorts of purposes, whether it's starting a revolution in Just Cause, or triggering a tactical chain reaction in Divinity: Original Sin. In a matter of moments, explosions can change dramatically in size, shape and colour. They can be triggered by the player in all kinds of different ways, and radically alter the existing game state. But how do development studios actually tackle these stunning, violent and oh-so-fleeting effects? Chris Judkins is principle VFX artist on Just Cause 4, which aims to continue the series' tradition of … [Read more...] about How great game explosions are made
Astro Bot is another example of how great platformers can be in VR
Astro Bot: Rescue Mission for PlayStation VR takes the adorable robots of augmented reality game The Playroom and its virtual reality sequel, and gives them a full-fledged, stand-alone VR platformer. The action and premise are simple — rescue your fellow ’bots in a series of platforming levels — but Astro Bot is another great example of how much fun 3D platformers can be in virtual reality. Developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Japan Studio, Astro Bot puts you in control of Astro, a robot tasked with finding his missing buddies over the course of 20 levels. Astro can punch enemies and jump over obstacles, using a jetpacklike device to hover (which is immensely helpful in landing jumps in a 3D VR space). There are coins and special “space chameleon” challenges to collect as your run and jump through each level. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission uses the DualShock 4 as an in-game multipurpose gadget. The PS4 controller is rendered as an object in … [Read more...] about Astro Bot is another example of how great platformers can be in VR
The great Kinect art heist
In October 2015 Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles walked into the Neues Museum of Berlin and together stole one of the world's most priceless artefacts: the bust of Queen Nefertiti. And, incredibly, they claim to have used Kinect to do it. It was the older model too, for the Xbox 360. Because, yes, although the bust itself remained safely in place behind a tall box of bulletproof glass in the museum, the pair managed to walk out with an incredibly detailed 3D scan with nobody the wiser. A scan they would later release to the world, for free, without the museum's consent. But... Kinect... seriously? The same hardware we used to play Fable: The Journey is responsible for a scan that looks as good as this? We've been playing around with the scan ourselves. And hang on, how do you even do a secret scan with one of these things. What are the logistics there? Do you strap a Kinect to your chest and hide it under a big coat? Well, yes actually. That's exactly what they did. Here's a … [Read more...] about The great Kinect art heist