Woke up at 11 am and my cousin had his confirmation which I’d skipped. I slept in for a long time until 12:30. Then I went down in my ‘other’ room and did the usual. Then I stayed up until 1am watching John Carpenter’s The Thing, Halloween, and Van Heising. I was very surprised that Mom wanted 4 movies instead of one. Mom also bought got Independence Day and The Exorcist. I picked Independence Day because I liked that movie. The Thing remake was probably the scariest movie ever made, but when you’d played all 5 Resident Evil games - you’re a little more used to the gore thus being less scared when certain scenes pop up. The scariest scene had to be at the beginning when the mutant husky was really an alien spider, and (like Alien) it came out of the dog’s body in a gory way – testacies, blood, mutant guts. Near the end of the film, there was a head within head scene – they’ve been doing that forever. It’s not very original now-a-days although this film has been made 20 years ago and didn’t keep it from scaring me at the beginning – before I was expecting testicles to shoot out of the dog’s body and the dog to turn into a monster… The other John Carpenter film, Halloween, was less scary. Van Heising is as much a fantasy as a horror film – did not anticipate and it was PG-13 so nothing about it was scary unlike Halloween and The Thing.
What changed between last year and this year? Well, I have a more powerful pc, new Xbox, a slightly used PS2, a slightly used Genesis, slightly used SNES, slightly used NES and more importantly added approximately 100 games in my collection. During this time, I haven’t bought 1 music album. I successfully completed 4 college courses towards my degree in “CNAA Industrial Networking”. I kept the same number of friends for 2 years – no more, no less. My MP3 collection grown to 11 Gigabytes! The MP3 player I got 2 years ago recorded Music Choice stations off DirecTV and contributed about 8% of that. Most importantly I am the happiest I ever was in 2 years.
My black cat got sick and started puking up mucus on Saturday. Onyx is 16 years old. The vet’s office was closed. I was hoping that it wasn’t his last days with us. Our dog, Ruby, is 10 and she’s got arthritis in her hip and it’s hard to go up and down the stairs. I just shoved down a puke pill down the cat’s throat, and hoping it makes him feel better. Amimal’s die sooner or later….although Onyx was the first cat our family had which wasn’t mean. Boo was an angry cat with a temper that hissed at Mom and Dad. Never remember him since I was 2 at the time. My family doesn’t miss him one bit. I don’t remember him at all because he died in 1986. I’m 20 today and that cat’s still hanging around – amazing isn’t it? I was trying to get Iris to be a lap cat, but she’s still too anxious. Her brother, Ambrious, is a much better lap cat. He plays with his water dish and splashes water all over. He’s also very hungry cat – stealing food at the first opportunity. That really pisses my mom off. The two kittens got “fixed” today. They are always together and Iris more than likely would have kittens soon. Don’t tell me how we got Ambrious….his name should have been Garfield. LOL
I bought a Gameboy Player for the Gamecube two days ago. I have 5 GBA games and I don’t play them, so it adds GBA functionality to the Gamecube. I thought it was a emulator too, but it’s actual Gameboy Advance hardware that uses Gamecube’s RCA input adapter and Gamecube controller to play. I almost regret buying it, though I wish I had found my copy of Mario Kart Super Circuit – that was my favorite GBA game. Would have had been a blast to play on the TV. Mario Kart Super Circuit had all the Super Mario Kart tracks after I’ve beaten all the tricks on all settings in 1st place. It’s fun shooting Nintendo characters with shells. I need to get a new RCA adapter since the old one is showing lines and it would be nice to get rid of them.
Nintendo Dual Screen comes out at the end of this month. No doubt in my mind, Nintendo will soon release a Gamecube peripheral that replaces the Gameboy Player. Perhaps the new peripheral will be called DS player? It’s confirmed that DS will be backwards compatible with GBA games, but not GBC games. In a sense, Nintendo has 6 products out: Gamecube, Dual Screen, GBA, GBA SP, Gameboy Player, and those new Pokemon Game&Watches. So I have 4 of the 6. Shall I buy a Dual screen or not? Nope. However, I might buy a DS Player when it comes out for Gamecube.
You know, I can’t really seem to figure out how to make my blog more interesting. My blog is very opinionated I know. I don’t see my blog as being so negative. Every reader should enjoy reading videogames. It’s not only a kid’s play thing like it used to be so come on. Remember back on those three “Generations 1985 – 2001” posts. I mean I wrote 22 pages in word for that. Part 1 is a refined version of my “Console Wars” page. Those did very well getting over 140 views each.
Most popular posts are:
1.) “I have 335 videogames v1.15” (updated regularly)
2.) “Action Replay Max is the way to go if you own PS2”
3.) “I was running Dreamcast on my PC today”
4.) I'm downloading DIVX codec for the first time
5.) My PC had the crash of the century. Read more....
6.) “CD64 & DV64: The only 2 N64 CD-ROM add-ons”
7.) I'm getting a Fluke Meter, they are fun.
8.) PC is the Winner of Best Gaming Platform Read more
9.) And I thought N64 was dead
10.) “Half-life 2 uses triangular pixel maps”
11.) I had my Saturn emulator running Daytona USA!!!
12.) “Had my PSone Emulator working | with Bios”
At 8:30 pm, my dad finally got home and I got $220 spending cash in an envelope. I don’t know what I want to spend it on though. I am going to try to stay away from videogames. It would be enough to buy a Nintendo DS. I probably will wait and see if my PS2 is going break so than I can buy a new one right away! I much rather use the money next year on a next generation console.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
A few Super Mario clones | Morrowind Mods I like
Welcome back to the ultimate Modblog gaming site. Today, you’ve all asked me, but here I go with the latest Super Mario Freeware on the Internet today. Of course, the ultimate Super Mario game didn’t appear on PC by chance…but I can say if found itself on my PC. My favorite is still emulating Super Mario 64. That’s right, it’s far better than any of these 2D clones. However, second place can be pretty difficult to judge. There are so many versions.
Here are some clones I found:
Super Mario Forever 2.16 – I know the name is kind of stupid, but it’s based on the SNES upgrade in Super Mario All Stars of Super Mario 3. The only thing is it’s easily the best freeware game with Mario in it. I beat it and it’s easily the better freeware ones you can download. Polish developers made this game. The levels get more interesting as the game progresses. I recommend this game.
Graphics 10/10 (excellent)
Gameplay 9/10 (uses near perfect platform mechanics)
Sound 10/10 (he got the best Mario fan-made remixes on the net and put it in the game)
Original 6/10 (not too original, but it’s a Mario game)
Download Size 18 MB (very large for a game staring Mario)
Super Mario Forever 2.16
Super Mario XP 1.3 – I’ve known this one for about a year now. It’s a brilliant mix of Mario, mushroom world and Castlevania. For one, mushroom world never looked so dark. The graphics are rendered after SMB1 for NES. This is the only mature Mario of the bunch. Craving a Mario game with blood? You got it. Mario explodes when he dies – literally. Score 8.0/10
Graphics 6/10 (great)
Gameplay 8/10 (above average)
Sound 9/10 (great Mario remixes)
Original 6/10 (not too original, but it’s a Mario game)
Download Size 5 MB (great size for the features)
Super Mario XP
Super Mario Worlds – basically a new game based on Super Mario All Stars graphics. It’s okay, but I like Super Mario Forever much more.
Graphics 8.5/10 (great)
Gameplay 8/10 (above average)
Sound 9/10 (great Mario remixes)
Original 6/10 (not too original, but it’s a Mario game)
Download Size 5 MB (great size for the features)
Super Mario Kamek's Revenge 2.6 – a playable, but slow version of any Super Mario game. This game is probably not worth your time. I find it funny that this game is so bad after version 2.6. Haha!
Graphics 5/10 (just bad)
Gameplay 7/10 (has potential)
Sound 8/10 (has potential)
Original 6/10 (not too original, but it’s a Mario game)
Download Size 1.5 MB (tiny)
South Park Mario Enhanced 1.0 – Probably the oldest of all the freeware games. South Park Mario replaces Mario with Kenny, a South Park character, but everything else from Super Mario Bros. stays the same. Worst of all - it’s shareware! You’re better off finding a NES emulator and playing the rom. First version came out in 1999.
South Park Mario Enhanced 1.0 Download page
South Park Mario 2 – Sequel to South Park Mario. This version has Kenny star in Super Mario Bros 2. Unlike the original, Kenny is the only playable character. Super Mario Bros 2 was okay, I just didn’t like it as much as the original.
South Park Mario 2 Download page
If Mario doesn’t excite you, I advise you to check out the new fan based improvements for the forgotten RPG, Morrowind. I’m impressed at the new face models. It looks like this designer succeeded in making faces that look a lot better with lower polygon count than the original ones. Morrowind Facial Improvements. The surprise is with all the upgrades, Morrowind may look as pretty as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion coming out next year. Khalazza Productions has a great update texture zip file. It updates all the existing textures in the game except for characters.
I am going to re-install Morrowind and apply all upgrades I downloaded within the last 2 years tonight. True, Morrowind is a slightly out-dated RPG, but it still looks halfway decent on my computer. I like to mug people at night and be a thief. I don’t like to kill people because than I will have the local vendetta after me for the rest of the game. I even played with cheat codes, because I enjoy being invincible. I do play mortal once in a while….after my characters HP level is 200. I got to a point where half the time I played an assassin wanted to kill me. I think there is a faq on Gamefaqs.com that tells gamers how to make your character extremely intelligent, high charisma, high wisdom and 5 bonus skills at the start of the game.
[One day later] I installed Morrowind and the expansion, Tribunal. The game is huge and really does support better graphics than the Xbox version, Morrowind Game of the Year Edition. Since I wanted to see how far I get without cheating, I just pick knight and pick any old symbol. I save my game once in town. Then I try to hit someone with a dagger and see if I could swim away. The guard’s sword had “knockback” and that kept me from going anywhere. Three hits with that thing and I was died. I can not get anywhere without a good sword. I must get to the trading city of Balmona so I can join a guild. Balmona is the best city in the game. It is best to keep off the trail and stay clear of enemies. I join the fighter’s guild there and do some quests. The last one I barely survived in. You’d have to play the game to know what I’m talking about here. I’m kind of melee guy. No magic, no intelligence, just a sword and willpower to be brave (and pretty stupid at times) Now I could get armor, but I’m already died if I don’t have a long sword. So I am saving up for that. Putting all my money towards it. The money cheat is temping but I will not cheap this time. The world looks pretty. The faces are ugly by today’s standards, but I’ve improved it by downloading all the plugins containing improved faces from that website listed above. It really does the trick. At home I was looking for the texture service pack that Khalazza Productions made. I have the outdated 2.1 version somewhere on my November 2003 data CD. It crashed last time so I’ll have to scan the file for viruses if I do find it. It really does upgrade the textures. Most game developers are finding out that textures matter much more than polygons. If you go to that first link two paragraphs above, you can see how the artist reduced polygons in the face while vastly improving the textures. Morrowind has a prettier graphics engine than Neverwinter Nights and also Morrowind is both a 3rd person and first person RPG and I like first person view. TAB alternates between the views. Unfortunately, I can’t get the game to recognize the new face models I added to the directory. My guess is that the files only support the retail version of Morrowind. The Tribunal installation patches Morrowind to version 1.3.
I’ll post a new entry in 4 more days after I think of something cool. Until then - I’ll frag in UT2004. C-ya. Birthday’s on Monday! It’s going to be interesting what gifts I get. I’m hoping for a new iPod or cd player for my truck or maybe more memory so I can upgrade that backup PC to 1GB!
Here are some clones I found:
Super Mario Forever 2.16 – I know the name is kind of stupid, but it’s based on the SNES upgrade in Super Mario All Stars of Super Mario 3. The only thing is it’s easily the best freeware game with Mario in it. I beat it and it’s easily the better freeware ones you can download. Polish developers made this game. The levels get more interesting as the game progresses. I recommend this game.
Graphics 10/10 (excellent)
Gameplay 9/10 (uses near perfect platform mechanics)
Sound 10/10 (he got the best Mario fan-made remixes on the net and put it in the game)
Original 6/10 (not too original, but it’s a Mario game)
Download Size 18 MB (very large for a game staring Mario)
Super Mario Forever 2.16
Super Mario XP 1.3 – I’ve known this one for about a year now. It’s a brilliant mix of Mario, mushroom world and Castlevania. For one, mushroom world never looked so dark. The graphics are rendered after SMB1 for NES. This is the only mature Mario of the bunch. Craving a Mario game with blood? You got it. Mario explodes when he dies – literally. Score 8.0/10
Graphics 6/10 (great)
Gameplay 8/10 (above average)
Sound 9/10 (great Mario remixes)
Original 6/10 (not too original, but it’s a Mario game)
Download Size 5 MB (great size for the features)
Super Mario XP
Super Mario Worlds – basically a new game based on Super Mario All Stars graphics. It’s okay, but I like Super Mario Forever much more.
Graphics 8.5/10 (great)
Gameplay 8/10 (above average)
Sound 9/10 (great Mario remixes)
Original 6/10 (not too original, but it’s a Mario game)
Download Size 5 MB (great size for the features)
Super Mario Kamek's Revenge 2.6 – a playable, but slow version of any Super Mario game. This game is probably not worth your time. I find it funny that this game is so bad after version 2.6. Haha!
Graphics 5/10 (just bad)
Gameplay 7/10 (has potential)
Sound 8/10 (has potential)
Original 6/10 (not too original, but it’s a Mario game)
Download Size 1.5 MB (tiny)
South Park Mario Enhanced 1.0 – Probably the oldest of all the freeware games. South Park Mario replaces Mario with Kenny, a South Park character, but everything else from Super Mario Bros. stays the same. Worst of all - it’s shareware! You’re better off finding a NES emulator and playing the rom. First version came out in 1999.
South Park Mario Enhanced 1.0 Download page
South Park Mario 2 – Sequel to South Park Mario. This version has Kenny star in Super Mario Bros 2. Unlike the original, Kenny is the only playable character. Super Mario Bros 2 was okay, I just didn’t like it as much as the original.
South Park Mario 2 Download page
If Mario doesn’t excite you, I advise you to check out the new fan based improvements for the forgotten RPG, Morrowind. I’m impressed at the new face models. It looks like this designer succeeded in making faces that look a lot better with lower polygon count than the original ones. Morrowind Facial Improvements. The surprise is with all the upgrades, Morrowind may look as pretty as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion coming out next year. Khalazza Productions has a great update texture zip file. It updates all the existing textures in the game except for characters.
I am going to re-install Morrowind and apply all upgrades I downloaded within the last 2 years tonight. True, Morrowind is a slightly out-dated RPG, but it still looks halfway decent on my computer. I like to mug people at night and be a thief. I don’t like to kill people because than I will have the local vendetta after me for the rest of the game. I even played with cheat codes, because I enjoy being invincible. I do play mortal once in a while….after my characters HP level is 200. I got to a point where half the time I played an assassin wanted to kill me. I think there is a faq on Gamefaqs.com that tells gamers how to make your character extremely intelligent, high charisma, high wisdom and 5 bonus skills at the start of the game.
[One day later] I installed Morrowind and the expansion, Tribunal. The game is huge and really does support better graphics than the Xbox version, Morrowind Game of the Year Edition. Since I wanted to see how far I get without cheating, I just pick knight and pick any old symbol. I save my game once in town. Then I try to hit someone with a dagger and see if I could swim away. The guard’s sword had “knockback” and that kept me from going anywhere. Three hits with that thing and I was died. I can not get anywhere without a good sword. I must get to the trading city of Balmona so I can join a guild. Balmona is the best city in the game. It is best to keep off the trail and stay clear of enemies. I join the fighter’s guild there and do some quests. The last one I barely survived in. You’d have to play the game to know what I’m talking about here. I’m kind of melee guy. No magic, no intelligence, just a sword and willpower to be brave (and pretty stupid at times) Now I could get armor, but I’m already died if I don’t have a long sword. So I am saving up for that. Putting all my money towards it. The money cheat is temping but I will not cheap this time. The world looks pretty. The faces are ugly by today’s standards, but I’ve improved it by downloading all the plugins containing improved faces from that website listed above. It really does the trick. At home I was looking for the texture service pack that Khalazza Productions made. I have the outdated 2.1 version somewhere on my November 2003 data CD. It crashed last time so I’ll have to scan the file for viruses if I do find it. It really does upgrade the textures. Most game developers are finding out that textures matter much more than polygons. If you go to that first link two paragraphs above, you can see how the artist reduced polygons in the face while vastly improving the textures. Morrowind has a prettier graphics engine than Neverwinter Nights and also Morrowind is both a 3rd person and first person RPG and I like first person view. TAB alternates between the views. Unfortunately, I can’t get the game to recognize the new face models I added to the directory. My guess is that the files only support the retail version of Morrowind. The Tribunal installation patches Morrowind to version 1.3.
I’ll post a new entry in 4 more days after I think of something cool. Until then - I’ll frag in UT2004. C-ya. Birthday’s on Monday! It’s going to be interesting what gifts I get. I’m hoping for a new iPod or cd player for my truck or maybe more memory so I can upgrade that backup PC to 1GB!
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Intel plans to stop Pentium 4 line at 3.8 GHz!
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I got some bad news for people wanting to buy a Pentium 4 at a monstrous 4 GHz because that’s not going to happen this year. P4s have been out since 2001 and it’s nearing 2005 so Intel will start Pentium 5s at 4 GHz. I Think Pentium 4s have been out longer than Pentium 3s or Pentium 2s. The highest MHz you can buy is 3.8 GHz. Intel feels that it can not have a market for 4 GHz and they are right, of course. I only have 3.2 GHz in my computer. It’s still great and very reliable although it’s a Dell PC. Dells suck, I know, but it was free so I had to take it. Actually, the motherboard, keyboard are made by Dell, everything else is made from 3rd party including ATI (video card), Western Digital (hd) , Creative Labs (soundcard) , Artic (DVD-RW), Samsung (DVD/RW). The mouse is from Logitech. I seriously doubt my keyboard will stop working tomorrow or a year from now.
I’m thinking that Pentium 5 will be 64-bit with a much higher clock speed than Athlon 64. Athlon 64 currently can outperform Pentium 4 in operation cycles. Intel says that it’s developing dual cores on a single dye with state-of-the-art technology making manufacturing costs of the “Pentium 5” less costly. Come on everyone – even though it’s not officially announced – there will be a Pentium 5 announcement soon.
Okay now for the interesting part that hurts us all. Intel has technology that stays secret like magnetic ram which are more technically advance than Pentium 4s and 64-bit Xeon CPUs. Intel is developing stuff in their labs that will come out in 2015 as quote “state-of-the-art” in consumer terms. I know - it’s scaring me too. The point is…they are using our money on their cheap technology. Instead of releasing a 10 GHz Xeon processor that will surely blow everything on the market, Intel decides to release 100 MHz every month which is pitiful. The silly part is about it is we pay big bucks for their fast processor and they know I can’t do anything about their strategy waiting until 2008 until they release a 10 GHz processor. They have a 64-bit 10 GHz processor prototype in the final stages and will not mass produce it. It’s not crazy – it’s the truth. That ensures the company will continue to grow. Doesn’t that make you sick? It makes me sick!
I was talking to a former British citizen at Toyriffic. He looks about my age and he’s married – which was a little odd. I came there with the agenda of buying either King of Fighters or Marvel vs. Capcom 2. MvC2 is 50 bucks! Last time I was there it was only $20. The King of Fighters ’99 Evolution for Dreamcast was $70! So I ended up buying the Playstation version which was only 11 dollars. I believe the difference between the two is the Playstation version ran at 30 fps, and the Dreamcast version ran at 60 fps. So when I got home, I put it in the tray and play. It comes with 32 players to play and the music was 80s rock. I have Fatal Fury - Dance of the Wolves for DC, and that was a prequel to the King of Fighters. It plays a lot like King of Fighters ’99 Evolution I can now see. King of Fighters still has that old-school look too it. (mostly a art style done in the mid-90s still used in the 2000s)
I spend Thursday night reading The King of Fighters history after I learned that the Neo Geo CD by SNK was the first CD-format console running at 1x. Playstation had a 4x cd-rom in it – a major improvement. What Neo Geo had that Playstation didn’t in the early days was Metal Slug and all the King of Fighter games from ’94 up to 2001 plus all the Fatal Fury games. All three games made their way to Playstation largely to do to it’s the most popular console ever in the history of man kind. For some strange reason, Neo Geo CD is more popular now state-side than it ever was in 1994. One day SNK will release a full anthology of all King of Fighters. Expect SNK will soon re-release all the King of Fighters in the states before the PS3 comes out. They’ve already did KOF’94and KOF 2000/2001 two years ago. If you count Dreamcast’s KOF ’99, that makes 4 games that made it state-side. According to the British retailer back at Toyriffic, KOF ’97 was the best of the series because it featured the best game play and graphics. The graphics supported the engine of the KOF ’94.
The only other 2D fighters are Viewiful Joe, Guilty Gear, King of Fighters and the occasional Street Fighter.
New games to add to vg list:
1.) King of Fighters ’99 Evolution
2.) Sly
3.) Gradius V
After the game store I spent time playing UT2004. I got at the masterful skill level without ranking at the bottom of the chart. It wasn’t pitiful to say the least. The game still has its really high points. If you’ve been to my IGN page, you’ve would have seen that I rated UT2004 a 9.9/10 because it’s perfect on nearly all levels, and the only thing not perfect is the pc specs it needs to run the game. I have 3 computers that can run it though. Shooting is good way to get the stress off me.
I am going either tomorrow or next week to pick up copies of Guilty Gear X or Guilty Gear X2. I know I can get Guilty Gear Isuka at Shopko, but 50 dollars is a steep price to pay for a 2D fighter even though it looks excellent for a 2D fighter. The guy at the game store said the newest one in the series is a pretty fun game. Sammy makes Guilty Gear and is the same guys who bought out SEGA of JAPAN, SEGA OF AMERICA, SEGA of Europe. That’s one reason why Sega stopped making DCs in 2001. Also the piracy has been apparent that the GD-ROMS could be copied. I learned today that GD-ROMS were available for the PC for a short time period thus DC games could be backup to disc images and presto you’ve gotten yourself a illegal DC game. Chankast makes Dreamcast emulation possible on the PC. In 1999, there were rumors that Xbox was supposed to be backwards compatible with Dreamcast discs, but the rumors were misinterpreted, and Sega was developing games for Xbox.
I feel very aggravated see there are some 3 very high anticipated games coming out on October 25th including Grand Thief Auto San Andreas, re-release of Fatal Frame 2 (the prequel is extremely hard to find now), and Dead or Alive Ultimate. Out of the 3, Fatal Frame will be sold in the least copies. Grand Thief Auto and DoA will sell by the millions so there will always be a used copy available. DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball clearly has a graphics engine that makes every other engine outdated. I suspect the price to be reduced to 20 dollars within February 2005 – March 2005 time period. Anyways, DOA Ultimate looks awesome and will probably be playing the same way as DOA 3 back in 2001. DOA: Ultimate combines Xbox versions of Dead or Alive and Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore and allows all the characters of both games to be played in all the stages first appearing in those games. In fact, I own DOA 2 for Dreamcast, and it’s one of the best Dreamcast games that came out in my opinion. The second best 3D fighter that came out for the system at least – next to Soul Caliber. Lots of propaganda like bouncing boobies, female fighters showing more skin than usual, and realistic body movement. Those standard intros and extros by each DOA fighter either victory poses or defeat both of which are great additions.
Other news is I finally played a game I bought last year, Shenmue 2. Shenmue is mostly RPG at it’s roots, but also has Virtua Fighter moves built into it. Your weapons are your body unlike swords, axes, mauls, polearms, or magic in dungeons and dragons RPGs the USA is known for. It looked great, played great, but somehow I got Shenmue’s back pack stolen within the first 30 minutes. The thieves took it from Shenmue, and I really didn’t have time to look for them, didn’t know where to start. Some of you may not remember Shenmue 2 on Dreamcast, but it was one of Dreamcast’s exceptional titles. Shenmue 2’s version of Hong Kong is absolutely huge, and those guys could have been anywhere – that was when I turned my Xbox off.
I remember when the PC RPG universe exploded after Diablo 2 came out. Before 2000, there were few RPGs to buy, now there are 2 new releases every month. No doubt I’m getting Half-life 2 a few days after the launch date, November 16th.
Here are some reviews I like and recommend:
IGN's Review of Full Specrium Warrior
IGN's Review of Guilty Gear X2
IGN's Review of Guilty Gear X
IGN's Review of Guilty Gear Isuka
Here is the entire Xbox 2 outline I found from another website, I found it irresistible to post it on here so here it is
Xenon Hardware Overview
By Pete Isensee, Development Lead, Xbox Advanced Technology Group
This documentation is an early release of the final documentation, which may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release, and is confidential and proprietary information of MS Corporation. It is disclosed pursuant to a nondisclosure agreement between the recipient and MS.
“Xenon” is the code name for the successor to the Xbox® game console from MS. Xenon is expected to launch in 2005. This white paper is designed to provide a brief overview of the primary hardware features of the console from a game developer’s standpoint.
Caveats
In some cases, sizes, speeds, and other details of the Xenon console have not been finalized. Values not yet finalized are identified with a “+” sign, indicating that the numbers may be larger than indicated here. At the time of this writing, the final console is many months from entering production. Based on our experience with Xbox, it’s likely that some of this information will change slightly for the final console.
For additional information on various hardware components, see the other relevant white papers.
Hardware Goals
Xenon was designed with the following goals in mind:
•Focus on innovation in silicon, particularly features that game developers need. Although all Xenon hardware components are technologically advanced, the hardware engineering effort has concentrated on digital performance in the CPU and GPU.
•Maximize general purpose processing performance rather than fixed-function hardware. This focus on general purpose processing puts the power into the Xenon software libraries and tools. Rather than being hamstrung by particular hardware designs, software libraries can support the latest and most efficient techniques.
•Eliminate the performance issues of the past. On Xbox, the primary bottlenecks were memory and CPU bandwidth. Xenon does not have these limitations.
Basic Hardware Specifications
Xenon is powered by a 3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor and a 500+ MHz ATI graphics processor. Xenon has 256+ MB of unified memory. Xenon runs a custom operating system based on MS® Windows NT®, similar to the Xbox operating system. The graphics interface is a superset of MS® Direct3D® version 9.0.
CPU
The Xenon CPU is a custom processor based on PowerPC technology. The CPU includes three independent processors (cores) on a single die. Each core runs at 3.5+ GHz. The Xenon CPU can issue two instructions per clock cycle per core. At peak performance, Xenon can issue 21 billion instructions per second.
The Xenon CPU was designed by IBM in close consultation with the Xbox team, leading to a number of revolutionary additions, including a dot product instruction for extremely fast vector math and custom security features built directly into the silicon to prevent piracy and hacking.
Each core has two symmetric hardware threads (SMT), for a total of six hardware threads available to games. Not only does the Xenon CPU include the standard set of PowerPC integer and floating-point registers (one set per hardware thread), the Xenon CPU also includes 128 vector (VMX) registers per hardware thread. This astounding number of registers can drastically improve the speed of common mathematical operations.
Each of the three cores includes a 32-KB L1 instruction cache and a 32-KB L1 data cache. The three cores share a 1-MB L2 cache. The L2 cache can be locked down in segments to improve performance. The L2 cache also has the very unusual feature of being directly readable from the GPU, which allows the GPU to consume geometry and texture data from L2 and main memory simultaneously.
Xenon CPU instructions are exposed to games through compiler intrinsics, allowing developers to access the power of the chip using C language notation.
GPU
The Xenon GPU is a custom 500+ MHz graphics processor from ATI. The shader core has 48 Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) that can execute 64 simultaneous threads on groups of 64 vertices or pixels. ALUs are automatically and dynamically assigned to either pixel or vertex processing depending on load. The ALUs can each perform one vector and one scalar operation per clock cycle, for a total of 96 shader operations per clock cycle. Texture loads can be done in parallel to ALU operations. At peak performance, the GPU can issue 48 billion shader operations per second.
The GPU has a peak pixel fill rate of 4+ gigapixels/sec (16 gigasamples/sec with 4× antialiasing). The peak vertex rate is 500+ million vertices/sec. The peak triangle rate is 500+ million triangles/sec. The interesting point about all of these values is that they’re not just theoretical—they are attainable with nontrivial shaders.
Xenon is designed for high-definition output. Included directly on the GPU die is 10+ MB of fast embedded dynamic RAM (EDRAM). A 720p frame buffer fits very nicely here. Larger frame buffers are also possible because of hardware-accelerated partitioning and predicated rendering that has little cost other than additional vertex processing. Along with the extremely fast EDRAM, the GPU also includes hardware instructions for alpha blending, z-test, and antialiasing.
The Xenon graphics architecture is a unique design that implements a superset of Direct3D version 9.0. It includes a number of important extensions, including additional compressed texture formats and a flexible tessellation engine. Xenon not only supports high-level shading language (HLSL) model 3.0 for vertex and pixel shaders but also includes advanced shader features well beyond model 3.0. For instance, shaders use 32-bit IEEE floating-point math throughout. Vertex shaders can fetch from textures, and pixel shaders can fetch from vertex streams. Xenon shaders also have the unique ability to directly access main memory, allowing techniques that have never before been possible.
As with Xbox, Xenon will support precompiled push buffers (“command buffers” in Xenon terminology), but to a much greater extent than the Xbox console does. The Xbox team is exposing and documenting the command buffer format so that games are able to harness the GPU much more effectively.
In addition to an extremely powerful GPU, Xenon also includes a very high-quality resize filter. This filter allows consumers to choose whatever output mode they desire. Xenon automatically scales the game’s output buffer to the consumer-chosen resolution.
Memory and Bandwidth
Xenon has 256+ MB of unified memory, equally accessible to both the GPU and CPU. The main memory controller resides on the GPU (the same as in the Xbox architecture). It has 22.4+ GB/sec aggregate bandwidth to RAM, distributed between reads and writes. Aggregate means that the bandwidth may be used for all reading or all writing or any combination of the two. Translated into game performance, the GPU can consume a 512×512×32-bpp texture in only 47 microseconds.
The front side bus (FSB) bandwidth peak is 10.8 GB/sec for reads and 10.8 GB/sec for writes, over 20 times faster than for Xbox. Note that the 22.4+ GB/sec main memory bandwidth is shared between the CPU and GPU. If, for example, the CPU is using 2 GB/sec for reading and 1 GB/sec for writing on the FSB, the GPU has 19.4+ GB/sec available for accessing RAM.
Eight pixels (where each pixel is color plus z = 8 bytes) can be sent to the EDRAM every GPU clock cycle, for an EDRAM write bandwidth of 32 GB/sec. Each of these pixels can be expanded through multisampling to 4 samples, for up to 32 multisampled pixel samples per clock cycle. With alpha blending, z-test, and z-write enabled, this is equivalent to having 256 GB/sec of effective bandwidth! The important thing is that frame buffer bandwidth will never slow down the Xenon GPU.
Audio
The Xenon CPU is a superb processor for audio, particularly with its massive mathematical horsepower and vector register set. The Xenon CPU can process and encode hundreds of audio channels with sophisticated per-voice and global effects, all while using a fraction of the power of a single CPU core.
The Xenon system south bridge also contains a key hardware component for audio—XMA decompression. XMA is the native Xenon compressed audio format, based on the WMA Pro architecture. XMA provides sound quality higher than ADPCM at even better compression ratios, typically 6:1–12:1. The south bridge contains a full silicon implementation of the XMA decompression algorithm, including support for multichannel XMA sources. XMA is processed by the south bridge into standard PCM format in RAM. All other sound processing (sample rate conversion, filtering, effects, mixing, and multispeaker encoding) happens on the Xenon CPU.
The lowest-level Xenon audio software layer is XAudio, a new API designed for optimal digital signal processing. The Xbox Audio Creation Tool (XACT) API from Xbox is also supported, along with new features such as conditional events, improved parameter control, and a more flexible 3D audio model.
Input/Output
As with Xbox, Xenon is designed to be a multiplayer console. It has built-in networking support including an Ethernet 10/100-BaseT port. It supports up to four controllers. From an audio/video standpoint, Xenon will support all the same formats as Xbox, including multiple high-definition formats up through 1080i, plus VGA output.
In order to provide greater flexibility and support a wider variety of attached devices, the Xenon console includes standard USB 2.0 ports. This feature allows the console to potentially host storage devices, cameras, microphones, and other devices.
Storage
The Xenon console is designed around a larger world view of storage than Xbox was. Games will have access to a variety of storage devices, including connected devices (memory units, USB storage) and remote devices (networked PCs, Xbox Live™). At the time of this writing, the decision to include a built-in hard disk in every Xenon console has not been made. If a hard disk is not included in every console, it will certainly be available as an integrated add-on component.
Xenon supports up to two attached memory units (MUs). MUs are connected directly to the console, not to controllers as on Xbox. The initial size of the MUs is 64 MB, although larger MUs may be available in the future. MU throughput is expected to be around 8 MB/sec for reads and 1 MB/sec for writes.
The Xenon game disc drive is a 12× DVD, with an expected outer edge throughput of 16+ MB/sec. Latency is expected to be in the neighborhood of 100 ms. The media format will be similar to Xbox, with approximately 6 GB of usable space on the disk. As on Xbox, media will be stored on a single side in two 3 GB layers.
Industrial Design
The Xenon industrial design process is well under way, but the final look of the box has not been determined. The Xenon console will be smaller than the Xbox console.
The standard Xenon controller will have a look and feel similar to the Xbox controller. The primary changes are the removal of the Black and White buttons and the addition of shoulder buttons. The triggers, thumbsticks, D-pad, and primary buttons are essentially unchanged. The controller will support vibration.
Xenon Development Kit
The Xenon development environment follows the same model as for Xbox. Game development occurs on the PC. The resulting executable image is loaded by the Xenon development kit and remotely debugged on the PC. MS® Visual Studio® version 7.1 continues as the development environment for Xenon.
The Xenon compiler is based on a custom PowerPC back end and the latest MS® Visual C++® front end. The back end uses technology developed at MS for Windows NT on PowerPC. The Xenon software group includes a dedicated team of compiler engineers updating the compiler to support Xenon-specific CPU extensions. This team is also heavily focused on optimization work.
The Xenon development kit will include accurate DVD emulation technology to allow developers to very precisely gauge the effects of the retail console disc drive.
Miscellaneous Xenon Hardware Notes
Some additional notes:
•Xenon is a big-endian system. Both the CPU and GPU process memory in big-endian mode. Games ported from little-endian systems such as the Xbox or PC need to account for this in their game asset pipeline.
•Tapping into the power of the CPU is a daunting task. Writing multithreaded game engines is not trivial. Xenon system software is designed to take advantage of this processing power wherever possible. The Xbox Advanced Technology Group (ATG) is also exploring a variety of techniques for offloading graphics work to the CPU.
•People often ask if Xenon can be backward compatible with Xbox. Although the architecture of the two consoles is quite different, Xenon has the processing power to emulate Xbox. Whether Xenon will be backward compatible involves a variety of factors, not the least of which is the massive development and testing effort required to allow Xbox games run on Xenon.
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My Photo Gallery
I got some bad news for people wanting to buy a Pentium 4 at a monstrous 4 GHz because that’s not going to happen this year. P4s have been out since 2001 and it’s nearing 2005 so Intel will start Pentium 5s at 4 GHz. I Think Pentium 4s have been out longer than Pentium 3s or Pentium 2s. The highest MHz you can buy is 3.8 GHz. Intel feels that it can not have a market for 4 GHz and they are right, of course. I only have 3.2 GHz in my computer. It’s still great and very reliable although it’s a Dell PC. Dells suck, I know, but it was free so I had to take it. Actually, the motherboard, keyboard are made by Dell, everything else is made from 3rd party including ATI (video card), Western Digital (hd) , Creative Labs (soundcard) , Artic (DVD-RW), Samsung (DVD/RW). The mouse is from Logitech. I seriously doubt my keyboard will stop working tomorrow or a year from now.
I’m thinking that Pentium 5 will be 64-bit with a much higher clock speed than Athlon 64. Athlon 64 currently can outperform Pentium 4 in operation cycles. Intel says that it’s developing dual cores on a single dye with state-of-the-art technology making manufacturing costs of the “Pentium 5” less costly. Come on everyone – even though it’s not officially announced – there will be a Pentium 5 announcement soon.
Okay now for the interesting part that hurts us all. Intel has technology that stays secret like magnetic ram which are more technically advance than Pentium 4s and 64-bit Xeon CPUs. Intel is developing stuff in their labs that will come out in 2015 as quote “state-of-the-art” in consumer terms. I know - it’s scaring me too. The point is…they are using our money on their cheap technology. Instead of releasing a 10 GHz Xeon processor that will surely blow everything on the market, Intel decides to release 100 MHz every month which is pitiful. The silly part is about it is we pay big bucks for their fast processor and they know I can’t do anything about their strategy waiting until 2008 until they release a 10 GHz processor. They have a 64-bit 10 GHz processor prototype in the final stages and will not mass produce it. It’s not crazy – it’s the truth. That ensures the company will continue to grow. Doesn’t that make you sick? It makes me sick!
I was talking to a former British citizen at Toyriffic. He looks about my age and he’s married – which was a little odd. I came there with the agenda of buying either King of Fighters or Marvel vs. Capcom 2. MvC2 is 50 bucks! Last time I was there it was only $20. The King of Fighters ’99 Evolution for Dreamcast was $70! So I ended up buying the Playstation version which was only 11 dollars. I believe the difference between the two is the Playstation version ran at 30 fps, and the Dreamcast version ran at 60 fps. So when I got home, I put it in the tray and play. It comes with 32 players to play and the music was 80s rock. I have Fatal Fury - Dance of the Wolves for DC, and that was a prequel to the King of Fighters. It plays a lot like King of Fighters ’99 Evolution I can now see. King of Fighters still has that old-school look too it. (mostly a art style done in the mid-90s still used in the 2000s)
I spend Thursday night reading The King of Fighters history after I learned that the Neo Geo CD by SNK was the first CD-format console running at 1x. Playstation had a 4x cd-rom in it – a major improvement. What Neo Geo had that Playstation didn’t in the early days was Metal Slug and all the King of Fighter games from ’94 up to 2001 plus all the Fatal Fury games. All three games made their way to Playstation largely to do to it’s the most popular console ever in the history of man kind. For some strange reason, Neo Geo CD is more popular now state-side than it ever was in 1994. One day SNK will release a full anthology of all King of Fighters. Expect SNK will soon re-release all the King of Fighters in the states before the PS3 comes out. They’ve already did KOF’94and KOF 2000/2001 two years ago. If you count Dreamcast’s KOF ’99, that makes 4 games that made it state-side. According to the British retailer back at Toyriffic, KOF ’97 was the best of the series because it featured the best game play and graphics. The graphics supported the engine of the KOF ’94.
The only other 2D fighters are Viewiful Joe, Guilty Gear, King of Fighters and the occasional Street Fighter.
New games to add to vg list:
1.) King of Fighters ’99 Evolution
2.) Sly
3.) Gradius V
After the game store I spent time playing UT2004. I got at the masterful skill level without ranking at the bottom of the chart. It wasn’t pitiful to say the least. The game still has its really high points. If you’ve been to my IGN page, you’ve would have seen that I rated UT2004 a 9.9/10 because it’s perfect on nearly all levels, and the only thing not perfect is the pc specs it needs to run the game. I have 3 computers that can run it though. Shooting is good way to get the stress off me.
I am going either tomorrow or next week to pick up copies of Guilty Gear X or Guilty Gear X2. I know I can get Guilty Gear Isuka at Shopko, but 50 dollars is a steep price to pay for a 2D fighter even though it looks excellent for a 2D fighter. The guy at the game store said the newest one in the series is a pretty fun game. Sammy makes Guilty Gear and is the same guys who bought out SEGA of JAPAN, SEGA OF AMERICA, SEGA of Europe. That’s one reason why Sega stopped making DCs in 2001. Also the piracy has been apparent that the GD-ROMS could be copied. I learned today that GD-ROMS were available for the PC for a short time period thus DC games could be backup to disc images and presto you’ve gotten yourself a illegal DC game. Chankast makes Dreamcast emulation possible on the PC. In 1999, there were rumors that Xbox was supposed to be backwards compatible with Dreamcast discs, but the rumors were misinterpreted, and Sega was developing games for Xbox.
I feel very aggravated see there are some 3 very high anticipated games coming out on October 25th including Grand Thief Auto San Andreas, re-release of Fatal Frame 2 (the prequel is extremely hard to find now), and Dead or Alive Ultimate. Out of the 3, Fatal Frame will be sold in the least copies. Grand Thief Auto and DoA will sell by the millions so there will always be a used copy available. DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball clearly has a graphics engine that makes every other engine outdated. I suspect the price to be reduced to 20 dollars within February 2005 – March 2005 time period. Anyways, DOA Ultimate looks awesome and will probably be playing the same way as DOA 3 back in 2001. DOA: Ultimate combines Xbox versions of Dead or Alive and Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore and allows all the characters of both games to be played in all the stages first appearing in those games. In fact, I own DOA 2 for Dreamcast, and it’s one of the best Dreamcast games that came out in my opinion. The second best 3D fighter that came out for the system at least – next to Soul Caliber. Lots of propaganda like bouncing boobies, female fighters showing more skin than usual, and realistic body movement. Those standard intros and extros by each DOA fighter either victory poses or defeat both of which are great additions.
Other news is I finally played a game I bought last year, Shenmue 2. Shenmue is mostly RPG at it’s roots, but also has Virtua Fighter moves built into it. Your weapons are your body unlike swords, axes, mauls, polearms, or magic in dungeons and dragons RPGs the USA is known for. It looked great, played great, but somehow I got Shenmue’s back pack stolen within the first 30 minutes. The thieves took it from Shenmue, and I really didn’t have time to look for them, didn’t know where to start. Some of you may not remember Shenmue 2 on Dreamcast, but it was one of Dreamcast’s exceptional titles. Shenmue 2’s version of Hong Kong is absolutely huge, and those guys could have been anywhere – that was when I turned my Xbox off.
I remember when the PC RPG universe exploded after Diablo 2 came out. Before 2000, there were few RPGs to buy, now there are 2 new releases every month. No doubt I’m getting Half-life 2 a few days after the launch date, November 16th.
Here are some reviews I like and recommend:
IGN's Review of Full Specrium Warrior
IGN's Review of Guilty Gear X2
IGN's Review of Guilty Gear X
IGN's Review of Guilty Gear Isuka
Here is the entire Xbox 2 outline I found from another website, I found it irresistible to post it on here so here it is
Xenon Hardware Overview
By Pete Isensee, Development Lead, Xbox Advanced Technology Group
This documentation is an early release of the final documentation, which may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release, and is confidential and proprietary information of MS Corporation. It is disclosed pursuant to a nondisclosure agreement between the recipient and MS.
“Xenon” is the code name for the successor to the Xbox® game console from MS. Xenon is expected to launch in 2005. This white paper is designed to provide a brief overview of the primary hardware features of the console from a game developer’s standpoint.
Caveats
In some cases, sizes, speeds, and other details of the Xenon console have not been finalized. Values not yet finalized are identified with a “+” sign, indicating that the numbers may be larger than indicated here. At the time of this writing, the final console is many months from entering production. Based on our experience with Xbox, it’s likely that some of this information will change slightly for the final console.
For additional information on various hardware components, see the other relevant white papers.
Hardware Goals
Xenon was designed with the following goals in mind:
•Focus on innovation in silicon, particularly features that game developers need. Although all Xenon hardware components are technologically advanced, the hardware engineering effort has concentrated on digital performance in the CPU and GPU.
•Maximize general purpose processing performance rather than fixed-function hardware. This focus on general purpose processing puts the power into the Xenon software libraries and tools. Rather than being hamstrung by particular hardware designs, software libraries can support the latest and most efficient techniques.
•Eliminate the performance issues of the past. On Xbox, the primary bottlenecks were memory and CPU bandwidth. Xenon does not have these limitations.
Basic Hardware Specifications
Xenon is powered by a 3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor and a 500+ MHz ATI graphics processor. Xenon has 256+ MB of unified memory. Xenon runs a custom operating system based on MS® Windows NT®, similar to the Xbox operating system. The graphics interface is a superset of MS® Direct3D® version 9.0.
CPU
The Xenon CPU is a custom processor based on PowerPC technology. The CPU includes three independent processors (cores) on a single die. Each core runs at 3.5+ GHz. The Xenon CPU can issue two instructions per clock cycle per core. At peak performance, Xenon can issue 21 billion instructions per second.
The Xenon CPU was designed by IBM in close consultation with the Xbox team, leading to a number of revolutionary additions, including a dot product instruction for extremely fast vector math and custom security features built directly into the silicon to prevent piracy and hacking.
Each core has two symmetric hardware threads (SMT), for a total of six hardware threads available to games. Not only does the Xenon CPU include the standard set of PowerPC integer and floating-point registers (one set per hardware thread), the Xenon CPU also includes 128 vector (VMX) registers per hardware thread. This astounding number of registers can drastically improve the speed of common mathematical operations.
Each of the three cores includes a 32-KB L1 instruction cache and a 32-KB L1 data cache. The three cores share a 1-MB L2 cache. The L2 cache can be locked down in segments to improve performance. The L2 cache also has the very unusual feature of being directly readable from the GPU, which allows the GPU to consume geometry and texture data from L2 and main memory simultaneously.
Xenon CPU instructions are exposed to games through compiler intrinsics, allowing developers to access the power of the chip using C language notation.
GPU
The Xenon GPU is a custom 500+ MHz graphics processor from ATI. The shader core has 48 Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) that can execute 64 simultaneous threads on groups of 64 vertices or pixels. ALUs are automatically and dynamically assigned to either pixel or vertex processing depending on load. The ALUs can each perform one vector and one scalar operation per clock cycle, for a total of 96 shader operations per clock cycle. Texture loads can be done in parallel to ALU operations. At peak performance, the GPU can issue 48 billion shader operations per second.
The GPU has a peak pixel fill rate of 4+ gigapixels/sec (16 gigasamples/sec with 4× antialiasing). The peak vertex rate is 500+ million vertices/sec. The peak triangle rate is 500+ million triangles/sec. The interesting point about all of these values is that they’re not just theoretical—they are attainable with nontrivial shaders.
Xenon is designed for high-definition output. Included directly on the GPU die is 10+ MB of fast embedded dynamic RAM (EDRAM). A 720p frame buffer fits very nicely here. Larger frame buffers are also possible because of hardware-accelerated partitioning and predicated rendering that has little cost other than additional vertex processing. Along with the extremely fast EDRAM, the GPU also includes hardware instructions for alpha blending, z-test, and antialiasing.
The Xenon graphics architecture is a unique design that implements a superset of Direct3D version 9.0. It includes a number of important extensions, including additional compressed texture formats and a flexible tessellation engine. Xenon not only supports high-level shading language (HLSL) model 3.0 for vertex and pixel shaders but also includes advanced shader features well beyond model 3.0. For instance, shaders use 32-bit IEEE floating-point math throughout. Vertex shaders can fetch from textures, and pixel shaders can fetch from vertex streams. Xenon shaders also have the unique ability to directly access main memory, allowing techniques that have never before been possible.
As with Xbox, Xenon will support precompiled push buffers (“command buffers” in Xenon terminology), but to a much greater extent than the Xbox console does. The Xbox team is exposing and documenting the command buffer format so that games are able to harness the GPU much more effectively.
In addition to an extremely powerful GPU, Xenon also includes a very high-quality resize filter. This filter allows consumers to choose whatever output mode they desire. Xenon automatically scales the game’s output buffer to the consumer-chosen resolution.
Memory and Bandwidth
Xenon has 256+ MB of unified memory, equally accessible to both the GPU and CPU. The main memory controller resides on the GPU (the same as in the Xbox architecture). It has 22.4+ GB/sec aggregate bandwidth to RAM, distributed between reads and writes. Aggregate means that the bandwidth may be used for all reading or all writing or any combination of the two. Translated into game performance, the GPU can consume a 512×512×32-bpp texture in only 47 microseconds.
The front side bus (FSB) bandwidth peak is 10.8 GB/sec for reads and 10.8 GB/sec for writes, over 20 times faster than for Xbox. Note that the 22.4+ GB/sec main memory bandwidth is shared between the CPU and GPU. If, for example, the CPU is using 2 GB/sec for reading and 1 GB/sec for writing on the FSB, the GPU has 19.4+ GB/sec available for accessing RAM.
Eight pixels (where each pixel is color plus z = 8 bytes) can be sent to the EDRAM every GPU clock cycle, for an EDRAM write bandwidth of 32 GB/sec. Each of these pixels can be expanded through multisampling to 4 samples, for up to 32 multisampled pixel samples per clock cycle. With alpha blending, z-test, and z-write enabled, this is equivalent to having 256 GB/sec of effective bandwidth! The important thing is that frame buffer bandwidth will never slow down the Xenon GPU.
Audio
The Xenon CPU is a superb processor for audio, particularly with its massive mathematical horsepower and vector register set. The Xenon CPU can process and encode hundreds of audio channels with sophisticated per-voice and global effects, all while using a fraction of the power of a single CPU core.
The Xenon system south bridge also contains a key hardware component for audio—XMA decompression. XMA is the native Xenon compressed audio format, based on the WMA Pro architecture. XMA provides sound quality higher than ADPCM at even better compression ratios, typically 6:1–12:1. The south bridge contains a full silicon implementation of the XMA decompression algorithm, including support for multichannel XMA sources. XMA is processed by the south bridge into standard PCM format in RAM. All other sound processing (sample rate conversion, filtering, effects, mixing, and multispeaker encoding) happens on the Xenon CPU.
The lowest-level Xenon audio software layer is XAudio, a new API designed for optimal digital signal processing. The Xbox Audio Creation Tool (XACT) API from Xbox is also supported, along with new features such as conditional events, improved parameter control, and a more flexible 3D audio model.
Input/Output
As with Xbox, Xenon is designed to be a multiplayer console. It has built-in networking support including an Ethernet 10/100-BaseT port. It supports up to four controllers. From an audio/video standpoint, Xenon will support all the same formats as Xbox, including multiple high-definition formats up through 1080i, plus VGA output.
In order to provide greater flexibility and support a wider variety of attached devices, the Xenon console includes standard USB 2.0 ports. This feature allows the console to potentially host storage devices, cameras, microphones, and other devices.
Storage
The Xenon console is designed around a larger world view of storage than Xbox was. Games will have access to a variety of storage devices, including connected devices (memory units, USB storage) and remote devices (networked PCs, Xbox Live™). At the time of this writing, the decision to include a built-in hard disk in every Xenon console has not been made. If a hard disk is not included in every console, it will certainly be available as an integrated add-on component.
Xenon supports up to two attached memory units (MUs). MUs are connected directly to the console, not to controllers as on Xbox. The initial size of the MUs is 64 MB, although larger MUs may be available in the future. MU throughput is expected to be around 8 MB/sec for reads and 1 MB/sec for writes.
The Xenon game disc drive is a 12× DVD, with an expected outer edge throughput of 16+ MB/sec. Latency is expected to be in the neighborhood of 100 ms. The media format will be similar to Xbox, with approximately 6 GB of usable space on the disk. As on Xbox, media will be stored on a single side in two 3 GB layers.
Industrial Design
The Xenon industrial design process is well under way, but the final look of the box has not been determined. The Xenon console will be smaller than the Xbox console.
The standard Xenon controller will have a look and feel similar to the Xbox controller. The primary changes are the removal of the Black and White buttons and the addition of shoulder buttons. The triggers, thumbsticks, D-pad, and primary buttons are essentially unchanged. The controller will support vibration.
Xenon Development Kit
The Xenon development environment follows the same model as for Xbox. Game development occurs on the PC. The resulting executable image is loaded by the Xenon development kit and remotely debugged on the PC. MS® Visual Studio® version 7.1 continues as the development environment for Xenon.
The Xenon compiler is based on a custom PowerPC back end and the latest MS® Visual C++® front end. The back end uses technology developed at MS for Windows NT on PowerPC. The Xenon software group includes a dedicated team of compiler engineers updating the compiler to support Xenon-specific CPU extensions. This team is also heavily focused on optimization work.
The Xenon development kit will include accurate DVD emulation technology to allow developers to very precisely gauge the effects of the retail console disc drive.
Miscellaneous Xenon Hardware Notes
Some additional notes:
•Xenon is a big-endian system. Both the CPU and GPU process memory in big-endian mode. Games ported from little-endian systems such as the Xbox or PC need to account for this in their game asset pipeline.
•Tapping into the power of the CPU is a daunting task. Writing multithreaded game engines is not trivial. Xenon system software is designed to take advantage of this processing power wherever possible. The Xbox Advanced Technology Group (ATG) is also exploring a variety of techniques for offloading graphics work to the CPU.
•People often ask if Xenon can be backward compatible with Xbox. Although the architecture of the two consoles is quite different, Xenon has the processing power to emulate Xbox. Whether Xenon will be backward compatible involves a variety of factors, not the least of which is the massive development and testing effort required to allow Xbox games run on Xenon.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Why the f*** don't people come to my page?
It’s been difficult to come up with something lately. And why the fuck doesn’t anyone come here anymore. I waste all this time trying to gather information in my brain and no one comes! I promoted a good amount of time on this page. And I can’t be because I’m average because I already know that. I can list many things that make my life boring. First, all my friends are doing different things. Another is there is nothing new to do except a few new videogames which I don’t have enough time to play. It’s a lot of studying for tests and stuff. Show your symphony because I know none of you care. All you bloggers care about is facts….Internet news…and political events….not personal life. This must be the reason I do not have hits here anymore. Okay, the technical tidbits you liked a lot, but my personal life no one cares. I was even thinking about just forgetting Modblog all together. Then I realized Modblog isn't the one to blame, they are just a server. My writing is to blame. Well, fuckin’ Jesus Christ this makes me real mad.
I tried out this new program 1Click DVD to Divx Avi, and it’s the best DVD to MPEG 4 tool I have ever used. There is also 1click DVD Ripper which has more options on it. I don’t like to encode video in MPEG2 since video compresses so much better with DivX 5.2.1. Obviously, if you compress video to go through the Internet you may want the compression at the slowest to allow the best compression for your video. I have my settings at 730x440 at 1034 KBPS and LAME audio compression at 192 KBPS. All films are released on a 9.4 GB DVD and I can put 1 hour 8 parts on a single layer DVD plus my DVD burner will only allow me to burn 4.4 GB of data total. I have a little left over so I could up the video to 1213 KBPS to make full the excess 500 MB I had on my last DVD. Every hour averages 680 MB. That’s pretty good considering the picture quality is good.
The Red Soxs have won against the Yankees and are going to the World Series. It is the only time in professional baseball history that a team have came back in 3 games to be 3 -3. The MN Twins lost against NY Yankees on game 4 about 2 weeks ago in the first playoff series. The Twins lead in the central division and clenched their division title. I may have missed the greatest games ever in whole season play. St Louis Cardinals may beat Houston in the American League thus well have Red Soxs vs. Cardinals. Cardinals will win tomorrow!
I missed Homecoming again. Truth about it is its high school and it’s in the past - two very good reasons not to go. I haven’t been to home coming for 4 years now. I saw it in the newspaper. Too bad though.
Oh and another thing I found this girl who lives by me on the Internet. I was really, really surprised. Here is her personal page. Weblink
to Anne's Track and Field Webpage. She hasn’t changed too much. What’s so important about her? Well, she thought I had crush on her in high school. It’s not that way anymore. I’m a technician. She’s something else. I haven’t seen her in 5 years. I found out in 1997, she went through the Teen University program at the UofW. It looks like she’s still in track and field. She started the last year I was at St. Croix Central.
I tried out this new program 1Click DVD to Divx Avi, and it’s the best DVD to MPEG 4 tool I have ever used. There is also 1click DVD Ripper which has more options on it. I don’t like to encode video in MPEG2 since video compresses so much better with DivX 5.2.1. Obviously, if you compress video to go through the Internet you may want the compression at the slowest to allow the best compression for your video. I have my settings at 730x440 at 1034 KBPS and LAME audio compression at 192 KBPS. All films are released on a 9.4 GB DVD and I can put 1 hour 8 parts on a single layer DVD plus my DVD burner will only allow me to burn 4.4 GB of data total. I have a little left over so I could up the video to 1213 KBPS to make full the excess 500 MB I had on my last DVD. Every hour averages 680 MB. That’s pretty good considering the picture quality is good.
The Red Soxs have won against the Yankees and are going to the World Series. It is the only time in professional baseball history that a team have came back in 3 games to be 3 -3. The MN Twins lost against NY Yankees on game 4 about 2 weeks ago in the first playoff series. The Twins lead in the central division and clenched their division title. I may have missed the greatest games ever in whole season play. St Louis Cardinals may beat Houston in the American League thus well have Red Soxs vs. Cardinals. Cardinals will win tomorrow!
I missed Homecoming again. Truth about it is its high school and it’s in the past - two very good reasons not to go. I haven’t been to home coming for 4 years now. I saw it in the newspaper. Too bad though.
Oh and another thing I found this girl who lives by me on the Internet. I was really, really surprised. Here is her personal page. Weblink
to Anne's Track and Field Webpage. She hasn’t changed too much. What’s so important about her? Well, she thought I had crush on her in high school. It’s not that way anymore. I’m a technician. She’s something else. I haven’t seen her in 5 years. I found out in 1997, she went through the Teen University program at the UofW. It looks like she’s still in track and field. She started the last year I was at St. Croix Central.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
FFVII Dirge of Ceberus | Square's new PC MMORPG
One of the reasons I haven’t posted in 5 days was study time at home. I have 3 tests to study for – 2 are retakes so I can either not do well or do well. Friday I was playing Star Ocean 3 all day. It’s Square-Enix’s newest game. I’m at the beginning of the 3rd chapter. I have a review up at IQB. I find it interesting to see Square-Enix developing another RPG for PC and it’s called Final Earth. Final Earth looks like a space saga that’s online and is going to be another Freelancer. The only question about it is if I have to pay to play. Even then, I’ll buy it because than I can say I have it. They are also making a PC game called Junk Metal .
Speaking on Square-Enix, they are apparently developing a Final Fantasy 7 action game. You mix Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy 7 to get a game called Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII . Officially the first Final Fantasy to not be a RPG is amazing in itself. Does Square-Enix even know how to make a good action game? Maybe, but it’ll require additional help. What would be cool is if Dante guest-starred in it. It’s just that Final Fantasy characters starred in Kingdom Hearts . I admit it was cool, but Cloud Strife as nothing to do with Squall Lionheart much less Disney characters. It’s propaganda at it’s best. And why was Cloud Strife working for the lord of the underworld, Hades? What’s next? Mario an unlockable character in the next installment of Metal Gear Solid? I got something totally wacky which might be true someday: Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles, Tails, Mario, Luigi, Browser and Dr. Robotnic in the same game! Perhaps Super Smash Bros 3 - The ultimate SEGA/Nintendo videogame!!! Wait, I got another one…. Capcom vs. Nintendo exclusive for Gamecube. If you don’t know what I’m talking about – think “Marvel vs. Capcom” and you’ll see what I mean.
Okay, impressions of Dirge of Cerberes. Where to start? The character animation is a rip off of Devil May Cry for one thing. I can’t remember but I think the main character was a bad guy in Final Fantasy VII. This spin off is going to be a disaster - I just know it. They have the ability to push out maximum polygons rates out of the PS2, but they don’t have experience making any kind of action/shooting games.
I found out the Half-life 2 release date is on my birthday! Half-life 2 is coming in a special DVD edition. Half-life 2 is such a highly anticipated game that everyone is getting this game (It’ll be the next best selling computer game of all time) Only 13 more days!
Concerning my writing style for those who view this as making little sense. I write 90 percent of the time according to what I view off the web browser in chronological order. So since I read a lot of material off game message boards (not writing in them) on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, I usually have a discussion on videogames because there is no other way to express how I set in front of a computer monitor all day except just that – sit in a chair and read material. I don’t care what other people think – but this is fun too me. I am finding it difficult to talk about games to people. See, where I live, people I know are PC gamers and I’m a console gamer primarily who so happens to have a pretty awesome PC too. A good example of this is Thursday at WITC. The class was going on a field trip 20 miles away in Osceola, Wisconsin. The field trip was going to be pretty cool, but I didn’t make it. It so happens that there was a guy playing Unreal Tournament. Someone else asked what this game is, and I say, “It’s Unreal Tournament!” This wouldn’t be so out of case other than I was absolutely right. Apparently the person playing I was undecided if I liked or not. I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the monitor. I don’t know his name, but he was playing the hardest setting on UT. This plain and simple states he out-performs me in his ability to kill bots. I tried not to ask to play. I knew what the answer was from the expression on his face, “NO!” Plus, I could always play UT2004 when I got home plain and simple. UT2004 is an awesome game *you can quote me on that*. So the words that came out of my mouth is, “I have this game at home” This states two things: I know exactly how the game is played because I obviously played it myself and #2 I know exactly what he meant by the “graphics are beautiful” because they were beautiful in 1999. Both those things are true. I always wanted to be in a local area network party like the Xbox LAN party I went to 2 weeks ago. Did you know that Xbox can interface with one cross-over cable with another Xbox or bus topology? It’s a lot faster than using a 10/100 Base T hub. I didn’t know that. Going there was a bummer. I knew no one there and yes, they were playing Halo with 2 networked Xboxes on two TVs. I managed to kill someone twice, but than the game was over and they didn’t want me to play again. I was also scared away from the fact that I wasn’t any good at the game. I shall not get into this.
On too real life stuff - Yesterday, I was really happy that I didn’t throw away my 120 dollar sound card away when the sound stopped working. Windows did something to the sound driver last installation. Now it works no problem. The sound card is a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Pro. It has 24 channels of digital audio. I can hear an instant sound boost over my last sound card.
Bob and I haven’t seen each other for a while. Bob is one of my closest friends. He likes heavy metal. Last time Bob and I met, I went over to his apartment and played a lot of games. The gang was playing Madden Football 2001. I watched and when I played, I was easily overmatched. He said he got a new AMD Seperion 2.0 GHz Processor with motherboard and RAM. It’s faster than his old Athlon that gave him problems. I feel bad about the fact that he won’t invest into a new hard drive. 20GBs isn’t enough to store half of everything he wants. It’s just enough for his OS and MP3 collection with a little left over for miscellaneous. He still will not answer his phone.
Speaking on Square-Enix, they are apparently developing a Final Fantasy 7 action game. You mix Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy 7 to get a game called Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII . Officially the first Final Fantasy to not be a RPG is amazing in itself. Does Square-Enix even know how to make a good action game? Maybe, but it’ll require additional help. What would be cool is if Dante guest-starred in it. It’s just that Final Fantasy characters starred in Kingdom Hearts . I admit it was cool, but Cloud Strife as nothing to do with Squall Lionheart much less Disney characters. It’s propaganda at it’s best. And why was Cloud Strife working for the lord of the underworld, Hades? What’s next? Mario an unlockable character in the next installment of Metal Gear Solid? I got something totally wacky which might be true someday: Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles, Tails, Mario, Luigi, Browser and Dr. Robotnic in the same game! Perhaps Super Smash Bros 3 - The ultimate SEGA/Nintendo videogame!!! Wait, I got another one…. Capcom vs. Nintendo exclusive for Gamecube. If you don’t know what I’m talking about – think “Marvel vs. Capcom” and you’ll see what I mean.
Okay, impressions of Dirge of Cerberes. Where to start? The character animation is a rip off of Devil May Cry for one thing. I can’t remember but I think the main character was a bad guy in Final Fantasy VII. This spin off is going to be a disaster - I just know it. They have the ability to push out maximum polygons rates out of the PS2, but they don’t have experience making any kind of action/shooting games.
I found out the Half-life 2 release date is on my birthday! Half-life 2 is coming in a special DVD edition. Half-life 2 is such a highly anticipated game that everyone is getting this game (It’ll be the next best selling computer game of all time) Only 13 more days!
Concerning my writing style for those who view this as making little sense. I write 90 percent of the time according to what I view off the web browser in chronological order. So since I read a lot of material off game message boards (not writing in them) on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, I usually have a discussion on videogames because there is no other way to express how I set in front of a computer monitor all day except just that – sit in a chair and read material. I don’t care what other people think – but this is fun too me. I am finding it difficult to talk about games to people. See, where I live, people I know are PC gamers and I’m a console gamer primarily who so happens to have a pretty awesome PC too. A good example of this is Thursday at WITC. The class was going on a field trip 20 miles away in Osceola, Wisconsin. The field trip was going to be pretty cool, but I didn’t make it. It so happens that there was a guy playing Unreal Tournament. Someone else asked what this game is, and I say, “It’s Unreal Tournament!” This wouldn’t be so out of case other than I was absolutely right. Apparently the person playing I was undecided if I liked or not. I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the monitor. I don’t know his name, but he was playing the hardest setting on UT. This plain and simple states he out-performs me in his ability to kill bots. I tried not to ask to play. I knew what the answer was from the expression on his face, “NO!” Plus, I could always play UT2004 when I got home plain and simple. UT2004 is an awesome game *you can quote me on that*. So the words that came out of my mouth is, “I have this game at home” This states two things: I know exactly how the game is played because I obviously played it myself and #2 I know exactly what he meant by the “graphics are beautiful” because they were beautiful in 1999. Both those things are true. I always wanted to be in a local area network party like the Xbox LAN party I went to 2 weeks ago. Did you know that Xbox can interface with one cross-over cable with another Xbox or bus topology? It’s a lot faster than using a 10/100 Base T hub. I didn’t know that. Going there was a bummer. I knew no one there and yes, they were playing Halo with 2 networked Xboxes on two TVs. I managed to kill someone twice, but than the game was over and they didn’t want me to play again. I was also scared away from the fact that I wasn’t any good at the game. I shall not get into this.
On too real life stuff - Yesterday, I was really happy that I didn’t throw away my 120 dollar sound card away when the sound stopped working. Windows did something to the sound driver last installation. Now it works no problem. The sound card is a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Pro. It has 24 channels of digital audio. I can hear an instant sound boost over my last sound card.
Bob and I haven’t seen each other for a while. Bob is one of my closest friends. He likes heavy metal. Last time Bob and I met, I went over to his apartment and played a lot of games. The gang was playing Madden Football 2001. I watched and when I played, I was easily overmatched. He said he got a new AMD Seperion 2.0 GHz Processor with motherboard and RAM. It’s faster than his old Athlon that gave him problems. I feel bad about the fact that he won’t invest into a new hard drive. 20GBs isn’t enough to store half of everything he wants. It’s just enough for his OS and MP3 collection with a little left over for miscellaneous. He still will not answer his phone.
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