ATI surprised no one with last June’s
announcement that its GPUs would sup-
port physics acceleration using Havok’s
physics middleware. But it’s a whole
new kettle of pixels now that ATI intends
to let people run as many as three vid-
eocards—two in CrossFire mode to ren-
der graphics, and a third card dedicated
to physics.
How do you fi t three videocards in
a PC? Simple: Buy one of those new-
fangled motherboards outfi tted with three
x16 PCI Express slots (although that third
slot—at least for now—is x16 in formfac-
tor only; it runs slower than that).
To demonstrate ATI’s dedication to
physics, the company is even offering a
new physics plugin for Maya, Autodesk’s
high-end modeling, rendering, and
animation tool. Using ATI’s workstation
videocards and this new physics plugin,
developers can create interactive phys-ics effects within Maya.
“Today, physics are applied after the
scene is rendered,” explained Raja Koduri,
ATI’s director of engineering. “Using our
technology and Maya Dynamics, the artist
will be able to apply physics properties
to every object in the scene before it’s
exported to the game engine.”ATI Invites Gamers to a Three-Way
‘Boundless Gaming’ initiative now
includes new tools for developersIt sounds crazy, but ATI thinks
people will buy three GPUs so they
can dedicate two to graphics and
one to physics.Microsoft Wades
into Physics
Battle
We ran a rumor mill story in July
about Microsoft’s plan to introduce
its very own physics API—dubbed
Direct Physics. Now, two months later,
there’s a job opening on Microsoft’s
website for a “Direct Physics” pro-
grammer. The ad states that the com-
pany is looking for an engineer, “to
join a growing team responsible for
developing Direct Physics.”
It makes perfect sense for
Microsoft to wade into the physics
scrum because, ultimately, having a
single, unified physics API will benefit
consumers and developers (as long as
it’s as good as, or better than, what
Havok and Ageia have to offer). Rich
Wickham from Microsoft’s Games
for Windows group told Maximum PC
he wrote the ad almost a year ago,
but insisted that the company has
no plans for a physics API. Wickham
stated that clearly physics are up-
and-coming, and it simply wants to
be on top of the situation.Attention readers: We need you to join
Maximum PC’s folding@home team!
The folding@home project is run by
Stanford University, in an attempt
to cure diseases using the power of
distributed computing. Download the
client from http://folding.stanford.edu,
fi re it up, and enter team 11108. We
also have a folding discussion online
at http://www.maximumpc.com/forums.Cure Cancer in
Your PC’s Spare
Time
quickstart THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
10 MA XIMUMPC SEPTEMBER 2006
“Today, physics are applied after the
scene is rendered,” explained Raja Koduri,technology and Maya Dynamics, the artistconsumers and developers (as long asTom McDonald has been covering games for countless maga-
zines and newspapers for 11 years. He lives in the New Jersey
Pine Barrens.S
ay “Episode One” to most people and they’re
likely to shudder, recalling a fl oppy-eared
abomination saying, “Mee-so Jaa-Jaa Beenks!”
Gamers, however, now have a new, far-more
pleasant “Episode One” association, thanks to
Valve Software’s Half-Life 2: Episode One.
With Steam, its online content delivery
system, Valve proved the potential of direct
delivery of software to the end-user via
broadband, bypassing the retail channel. With
Episode One, Valve has demonstrated a new,
unanticipated feature of the Steam service—the
ability to draw players in like never before and
keep them coming back for more.
In a way, the birth of episodic gaming is
reminiscent of the way massively multiplayer
games changed our expectations of the way
game worlds expand and grow over time with
new missions, regions, or characters. That
model doesn’t really work with single-player
games, where users can, at best, hope for a few
new multiplayer maps or an expansion pack.
Steam’s quasi-MMO features (a front end, retail
hooks, news, auto-downloading of patches, and
community features) allow Valve to create a more
involved solo experience.
Episodic gaming will allow new installments
for Half-Life 2 and Sin to be released at regular
intervals. Users can thus add new chapters,
each running about four to six hours, to their
games. With HL2, a single three-part story arc is
planned to be released over the next 18 months,
continuing the original game, as Gordon and
Alyx return to fi nish off the Citadel. Episode One
even comes with a remarkably innovative and
informative commentary track, providing tips
and fascinating behind-the-scenes details about
the game’s design.
Even though it’s new to PC gamers,
episodic gaming is really just a classic serial
format, used by everyone from Charles Dickens
to television shows like Lost. Serial storytelling
has a powerful appeal, stretching the narrative
experience over months and giving it time
and room to become a part of people’s lives.
An expansion, on the other hand, is released,
bought, played, and forgotten. With the
episodic format, Valve can create an ongoing
experience to keep players returning—
something that simply wasn’t possible with a
single-player game before.The Other
‘Episode One’GAME THEORY
THOMAS
MCDONALD