Cloud QuestionmarkHi everybody.

It's starting to get nice again. It's about time. It's almost to Spring temperatures.

Anywho. So I've been playing Starcraft, and I finished Broodwar so I'm pretty happy. I forgot how awesome the story was in that game. As a result, I've been brushing up on Starcraft lore. I've ingested so much.

A great source of lore is right in the Starcraft manual. If you have any interest, read your manual for Starcraft. It's basically a mini novel. Great information in it though. I've been drawing correlations between the books, the game, and what not too. For instance why they chose the desert tileset for Korhal. It was nuked to death. Makes sense.

I need to start reading The Dark Templar saga though. I plan on reading that during the summer. Apparently lots of information is in those, such as Adun, who was a great warrier to the Templar.

Speaking of which, if anyone has an issue of Amazing Stories magazine, with the short story, "Starcraft: Revelations," can you send me an email? It's issue 596. Also if you have issue 601, with "Starcraft: Hybrid." I'd like scans of these stories and I cannot find them online anywhere! I can find summarizations of the stories, but that's not the same for me. I would be very happy if you could.

The Game Developers Conference is over now and there were some things announced that caught my attention. First off is Onlive. Onlive is a great idea, but I don't know if America is ready for it. I know Europe and Asia would be fine with it, but America might be lagging behind.

Let me explain what Onlive is first. Onlive is cloud computing brought to the video game world. With cloud computing, a server runs all the software, while delivering the information to the client computer via network or internet. You can have a very low end computer, and run hi end applications doing this.

A very simple example is Google Documents. Their servers are running the Word Processor, not your computer. An extremely simple example is Remote Desktop. It's no quite like Remote Desktop, but it illistrates it well.

Basically Online has servers that run the video games, and you can access those games on low end PCs, Macs, or their little box that hooks up to your internet and TV, and play these games on-demand. You can rent or buy. Their server runs the game and sends the information to your PC/Mac/OnlineBox, and you can play these games.

The catch is the same catch that makes me not support video streaming. Our bandwidth sucks in the United States. Here's a website that outlines where we ranked in bandwidth ratings in 2007. We rank 12, behind Japan, Korea, Norway, Australia and others.

I have done some testing with my Cable Broadband internet. During busy hours, I get about 4 megabits/second. During nonbusy hours, I get 8 megabits/second. That's using test speed sites. Reason why there is a difference between busy and nonbusy, is because cable internet is split up into sections, and your section has a shared bandwidth. My internet provider advertises 10 megabits/second, but my throughput is different because of overhead and what not. Then my upload rates sucks. Less than 1 megabit/second.

Reason why I tell you about this is because video games are a lot of information to stream. Online requires a minimum of 2.5 mbit/second. It recommend higher... I think 10 or 15 mbit/second. If you have a lower bandwidth, it scales your video game. So if you have 2.5 mbit/sec, expect 480p video. If you have 15 mbit/sec, you can get 1080p video quality for your games. It automatically scales.

It's a matter of when now though. Our bandwidth is getting better, but I'm not sure if it's there yet. I know rural areas are still using dial up. The small town of Antelope Montana just got DSL.

However, I do think Onlive is the future. Probably one console like that, and you can hook up different controlers to it, and play games. That would be awesome. I like downloading games from the Playstation Network, and Steam, so why not get games on demand?

I used to be a big "I want my hard copy" before, but now I don't care. I like downloading music from ITunes, I like downloading books in pdf format. I like buying games from steam. I would like to download movies digitally, but so far it can't compete with BluRay... yet. Once file storage and bandwidth gets better, then digital movies will blow BluRay out of the water. Until then, hard copy that.

I rambled again. I have more to say though. Here's an update to "Games to the Video 5." Release dates have changed so here it is:

  • Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers - Released
  • Damnation - May 26, 2009
  • Madworld - Released
  • Resistance Retribution - Released
  • inFamous - Q2 2009 (June 2009)
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum - June 9, 2009
  • The Conduit - June 23, 2009
  • Dark Void - August 25, 2009
  • I Am Alive - TBA 2009

So Dark void got moved to Q3, and inFamous still doesn't have a date. Damnation was pushed back twice. And I Am Alive is TBA so who knows?

I updated my personal list too, and look at the second half of the year to make sure that no one has updated the release dates of those games, and no one has so I'm hoping E3 will bring some release dates. As a result, July through the end of the year will be the next "Games to the Video" Dates, and July will probably bring "Games to the Video 6," unless there aren't a lot of games that have given me release dates.

I'm rambling so Bye.

"I like to scramble the fairies!"
- Jorgen Von Strangle