Half-Life 2: Episode Two Interview @ GameSpot

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Almost a full year has passed since Valve released Half-Life 2: Episode One, the first of three promised episodes that will continue the saga of the blockbuster first-person shooter franchise. Episode Two was originally scheduled for release late last year, but Valve pushed the release date back to later this year. When it does arrive, it will feature not only the continuing story of series protagonist Gordon Freeman and partner Alyx Vance battling the alien Combine, but also the multiplayer action game Team Fortress 2 and a 3D puzzle game called Portal. To learn more about what's going on in Episode Two, we caught up with Valve project manager Erik Johnson. A warning to those who haven't played Episode One yet, as this preview contains spoilers to major events.

In The Hot Seat: ATI's Phil Rogers

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Phil Rogers joined ATI Technologies in 1994 as manager of the 3D drivers group, and led the development of the D3D, OpenGL, and Mac Rave drivers for the Rage series of graphics chips.
In 1999, Phil moved to an architectural role and has been responsible for 3D driver architecture and 3D performance optimization for the Radeon series of GPUs. An important part of that role has been to work closely with Microsoft on the evolution of the Direct3D API/DDI and on the development of the Windows Display Driver Model for Windows Vista. Phil plays an active role helping Microsoft make software architecture decisions that work well with all AMD graphics hardware and drivers. In 2006 Phil was promoted to ATI Fellow with broad architectural responsibility for all graphics software at ATI, and now AMD. In this role Phil has guided development of AMD's Vista drivers, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray playback drivers, a new driver architecture for Dx10, and the Crossfire architecture for MultiGPU. In his spare time Phil directed development of the new 3D preview for Catalyst Control Center, which just released on Vista. Phil is currently the lead software architect for the R600 drivers and is ramping up on his next challenge, which will be the software architecture for Fusion (AMD's combination CPU/GPU, scheduled for release in 2008). Read the interview here

Nvidia Interview: Direct3D10

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PCGH: How many games are currently in the works with the TWIMTBP program that uses DX10 features? Darryl Still: In Europe alone we are working with 155 different PC titles for release over the next 24-30 months from territories as diverse as Iceland, Slovakia, Belarus & Croatia, as well as the usual UK, Sweden, France & Germany. 38 of those are already confirmed as DX10 but over the coming months I would expect many more to move in that direction. Add to that a similar number from our US and APAC divisions and we are probably at close to 100 confirmed with double that number again a possibility. PCGH: What do you expect: How many TWIMTBP with DX10 features will be ready for the market let's say in Q1-2007? Read on at PCGamesHardware