Hot Info For This Week

2011 Independent Games Festival Announces Student Showcase Winners

The Independent Games Festival has announced the eight Student Showcase winners for the thirteenth annual presentation of its prestigious awards, celebrating the brightest and most innovative creations to come out of universities and games programs from around the world in the past year.

This year's showcase of top student talent include slapstick physical comedy adventure Octodad, from DePaul University's Team DGE2, University of Montreal student Richard E. Flanagan's boldly styled Myst-like adventure Fract, and Tiny and Big, an ambitious, comic-book styled 3D action platformer from Germany's School of Arts and Design Kassel.

In total, this year's Student Competition took in more than 280 game entries across all platforms -- PC, console and mobile -- from a wide diversity of the world's most prestigious universities and games programs, a 47% increase from entrants in the 2010 Festival, making the Student IGF one of the world's largest showcases of student talent.

All of the Student Showcase winners announced today will be playable on the Expo show floor at the historic 25th Game Developers Conference, to be held in San Francisco starting February 28th, 2011. Each team will receive a $500 prize for being selected into the Showcase, and will are finalists for an additional $2,500 prize for Best Student Game, revealed during the Independent Games Festival Awards on March 2nd.

In conjunction with this announcement, IGF organizers are also revealing that this year's Independent Games Festival Awards at GDC will be hosted by Anthony Carboni. Carboni is host and producer of Bytejacker, the acclaimed indie and downloadable game video show and website, and one of the most enthusiastic and devoted followers of the independent game scene.

The full list of Student Showcase winners for the 2011 Independent Games Festival, along with 'honorable mentions' to those top-quality games that didn't quite make it to finalist status, are as follows:

Tahaky

First Dragon Age 2 DLC revealed in Signature Edition

'The Exiled Prince' free if you pre-order by January 11.


As you may have noticed Dragon Age 2 isn't out yet, but that hasn't stopped the first downloadable content pack from being revealed.

Next fortnight's Xbox Live deals and releases detailed

Free Xbox Live weekend starting January 28.


Major Nelson has revealed what we can expect in terms of Xbox Live deals, Games on Demand and arcade releases for the next couple of weeks.

Picasso portrait

Gophermods RSX Reballing Available Later This Month

For those of us who have fallen victim to the YLOD, one of the potential problems that causes it was the deterioration and melting of the lead-free solder on the hot-running RSX chip. Over time, the solder will have potentially melted off of a contact, causing the error, which required the solder to be re-flowed onto the contacts (using the same solder).

Doing it that way will likely not be a permanent fix, since it was that solder that caused the problem to begin with. If you researched fixes, the closest thing you can get would be a reballing service (which replaces all of the RSX solder with new stuff), preferably a lead-based solder. That’s where Gophermods comes in.

For a few months now, Gophermods has had the service listed on their site, but it only had a “coming very soon” on it, with no purchasing options or a FAQ available. It did have a price ($139.99), though.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I received a mass-email pertaining to the service (since I had contacted them and asked them about it. It was sent to everyone who had sent them the same questions), and with it was a little FAQ, and a few more details of the service. You can read those here (and although this little FAQ doesn’t say when it will be available, the email did, with the launch happening this month):

Q: How much will the service cost?

A: As of now, everything is priced at $139.99.

Q: What will the warranty be?

A: As of now, we are looking at standard free one year warranty.

Q: How long will the repair take? All other repairs on the website are listed as 24 hours.

A: We will not be able to guarantee a 24 hour turnaround time for the reballing service. While we would like to get them finished in the 24 hour period, it is not possible. Each repair will take in the time frame of 2-3 hours to do it correctly, and that is assuming there will be no issues in the repair process.

Our timeframe will be 24-72 hours, with more units getting out well before the 72 hour timeframe.

Q: I tried reflowing my unit before, or I sent it to another repair shop, other than yours. Will you accept my unit?

A: Unless the console was repaired by us previously, we will not be able to accept any other units that have been worked on previously, unless approved by us.

Q: Will you replace the lead-free Sn-Ag-Cu solder, with a lead Sn/Pb based solder?

A: Yes, all lead-free solder BGA’s will be replaced with a more robust lead based solder spheres.

Q: Is this a permanent repair?

A: No, we cannot guarantee this is a permanent repair because we cannot test a unit that extensively. So we don’t want be deceptive to our customers, and guarantee this will last for life. Other than the processors on the PS3 motherboard, there are more areas where the unit is susceptible of breaking down. While 90% of failures are caused by the processors, we want to stress that there are about 10% of YLOD failure points that are unknown.

Q: What if my GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) is dead, bad, or fried?

A: A reball would not fix this problem. It would require a new GPU to be reballed onto the motherboard. We are currently working to source some reliable and new GPU processors so we will be able to offer this. At the moment, there is no one reliably supplying brand new GPU processors.

Q: What is a sign that my GPU is bad?

A: Graphic distortions, green lines, polygons, white snow on the screen, color distortion, pixelation, no audio or video on either HDMI or Composite ports.

A one year warranty sounds like they definitely have confidence in the fix and in their work. The lead-based solder will also help ensure the solder won’t simply melt from the heat, either. Although they say it’s not a guaranteed permanent repair (for liability reasons), mixed with the standard warranty and the success of other reballs people have done, there’s a good chance you’ll get even an old 60GB PS3 to last a few years longer.

With the overall positive ratings these guys received, I have decided to wait until the service becomes available so I can get my YLOD fixed by them. If you have gotten a YLOD, or if it does happen, keep an eye on the service here.

Poll Results and New Poll

Poll Results

No surprise here, but Uncharted did take the win. What was surprising was the sheer number of votes it got in comparison to the rest of the selection (including big name first party titles like LBP2, inFamous 2, and Killzone 3).

Now for a few queries regarding some of the choices. Are there seriously 6 people who aren’t anticipating anything? Spider-Man 3? And who the heck put Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on there?

Also, I know the graph is rather huge, but I had to size it so the winners were easily legible.




New Poll

With 3D becoming more popular, and with the lack of any really good poll ideas, I decided to ask whether or not you folks will be picking up a 3D TV this year. I added a couple situation-based answers to the standard yes and no as well.

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Will you be purchasing a 3D TV this year?





No



Wait it out a couple more years



Not until glasses-less option available



Depends (money, usefulness, etc)



Yes





View Results

Diablo 3