Gamers who love to hunt down Easter eggs in their favorite titles may get a kick out of Call of Duty: Black Ops. According to recent reports, there are at least two, both of which can be accessed from the game's main menu.
As seen in the video below, players are strapped down to a chair mounted in front of the main menu. On the Xbox 360 version, they can escape by tapping LT and RT repeatedly (use the Spacebar on the PC) until the arms break free of the straps. Once unsecured, players can actually roam around the area and eventually come across a PC running the old-school classic DOS.
Here's where the Easter egg fun begins. Type in "DOA" and the old computer will load up a top-down zombie shooter called Dead Ops Arcade-- this unlocks the "Insert Coin" Xbox 360 achievement. Type in "ZORK," and the PC will load up Infocom's classic adventure game Zork I: The Great Underground Empire in its entirety--this will unlock the "Eaten By A Grue" achievement.
For the uninitiated, Zork I was one of the first interactive fiction computer games, published in 1980 and the first part of a trilogy. The game originally appeared on the TRS-80, Apple II, the Commodore 64, the IBM PC and a few others, and was installed using the amusingly oversized 5.25-inch and 8-inch floppy disks.
Activision purchased Infocom back in 1986, and has since dissolved the studio. Activision still owns the licensing rights to the Zork franchise, allowing the publisher to include Zork in any Activision release. That could also mean Activision may have slipped in other classic titles.
UPDATE: Players can actually browse through the virtual PC, typing "DIR" to see its full contents and "HELP" to see a list of commands. There's a good possibility that Activision has hidden other Easter eggs on the PC, so gamers are encouraged to experiment.
Additionally, an Eminem song can be activated on the second zombie map called "Five." Simply find and activate the three red telephones.
Que bien! Uno de mis directores favoritos está embarcado en un nuevo proyecto, y quería compartirlo con ustedes. Realmente no es alguien muy muy conocido, aunque ya tiene 5 películas en su haber. Con ustedes, lo nuevo de Wes Anderson :)
Hay muchas noticias siempre pululando por la internet acerca de diferentes películas que ya tienen sus respectivos cast confirmados y esas cosas que a muchos los alegrará, pero siempre en función si algún que otro miembro nos cae más simpático que el otro o si, gracias a la noticia, ya podemos considerar que una película que esperabamos desde hace bastante se encuentra en camino de llegar por fin a la gran pantalla. Bueno, digamos que de esta noticia cada uno de los confirmados entra en la lista de mis favoritos —- y creo que muchos tendrán la misma sensación —-: Wes Anderson ya dió a conocer la lista de convocados para participar en su venidero filme, “Moon Rise Kingdom”.
Claro, convocados no quiere decir precisamente que serán los que estarán engrosando los definitivos actores del proyecto, pero conociendo a Anderson y su buena relación con los actores, dudo muchísimo que haya grandes sorpresas fuera de la lista que estamos dando en estos momentos. Tenemos a uno de los colaboradores usuales de los proyectos del ya citado director, Bill Murray, quien nos volverá a enamorar de alguna manera que aún desconocemos. Luego, una lista con ciertas novedades para un trabajo de Anderson: Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton yTilda Swinton.
La película, escrita por el director junto a Roman Coppola, se ambienta en los años ´60, en New England, lugar en donde dos jóvenes se enamoran y provocan un pequeño escándalo en la comunidad que deriva en la búsqueda desesperada de los amantes en fuga. Willis hará de comisario del lugar, mientras que McDormand hará de la madre de la chica enamorada que mantiene unaffaire con este representante institucional. Murray sera tanto el padre de la chica, el marido engañado: ya me puedo imaginar esa expresión alienante que posee, eso tan espectacular que nos hace volver una y otra vez a sus cintas. Por el lado de los dos restantes, Norton interpretará a un hombre que se colocá también en el plan de encontrar a los huidos, mientras que Tilda Swinton aún no tiene un rol declarado.
La película planea filmarse en la venidera primavera norteamericana con el soporte financiero de Indian Paintbrush, empresa dirigida por le multimillonario Steven Rales, quien ya ha colaborado con Anderson en cintas anteriores como“Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009) y “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007). Creo que es uno de los proyectos más emocionantes a seguir en estos días, así que estaremos atentos frente a cualquier novedad, con las ansias del fanático un poco, apenas un poco disimuladas.
Este verano os adelantábamos que LG estaba trabajando en nuevas pantallas de tinta electrónica en dos líneas. La primera era la de las pantallas flexibles y la segunda la de la creación de pantallas que fueran a color.
Pues bien, parece que las segundas ya son una realidad y al igual que otros fabricantes comoHanvon o las pantallas Triton, LG ya dispone de sus propias pantallas e-ink a color.
Por un lado, tenemos la que ves en la imagen. Se trata de una pantalla de 9,7 pulgadas y una resolución de 800 x 600 píxeles.
Por el otro una pantalla también de 9,7 pulgadas que nos recuerda al Nook original con una parte en blanco y negro a 1200 x 1200 y la parte inferior a color con 200 x 600 de resolución. Podéis verlo en el vídeo que os dejo a continuación.
Como alguno ya habrá imaginado, solo tenemos que atar cabos. El tamaño de los paneles son exactamente el mismo que el tamaño de pantalla del famoso tablet de Apple, pero en este caso de tinta electrónica a color. Quién sabe, lo mismo si que decían en serio aquellas declaraciones de que el tablet de LG será mejor que el iPad.
Y desde TechSpot en español…
Por Emil Protalinski y Erik Orejuela.
Los lectores electrónicos a color hasta ahora solo han estado disponibles como prototipos pero pronto estarán listos para las masas. Todo comenzará con el fabricante chino Hanvon, la compañía que planea estrenar el primer lector a color para el próximo año. El dispositivo de Hanvon tendrá una pantalla a color de 9,68 pulgadas sensible al tacto, Wi-Fi, y 3G. Saldrá a la venta en China en marzo del 2011 a un precio aproximado de $440. “Es posible que lo vendamos en los EE.UU. también,” expresó el presidente de Hanvon, Liu Yingjian, al New York Times. Incluso si Hanvon no lo hace, sin duda uno de sus competidores lo hará.
El lector en cuestión utiliza una pantalla de E Ink estándar con un filtro de colores. Como resultado de esto mantendrá el mismo bajo consumo, peso, y alta definición de caracteres que sus contrapartes en blanco y negro. El lado negativo es que la pantalla será bastante estática: imágenes a color estarán bien (tal vez animaciones básicas) pero los videos a los que estamos acostumbrados están totalmente fuera de lo posible. Es más, la falta de una luz posterior significa que los colores no serán tan brillantes como los de una pantalla LCD. No se sabe de otras características pero Hanvon es bien conocido por su tecnología para el reconocimiento de escritura a mano aunque esta no está disponible en todos sus lectores electrónicos.
El color no esta importante para leer en comparación al entretenimiento o juegos. ¿Serán las ilustraciones a color sean razón suficiente para no elegir una tableta más potentes con pantalla LCD? Los más probable es que los consumidores quieran todo en un solo dispositivo: un lector a colores, entretenimiento, video juegos, bastante brillo, un bajo consumo y una batería de larga duración. Y obviamente un precio más económico siempre es bienvenido.
De los mejores tutoriales que encontré en la Web, para ayudarnos a obtener un resultado lo más realista posible, mediante la técnica de alto rango dinámico. Incluye un muy interesante video sobre uso de curvas, muy útil no solo para finalizar dicha técnica.
In the right hands, high dynamic range imaging can blend multiple exposures of the same scene to more closely reproduce what your eye can see. Here's how to do HDR the right way.
So when should you use HDR? It's simple: when you're trying to capture a scene with a wide range between its lightest and darkest areas (aka dynamic range) as accurately as possible. Your camera's sensor can only capture a small portion of the light that your eye can take in and process, so to make up for that, HDR images are created by combining the pixel information from several pictures into one 32-bit Voltron-file that contains the full dynamic range of each of the individual shots used to create it.
Take this range of shots of the Cairo skyline I took last week from the top of the highest minaret of the Al Azhar mosque in that lovely city. Neither one of the three accurately exposes the whole scene—in the shot that captures the sky correctly, the buildings below are too dark, and when the buildings are exposed accurately, the sun behind the clouds gets blown out, losing all detail. So this is the perfect situation for an HDR image.
But in many cases rightfully, HDR has a reputation as a gimmick that can easily be abused to turn your photos into dreadful, over-saturated, tacky looking messes of clown vomit. But if your main intent is to accurately capture a scene as your eye sees it, you can come away with some believable but still otherworldly (for a photograph, in a good way) images. In the end, it all comes down to personal preference; you may think my shot above looks like garbage. That's cool, save your comments, photo snob trolls. You're free to make your shots look however you want, and here's the best way I've found to do just that.
What You'll Need: • A camera that has auto exposure bracketing (not essential, but without it, you'll have to set the range of exposures manually and will need a tripod). At the very least you'll need manual exposure controls.
• Photoshop CS2 or higher (you can also use specialized HDR software like Photomatix, but for this guide I'm using Photoshop CS4).
• Some knowledge of curves and histograms in Photoshop. This video tutorial is a great start for curves.
Take Your Shots As mentioned before, you'll get the most bang for your HDR buck with scenes that have both extremely bright and extremely dark areas of interesting detail to bring out. So choosing the right scene is an obvious first step.
1. Set your camera to auto exposure bracketing mode, which takes three (usually) sequential shots at three different exposure levels: one correctly exposed, one overexposed, and one underexposed. You can usually specifiy the amount of exposure stops to under- and overexpose—you probably want the maximum range, which is usually a full two stops in either direction.
2. You want to take the three shots in the quickest succession possible since we'll be merging them later and you don't want moving objects to foul that up. So turn your camera on burst shooting where possible and hold down the button, firing off three quickies without moving. This is where you'll need a tripod for cameras without AEB to keep the shots uniform.
Note: If you can, shoot in RAW. Photoshop can handle RAW files just fine, and the extra exposure information within compared to JPEG will make your HDR images all the more juicy. Also, the more source images you have the better, so if you do have a tripod and are shooting an immovable scene, bringing more than 3 images to your HDR file will only give you more detail to work with.
Create Your HDR Image
3. In Photoshop, go to File -> Automate -> Merge to HDR. Select your three images, click "Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images" if you think they may be slightly crooked, and then hit OK. Photoshop will chew on them for a while and then present you with your 32-bit HDR image.
You may notice that the file you have now doesn't look so hot. That's because a 32-bit HDR image isn't useful in itself unless you have a $50,000 HDR monitor. To look good on your screen and on paper, it must now be "tone mapped" into an 8-bit image that selectively uses parts from each exposure to accurately represent the scene.
4. Before we head to tone mapping, save your HDR as a 32-bit Portable Bit Map file so you can start fresh again if need be.
Tone Mapping Your Image How you tone map the HDR file determines whether your result will look great or like the aforementioned clown vomit. We're using Photoshop here because it's more closely tuned, in my opinion, to achieving real-world results than HDR-specific software like Photomatix. Here, though, personal taste is everything, so if you like your images more or even less saturated and otherworldly than I do here, feel free to experiment, of course. They're your photos! It also helps to keep an eye on your originals as you're doing this to make sure you don't stray too far from reality.
To become a skilled HDR jockey in the tone mapping department, you'll need to be at least a little bit familiar with two fundamentals of digital imaging that tend to hide in the background for most users—the scary-looking graphs known as histograms and curves, both of which look like they belong in your school text book.
But no need to cower in fear! Watch this video right now to get the basic gist of curves (and also, essentially, histograms).
Now, armed with that knowledge, to tone-mapping!
5. With your 32-bit HDR file open, go to Image -> Mode -> 8 Bits/Channel. This will bring up the tone mapping window, which has four options in the drop-down: Exposure and Gamma, Highlight Compression, Equalize Histogram and Local Adaptation. The first three, to varying degrees, are automatic settings. To say I understand the specific differences between all four would be lying, but I do know this: Local Adaptation is the only one that lets you manually futz with the image curve, giving you the most creative control. Choose that one (but feel free to experiment with the others, of course).
6. Here's where things get kind of abstract. If you watched your tutorial video, you'll know you want to use the eyedropper tool to isolate areas of the image you want to work with, then create an anchor point and move that section of the curve into the ligher or darker area of the graph. You can start with the easiest adjustment, which is dragging the lower-left portion of the curve to where the histogram begins—this will make the darkest parts of your image pure black, which you want for good contrast.
7. Your next goal should be to fiddle with a point higher on the curve to make your whites whiter. So grab a point up there and move it into the top portion of the graph until the whites are to your liking in the live preview.
8. And finally, choose a point in the middle and work the midtones. Again, preference is key, but you'll want something that, in the end, represents a classic S-curve for the best contrast. In the end, you want an image that has black blacks, white whites (but few to zero completely washed out areas), and detail through the midrange. Your image may still look not so good when your curve is done, but that's OK.
9. The last step in the tone mapping process is to mess with the good ol' Radius and Threshold sliders. Again, like many things in Photoshop, I have no idea exactly what's being jiggered here, but these essentially control how HDR-ed out your HDR images will look, if that makes sense. The wrong setting will peg the image's edge detail, resulting in some yucky looking mess. I like to keep a little bit of blown-out highlights in the image too, to remind everyone it's still a photo.
So fiddle with these sliders until the live preview looks good in your esteemed opinion. Again, your image won't look perfect, even now. The object here is to strike the right balance between detail and a natural look.
Toning Your Image Now you have a good old fashioned 8-bit image that contains some elements of all three of your original source files, tone mapped. The final step is applying some of Photoshop's basic tools used for any photo in order to bring out the most detail possible.
10. First, Levels. Even though you set contrast with your tone curve, you may still be able to fine tune it with levels. So under Image -> Adjustments -> Levels, make sure the black and white sliders are aligned with the left and right edges of your histogram mountain to the extent that it pleases you.
11. Next, Image -> Adjustments -> Shadows/Highlights, one of Photoshop's most magical tools. Here is where the areas of your image that previously looked too dark will reveal their glorious hidden detail. Slowly raise the Amount and Tonal Width sliders under Shadows until the detail comes out, but not too far into ugly boosted-out territory. Do the same for Highlights.
12. And last, Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation, where you probably want to boost the Saturation just a little bit to get the colors popping to your liking.
And that's it! You should now have an HDR image that captures that amazing scene like you remembered it, without the clown vomit!
Like always, knowledge dropped in the comments of our Saturday How-To Guides is essential.Don't feel like my way is the only way—if you've got something constructive to share, please do! Happy HDR-ing this weekend everyone, and please do post your results in the comments. I want to see,
