Microsoft just announced their new promotion called ‘Block Party‘ and we are very honored that Scrap Metal is going to be part of it.

The Block Party promotion will start in March and Scrap Metal will be available on XBLA on March 10th.

Below is an interview Kees did with ‘Inside Gaming Plus’ at the Microsoft X10 event where Block Party was announced.

Only a few more weeks!

It’s great to see the game getting amazing support at events like yesterday’s X10 and from sites like Neoseeker. We’re in the home stretch to launching the game in March – can’t wait.

We took this picture at the top in anticipation of passing Certification successfully and luckily, we were right. :) Scrap Metal passed certification on the first try and we are on track for a Spring 2010 release, so look for even more great news soon!

To make it really simple, the way a human being perceives depth in an object is by looking at it with both eyes. One eye will see the object from a slightly different angle than the other, which allows your brain to triangulate the points you’re looking at. This allows your brain to see the 3D shape. Of course, there are other clues that your brain uses to get a full grasp of whatever is going on around you, but this is the main factor. So, if you artificially cause your left and right eye to see slightly different images in a game, you can fool your brain into thinking that there’s actual 3D information on the screen.

There are many different ways of displaying 3D images. There are full-on 3D television sets now, but they are still quite expensive. Another method is using polarizing glasses, which is used in the 3D movies you can watch in the cinema nowadays. These systems are extremely high quality, but also very expensive still.
One more method that is more accessible to most gamers is anaglyphic rendering. This method uses colored lenses to filter out certain colors for your left or right eye. In fact, you’ve probably seen the glasses you need to use for this method – they are the ones that are red in one eye, and cyan (blue-ish) in the other.

On a TV and computer monitor, colors are displayed by mixing red, green and blue pixels. Now, the anaglyphic glasses filter out the colors so that the red pixels are only visible to your left eye, and the green and blue pixels are only visible to your right eye (Green + Blue = Cyan!). This is the key to displaying the game in 3D! We need to render the game scene from two different camera points, one for the left eye, and one for the right eye, and then mix these two images together so that the left image only affects the red pixels of the final image, and the right image only affects the green and blue pixels of the final image. This image may make things a bit more clear:

I got the idea for adding in the 3D feature to Scrap Metal™ because I had a pair of anaglyph glasses lying around the house that came with a 3d DVD movie. I picked them up and took them into the office and the rest is history.

So, if you have a pair of 3D glasses on hand, want to buy some from one of several online stores, or if you’re at CES, you can pick some up at our display at the Microsoft Booth, you’ll love this feature of Scrap Metal™. Here are a few more 3D screenshots to check out (if you have anaglyphic glasses of course)!

Click on the thumbnail to view the full image!

Ok, that’s it for now! If you want to hear more about this and other features as we ramp up for launch, subscribe to our Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/scrapmetalgame) to get the latest updates.

- Nick

The game’s looking great! So great, in fact, that we’ll be making some major announcements in the coming weeks, so check back soon!

Nick

We’ve been scrambling for the past few days to get our third dev-blog video ready, as well as all our PAX preparations. This video one shows a bit more of the gameplay, as well as some multiplayer split screen goodness. We’re making an announcement in the video as well, but you’ll have to watch the video for that. :)

Also, come check us out at the Penny Arcade Expo! You can try out Scrap Metal, and we’ll have some cool swag to give away as well. Look for booth #3106 (directly across from the PAX10 stand)

- Nick

Just wanted to give you a quick peek at the awesome looking T-shirts we’re going to be giving away at PAX:

All we ask for is some feedback on the game, and the shirt is yours! (as long as supplies last of course)

- Nick

It’s been a while since our last update, but that’s solely because we’re trying to get the game done! With a two man team, you have to pick your battles, and try to do everything as efficiently as possible. However, some things just take a lot of time, and the only way to get it done is just by doing the work. And that’s what we’ve been doing the last 4 months! (As well as sitting on the beach a few days, it’s been very hot here in Vancouver, BC).

We’re still going strong with Scrap Metal; We’ve got all the major systems working, we’ve got multiplayer working, we’ve got most of the single player game. We’re going to be making a few more tracks, and then it’s all about polishing the missions and cars.

The rendering technology we built seems to be holding up quite nicely, and we’ll be making a video about this next. This video should be released before PAX, where we’ll share a stand with our good friends Klei Entertainment. If you’re going to PAX, come check us out! We’ve got some awesome merchandise to give away.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you this one thing I put in the game last night. I thought it was kinda cool. I’m not sure yet if we’ll put it in the actual game, but since it’s pretty damn cool, there’s a good chance it will! I present to you: Anaglyph rendering! So to make this work you need some Red-Cyan glasses (Red over the left eye, cyan over the right). There’s tons of types available here, just make sure you get red-cyan ones!

(click on the image to see a bigger version)

- Nick

This is blog post number one, so stay tuned for more.