they have developer and nzone forums, but won't make any difference unless you speak to them directly.
worked for them for a year, trust me even that didn't give me instant access to talking to anyone actually in-charge simply because I wasn't working in the same office.
it actually disgruntled me so much that after my contract was up I told them what they could do with their brand new graphics cards when they asked if I could extend the contract 12months (and it was bloody good pay too)
while they have some great products and know their stuff when it comes to business in that sector, the rest they're totally inexperienced and just poor at communication. it's why they got screwed over by Microsoft on the original Xbox and also why they ended up loosing the court-case about it.
on the other hand though, I'd say that banner competition was far more a popularity contest than anything else. while the end results weren't 100% accurate it was done in a way to make it far more fair to those who didn't get the majority because Rich realised it ended up being about popularity of people on the forums. So if you want to make a stink about it being a big unfair scandal in your favour then go ahead, personally though I feel there are more important matters to talk about.
I also honestly don't believe Dino Hunter deserved to win anyway. Sorry Gatorhax but, couldn't really see many shaders at work in it, and for a shader game competition that's a big let down imo
What's more it just wasn't that fun or playable. Again for a game those are extremely important factors.
I've only been able to play a handful of the games so far (trying to see if I agree with the judge(s) decisions) some I'd say have merit... but again a large majority of games especially the FPSCreator ones either had little shaders at work, or even had them bloody turned off!
Not to be funny, but when a core point of the competition is to use and demonstrate shaders within a real-time game, and not a technology demo. Then to have games (especially the FPSCreator ones that honestly have no excuse given it's a built-in option and most of the work is pre-done for you in the model packs) just ignore that fact of the competition is beyond me.
This might also be part of why NVIDIA screwed people on the whole, their expectations might've been unrealistic on the whole; expecting something like the next FarCry or such from DBP/FPSCreator crowd, but I think if that is their reasoning it does have merit with what I've played so far.
Not to say they're not bad attempts, but on the whole the games that really lived up to the expecations of the competition most were scrapped. This left us with the competition winner (which I feel is quite well deserved tbh, was a great game on the whole), and Illusion of the Tower that honestly Mike you need your head examined for. I know you and your mates do that sort of artwork regularly but fgs it had absolutely nothing to do with the "story" at all, was just thrown in there for the hell of it. That's really what I have more against than anything else, and more over is it could've been easily censored if you didn't want tgc to find it or if they did to just think WTF by removing the textures or replacing the mesh with cubes.. some such task that takes all of what 2seconds.
I mean I fully agree this competition has been handled poorly, but on the flip side it seems only a handful of people actually took the damn thing seriously.
As such I do feel sorry for DarkCoder not getting the price he so rightly deserved, as for the rest.. dunno there's some I felt with a bit more effort to use Shaders (e.g. Beyond Life) they deserve prizes too.
I hope the developer of Beyond Life actually continues it, because I quite liked the story; and despite some serious performance issues it was quite well thought out. It's a game that I hope in the coming months he might want to consider remaking in Resident to show off it's potencial. As the level design (and this is coming from someone who does this for a living) was actually pretty damn good and well thought out.
When I'm finally done playing all of the enteries, I'll literally be pulling them apart, reviewing each one with links as part of the podcast. So I'll save most of my bitching and praise for that.
Shame on the whole though, given how much effort was put into the PhsyX competition. Some damn good enteries in that one.
