A scrambled Rubik’s cube can be solved in just 25 moves, regardless of the starting configuration. Tomas Rokicki, a Stanford-trained mathematician, has proven the new limit (down from 26 which was proved last year) using a neat piece of computer science. Rather than study individual moves, he’s used the symmetry of the cube to study its transformations in sets. This allows him to separate the ‘cube space’ into 2 billion sets each containing 20 billion elements. He then shows that a large number of these sets are essentially equivalent to other sets and so can be ignored. Even then, to crunch through the remaining sets, he needed a workstation with 8GB of memory and around 1500 hours of time on a Q6600 CPU running at 1.6GHz. Next up, 24 moves.

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Today the existing world-wide modding community of Crysis will receive a major boost as Crytek is happy to release the first version of the Mod Software Development Kit for the award-winning FPS.

Mod SDK - Description
With the tools and the assets provided now modders will be able to not only get their own creations exported into the Sandbox2 Editor but will also be able to create complete new levels and modifications with outstanding content.

This SDK is only the first version that has been released to the community in order to provide the necessary exporters, plug-ins, and also respective documentation.

Next to some basic sample assets that provide information on how to set things up correctly, this SDK also includes a few serious game assets. These are high poly objects that can be used as reference for own creations.

With patch 1.2 not being far away from being released, the SDK will get updated with the game source code. The update will then be available for download around the time the patch is released.

Mod SDK – Content
The list below represents everything modders will find from the 400MB sized package.

Tools:
Resource Compiler (32 bit only)
CryExport plug-in for 3DS Max

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We’ve been waiting for Flash support to hit the iPhone ever since…well…it launched. We’ve had to make do without Flash for almost eight months, and YouTube even had to convert a bunch of their catalog to H.264 in order for the service to be enjoyed on the iPhone. Well, we’ve just got word from a reliable source that Flash support is on its way to the iPhone, and it should be coming very, very soon. Speculating a bit further on our own, we are guessing that it would be pretty convenient for Flash support to be introduced alongside the iPhone SDK, wouldn’t you say? Now, we know that there isn’t much information here, but you also know how strong our sources are too - Flash on the iPhone is coming, just take our word for it, okay?

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Some say you need a super computer to run Crysis, Crytek beg to differ.

The Experiment

Over Christmas we took the time for a little in-house experiment. With only a limited budget of around US $900 we wanted to set up a brand new machine that can handle Crysis on High settings. We should note that Very High settings are reserved to keep Crysis future-proofed, just like Ultra was in Far Cry.
Together with EA we looked in shops around the world and bought the hardware parts to put together our machine starting from scratch. While we had a budget in mind, we wanted to still make sure this machine would have top-notch hardware such as a multicore processor or a DirectX10 graphics card.
The Videos
As you’ll see from the 8 minutes of video we recorded, Crysis looks absolute fabulous on High settings with this configuration and runs very smoothly on a 1280×720 resolution. They show different locations from the Crysis Singleplayer Campaign with everything set to High.

The Configuration

Below you find a rough list of parts we purchased so you can see and check for yourself about the total costs of such a high-end computer. The prices may vary from country

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The long-awaited first Crysis patch is finally released for the masses.

Finally it is out! The long awaited Patch 1.1 for Crysis is available for download! The 140MB sized file can be downloaded from one of the sources further below. The patch mainly addresses the performance of Crysis. Additionally it includes quite a few bug fixes and tweaks for the Multiplayer part to provide a more balanced gameplay.
Please find here the complete change log:
Fixes:
* Fixed: Potential crash in D3D10
* Fixed: Orange boxes apearing when hispec savegame loaded into lowspec game.
* Fixed: Inconsistent damage dealt to vehicles when shot by LAW.
* Fixed: Reflection resolution on D3D10, MultiGPU reflection update fix
* Fixed: Memory leak with FSAA modes
* Fixed: Infinite ammo hacks.
* Fixed: Memory leak in D3D10 when switching screen modes
* Fixed: Muti optimizations
* Fixed: When player melees during gun raise animation, their gun will be in a
permanently raised

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Microsoft has released the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) ‘Release Candidate’ (RC). This is the last step before the official SP1 is released in the first quarter of 2008. Note that this is still not official code, so there could still be bugs (but hey, there will still be bugs in the official release as well). If you install this, you will most likely need to remove it before installing the final release.

If you have a fast network connection, the easiest way to install will be with one of the stand-alone installers, which include everything you need to get rolling. Just pick which one you need, based on if you are running 32-bit (most common) or 64-bit, and what language you are using (choose from the last two if you use multiple languages).

• 32-bit in English, German, Japanese, French, Spanish
• 64-bit in English, German, Japanese, French, Spanish
• 32-bit in 36 Windows Vista languages
• 64-bit in 36 Windows Vista languages

The other way to get it (beside the inevitable P2P connections) is to download it directly through Windows Update. Microsoft describes it as ‘Experience the WU based Vista SP1 installation

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