That's right, the post-apocalyptic detective adventures of Access Games' Tex Murphy 1 & 2 are free until December 24th for anyone who registers with GOG.com, and if you go for the free adventure games, you might stick around for the savings. There's a huge list of discounted titles on sale now at the website, with Fallout 3 and Freespace 2 only $3.98; Sacred Gold and Jagged Alliance 2 for $5.99; and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Beyond Good and Evil on sale for $7.49 apiece. All the games in the sale (and all of the games on GOG for that matter) are completely DRM free, allowing you to put them on whatever computer you'd like and play them as long as you want without ever having to worry about the man coming down on you. You buy it, it's yours.

There's still no BloodNet, but I maintain hopes that one day it will make its way there.

GOG Xmas Holiday Sale [GOG.com]

Here's the score: Bethesda sued Interplay, claiming the Fallout Trilogy bundle it was selling and marketing through digital distribution services was "confusingly similar" to Bethesda's Fallout 3 products going out this year. Bethesda also wants to terminate Interplay's contract to develop the Fallout MMO, a deal signed when Bethesda bought the rights in 2007 - for $5.75 million - from Interplay, the series' original publisher.

But U.S. District Court Judge Deborah K. Chasanow rejected Bethesda's request for an injunction, without giving any reasons, in a ruling first found by Fallout fan Web site Duck and Cover, and reported today by Gamasutra.

Court Denies Bethesda's Motion To Block Interplay Fallout Activity [Gamasutra]

Fallout fan Wikia The Vault believes them to be, writing today that they were acquired from an "anonymous, but reliable source" and that they're a part of Interplay's defense in a lawsuit filed against the developer by Fallout-rights holder Bethesda.

The screens at least appear to be in line with what the Project V13 concept art hinted at, even if the purported in-game stuff looks like a very brown, very bleak place to spend one's online time.

The Vault blogger Ausir also has more PV13 concept art, should you be turned off by the reality of the in-development MMO. Thanks to Dmitriy for the heads up.

"Wolfenstein Classic was my original experiment on whether a first-person shooter would be any fun on the iPhone," he said. "It did surprisingly well for all of us."

So well, in fact, that Carmack finds himself spending a disproportionate amount of his time working on future iPhone games. Already id Software has released Wolfenstein Classic, Wolfenstein RPG, Doom Resurrection and this week Doom Classic.

Carmack said that there was a lot of "hand wringing" initially over the idea of spending the company's own money (there was no publisher to help fund development) on making games for the iPhone. Doom Resurrection, when it hit, was probably the most expensive game to develop for the iPhone, Carmack says.

But that internal concern quickly disappeared when Wolfenstein Classic hit the App Store.

"It did really well for us," he said. "It was Wolfenstein Classic that made the argument for iPhone development for me. We made quite a bit of money off of that."

After its success Carmack and id Software decided to launch a three-prong approach to iPhone development, working on classic remakes, role-playing titles and original games.

With only a few games out for the platform so far, each game gives Carmack a chance to experiment with development and the technology, he said.

While Doom Classic's touch controls may seem very similar to those found in Wolfenstein Classic, Carmack says there's quite a big difference.

" There were some important changes, like the virtual stick autocentering, changes to precise ramping of movement," he said.

The game also introduces a new control option that allows gamers to turn around in the game by spinning a virtual wheel. But only six months into iPhone game development, Carmack says he already finds himself "hamstrung" by people's expectations of controls set by his previous games.

"We're still feeling out what will play well and what people will like," he said.

Next up for Carmack is Quake Classic, it will be the first shooter that id Software releases for the iPhone that will include the ability to look up and down, not just side to side.

I pointed out that some in the gaming and development community have suggested that both Doom and Wolfenstein Classic control so well because they don't need to worry about up and down controls.

Carmack said that while adding another axis of control is tricky, it would be wrong to dismiss what the current games have accomplished.

"There is an excellent experiment that can be done here," he said. "Play the jail broken Doom and the one I worked on. There is obviously a large difference here. You can be dismissive of the game, that there is a limited control input set, but there is a lot of work that goes into that.

"Everything that has a 32-bit processor has had Doom ported to it, you can run it on a toaster, but it takes a lot of work and care to turn it into something you would choose to play. I had people showing me FPS apps while I was working on Wolfenstein, and they were all atrocious."

Carmack says that it is possible that a fully controlled first-person shooter just isn't in the cards for the iPhone, but he won't really know until he's developed Quake Classic. After that he plans to work on Quake 2 for the iPhone.

"I'm not sure if after Quake 2 I want to do Quake Arena or Quake Live for the iPhone," he said.

The problem is that while Quake Live has better levels it would require WiFi to play online. That's because 3G just won't cut it for Carmack.

"I was originally excited about 3G," he said. "I was told it could have 180 pings, but when I tested it, it was twice that. It was not usable."

While the Classics' line seems fairly mapped out, Carmack isn't as sure about the RPG and original games coming from the developer. He says that the next RPG game will be Doom 2 RPG and if that does well they will move on to the Orcs and Elves RPG games.

The only other original game announced by id Software is one that will be based on their upcoming PC title Rage, but that doesn't mean there aren't others in the works. In particular Carmack is interesting in getting parent company Bethesda interested in bringing some of their games over to the iPhone.

"I spent a bit of time talking to Todd Howard about the iPhone," he said. "We want to make something happen for those products as well."

An obvious choice would be Fallout, something that Carmack says has already had internal proof of concepts made. But nothing has yet officially happened with the game.

Carmack says that Howard, a big fan of the iPhone, is very supportive of the idea and that anything made based on Bethesda's games would likely be created as a joint project between id and Bethesda.

He added that he would be involved in making the game most likely, but that his time is "overloaded badly right now".

"At the very least I'm going to be providing code," he said.

While more people are being brought on to help with iPhone development at id Software, it's clear that Carmack wants to stay involved with the growing business.

"I've had tons of fun working on it as a platform,"he said. "I carry an iPhone around with me as my regular phone all of the time. It's like carrying around a dev kit in my pocket."

The details of that case come from a complaint filed in the District Court of Maryland earlier this week. That complaint alleges that Interplay did not seek approval for the sale of the Fallout Trilogy bundle, which features the original Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics. Bethesda claims that the title Fallout Trilogy is "confusingly similar" to that of Fallout 3 and takes issue with Interplay's marketing, sale and distribution of other Fallout packages named Fallout Collection and Saga Fallout.

Bethesda also takes issue with Interplay's licensing of Fallout games to digital distribution services Good Old Games (GOG), GameTap and Steam, which Interplay was said never to have sought approval or permission for. Basically, Bethesda takes issue with pretty much everything Interplay seems to be doing with the pre-Fallout 3 releases, believing they cannibalize sales of Fallout 3.

The Fallout 3 developer furthermore wants to officially terminate Interplay's rights to create a massively multiplayer online game with the Fallout license. Bethesda believes that Interplay has breached its trademark licensing agreement by failing to enter into full-scale development of a Fallout MMO.

Bethesda threatened legal action over the Fallout MMO earlier this year, claiming that Interplay was slow to develop such a game and had failed to secure the proper funding for the game code-named "Project V13."

In short, it appears that Bethesda wants Interplay to stop selling the Fallout Trilogy and pay up any profits it made selling the trademark infringing games.

Bethesda purchased the rights to the Fallout property for $5.75 million.

Most people will head straight for Fallout. Or Fallout 2. Or Fallout Tactics. Or even the Fallout Collection, bundling all three. That's cool, Fallout's all the rage right now.

Me, I'm heading straight for Kingpin. The ultra-violent FPS is a forgotten gem, and it's great more people will get the chance to try out one of gaming's most gratifying lead pipes.

Oh, Sacrifice is also available, if the above titles are a little too...dark for your tastes.

The game is "getting closer," the Fallout and Oblivion game director told me during our interview at QuakeCon in Dallas.

"I put some of that on hold, because I knew we would be doing some stuff with id." That "stuff" was Bethesda parent company ZeniMax's June purchase of the renowned first-person shooter development studio. id co-founder John Carmack has been aggressively working on the iPhone platform, now promising an iPhone game just about every other month. He remembers thinking, "I'll wait and see what John has to say about it."

The game is not a personal Todd Howard project. Think of it as a Bethesda game, though Howard wouldn't offer gameplay details or subject matter. I asked if it would be a Fallout or Elder Scrolls project, but he'd only remind me that "those are things we really like."

Carmack willing, it seems, the game will proceed. "It's one of those things where I wish it would happen sooner," Howard said, "But we're definitely going to do some stuff."

By following Chris Furniss's simple instructions, you can whip up a ton of hand-made Nuka Cola caps, Med-X and Buffout, then scatter them across your tables and floors accordingly.

Best part? They're cheap and easy to make. Well, that and you get a little slice of Fallout without the whole nuclear armageddon thing. That's also a plus, I guess.

Fallout Cosplay Accoutrements: Make your own Nuka Cola bottlecaps, Buffout and Med-X [Weekly Geek, via Offworld]

Not only that, the original design of Fallout 3, by Black Isle, there were no plans to include Dogmeat. But Bethesda ultimately brought him back. It seems bizarre that they could have left out a dog companion, one of the most motionally fulfilling features of the original two games.

The Escapist's latest issue examines canines in gaming, and no such study would be complete without a discussion of Dogmeat, the unwaveringly faithful follower your Lone Wanderer picks up in all three Fallout titles. The game's creators never imagined how attached players would become to the dog, going to hell and back to keep him alive until the end of the game.

Junktown Dog

"Dogmeat was definitely inspired by The Road Warrior," says Cain. "Leonard Boyarsky, the art director ... had that movie running continuously in his office, and I think he remarked on several occasions that having a dog in the game would be really cool. [It's] why we wanted a dog in the first place."

Many pieces of the Fallout games were inspired by The Road Warrior, from the opening "newsreel" monologues (narrated by Ron Perlman of The City of Lost Children, another inspiration according to Cain) to the games' stylized leather armor and medical braces. One of the most vivid images from Bethesda Game Studios' Fallout 3, the latest installment in the series, is that of the Lone Wanderer with Dogmeat by his side, a mirror image of a scene from Mad Max. Even the breed is the same: Both are Blue Heelers, known for their loyalty, trainability and heterochromia (one blue eye, one brown eye).
image

What isn't derived from The Road Warrior is Dogmeat's name; that likely comes from a scene in the 1975 film A Boy and His Dog where Vic (Don Johnson) refers to his mutt as "Dogmeat."

"A Boy and His Dog inspired Fallout on many levels, from underground communities of survivors to glowing mutants," says Heinig. "My understanding is that (Fallout designer) Scott Bennie settled on the name 'Dogmeat' for the character, and it's likely that he did pick that from the story in question." Good thing, because according to Bennie, Dogmeat's original name was "Dogs**t."

In the original Fallout 3 (aka Van Buren), designed to near-completion by Black Isle, there were no plans to bring Dogmeat back, but fortunately for dog lovers he made it into Bethesda's version as a presumed descendant of the original dog who - according to the developers - perished in a "force field accident." Fallout 3's Dogmeat not only follows and defends you, but will fetch food, ammo and weapons (even boasting the curious but helpful ability to pilfer things from locked containers). When he goes missing, he can often be found waiting patiently outside Vault 101, perhaps inspired by the final scene from A Boy and His Dog where "Dogmeat" waits outside a vault for his owner.

[...]

Dogmeat's unwavering devotion lets players "Pet the Dog," a fiction trope wherein a potentially despised character appears kinder by demonstrating a love for dogs: In Equilibrium, Cleric John Preston slaughters a dozen policemen to save a puppy; Discworld's Lord Vetinari (veterinary?) is an ex-assassin with dogs named Wuffles and Mr. Fusspot; even Richard Nixon had Checkers. In an uncaring wasteland where you can play a total psychopath if you so choose, Dogmeat is a moral compass: Though your needle might swing towards good or evil, his center always holds strong provided you protect him. If you don't, his death becomes a sad reminder of the consequences of reckless slaughter.

For many reasons, Dogmeat is arguably the most successful NPC companion ever, according to Chris Avellone, Level Designer for Fallout 2, creator of the Fallout Bible and Chief Creative Officer of Obsidian Entertainment, developer of Fallout: New Vegas.

"One, he doesn't talk, so the players can project a personality on to him," says Avellone. "Two, he's effective in combat ... and three, he's a dog that stays with you through thick-and-thin. I don't think there's a deeper 'awww' sentiment than people have in their hearts for their pets."

- Michael Fiegel

Giant Bomb community member buzz_clik threw theses screens together in lieu of an actual game after reading a story about the Rutgers University robot that conquered the Atari 2600 classic game. It would have been cooler to have an actual flash game, of course, but what buzz_clik lacks in programing know-how, he (or she) makes up for in Photoshop skills.

And I can't argue with buzz_clik's logic on this — the games do seem to be a match made in heaven. Or, post apocalyptic brown heaven as the case may be.

Why not make a game that combines Pitfall! and Fallout ? They're both open-world games, with our hero braving a harsh landscape looking for stuff to pocket. They both have portions that take place underground. Both games have scorpions, as any good game should. Hell, there's even an expansion for Fallout 3 called The Pitt!

PitFallout! [Giant Bomb]

The Bureau's mission: To needlessly expose the wide gulf between video game physics and the laws of the real world; to pursue, to a pointless degree if necessary possible, the logical extremes of any mathematical given; to ask the questions that do not really deserve to be answered; and as an ultimate, Quixotic pursuit, to finally define the real world value of one hit point. We do this in the name of science for all mankind.

Our first journal of study is hereby submitted, dealing with three metrics - weight, speed and momentum.

Dr. Owen S. Good
Director, Kotaku Bureau of Weights & Measures

WEIGHT
Game: Fallout 3
Test Subject: Vault Dweller

In an RPG, you'd expect to have some distorted encumbrance measurements. Players have been hauling around a full cabinet of arms, plus full plate armor, plus a spare set of armor, plus dual-wield crossbows, plus 500 bolts, plus turkey dinner, since this kind of game was played on paper. It's why D&D invented the Portable Hole.

Fallout 3 measures weight in vague units of "WG." Of any RPG that caps carrying weight, it seems to let you carry a lot. Like a U-Haul's worth. In my latest game I deliberately created a guy with 4 strength because I wanted him to travel light and carry only that which was useful. But as you can see in this recent loadout below, I'm still stowing a spare set of recon armor in case a Glowing One makes me dump in my Brotherhood suit.

Weapons: A3-21's Plasma Rifle, Combat Shotgun, 28 Frag Grenades, 15 Frag Mines, Mesmetron, 3 Plasma Grenades, 4 Plasma Mines, Plasma Pistol, 9 Pulse Grenades, Scoped .44 Magnum (56 WG)
Apparel: Enclave Officer Hat, Power Armor, Power Helmet, Recon Armor. (71)
Aid: Blood Pack, 9 Buffout, 3 Dirty Water, 14 Med-X, 15 Mentats, 2 Nuka-Cola Quantum, 4 Psycho, 17 Purified Water
9 Rad-X, 25 RadAway, 6 Stealth Boy, 79 Stimpak, (sue me, I'm a HP whore), Sugar Bombs. (28)
Miscellaneous: 16 Bobby Pins, Carton of Cigarettes, Cherry Bomb, Conductor, Fire hose Nozzle, Ink Container
Leaf Blower, Pack of Cigarettes, 5 Pre-War Money, 12 Scrap Metal, Key ring with 14 keys on it (29)
Ammo: 202 rounds .44 magnum, 20 darts, 285 Energy Cells, 50 Mesmetron Power Cells, 493 Microfusion Cells, 280 Shotgun Shells. (0 WG)
Total WG: 184

What bothered me about Fallout was not so much that the heavy weapons, like a Flamer, weighed only "15." Maybe they're made from futuristic lightweight metal. No, it's more that a pair of freaking TWEEZERS was equivalent in weight to a motorcycle helmet. It's not even that the WG figure represents a total encumbrance factor – that either the item's size or fragility makes it difficult to carry - because a pool cue has the same WG figure: 1.

So I chatted up Todd Howard of Bethesda Softworks, Fallout 3's game director, about this. First off, is "WG" equivalent to anything?

"Not really," Todd said. "It's sort of close to pounds, but we intentionally don't really say what it is. It actually started based on the weights we used for The Elder Scrolls, which most people don't know are the also-amorphous ‘stones.'"

OK, fine. If they didn't peg WG to something, I will. And I'm going to base it on the weight of beer. A bottle in Fallout is 1 WG. In real life, a bottle of beer, depending on how stout it is, will weigh roughly three-quarters of a pound when you figure in the glass. By figuring my total burden as it relates to at least one item in my possession, I could start imagining how large a load I was carrying around.

But what I couldn't measure is ammo, meds and chems, which have no weight value - and I wasn't going down to the local needle exchange to weigh whatever approximates a Jet syringe. Why didn't Bethesda give them a weight? Because in the game, these are very valuable items. Why wouldn't an RPG, which is more based in realism and more dependent on choice-making than other genres, also require players to be more conscientious about what they're carrying?

"In regards to ammo and money, it's just too granular a decision for the player, if they had weight," Todd said. "You don't want to make that a choice for the player; he already has to manage so much in his inventory and you need things he can find that are an instant win - ammo, money, drugs, etc, things that help keep him alive and playing. It would just bog the game down too much to find ammo and be thinking, ‘Do I want to pick up two of these bullets or the whole stack?' We felt that decision should be on [which] weapons to carry, not what ammo."

Yes, but when a Gatling Laser weighs the same as a frosty 18-can fridge pack of Miller, your decision to carry two is not because of their combat utility but the resale value in Rivet City. Todd said that's entirely valid reasoning, and strength is meant to enable it.

"Much of your character's power comes from his stuff. The more he has, the better he is. Even if he's not using it, it becomes money," Todd said. "Players get pretty good at the value versus weight game quickly."

You might figure that, in the long run, it all balances out. Tweezers are overweighted, bazookas are underweighted, and everyone gets along. But my previous loadout would weigh 138 pounds (1 WG = 0.75 pounds) and still fill up a Public Storage room. Todd insisted that developers discussed the question of how much a player should be able to carry, "right until the end. … We kept narrowing and narrowing what a low-strength versus high-strength gave you, because it was too powerful."

Was too powerful? In the finished game, a Fallout 3 character with the bare minimum strength of 1 can carry 160 WG. I searched for a real world comparison, and this is the best I could do: The Improved Load Bearing Equipment in use by the U.S. Marine Corps since 2005 can carry - ready for this? - 120 pounds. If beer is our unit of measure (and why shouldn't it be?) that converts to 160 bottles of beer (or WG). In other words, any vault reject a notch above total weakling - a 2 strength or better - will out-lug any Marine, even the one assigned to carry the mortar and shells.

Partly to spite Bethesda, I created a character with 1 Strength and assigned the rest of the points to more useful attributes. I never use melee weapons, anyway. I also manually assigned weight to my ammunition and chems (1 for units of 10). I quickly saw how right Todd was.

In Fallout, your ability to meet more difficult challenges depends a lot on the equipment you have, and it's usually items you build or buy that prove the difference. Financing that comes from the resale of surplus items, not the discovery of treasure. Realistic strength would leave you endlessly grinding before starting the next job.

As for ammo, I gave up on that shortly after a raid at the Super-Duper Mart. I was robbing Raider corpses for spare rounds to fight off the survivors and writing down the totals. It was indeed too granular a decision, and got in the way of more pressing challenges.

So, even though with a 5 strength, you can run from Megaton to the Arlington Public Library loaded down like a Peruvian donkey, let's just say the future is made of super-light plastics. And the radiation turned everyone into Lou Ferrigno.

[Images from the Fallout Wiki]

SPEED
Game:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Test Subject: Carl "C.J." Johnson

Originally, I wanted to test the scale speeds of the Team Fortress 2 characters, especially Scout, who could probably outrun Carl Lewis like a Porsche outruns Stephen Hawking. The problem with this, as with other games, is measuring the distance those guys cover in real world units. I'd have to know, say, Heavy's IRL height (6'5?") and be able to lay him end to end over a straightaway to get its real distance. I'm not a modder, and I wouldn't have that kind of time anyway.

So I then looked to the Grand Theft Auto series. From Claude to Niko, you've always had the ability to overtake a moving car on foot and jack it. I really wanted to know these guys' running speeds, and they live in cities with structures based on real world ones. Unfortunately, everything in Liberty City is a compressed distance, so running Niko across the Broker Bridge still wouldn't tell us much.

But in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there's this Easter egg, which identifies the specific dimensions of the Gant Bridge, including a length of 159.7 meters. During the first few tests, something seemed way off. First, 159.7 meters isn't even a 10th of a mile, and C.J.'s runs - at a sprint - were keeping up with traffic and returning mile times of 17:41. So I had to measure this bridge for myself. If I knew the actual scale speed of a vehicle in the game, I could derive its length. This database lists all such attributes.

Thus aboard an NRG-500 motorcycle running at its top speed of 118 mph, I made five maximum-speed trips across the bridge, at a flying start, with a median time of 18.15 seconds. If the Gant Bridge really was 159.7 meters, the bike would have been doing 20 mph, not 120 mph. It's possible they're talking about a distance shorter than the one I was using - toll booth in San Fierro to concrete strip at Tierra Robada - but at top speed, the bike should be able to cross 159.7 meters in just under 3 seconds. Either way, 160 meters is a fraction of the bridge's length as it relates to C.J.

So, at top speed, the bike is traveling at 173.16 feet per second. Multiplied by 18.15, we discover the length of the Gant Bridge is 3,142.85 feet, which is nearly 1 kilometer. As another control, I went back and rode with traffic, matching its speed. We crossed the bridge in 1:09.16, which is 30.98 miles per hour. I damn for sure could see a developer setting standard traffic speed to something round, and 31 mph is almost 50 kph. So, I'm pretty confident the sign is incorrect, and I got this measured as close as possible.

Now, back to running it. C.J. has five paces on foot: a walk, a "brisk walk," a "jog," and then two sprints, one with the A button held down, and another that provides a burst of speed by rapidly tapping it. The C.J. I was playing had maxed all of his physical stats, so he could achieve top running speed and not tire out, at any distance. Back at the bridge on foot, I took him through the five paces.
Walking
At his slowest C.J. covered the distance in 8:22, which equates to 4.2 miles per hour. Frame of reference: 4.0 is the fastest most walk on a gym treadmill. At the "brisk walk" pace, C.J. covers the distance in 4:44.03. Remember our treadmill? This "walk" is more than a jog, it's 7.54 miles per hour. It's equivalent to a 7:57 mile time. My best time in the mile - running - is 8:21, five years ago.

Running
Now it gets good. At the third pace, "jogging," C.J. crossed the span in 2:43.16. If he held that pace he would run a marathon in under two hours, which is unprecedented. Holding down the A button, C.J. crossed the bridge in 1:38.11, or 21 miles per hour. That's a mile in 2:44.84, which is inhuman. Remember Roger Bannister? The first mile under 4 minutes? C.J. would run the first one under three. He would beat the world record holder by a larger margin (in seconds) than he would have lost this year's Kentucky Derby.

Sprinting
Rapid-tapping the A-button gave C.J. just a 16- second advantage, which means this loses its effect pretty quickly. Still, at minimum one can assume some world-class sprint times. How world class? Try torching Usain Bolt's records in the 200 and 100 by two and one seconds, respectively - 17.1 and 8.58 seconds. Granted, that speed figure is derived from a running start. Real-life sprinters have to react to a gun and get up to speed. But, remember, C.J.'s sprint lost effect, I'm not sure exactly how far in, so most of this time was derived from a run at the standard "A" pace.

Incidentally, C.J.'s motion capture actor was Eddie Goines, a star wide receiver at North Carolina State University and a classmate of mine. I knew him pretty well, as well as a sports writer knows one of the team's stars, anyway. As a flanker, he set all the receiving records that Torry Holt and Koren Robinson would later break. As a freshman, Eddie was the fastest on the team, clocking a 40 yard dash in 4.35. A 4.09 is thought to be the NFL record. CJ's time is 3.15. I'm sure Eddie would be delighted to know that, at least in a video game, he's by far the fastest human alive.

MOMENTUM
Game: Assassin's Creed
Test Subject: Altair

No one would expect to fall 40 stories onto the top of a parked car and survive. However, at least it stops the body from crashing all the way through to the ground. Now imagine falling that height into a pile of hay that's roughly 2 meters wide by a meter and a half tall.

That's the first "leap of faith" in Assassin's Creed, from the tower at Masayaf. Holy catfish, that poor bastard who jumped with Altair at the beginning was lucky to get off with just a broken leg. And it is far from the steepest drop in the game. The infamous steeple on the cathedral at Acre is nearly twice as tall. Fresh off our victory in San Fierro, the Kotaku Bureau of Weights & Measures set out not only to fix its height, but also to calculate how much hay you'd need to land safely.

Ubisoft verified that Altair's height and weight, for purposes of the game's physics, was 6 feet and 190 pounds. This would be useful in calculating his stop. But that's all we got from them. However, one of the locations in the game is Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, whose dimensions are known. The structure's walls are 11 meters tall. Putting all this information in the hand of a trained scientist - devoted reader Matt M. - we were able to come up with some good estimates.

Matt worked up all three heights, but let's use Acre's as it is the most impressive. We were able to time the drop from the top of the steeple -4.1 seconds - using this video (which I downloaded and measured frame by frame). Working backward, we found that its real-world height would be 82.37 meters - about 270 feet. In the game, Altair is accelerating to 39.69 meters per second, acquiring a momentum of 3,420.48 kilogram-meters per second.

That's certainly a large number, but what does it mean? Matt breaks it down:

Basically, whatever catches him has to has to reduce that momentum to zero in under 0.05 seconds, which is the difference in time between Altair falling 82.05 meters and falling 80.05 meters at that speed. That means in the space of 2 meters - which is a little lenient since the floor of the cart is, what, half a meter off the ground? - the hay has to provide 68,298.25 Newtons of force. It's 136,596.5 Newton meters of work, which is a ridiculous thing to ask of hay.

Certainly, Kotaku Weights & Measures does not want to be unreasonable in its dealings with dead vegetable matter. And I'm not sure what could provide that kind of stopping power in that space, other than Kevlar. Or pavement. So I asked Matt if he could figure how large a haystack would be required to cushion a fall from such a height. We used the elasticity of military-grade bungee cords as a guide (using specs found here).

In the case of Acre, the haystack would be so big it would dwarf most other buildings in the game - 40 meters (131 feet) at its point, 67 meters (219 feet) wide at the bottom, if the dimensions conform to the original tiny pile. The freefall into such a mass of hay would last only 2.87 seconds. In terms of volume, it's more than 2.7 million cubic feet of hay - 2,695 times greater than what Altair is leaping into. I kept picturing Phil Hartman sitting atop the amazing mountain of Colon Blow cereal.

Alongside this you can see comparisons, to scale, of the heights Altair falls at the Dome of the Rock, Masayaf, and Acre, and of the size of hay he hits in the game relative to the size he would need to survive. "Leap of Faith" indeed. Sounds more like Altair's in a suicide cult.

The Kotaku Bureau of Weights & Measures gratefully acknowledges the contribution of Matt M. to this post. Follow him on Twitter.

Two of the most acclaimed game development studios of all time are joining forces. ZeniMax Media, parent company of Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls development studio Bethesda Softworks, announced today that it is purchasing legendary Doom and Wolfenstein studio id.

In an interview with Kotaku, id co-founder John Carmack, id CEO Todd Hollenshead and ZeniMax CEO Robert Altman said the purchase will change none of the principles or principals of id and Bethesda but will allow id to grow like it never has before. The purchase does not affect plans for previously announced games from id that are slated for release through other publishers, including the Activision-backed Wolfenstein and the EA Partners-planned Rage.

Why did id sell?

"We're really getting kind of tired competing with our own publishers in terms of how our titles will be featured," Carmack said. "And we've really gotten more IPs than we've been able to take advantage of. And working with other companies hasn't been working out as spectacularly as it could. So the idea of actually becoming a publisher and merging Bethesda and ZeniMax on there [is ideal.] It would be hard to imagine a more complementary relationship. They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes."

Hollenshead said ZeniMax's acquisition will allow id to grow its internal teams, staffing up the groups working on the next Doom — which will now be a ZeniMax game — and the Quake Live team, for starters.

The goal, explained Carmack, is for id to handle all of its own IPs. "We can build the pipeline and have a regular pipeline of releases."

Altman described the deal as a "win for fans of id." He said the deal came about when Hollenshead approached him. ZeniMax had been looking to acquire developers and wanted id, but didn't know it was available until approached. The merger had been in the works for months, according to the men on the call today.

In a press release for today's news, Altman laid out a vision for a robust id: "We, along with many others, consider id Software to be among the finest game studios in the world, with extraordinary design, artistic and technical capabilities. They have demonstrated, repeatedly, that rare ability to create franchise properties that are critical and commercial successes. Our intention is to make sure id Software will continue to do what they do best – make AAA games. Our role will be to provide publisher support through Bethesda Softworks and give id Software the resources it needs to grow and expand."

No co-developed games are planned at this time. But, they joked, getting those Fallout bobbleheads into Rage would be fun.

Speaking to Joystiq at E3, Todd Howard, the game director for Bethesda, said "We've looked into those things."

I think that the world of Fallout is unique enough that it could work on any platform. I think some of the things we do like VATS, I think that could translate to any platform, particularly the iPhone, We've looked into those things, we just haven't found the thing that supports the brand well. I wouldn't be surprised if it does happen one day. The iPhone versions that we've designed and said 'Ehh, we don't think we're going to do that right now,' there are ... there are a lot of them.

I suppose it's too much to hope we'll hear about one of them in the coming week, at Apple's developer conference.

Bethesda has Designed iPhone Versions of Fallout [Joystiq. Image from modmyi.com]

In an interview with industry site GamesIndustry, Bethesda Europe's Sean Brennan questioned whether there's a market for 18-year-old-and-up Wii titles. "Is there space in the Wii market for that? I think there is, but again, it' all about finding out how big that is," said Brennan. "Is it 5 percent? If it's five per cent of the market and you can own that space it's worth doing because you can achieve volume." For Bethesda, if you can't own that 5 percent, it's not worth doing.

That being stated, Bethesda is announcing a Wii game sometime this year. Like we previously mentioned, a really big Wii game. According to Brennan, "We are going to make an announcement on a really big Wii game this year, we've got a couple of other things in the pipeline, and it's a format we're really looking at with the right approach."

"We're not going to establish a new range and call if 'My Girly Game Range' or whatever these other companies are doing, it's so me-too and boring," Brennan added. A "My Girly Game Range" from Bethesda too boring? No, Sean, we think you mean, too awesome.

Bethesda's Sean Brennan Part Two [GamesIndustry]

The packs will be available for both 360 and PC, and are currently slated to appear in late May. You will of course require a copy of Fallout 3 to be able to play these expansions.

No official US pricing as of yet, but the bundle will be 15 quid in the UK (which is USD$22).

[Amazon]

It could be a case of covering all of your bases, or maybe they really are thinking about turning the role-playing game into a tv show. We've contacted Bethesda for comment and will update as soon as we hear something.

If they do a TV show I just hope it's a children's show. One of those kids' shows with a bunch of cartoon in it and maybe a zombie mascot. So cool.

Fallout Television Show [Dwell On It, via Joystiq]

The looming action (which has not yet been made official, but is still likely enough to warrant Interplay filing about it) stems not from the game's rights - which Interplay picked up fair and square - but from the game's progress. Or lack thereof.

Fallout IP owners Bethesda allege that, as part of the deal in which they bought the rights to Fallout (but left the MMO rights for Interplay), Interplay were supposed to have commenced "full-scale" work on the title by April 4, 2009.

Interplay were also supposed to have secured funding for the development of the game. Bethesda claim that neither of these conditions have been met.

As a result, Bethesda are seriously considering "[terminating] the trademark license agreement" currently in place between the two companies.

If Bethesda choose to go ahead with all this, and win, Interplay would lose their rights to produce a Fallout MMO, which may explain why an Interplay MMO is sticking with a "Project V13" code name instead of officially coming out with Fallout MMO branding.

For what it's worth, Interplay "adamantly disputes these claims". We've contacted Bethesda for comment, and will update when/if we hear back from them.

Interplay Entertainment Form 10-K [Edgar Online, via NMA]

Interplay announced their intentions to create a massively multiplayer online game based on the Fallout property back in December 2006, having retained that particular portion of the rights to the franchise after selling the rest to Fallout 3 creators Bethesda Softworks. Now they've teamed up with Masthead Studios, the team behind post-apocalyptic MMO Earthrise to complete work on the mysterious Project V13, which Interplay has been designing and developing since November 2007.

If we had to guess, we'd say V13 stood for Vault 13, which is where the Vault Dweller from the original Fallout originated. Not enough to say that they are official working on a Fallout MMO, but come on, what other MMO would Interplay be working on? Earthworm Jim?

Interplay and Masthead Studios to Jointly Develop Massively Multiplayer Online Game [Yahoo! via MMORPG.com - Thanks Connor!]

Don't worry, though. It's nothing drastic. "The Pitt" will now be out in March, with "Broken Steel" out a month later, in April.

By May, then, you'll not only have new areas to explore and new quests to complete, but an expansion to the game's level cap as well.

As with the first piece of DLC, "Operation Anchorage", both will only be available on PC and 360.

Fallout 3 DLC slips a month [GameSpot]

Available until December 31st, the holiday bundles package together several related games into one $9.98 package for easy consumption. Bundles include Fallout & Fallout 2; MDK & MDK 2; Freespace with Silent Threat mission pack & Freespace 2; Descent 1+2 & Descent 3 with Mercenary expansion; and Stonekeep & Lionheart. As a big fan of the MDK series, I cannot stress enough to anyone reading who might be related to me and looking for gift ideas how much someone like me would appreciate that particular bundle. Just saying.

GoG has also added Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus and Patrician 3 to their line up this day, just in case the bundles didn't tickle your fancy. Head over to GoG.com today to check out all the new additions!

GOG.com Launches Holiday Bundles

Celebrate the Season with Great Deals on Classic PC Games – Cheap, no Matter Where you Live

Warsaw, Poland – December 23 – Stressed out? Need to get away from those family members that showed up uninvited and just won’t get the hint that you need some “me time”? Gamers with a few extra bucks left over after some intense holiday shopping should head right over to GOG.com (http://www.gog.com), where five new holiday bundles will be available for a limited time. Until December 31 fans of DRM-free classic PC games can get any of the following bundles for just $9.98: Fallout & Fallout 2; MDK & MDK 2; Freespace with Silent Threat mission pack & Freespace 2; Descent 1+2 & Descent 3 with Mercenary expansion; Stonekeep & Lionheart. Before you go, “oh but I already bought one of those, what about me?!” rest assured that anyone who’s already bought one of the games will get $1 off the second title.

Additionally, two new games were added to the GOG.com games catalogue today. Following up on the release of Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee last week, Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus (http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/oddworld_abes_exoddus) continues the imaginative adventures of everyone’s favorite Mudokon. Grab that for $9.99 then read part one of GOG.com’s Oddworld Retrospective (http://www.gog.com/en/editorial/editorial_oddworld_abes_oddysee/). Strategy fans can get their fill with Patrician 3 (http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/patrician_3), as they expand a medieval trade empire to encompass the Old World… and all of that economic power can be harnessed for just $9.99.

“We want to bring people the best value no matter where they live. With our Polish origins, we know how awful it feels when popular web services and products are not available or are more expensive just because of where we live," said Adam Oldakowski, Managing Director of GOG.com. “That’s why we’re committed to making sure that these great holiday bundles are available worldwide, and that our prices and product catalogues are the same for everyone across the globe; we think that everyone should have access to great games like Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus and Patrician 3.”

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