Richard Foster

Blue (purple) sunglasses wearing geek & music listener from the north of England. Incredible natural sex appeal.

[Tyne and Wear Metro @My_Metro]

We’re delighted to tell you that our first new train has entered customer service this morning. Achieving this has been a huge task and is a momentous day for Metro and our customers.

[David Braben @DavidBraben]

https://t.co/miqlKN3Hhn

[HIDEO_KOJIMA @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN]

With Keanu👍

[Dream Theater @dreamtheaternet]

Our new album, Parasomnia, marks a special new chapter for us as bandmates and as brothers. This collection of songs represents not only where we’ve come from but also where we’re heading next. 

We’re excited for you to experience it on February 7, 2025. Pre-orders start tomorrow!

1. In The Arms Of Morpheus (5:22)
2. Night Terror (9:55)
3. A Broken Man (8:30)
4. Dead Asleep (11:06)
5. Midnight Messiah (7:58)
6. Are We Dreaming? (1:28)
7. Bend The Clock (7:24)
8. The Shadow Man Incident (19:32)

Cover art by Hugh Syme

[KING CRIMSON @DGMHQ]

King Crimson's 11th studio album, THRAK, was released on this day 29 years ago. You can read about the making of the record here:
https://t.co/vv7l14rEXb

[John Carmack @ID_AA_Carmack]

Looking through the Dune 2 (amazing movie!) art book, I was thinking about the relationship between art and games.

In the early days, you just couldn’t apply much art to a game. The fundamental display resolution and color palette were very limited, and distribution media size was an even harsher limit. Significant amounts of engineering effort and artist contortions were called on to allow just a little bit more artistry to shine through. Fine art could be done on the boxes, manuals, and advertisements, but it had little connection to the game experience.

The introduction of CD-ROM made distribution size almost a non-issue, such that the cost of creating art dominated. We had a few enemy characters in Doom 2 that were basically “paint overs”, and Doom 3 could have really benefitted from having multiple variations on the enemies, but that was all we could manage with our team size.

Unlike many aspects of game development, art can largely be done in parallel, and companies started building out artist armies that could fill out multiple CD-ROMs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. Players value art, but there is a diminishing return effect for the typical player. The hit-driven, power-law return nature of the AAA gaming business generally pushes the creation of art past what would be a natural value point, which in some ways diminishes the value of individual works of art, and leads to a lot of work being created and never used. Doom 2016 went through multiple internal reboots, discarding entire art styles and characters along the way.

One of the things that stood out for me during my early VR experiments when I was using scenes from Rage was how much amazing detail was already there that I never even noticed in dozens of conventional play throughs. There is SO MUCH in modern games that barely gets looked at by most players.

The modern gaming cosmetics markets are actually pretty cool from an art value standpoint — there is precise feedback on how much a given work of art is valued by players, and there are all the traditional sales tools available to try to maximize the value of the art. I haven’t worked on a team that did cosmetics, but I bet there are a lot of interesting things to learn there. It would be great if artists got bonuses when their cosmetics are hugely successful.

[Mark Knopfler @MarkKnopfler]

In case you missed the news: One Deep River, the new album from Mark Knopfler lands 12th April 2024.

Pre-order your copy or to listen to the first song released from the record, 'Ahead Of The Game', here: https://t.co/iZdZzszR86

[HIDEO_KOJIMA @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN]

I am tired and not feeling well. Medications are not helping, so I take a "deep red" nourishment from my eyes. I watched "Deep Red" my favorite Dario Argento movie. I have seen it dozens of times, but now that a gorgeous 4K restored version has been released, I watched it again. It's wonderful! Beautiful! Argento was one of the heroes of my youth. So I'm quite influenced by him. It's also Argento's influence that I get chomped on the neck in every one of my early films. This time, I rewatched "Deep Red" and saw the scene where David Hemmings explores the hidden room of the mansion with a flashlight. I wondered if this scene might have influenced me to create the underground event at the QUEEN hospital in "SNATCHER".

[Peter Gabriel @itspetergabriel]

Today marks the official release of Peter's latest album, ‘i/o’.

Releasing a new song every full moon has allowed each track the time and space to enjoy its own orbit, “a little like getting a Lego piece each month".

All 12 tracks come with two stereo mixes: the Bright-Side Mix, handled by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, and the Dark-Side Mix, as reshaped by Tchad Blake. There's also the In-Side 3D mix by Hans-Martin Buff.

Now it’s time to stand back and admire the final, completed creation. Listen to the full album here: https://t.co/MUYkjpPmxv

#ioPeterGabriel

[Tony Levin @tonylevin]

My first solo album “World Diary” featuring many wonderful musicians including Shankar, Bill Bruford, Jerry Marotta and Manu Katche, is being released to all streaming platforms on November 17th.

https://t.co/nMmhHHXqjP

[John Carmack @ID_AA_Carmack]

Visual Studio Code has done great work uniting many tribes of developers, but it is still a failure that it can’t single step python code as fast as I can hit the F-key.

[HIDEO_KOJIMA @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN]

Tonight I’m rewatching JOHN WICK 1 and 2.

[Bridie @spooky_bush]

The fact that Twitter is now under an app entitled 'X' makes me feel a bit gross, like I should be hiding it or something
Gimme my cute bird back

[John Carmack @ID_AA_Carmack]

I was pleasantly surprised to be able to pin 1936 GB of memory on a 2 TB (Linux) machine — I had outdated memories of only being able to pin modest fractions of total memory.

[katebushnews.com @katebushnews]

We wish Kate Bush the happiest of 65th birthdays! We cherish what you do so much, Kate. Your music has changed our lives! Have a fantastic day! xxx https://t.co/Zh6LRQ56cr

[Robert Lindsay @RobertLindsay]

I so wanted to hear”Dad I’ve decided I don’t want to be like you”

[Lieutenant Columbo @columbophile]

👀

[KING CRIMSON @DGMHQ]

Tony Levin, King Crimson's longest-serving bassist is 77 today. Happy birthday, Tony!

[Dire Straits 🎸 @DireStraits77]

Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler meets AC/DC's Brian Johnson at the Spanish City in Whitley Bay

[Tom Jones @RealSirTomJones]

Tina, an incredible woman, a genuine singer, a one of a kind talent, I am honoured to have known her. RIP Tina