ECTS

ECTS was rather disappointing this year, with relatively little to do or see. The world Cyber Games had the biggest and most impressive display, as they held the British playoffs for the finals held in Seoul in October.

Sony were most notable by their complete absence, having apparently abandoned ECTS completely in favour of EGN at the other side of London. There were a number of game stations where you could play various PC, Gamecube and XBox games, although actually getting a machine to yourself wasn't all that easy.

VIA and S3 shared a sizeable booth where visitors could challenge the professional gamer 'fatal1ty' to an Unreal Tournament Deathmatch. They were offering prizes to anyone who could frag him just once, but it looked as though they were relatively safe - when I last looked the best score anyone had managed was twelve-nil to fatal1ty.

Discreet gave regular demonstrations of the latest incarnation of 3DStudio Max at their booth. I caught part of one demonstration during which they showed off some of the useful tools, such as the turbo smoothing function and the painting tools that allow you to sculpt your model as though it were a lump of clay.

A number of booths were dedicated to weird and wonderful control devices, such as the 'action stick'. This device picks up your movements and translates them into punches and kicks in a beat-em-up game. I'm not sure how effective they were, but it was certainly entertaining watching people try and play with them. Another such device was the 'playseat', a chair with built in pedals and steering wheel ideal for racing games, although perhaps a little bulky to have sitting around in your living room.

I spent a fair amount of time chatting with the guys at the Dare To Be Digital booth. Dare to Be Digital is a game development competition for Scottish students, although it is looking to expand internationally. The object of the competition is to develop a working prototype of a game or education product within ten weeks. There are several prizes available, such as the Commercial Potential prize and the Innovation prize, but it isn't all about winning - all the entrants receive invaluable experience, get something impressive to put in their portfolio for when they apply for a job in the industry.

A company called 'Moqon' were demonstrating their physics engine, and were kind enough to give me a demo CD. It's certainly quite fun to play with some of the demos, and this product might make a useful, cheaper alternative to better known systems such as Havok. Also exhibiting were the developers of the Gryps engine, a complete game engine package with highly flexible licensing tailored to the needs of each client.

And now for the bit everyone's been waiting for - the booth babes. Unfortunately, there was a distinct lack of booth babes at ECTS this year. I hear there were a couple of girls at the VIA booth, but they managed to elude my camera. So by way of an alternative, here's a picture of a kitten with a box on its head.