I used to do Mac game development/ports for several years from 1999 to 2003, including a couple high profile games. I've since moved on to 'real' work - non-port console and PC games. Since leaving Mac development I've managed to find a job in the games industry that has kept me employed longer than 12 months at a time without the company going bust (going on almost 4 years at the same company now).
The real problems with developing Mac games during that time frame:
The work didn't pay well (on the other hand, telecommuting was often a viable option) The projects were few, and it was a highly competetive market Support from Apple was effectively nonexistant Quality assurance procedures were often mediocre - what you'd expect from a shareware company The market wasn't large enough to make it financially viable to develop an original high quality Mac-only game The market wasn't large enough to make most ports worthwhile unless the game was a proven hit seller already.
I doubt any of the above issues have changed.
I believe all of the Mac game developers I knew 5-6 years ago have moved on to other work. The 3 most well known Mac game port houses of that time shut down or ceased Mac development years ago.
DX10 itself - if it existed apart from Vista - is a clean break in an API that has had additions made to it repeatedly, and built up too much legacy.
To be DX10 compatible, graphics cards are moving to a more generic architecture - dropping specialized vertex and pixel shaders for fully programmable, generic stream processors. So the DX10 migration is both a clean break for both the API and the cards themselves, a chance to ditch legacy. It is possible for the cards to have simply moved to this new system, without any change to the API, but without the changes with DX10 (and the fresh start there), there wouldn't have been as much motivation to make the change.
I'm not a fan of the way DX10 is handled (Vista-only, that is), but it is a good change. I was very skeptical at first (about DX10 itself) until I started doing a lot more research. Working in the games industry I also have easy access to the GDC presentations, which helped me understand more of what can be done with these new generations of cards.
One of the new features added in DX10, and provided via the stream processors on new cards, is geometry 'shaders' - geometry processing and procedural geometry generation on the GPU. Some games have shown examples of the difference of scenes between DX9 and DX10 versions of an engine, and DX10 scenes have a lot more detail and usually a further clip plane. This is because, with DX10, things like procedurally generated trees can be done in parallel in the multiple (128 on a 8800 GTX) stream processors, rather than doing them serially on the main CPU. Shadow map generation can be done entirely on the GPU now. This can be done much faster in stream processor, and more can be done in parallel, than could be done on the CPU (which would then have to send the data across the bus to the GPU). You've probably seen what normal mapping looks like; geometry shaders can replace normal mapping with true geometric extrusion/morphing.
The stream processors on these new generation of cards are fully programmable... we may see hardware accelerated physics support via our graphics cards in the not too distant future.
They do... and it helps cover the losses of games that only sold, say, 200,000 or so units. It also helps to fund the next game, with a potentially bigger budget, or fund more titles in development. Plus, costs of migration (transitioning to the next gen has been very expensive for companies), paying investors their dividends, etc.
2142 did not snoop web browsing habits; a few blogs misread the disclaimer and claimed it did, but the disclaimer was somewhat different than the reactionaries made it out to be. DICE clarified things (it only reported what ads you saw in the game), and others investigated it, and nobody produced any evidence that the game did anything at all outside of the game itself.
If you want to argue a point, don't use deliberate misinformation that has been publicly proven to be false.
I almost went down a similiar path to this kid. I skipped out on school, ignored the rules. Punishments didn't phase me. I spent time in jail and in juvenile "shelter" homes, from my truancy. When I was a young child, at times my mother was actually afraid of me - I was fearless of punishment even then. Spank me, (it was legal then), and I'd just go do whatever I did again.
It took my father's sudden death (heart failure) when I was 15 to snap me out of it. I fell into a deep depression (I already suffered from chronic depression) and ended up spending half a year at a residential treatment facility for emotionally unstable teenagers.
I look back, and both my mother and I can agree that, my father's death inadvertantly saved my life. I was probably only a year or so off from making a big mistake. My father was already terminally ill at the time from leukemia... probably only had a year and a half left, based on the estimate from the autopsy. His death cost him and us another year or two together, but may have given me many more years to live life.
That was about 12 years ago. My father would be proud of the person I am today. I don't think that would be the case if he had survived.
I met a lot of kids who were like me, in the places I went. There are more exceptions to the rule than people think.
Clathrates are exactly what the article is talking about, without using the word - methane trapped within the structure of water ice.
Better to burn it before it melts on it's own from global warming (if there is any possibility of that). Methane is something like 23x worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas by mass.
Not all that fun. A lot of building up and racing to construct massive army/defenses, which has to be done in certain patterns to be entirely effective. Not engaging your opponent until 20 minutes into the game, and then just minor skirmishes.
Later in the game, when the big battles start occuring, to be able to manage it all you have to zoom out so far that all the graphics go to waste as you look at a global map and icons moving around on it.
I didnt like it after my first playthrough, but forced myself to go back and try a second time. It was more enjoyable once I shifted my mindset away from traditional RTS style play, but not enough that I've wanted to go back a third time.
To talk about his peers in the industry he does, and paint with such a broad brush. If he wants to make himself look better than his peers, perhaps he should do so by proving himself, rather than trying to stand apart through pointless and insulting talk alone.
As someone who works in the industry, I know many designers, artists, and engineers, and in general they love all kinds of fiction - SF, fantasy, action, horror, drama. Tastes are quite varied... there is no extreme focus on Tolkien or Aliens. In fact, many of them are quite tired of Tolkien.
I was unaffected and equally close to the light. The moment the light was off the burning and itching sensation stopped and the splotchy rash went away in a few hours.
This was direct exposure; there was no intervening lampshade (a ceiling light). Single 60-watt equivalent, 1000 lumens, white light.
I hope it is not; we tried switching to CFLs recently, and my wife is allergic to them; she gets horrible rashes when exposed to light from CFLs for more than a couple hours.
We need to ship this game ASAP, but we don't have enough content for the game. Therefore, we are going to ship what we have now, call it "episodic" so you don't feel quite so ripped off, and if it sells well enough we'll release the content we had originally promised, for a fee we feel is reasonable, and thereby hopefully get even more money from you than we could have otherwise.
I've actually found gmails ads' sometimes useful too. I GM a roleplaying game with virtual tabletop software, and some interesting things I had never heard about, but am interested in, show up in the sponsored links section.
Google's adsense is far more useful to users than regular banner ads.
Just releasing a new roster would also mean large licensing fees, which are factored in. With the work in the roster, new player images, license fees... it adds up. At that point, throw some more features in and sell a new game. Rather than charge $15-25 for a simple 'roster update', charge $60 for a new game (keep in mind that stores get a good portion of that fee). Players will pick the enhancements+roster for $50 to $60 over a roster update for a third as much.
It's only abuse if they feel abused or harmed. They're buying more copies each year than the previous year, so that obviously is not the case.
You must not do much game programming. The bulk of code in a game (and where most of the time is spent), is "general purpose computing" code. Out of order execution and speculative execution are pretty useful features. I also suggest you go do some reading about flushing the instruction pipeline on these CPUs...
As for optimizations, all I can say is "I hope you have the chance to experience the use of these 'compiler optimizations' for yourself."
The Cell and the 360's chip threw out important modern processor features to get the clock rate up. Both are outperformed by the lowest end Core 2 Duo.
64 bit is just one of the improvements. CPUs have also gotten faster. It's a package deal, although the two are not necessarily related.
Even if you don't run an OS or software to utilize the 64-bit aspect of the CPU, all the current faster chips are 64-bit. Consider the 64-bit aspect as a bit of future proofing your new, fast machine. Go for SATA-2, PCI-E, and dual core, and you're set for a while.
I knew several people who didn't realize they were illegally downloading music. They honestly believed and swore left and right that Limewire was legitimate because they had paid for the program, and could download anything they wanted with it for free, legally.
If I didn't know that the software promoted copyright infringement, I wouldn't have figured it out by looking at their website at the time.
Kazaa deliberately mislead people into commiting copyright infringement, and thus eventually getting sued by the RIAA, for the sake of selling a $20 program.
It is of course hard to draw parallels, but compare it to an accountant who, for a fee, will hook a person up with an abusive tax shelters, by promising "a totally safe way to reduce your taxes" (completely avoiding the word "legal" or "illegal" at any time). Organizations or individuals whose goal is to make a profit from people by convincing them to break the law. They do so using seemingly logical arguments that the average person not intimately familiar with the subject can be convinced with. They convince the victim that it is either not actually illegal, due to some technicality, or that the method makes it legal by some reasonable means.
Consider how many people fall for pyramid schemes, the promise of making lots of money, but they don't sit down and actually do the math. Yes, they may be idiots for doing so, but sadly there are a lot of people like that... and even geniuses do foolish things from time to time.
I fail to see how backwards compatability should be the key selling point of a console, yet everyone trots that out like it's a holy grail of gaming.
Isn't the point of buying a new console to play... new games? One doesn't buy a next gen console solely for the sake of playing old games. Granted that is a use and a selling point, but it's not the god damned WHOLE point!
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I used to do Mac game development/ports for several years from 1999 to 2003, including a couple high profile games. I've since moved on to 'real' work - non-port console and PC games. Since leaving Mac development I've managed to find a job in the games industry that has kept me employed longer than 12 months at a time without the company going bust (going on almost 4 years at the same company now).
The real problems with developing Mac games during that time frame:
The work didn't pay well (on the other hand, telecommuting was often a viable option)
The projects were few, and it was a highly competetive market
Support from Apple was effectively nonexistant
Quality assurance procedures were often mediocre - what you'd expect from a shareware company
The market wasn't large enough to make it financially viable to develop an original high quality Mac-only game
The market wasn't large enough to make most ports worthwhile unless the game was a proven hit seller already.
I doubt any of the above issues have changed.
I believe all of the Mac game developers I knew 5-6 years ago have moved on to other work. The 3 most well known Mac game port houses of that time shut down or ceased Mac development years ago.
Command and Conquer 3. The PC interface and Xbox360 interface are entirely different.
I've been looking for a decent pump-driven espresso machine in the sub $500 range... I'm definitely going to check this one out. Thanks for the post!
"Enjoy your cheap plastic replacement!"
DX10 itself - if it existed apart from Vista - is a clean break in an API that has had additions made to it repeatedly, and built up too much legacy.
To be DX10 compatible, graphics cards are moving to a more generic architecture - dropping specialized vertex and pixel shaders for fully programmable, generic stream processors. So the DX10 migration is both a clean break for both the API and the cards themselves, a chance to ditch legacy. It is possible for the cards to have simply moved to this new system, without any change to the API, but without the changes with DX10 (and the fresh start there), there wouldn't have been as much motivation to make the change.
I'm not a fan of the way DX10 is handled (Vista-only, that is), but it is a good change. I was very skeptical at first (about DX10 itself) until I started doing a lot more research. Working in the games industry I also have easy access to the GDC presentations, which helped me understand more of what can be done with these new generations of cards.
One of the new features added in DX10, and provided via the stream processors on new cards, is geometry 'shaders' - geometry processing and procedural geometry generation on the GPU. Some games have shown examples of the difference of scenes between DX9 and DX10 versions of an engine, and DX10 scenes have a lot more detail and usually a further clip plane. This is because, with DX10, things like procedurally generated trees can be done in parallel in the multiple (128 on a 8800 GTX) stream processors, rather than doing them serially on the main CPU. Shadow map generation can be done entirely on the GPU now. This can be done much faster in stream processor, and more can be done in parallel, than could be done on the CPU (which would then have to send the data across the bus to the GPU). You've probably seen what normal mapping looks like; geometry shaders can replace normal mapping with true geometric extrusion/morphing.
The stream processors on these new generation of cards are fully programmable... we may see hardware accelerated physics support via our graphics cards in the not too distant future.
I've been programming video games on for about 9 years now, with many shipped commercial titles on various platforms.
For the love of god, get a real degree. "Game" degrees are useless outside the game industry, and a joke and target of pity from within the industry.
They do... and it helps cover the losses of games that only sold, say, 200,000 or so units. It also helps to fund the next game, with a potentially bigger budget, or fund more titles in development. Plus, costs of migration (transitioning to the next gen has been very expensive for companies), paying investors their dividends, etc.
They're still launching, it was delayed to 4:45.
2142 did not snoop web browsing habits; a few blogs misread the disclaimer and claimed it did, but the disclaimer was somewhat different than the reactionaries made it out to be. DICE clarified things (it only reported what ads you saw in the game), and others investigated it, and nobody produced any evidence that the game did anything at all outside of the game itself.
If you want to argue a point, don't use deliberate misinformation that has been publicly proven to be false.
I almost went down a similiar path to this kid. I skipped out on school, ignored the rules. Punishments didn't phase me. I spent time in jail and in juvenile "shelter" homes, from my truancy. When I was a young child, at times my mother was actually afraid of me - I was fearless of punishment even then. Spank me, (it was legal then), and I'd just go do whatever I did again.
It took my father's sudden death (heart failure) when I was 15 to snap me out of it. I fell into a deep depression (I already suffered from chronic depression) and ended up spending half a year at a residential treatment facility for emotionally unstable teenagers.
I look back, and both my mother and I can agree that, my father's death inadvertantly saved my life. I was probably only a year or so off from making a big mistake. My father was already terminally ill at the time from leukemia... probably only had a year and a half left, based on the estimate from the autopsy. His death cost him and us another year or two together, but may have given me many more years to live life.
That was about 12 years ago. My father would be proud of the person I am today. I don't think that would be the case if he had survived.
I met a lot of kids who were like me, in the places I went. There are more exceptions to the rule than people think.
Clathrates are exactly what the article is talking about, without using the word - methane trapped within the structure of water ice.
Better to burn it before it melts on it's own from global warming (if there is any possibility of that). Methane is something like 23x worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas by mass.
Not all that fun. A lot of building up and racing to construct massive army/defenses, which has to be done in certain patterns to be entirely effective. Not engaging your opponent until 20 minutes into the game, and then just minor skirmishes.
Later in the game, when the big battles start occuring, to be able to manage it all you have to zoom out so far that all the graphics go to waste as you look at a global map and icons moving around on it.
I didnt like it after my first playthrough, but forced myself to go back and try a second time. It was more enjoyable once I shifted my mindset away from traditional RTS style play, but not enough that I've wanted to go back a third time.
To talk about his peers in the industry he does, and paint with such a broad brush. If he wants to make himself look better than his peers, perhaps he should do so by proving himself, rather than trying to stand apart through pointless and insulting talk alone.
As someone who works in the industry, I know many designers, artists, and engineers, and in general they love all kinds of fiction - SF, fantasy, action, horror, drama. Tastes are quite varied... there is no extreme focus on Tolkien or Aliens. In fact, many of them are quite tired of Tolkien.
I was unaffected and equally close to the light. The moment the light was off the burning and itching sensation stopped and the splotchy rash went away in a few hours.
This was direct exposure; there was no intervening lampshade (a ceiling light). Single 60-watt equivalent, 1000 lumens, white light.
I hope it is not; we tried switching to CFLs recently, and my wife is allergic to them; she gets horrible rashes when exposed to light from CFLs for more than a couple hours.
I've actually found gmails ads' sometimes useful too. I GM a roleplaying game with virtual tabletop software, and some interesting things I had never heard about, but am interested in, show up in the sponsored links section.
Google's adsense is far more useful to users than regular banner ads.
Just releasing a new roster would also mean large licensing fees, which are factored in. With the work in the roster, new player images, license fees... it adds up. At that point, throw some more features in and sell a new game. Rather than charge $15-25 for a simple 'roster update', charge $60 for a new game (keep in mind that stores get a good portion of that fee). Players will pick the enhancements+roster for $50 to $60 over a roster update for a third as much.
It's only abuse if they feel abused or harmed. They're buying more copies each year than the previous year, so that obviously is not the case.
Just going to court over it will mean companies will be very hesitant to touch Spark in the future, whether they were in the right or the wrong.
You must not do much game programming. The bulk of code in a game (and where most of the time is spent), is "general purpose computing" code. Out of order execution and speculative execution are pretty useful features. I also suggest you go do some reading about flushing the instruction pipeline on these CPUs...
As for optimizations, all I can say is "I hope you have the chance to experience the use of these 'compiler optimizations' for yourself."
The Cell and the 360's chip threw out important modern processor features to get the clock rate up. Both are outperformed by the lowest end Core 2 Duo.
... welcome our not-so-mad cow overlords.
64 bit is just one of the improvements. CPUs have also gotten faster. It's a package deal, although the two are not necessarily related.
Even if you don't run an OS or software to utilize the 64-bit aspect of the CPU, all the current faster chips are 64-bit. Consider the 64-bit aspect as a bit of future proofing your new, fast machine. Go for SATA-2, PCI-E, and dual core, and you're set for a while.
I knew several people who didn't realize they were illegally downloading music. They honestly believed and swore left and right that Limewire was legitimate because they had paid for the program, and could download anything they wanted with it for free, legally.
If I didn't know that the software promoted copyright infringement, I wouldn't have figured it out by looking at their website at the time.
Kazaa deliberately mislead people into commiting copyright infringement, and thus eventually getting sued by the RIAA, for the sake of selling a $20 program.
It is of course hard to draw parallels, but compare it to an accountant who, for a fee, will hook a person up with an abusive tax shelters, by promising "a totally safe way to reduce your taxes" (completely avoiding the word "legal" or "illegal" at any time). Organizations or individuals whose goal is to make a profit from people by convincing them to break the law. They do so using seemingly logical arguments that the average person not intimately familiar with the subject can be convinced with. They convince the victim that it is either not actually illegal, due to some technicality, or that the method makes it legal by some reasonable means.
Consider how many people fall for pyramid schemes, the promise of making lots of money, but they don't sit down and actually do the math. Yes, they may be idiots for doing so, but sadly there are a lot of people like that... and even geniuses do foolish things from time to time.
I fail to see how backwards compatability should be the key selling point of a console, yet everyone trots that out like it's a holy grail of gaming.
Isn't the point of buying a new console to play... new games? One doesn't buy a next gen console solely for the sake of playing old games. Granted that is a use and a selling point, but it's not the god damned WHOLE point!