Hardware consistency, everyone is using the same system and that system runs the latest games for that platform perfectly, you can code to the limit, not the bare minimum.
I'm under the impression that a game engine designed for the asset budget of an indie game might not even fully stress the capability of the bare minimum. A couple of the screenshots in the article were of 2D games.
Assets are not the only things that are computationally expensive, there are plenty of AI, physics, shader effects, etc... that are beyond the scope of the bare minimum. And the obvious way to get around a distribution limit is to use the computational power to generate as many procedural assets as you can.
also the ability to use Kinect.
Windows 7 officially supports the Kinect sensor, and a subset of functionality (depth field, not automatic skeleton recognition) is available with third-party user-mode Kinect sensor drivers.
Yes i have seen there is a BETA version of the SDK recently made available. You can do it, but it's still sold as an XBox accessory, most consumers are using kinect with an XBox anyway.
compared to having to set up your own distribution and paywall system
Would something like osCommerce + Super Download Shop + PayPal/Google/Amazon payment work? Or perhaps your point is that the annual price of HTTPS hosting approaches the App Hub + Xbox Live Gold membership fee.
Yes obviously you can do it with a combination of other services, the point is you don't have to, it's all included.
Moreover, the fact that the XNA framework uses a programming language not common on non-Microsoft platforms (C#) limits portability of a game designed for XBLIG to other platforms.
You are suggesting targeting the PC but if multiple platforms is your goal then you know that by targeting XBLIG you get 90% of the PC gaming market that you are suggesting as the alternative anyway.
Or should one just plan on making entirely separate products for XBLIG vs. other platforms?
XBLIG + Windows7 vs other platforms, yes. Given that XBLIG + Windows 7 is the vast majority of the gaming market anyway, as hobbyist if you've targeted that then you're doing well.
Oh come on, the suggestion you linked to - if you even bothered to read it or have any understanding of what it does - is an emulator that emulates the entire device including the hardware and then runs android on top of that and then your applications on top of that. Whether or not it's java makes no difference which is why you can make native calls from java to compiled ARM libraries using the NDK and it still works in the emulator, it's also why the emulator is so incredibly slow.
The high costs of DEV kits holds down the small guys.
Why do you need a dev kit if you're doing XBLIG?
Also Xbox Live Indie Games has limits that are in place to make it hard to make a game on the level of the big guys.
If you want to compete with the big guys then you wouldn't be using XBLIG for many of the same reasons they aren't using XBLIG. It also limits your choice of language, but again if you want the full flexibility and ability to compete with big studios you don't use XBLIG, that's not what it's for.
The binary distribution package must be no larger than 150 MB (dumb and makes you cut down on stuff like art, sounds and levels.
Well you aren't paying for distribution now are you?
XBLIG games do not have achievements or leaderboards, nor are they listed on a player's "Gamer Card (why does this need to locked out?) at least have leaderboards.
Because these aren't premium features. Gees all your complaints are that the cheapest, most basic entry-level way to start out in game development on the xbox doesn't offer you all the features given to commercial studios, so it appears you've completely missed the point of what XBLIG is.
XBLA games are profitable? When you see most sold about 5000 copies and they retain about $2 from a copy... then where is the profit?
In the $10k that adds up to.
iPhone and PCs are totally hopeless as you get released into the pool with tens of thousands competing apps/games and most users only see the top 100. Unless you are well established, multiple award winner or have some marketing strategy you will hardly see any sales.
How is that different from anything else? Of course you need to have some kind of marketing strategy, you can't just put it out there and expect everyone to notice it.
Hardware consistency, everyone is using the same system and that system runs the latest games for that platform perfectly, you can code to the limit, not the bare minimum.
As you said, controller consistency, but also the ability to use Kinect.
You don't have to worry about distribution because that is taken care of directly to all gold subscribers. All you need to concern yourself with is advertising.
Payment, another thing you don't have to worry about and if you're a student doing this just to get a title out then the average earning of $3800 is pretty good, compared to having to set up your own distribution and paywall system.
So when bin Laden is gone, the authorities are equating script kiddies with terrorist, and refer to their hideout as their "cell".
You aren't aware words have multiple meanings? In this instance 'cell' is used in the same way it is used to describe 'terrorist cells', as a a small group acting as a unit...nowhere did i see anyone referring to the 'hideout' of such people as a 'cell' so i'm not sure where you're getting that from.
Google's vast infrastructure runs on GNU/Linux, and they sponsor the yearly Summer of Code that creates a lot of new FOSS code. They are an open source company, even if they keep their main revenue-producing technology closed.
So what exactly is an open source company then? You know Microsoft runs the CodePlex open source project hosting and hosts quite a lot of open source projects that they have done and use there, but i wouldn't call them and 'open source company' and they - like google - keep their main revenue-producing technology closed.
The only reason people's systems are getting infected by this is because they gave the software privileges even after being warned it was a security risk.
Which in turn is because the operating system has conditioned the user to think that nothing labeled a security risk is a true security risk. UAC (or counterparts on other operating systems) has cried "wolf" too many times.
I should have phrased that as 'potential security risk', which of course is a signal to the user that it may not be safe. Following that there is another message that the application requires administrative privileges, but most people don't care about what that means because they just want their xxx screensaver and don't stop and think what could happen.
It doesn't matter what you do, if you give them the option to bypass security then they voluntarily will.
But is this the case even if the maker of an appliance treats all homemade applications as security risks and sues those who sell the tools needed to bypass the security?
I'm not sure what you're referring to there. I'm not suggesting removing the option to bypass security, just that when you leave the decision to the user then this is going to happen in some cases because the user doesn't care until something bad happens.
Except you and I both know that the idiots who get infected by the new virus every single time, who do the same things we tell them not to every time, will happily open any physical lock because the popup box says to.
Exactly! The only reason people's systems are getting infected by this is because they gave the software privileges even after being warned it was a security risk. It doesn't matter what you do, if you give them the option to bypass security then they voluntarily will.
You haven't tried it then. If you send yourself an email marked with high importance it will end up in your priority inbox. Of course that is not the only way to get emails to end up there, essentially they are determining what is and is not solicited, given they know the email from their offers is solicited they probably took a shortcut on it.
they might not even be doing that, it's quite possible that given the priority email system is designed to distinguish between solicited and unsolicited mail they just put in an exception for google offers since they already know it's solicited.
well the priority inbox is essentially an attempt to separate solicited mail from unsolicited mail, they know their offers emails are solicited because you signed up for it with them and assuming you are opening offers emails from other companies over time it will determine those as being solicited too.
who would have thought a for profit company would ever try to push its products and services before the competition?
send yourself an email marked with 'high importance' and it ends up in your priority inbox...so google is sending their offer emails with 'high importance' where other companies aren't, how is this a story at all?
Why would you think that? We still have files with bytes in them, pipes, sockets, and all the other things these system calls work on. And since we're still working with the same concepts, and we have a good API for them, why would we want to change the API?
That's exactly my point, just because it hasn't changed doesn't mean it's dead.
That may be true for COM, but is the same true for ActiveX, VBA, or DirectX? I've worked on an app for a mobile device that was developed in Visual Studio 2008, that would compile in no other version of Visual Studio. Apparently, Microsoft introduced APIs in one version of their flagship development environment and removed them in the next.
There could be many reasons for that, and by exactly the same token there are plenty of libraries on unix-like OSes that will only compile with a certain version of gcc and will not build with later versions.
I am not saying this is a bad thing, just that it happens.
Fair enough, but my point is that it's not just an MS thing, POSIX deprecates APIs, Khronos deprecates APIs, some software will build only with certain versions of gcc because they aren't compatible...it happens.
And thankfully all hardware in Android phones has Linux drivers.
Except it's not quite so black and white, the Android kernel is not the same as the Meego kernel, it would be fine if all of those drivers were open source so you could build them for any system and build against Bionic or glibc depending on which system you are using but at the moment very few are open source.
Take a step back and think about it: if
this patent is granted and we can all do virtual skywriting, it will
eliminate actual planes in the air doing "real" skywriting.
why does it have to be patented for us to be able to do it?
Not true. Allot of the programs need to be run in compatibility mode for a reason.
Because they are either unsafe or have been used incorrectly, so they get run in compatibility mode, but as i said they don't work any differently. Just the same as how apple worked in their technology transition phases.
Not to mention the development environment and so forth do not support it.
Of course the development environment supports it, are you sure you know what COM is? And what's the 'and so forth'? Is that just an attempt to pad out your argument?
It solves the architecture-compatibility issue easily enough, but there are serious limits in what currently exists as "HTML5 and Javascript" (lack of threads, performance, etc) that make this a potentially very bad decision.
What decision? They aren't 'moving developers' to this platform, all i've seen is that they have a new development platform - clearly not as technically capable as their multiple existing development platforms - based on HTML5 and Javascript.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, $10K is about the employment cost of 2 people for one month. A game that will sell 5K copies probably needs a little more than that.
XBLIG is for hobbyists, not full time devs.
You make good points. However:
Hardware consistency, everyone is using the same system and that system runs the latest games for that platform perfectly, you can code to the limit, not the bare minimum.
I'm under the impression that a game engine designed for the asset budget of an indie game might not even fully stress the capability of the bare minimum. A couple of the screenshots in the article were of 2D games.
Assets are not the only things that are computationally expensive, there are plenty of AI, physics, shader effects, etc... that are beyond the scope of the bare minimum. And the obvious way to get around a distribution limit is to use the computational power to generate as many procedural assets as you can.
also the ability to use Kinect.
Windows 7 officially supports the Kinect sensor, and a subset of functionality (depth field, not automatic skeleton recognition) is available with third-party user-mode Kinect sensor drivers.
Yes i have seen there is a BETA version of the SDK recently made available. You can do it, but it's still sold as an XBox accessory, most consumers are using kinect with an XBox anyway.
compared to having to set up your own distribution and paywall system
Would something like osCommerce + Super Download Shop + PayPal/Google/Amazon payment work? Or perhaps your point is that the annual price of HTTPS hosting approaches the App Hub + Xbox Live Gold membership fee.
Yes obviously you can do it with a combination of other services, the point is you don't have to, it's all included.
Moreover, the fact that the XNA framework uses a programming language not common on non-Microsoft platforms (C#) limits portability of a game designed for XBLIG to other platforms.
You are suggesting targeting the PC but if multiple platforms is your goal then you know that by targeting XBLIG you get 90% of the PC gaming market that you are suggesting as the alternative anyway.
Or should one just plan on making entirely separate products for XBLIG vs. other platforms?
XBLIG + Windows7 vs other platforms, yes. Given that XBLIG + Windows 7 is the vast majority of the gaming market anyway, as hobbyist if you've targeted that then you're doing well.
First, it's called Java and it runs android apps on linux (amoung others), just like Linux runs any other app.
Oh come on, the suggestion you linked to - if you even bothered to read it or have any understanding of what it does - is an emulator that emulates the entire device including the hardware and then runs android on top of that and then your applications on top of that. Whether or not it's java makes no difference which is why you can make native calls from java to compiled ARM libraries using the NDK and it still works in the emulator, it's also why the emulator is so incredibly slow.
The high costs of DEV kits holds down the small guys.
Why do you need a dev kit if you're doing XBLIG?
Also Xbox Live Indie Games has limits that are in place to make it hard to make a game on the level of the big guys.
If you want to compete with the big guys then you wouldn't be using XBLIG for many of the same reasons they aren't using XBLIG. It also limits your choice of language, but again if you want the full flexibility and ability to compete with big studios you don't use XBLIG, that's not what it's for.
The binary distribution package must be no larger than 150 MB (dumb and makes you cut down on stuff like art, sounds and levels.
Well you aren't paying for distribution now are you?
XBLIG games do not have achievements or leaderboards, nor are they listed on a player's "Gamer Card (why does this need to locked out?) at least have leaderboards.
Because these aren't premium features. Gees all your complaints are that the cheapest, most basic entry-level way to start out in game development on the xbox doesn't offer you all the features given to commercial studios, so it appears you've completely missed the point of what XBLIG is.
XBLA games are profitable? When you see most sold about 5000 copies and they retain about $2 from a copy... then where is the profit?
In the $10k that adds up to.
iPhone and PCs are totally hopeless as you get released into the pool with tens of thousands competing apps/games and most users only see the top 100. Unless you are well established, multiple award winner or have some marketing strategy you will hardly see any sales.
How is that different from anything else? Of course you need to have some kind of marketing strategy, you can't just put it out there and expect everyone to notice it.
Then why not do so on the PC?
Hardware consistency, everyone is using the same system and that system runs the latest games for that platform perfectly, you can code to the limit, not the bare minimum.
As you said, controller consistency, but also the ability to use Kinect.
You don't have to worry about distribution because that is taken care of directly to all gold subscribers. All you need to concern yourself with is advertising.
Payment, another thing you don't have to worry about and if you're a student doing this just to get a title out then the average earning of $3800 is pretty good, compared to having to set up your own distribution and paywall system.
So when bin Laden is gone, the authorities are equating script kiddies with terrorist, and refer to their hideout as their "cell".
You aren't aware words have multiple meanings? In this instance 'cell' is used in the same way it is used to describe 'terrorist cells', as a a small group acting as a unit...nowhere did i see anyone referring to the 'hideout' of such people as a 'cell' so i'm not sure where you're getting that from.
Cell?
Yes.
As in terrorist cell?
Yes, Cell: a small group acting as a unit.
REALLY?
Yes, really, how hard is it to understand?
Google's vast infrastructure runs on GNU/Linux, and they sponsor the yearly Summer of Code that creates a lot of new FOSS code. They are an open source company, even if they keep their main revenue-producing technology closed.
So what exactly is an open source company then? You know Microsoft runs the CodePlex open source project hosting and hosts quite a lot of open source projects that they have done and use there, but i wouldn't call them and 'open source company' and they - like google - keep their main revenue-producing technology closed.
The only reason people's systems are getting infected by this is because they gave the software privileges even after being warned it was a security risk.
Which in turn is because the operating system has conditioned the user to think that nothing labeled a security risk is a true security risk. UAC (or counterparts on other operating systems) has cried "wolf" too many times.
I should have phrased that as 'potential security risk', which of course is a signal to the user that it may not be safe. Following that there is another message that the application requires administrative privileges, but most people don't care about what that means because they just want their xxx screensaver and don't stop and think what could happen.
It doesn't matter what you do, if you give them the option to bypass security then they voluntarily will.
But is this the case even if the maker of an appliance treats all homemade applications as security risks and sues those who sell the tools needed to bypass the security?
I'm not sure what you're referring to there. I'm not suggesting removing the option to bypass security, just that when you leave the decision to the user then this is going to happen in some cases because the user doesn't care until something bad happens.
Except you and I both know that the idiots who get infected by the new virus every single time, who do the same things we tell them not to every time, will happily open any physical lock because the popup box says to.
Exactly! The only reason people's systems are getting infected by this is because they gave the software privileges even after being warned it was a security risk. It doesn't matter what you do, if you give them the option to bypass security then they voluntarily will.
Priority inbox doesn't work like that.
You haven't tried it then. If you send yourself an email marked with high importance it will end up in your priority inbox. Of course that is not the only way to get emails to end up there, essentially they are determining what is and is not solicited, given they know the email from their offers is solicited they probably took a shortcut on it.
they might not even be doing that, it's quite possible that given the priority email system is designed to distinguish between solicited and unsolicited mail they just put in an exception for google offers since they already know it's solicited.
well the priority inbox is essentially an attempt to separate solicited mail from unsolicited mail, they know their offers emails are solicited because you signed up for it with them and assuming you are opening offers emails from other companies over time it will determine those as being solicited too.
Google is already facing an inquiry from the FTC. All you need to do is pay attention to the news: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/ftc-launching-antitrust-probe-over-google-search-ad-businesses.ars This sort of thing is not going to look very good to the FTC.
How so? If you send an email with the 'high importance' flag it ends up in your priority inbox the same way as emails from google.
who would have thought a for profit company would ever try to push its products and services before the competition?
send yourself an email marked with 'high importance' and it ends up in your priority inbox...so google is sending their offer emails with 'high importance' where other companies aren't, how is this a story at all?
...just in time for an antitrust investigation.
On what grounds? I'm not seeing anything here that would warrant such a thing.
Why would you think that? We still have files with bytes in them, pipes, sockets, and all the other things these system calls work on. And since we're still working with the same concepts, and we have a good API for them, why would we want to change the API?
That's exactly my point, just because it hasn't changed doesn't mean it's dead.
That may be true for COM, but is the same true for ActiveX, VBA, or DirectX? I've worked on an app for a mobile device that was developed in Visual Studio 2008, that would compile in no other version of Visual Studio. Apparently, Microsoft introduced APIs in one version of their flagship development environment and removed them in the next.
There could be many reasons for that, and by exactly the same token there are plenty of libraries on unix-like OSes that will only compile with a certain version of gcc and will not build with later versions.
I am not saying this is a bad thing, just that it happens.
Fair enough, but my point is that it's not just an MS thing, POSIX deprecates APIs, Khronos deprecates APIs, some software will build only with certain versions of gcc because they aren't compatible...it happens.
And thankfully all hardware in Android phones has Linux drivers.
Except it's not quite so black and white, the Android kernel is not the same as the Meego kernel, it would be fine if all of those drivers were open source so you could build them for any system and build against Bionic or glibc depending on which system you are using but at the moment very few are open source.
It will run on rooted Android phones. Or will even dual-boot on them. I am sure, there will be plenty of unlockable Android phones.
You still need drivers for all the hardware, it's not just a case of loading the OS onto a different phone.
Take a step back and think about it: if this patent is granted and we can all do virtual skywriting, it will eliminate actual planes in the air doing "real" skywriting.
why does it have to be patented for us to be able to do it?
Of course the technologies still work, but does Microsoft support them?
Well ancient things like COM and MFC are still available in the latest VS and are still supported.
Does Microsoft update them to fit modern needs?
MFC is nearly 20 years old and got all the recent ribbon updates.
Can you get as many jobs writing in them?
I don't know.
Can you get jobs other than maintenance jobs in them?
Of course, you can't find any?
Your confusing implementation with interface. read and write's implementation has kept up with the times while maintaining the same interface.
Kept up with the times? So has Win32.
Now compare that to Microsoft who constantly deprecates interfaces which means no new features are ever back ported
Oh come on don't be obtuse, look at MFC, it's nearly 20 years old yet it still gets new features, it even got the new ribbon APIs.
Not true. Allot of the programs need to be run in compatibility mode for a reason.
Because they are either unsafe or have been used incorrectly, so they get run in compatibility mode, but as i said they don't work any differently. Just the same as how apple worked in their technology transition phases.
Not to mention the development environment and so forth do not support it.
Of course the development environment supports it, are you sure you know what COM is?
And what's the 'and so forth'? Is that just an attempt to pad out your argument?
It solves the architecture-compatibility issue easily enough, but there are serious limits in what currently exists as "HTML5 and Javascript" (lack of threads, performance, etc) that make this a potentially very bad decision.
What decision? They aren't 'moving developers' to this platform, all i've seen is that they have a new development platform - clearly not as technically capable as their multiple existing development platforms - based on HTML5 and Javascript.