Easy money is one thing. Value for money is another. A few years ago, I worked on a game that hired an "A-list" actress to supply the voice for the main game character. The results were pretty flat and lifeless, and didn't fit the game well at all. I don't know if the guys who had gone along to the recording session hadn't explained the context properly, or what.
Worse, though, was knowing that it would take me three or four years to earn what she was paid for that afternoon of "work". Bitter? Me? Naaaaah!
Can I patent the idea of filing patents on vapourware ideas as a mechanism to net potential future license fees and/or stifle any competing research on the idea? I can smell cash...
Ah, interesting. Alienbrain was evaluated a couple of times in the past few years by the company I used to work for. I think the problem was that they were looking at it from the point of view of finding an alternative to Visual SourceSafe. While Alienbrain does provide version control, it seems to do much more than that - in fact, it looks like everything I was looking for!
I think one of the main reasons it was turned down was the price tag. The initial costs to shift the studio over to use Alienbrain were huge. I'm wondering if whoever evaluated it realised what the true strengths were. It will be interesting to see if XNA studio is attempting something similar.
Oh, and Subversion proved a worthy successor to VSS...:)
Every time XNA studio is discussed, they mention how it's going to incorporate asset management and project tracking utilities. Annoyingly, they're often short on details as far as what exactly this entails.
As a programmer, one of the difficulties I've regularly faced is finding the art resources I need to complete my tasks. At some point, the art and programming schedules split, and each group ends up shuffling scheduled tasks in order to deal with unforeseen problems, last minute demos and all the usual fun. What frequently happens when I get a task requiring art assets, is that I need start running around the building on the asset chase:
a) Find the lead programmer/programming manager to find where the assets should be. b) If the asset location is not known, find the lead artist/art manager and see if they know where the asset is, if it's been completed yet according to the art schedule, and which artist is responsible for creating that asset. c) Find the artist responsible to find where the asset is located, or the current status if they're still working on it.
It seems to me that there is potential for a centralised schedule and asset tracking system, so that I can immediately check for a programming task what resources (art, audio and/or design) that task depends on, who is scheduled to create those resources and the current status. This works both ways, too - an artist may be waiting for a particular software component to be written before they can see how a bitmap or mesh looks using that component. I've regularly heard complaints along the lines of "I started doing x two months ago, but I needed y to finish; no-one told me y was completed five weeks ago".
I'm interested to see if this is the sort of thing that XNA studio will provide, or if there's still a niche open. Or does anyone have a similar system already in use?
After years of pouring your heart and soul into your project, experience the euphoria of having it ripped to shreds in a few hours by a ruthless, pimply reviewer.
that show is freaky, like the kind of thing they'd show in a right-wing totalitarian state to placate the masses
How dare you? I live in Texas and I, um, I, err... oh, never mind.
That guy is my hero. I look forward to him showing me what happens when "hopped-up punks" get behind the wheel of a stolen SUV. Maybe this time they'll get away!
smash open the hard drive and toss the platters around
If you're planning this, make sure you know a quick way of smashing that particular drive. I tried smashing an old broken drive in a moment of tin-foil-hat-wearing privacy fear. Ten minutes later, a screwdriver, claw hammer and concrete patio left me with an intact, although somewhat dented drive. This kind of display, while reasonably accurate, would not provide a good impression of a software engineer's life.
Cringley has been mulling over this in recent columns... His theory is that IBM pulling out of the PC market releases them from Microsoft's OEM stranglehold, and by investing more time, money and effort into the Cell processor, they may be looking to free themselves of Intel's hold, too. Cell-powered, unix/linux servers? Wild speculation it may be, but it's believable.
Re:In the near future...
on
SLI Primer
·
· Score: 1
And then one day we'll realize we've been plugging the motherboard into the graphics card, not the other way around...
Still, the point I was attempting to make was that games use this space for caching data, not completely installing to. I'm guessing this requires at least some kind of patching to the Xbox system software to allow entire games to be copied and executed from the HD alone. This in itself risks detection and banishment from online services, which are a major part of XBox gaming.
HD or no HD, there are still going to be ways discovered to pirate software. The HD in the XBox provided a method for speeding up load times, as well as storage for downloaded content and saved games. It is also a relatively expensive component, prone to failure or damage, drawing extra power and adding physical bulk to the system. Faster dvd drives and large capacity, cheap removable storage also make it redundant. Their main competitor, Sony, have also managed well enough without a HD. This is why I believe MS were thinking financially when they looked at removing the HD-as-standard for XBox 2, as opposed to cutting down on piracy.
You'll be able to buy your add-on HD later to complete your gaming/tivo/mp3/wma serving media centre gizmo.:)
Yep, it's the next XBox that MS were thinking about releasing without a HD as standard. Have they finally made a decision on this? I thought it was due to costs rather than piracy concerns. The HD in the current Xbox simply provides a cache for game data which is faster to access than a dvd. If memory serves me, the developer can copy up to half a megabyte of data to the HD if required. I'm not sure how this has been exploited for piracy...?
The author has gathered a huge pile of miscellaneous statistics and munged them into some sort of coherent article, without fully understanding what the stats actually mean. Plenty of facts, some true, some incorrect, but there's an overwhelming lack of any substance to the article - no conclusions, no added insight, no comparisons - a bit of a pointless read all round.
As another British ex-pat, I also miss the shows on BBC and C4. So does my US wife. I'd gladly pay a monthly subscription to be able to download the shows.
I signed up for the C4 broadband service. Yes, it does require you to be in the UK, but this doesn't seem any more difficult to get around than sticking in your old UK post code and saying your country is the UK.
My only problem with the C4 service is that beyond the nightly news, there's hardly any new content being made available. I'll still pay their subscription fee, but download their shows through external torrents, if they promise not to throw the attack lawyers at me.
Yep, in the long run, these problems will cost you more time than the quick and easy implementation saves you.
A couple of rules of thumb I keep in mind when designing a save-game system:
- Maintain backwards compatibility when possible. Assign unique IDs to all values stored in the file, so you're not relying so much on order or assuming the existance of something. Also, testers get pissed when their 8-hour saved game no longer works with each and every new build.
- Add a version number, so that on the occasion that backwards compatibility cannot be maintained, you can prevent the attempted load of an old file. Programmers get pissed after spending hours tracking a bug, only to find it was due to an old incompatible saved game file.
A little extra work now can save a lot of effort later!
I was cruising along the interstate a couple of days ago, rocking out to Queen's greatest hits II, thinking to myself "Now this is real music, not like that rubbish you get these days", when
WOAH!
I've turned into my father! When did this happen??
[The games] industry remains strong and poised for renewed double digit growth over the next five years as we enter a new cycle of video game console launches. The future could not be brighter.
And yet on the other other hand, we have all these studio closures. It's only a few days since I heard of the demise of the Ion Storm studio in Austin, TX. I'm not sure who the future looks bright for, but it certainly doesn't appear to be game developers. My condolences to all those families who are affected by these closures.
Unlikely. IIRC, the driver series is developed by Reflections in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. Despite Driv3r being a bit of a let-down and linked to all kinds of controversy over paid-for reviews, it's still a strong brand and I'd be surprised if there wasn't a D4 already well into development.
Interesting. Due to an apparently pre-natal injury, I have damage to the lens in my right eye. It looks perfectly fine, but optically I'm very, very, very long sighted in that eye. As a result, my brain generally ignores what my right eye sees if I'm using both eyes.
I've been wondering if laser treatment or a lens implant would help - as the eye is already damaged, there's not much to lose. However, it may be pointless if now that I'm in my early 30s, my brain is too old to adapt.
RAD Game Tools produced the Bink codec. Although I'd guess very few PCs have a Bink player installed already, free players are available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
The encoder is pretty flexible (and pretty much idiot-proof), so you can cut down the quality/bandwidth/size as required. I've only used it for streaming game video off dvd, so I don't know how it performs for the smaller files you're wanting. Might be worth a try, though.
Memory Protection - With Java, you have no worries about memory troubles.
Unless you're working with a seriously restricted system.
I'm relatively new to Java, but I like it. The code seems more refined, elegant, and less likely to blow your face off if something goes wrong.
However, all the overheads involved with type checking, array bounds checking, etc, and the relative lack of control over the memory management compared to C/C++ all make life hard when your available memory is measured in kilobytes, not megabytes. I'm currently knee-deep in a J2ME project, cramming 15lb of crap into a 10lb bag, and my #1 problem is cutting down on heap usage. The line "With Java, you have no worries about memory troubles" caught me like a slap around the face with a haddock!
Mr Hasson is not too original, either. I remember hearing pretty much the same speech about six years ago. That time, however, I was sat across the table from former Acclaim CEO Greg Fischbach. As history shows, this is not a guaranteed plan for success.
Some of what he says is true, though. The projects are getting more complex, the teams are getting larger. Both development teams AND management need to look how large scale non-games software development companies tackle scheduling, design, documentation, feature change requests, bug tracking and other aspects. There may be some improvements that can be applied to their own projects. All too often, I've had time scheduled at the beginning of a project for game/tools code design and planning thrown aside in order to hack together a half-baked demo because someone up the chain doesn't want to spend the time reading the game design.
For the creative side of games development, this needs to be as free from business related restrictions as possible. Coming up with a game design that is well received by your peer group - other games designers/developers and gamers themselves - is key to a good game. However, good is not always successful, and who wants good when we can have success with YetAnotherSportsSim 2008, with realistic sweat physics?
Slashdot Mirror
Easy money is one thing. Value for money is another. A few years ago, I worked on a game that hired an "A-list" actress to supply the voice for the main game character. The results were pretty flat and lifeless, and didn't fit the game well at all. I don't know if the guys who had gone along to the recording session hadn't explained the context properly, or what.
Worse, though, was knowing that it would take me three or four years to earn what she was paid for that afternoon of "work". Bitter? Me? Naaaaah!
Can I patent the idea of filing patents on vapourware ideas as a mechanism to net potential future license fees and/or stifle any competing research on the idea? I can smell cash...
Ah, interesting. Alienbrain was evaluated a couple of times in the past few years by the company I used to work for. I think the problem was that they were looking at it from the point of view of finding an alternative to Visual SourceSafe. While Alienbrain does provide version control, it seems to do much more than that - in fact, it looks like everything I was looking for!
:)
I think one of the main reasons it was turned down was the price tag. The initial costs to shift the studio over to use Alienbrain were huge. I'm wondering if whoever evaluated it realised what the true strengths were. It will be interesting to see if XNA studio is attempting something similar.
Oh, and Subversion proved a worthy successor to VSS...
My cat has developed a stealth mode. I'm sure he runs along on three legs, with the fourth paw over the bell.
Every time XNA studio is discussed, they mention how it's going to incorporate asset management and project tracking utilities. Annoyingly, they're often short on details as far as what exactly this entails.
As a programmer, one of the difficulties I've regularly faced is finding the art resources I need to complete my tasks. At some point, the art and programming schedules split, and each group ends up shuffling scheduled tasks in order to deal with unforeseen problems, last minute demos and all the usual fun. What frequently happens when I get a task requiring art assets, is that I need start running around the building on the asset chase:
a) Find the lead programmer/programming manager to find where the assets should be.
b) If the asset location is not known, find the lead artist/art manager and see if they know where the asset is, if it's been completed yet according to the art schedule, and which artist is responsible for creating that asset.
c) Find the artist responsible to find where the asset is located, or the current status if they're still working on it.
It seems to me that there is potential for a centralised schedule and asset tracking system, so that I can immediately check for a programming task what resources (art, audio and/or design) that task depends on, who is scheduled to create those resources and the current status. This works both ways, too - an artist may be waiting for a particular software component to be written before they can see how a bitmap or mesh looks using that component. I've regularly heard complaints along the lines of "I started doing x two months ago, but I needed y to finish; no-one told me y was completed five weeks ago".
I'm interested to see if this is the sort of thing that XNA studio will provide, or if there's still a niche open. Or does anyone have a similar system already in use?
Good to hear. :)
At least you appeared to have read the book in some depth - you're a step ahead of most games reviewers already!
Seriously, though, it was a good review. Thanks!
It's the final lesson in games development:
After years of pouring your heart and soul into your project, experience the euphoria of having it ripped to shreds in a few hours by a ruthless, pimply reviewer.
I'll never forget the time a salesman at a local electronics store tried to sell me a dodgy copy of a game I was still writing.
I'm not sure if came from the publisher's test department, or a magazine preview copy, or what.
He didn't work there for much longer.
You need to select print to save? That's intuitive... err, I think.
that show is freaky, like the kind of thing they'd show in a right-wing totalitarian state to placate the masses
How dare you? I live in Texas and I, um, I, err... oh, never mind.
That guy is my hero. I look forward to him showing me what happens when "hopped-up punks" get behind the wheel of a stolen SUV. Maybe this time they'll get away!
smash open the hard drive and toss the platters around
If you're planning this, make sure you know a quick way of smashing that particular drive. I tried smashing an old broken drive in a moment of tin-foil-hat-wearing privacy fear. Ten minutes later, a screwdriver, claw hammer and concrete patio left me with an intact, although somewhat dented drive. This kind of display, while reasonably accurate, would not provide a good impression of a software engineer's life.
Cringley has been mulling over this in recent columns... His theory is that IBM pulling out of the PC market releases them from Microsoft's OEM stranglehold, and by investing more time, money and effort into the Cell processor, they may be looking to free themselves of Intel's hold, too. Cell-powered, unix/linux servers? Wild speculation it may be, but it's believable.
And then one day we'll realize we've been plugging the motherboard into the graphics card, not the other way around...
What we need is some kind of turbine...
Feh.. yes, that should have read "gigabyte".
:)
Still, the point I was attempting to make was that games use this space for caching data, not completely installing to. I'm guessing this requires at least some kind of patching to the Xbox system software to allow entire games to be copied and executed from the HD alone. This in itself risks detection and banishment from online services, which are a major part of XBox gaming.
HD or no HD, there are still going to be ways discovered to pirate software. The HD in the XBox provided a method for speeding up load times, as well as storage for downloaded content and saved games. It is also a relatively expensive component, prone to failure or damage, drawing extra power and adding physical bulk to the system. Faster dvd drives and large capacity, cheap removable storage also make it redundant. Their main competitor, Sony, have also managed well enough without a HD. This is why I believe MS were thinking financially when they looked at removing the HD-as-standard for XBox 2, as opposed to cutting down on piracy.
You'll be able to buy your add-on HD later to complete your gaming/tivo/mp3/wma serving media centre gizmo.
Yep, it's the next XBox that MS were thinking about releasing without a HD as standard. Have they finally made a decision on this? I thought it was due to costs rather than piracy concerns. The HD in the current Xbox simply provides a cache for game data which is faster to access than a dvd. If memory serves me, the developer can copy up to half a megabyte of data to the HD if required. I'm not sure how this has been exploited for piracy...?
The author has gathered a huge pile of miscellaneous statistics and munged them into some sort of coherent article, without fully understanding what the stats actually mean. Plenty of facts, some true, some incorrect, but there's an overwhelming lack of any substance to the article - no conclusions, no added insight, no comparisons - a bit of a pointless read all round.
As another British ex-pat, I also miss the shows on BBC and C4. So does my US wife. I'd gladly pay a monthly subscription to be able to download the shows.
I signed up for the C4 broadband service. Yes, it does require you to be in the UK, but this doesn't seem any more difficult to get around than sticking in your old UK post code and saying your country is the UK.
My only problem with the C4 service is that beyond the nightly news, there's hardly any new content being made available. I'll still pay their subscription fee, but download their shows through external torrents, if they promise not to throw the attack lawyers at me.
Yep, in the long run, these problems will cost you more time than the quick and easy implementation saves you.
A couple of rules of thumb I keep in mind when designing a save-game system:
- Maintain backwards compatibility when possible. Assign unique IDs to all values stored in the file, so you're not relying so much on order or assuming the existance of something. Also, testers get pissed when their 8-hour saved game no longer works with each and every new build.
- Add a version number, so that on the occasion that backwards compatibility cannot be maintained, you can prevent the attempted load of an old file. Programmers get pissed after spending hours tracking a bug, only to find it was due to an old incompatible saved game file.
A little extra work now can save a lot of effort later!
Guilty, your honour.
I was cruising along the interstate a couple of days ago, rocking out to Queen's greatest hits II, thinking to myself "Now this is real music, not like that rubbish you get these days", when
WOAH!
I've turned into my father! When did this happen??
And yet on the other other hand, we have all these studio closures. It's only a few days since I heard of the demise of the Ion Storm studio in Austin, TX. I'm not sure who the future looks bright for, but it certainly doesn't appear to be game developers. My condolences to all those families who are affected by these closures.
Unlikely. IIRC, the driver series is developed by Reflections in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. Despite Driv3r being a bit of a let-down and linked to all kinds of controversy over paid-for reviews, it's still a strong brand and I'd be surprised if there wasn't a D4 already well into development.
Interesting. Due to an apparently pre-natal injury, I have damage to the lens in my right eye. It looks perfectly fine, but optically I'm very, very, very long sighted in that eye. As a result, my brain generally ignores what my right eye sees if I'm using both eyes.
I've been wondering if laser treatment or a lens implant would help - as the eye is already damaged, there's not much to lose. However, it may be pointless if now that I'm in my early 30s, my brain is too old to adapt.
RAD Game Tools produced the Bink codec. Although I'd guess very few PCs have a Bink player installed already, free players are available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
The encoder is pretty flexible (and pretty much idiot-proof), so you can cut down the quality/bandwidth/size as required. I've only used it for streaming game video off dvd, so I don't know how it performs for the smaller files you're wanting. Might be worth a try, though.
Memory Protection - With Java, you have no worries about memory troubles.
Unless you're working with a seriously restricted system.
I'm relatively new to Java, but I like it. The code seems more refined, elegant, and less likely to blow your face off if something goes wrong.
However, all the overheads involved with type checking, array bounds checking, etc, and the relative lack of control over the memory management compared to C/C++ all make life hard when your available memory is measured in kilobytes, not megabytes. I'm currently knee-deep in a J2ME project, cramming 15lb of crap into a 10lb bag, and my #1 problem is cutting down on heap usage. The line "With Java, you have no worries about memory troubles" caught me like a slap around the face with a haddock!
Mr Hasson is not too original, either. I remember hearing pretty much the same speech about six years ago. That time, however, I was sat across the table from former Acclaim CEO Greg Fischbach. As history shows, this is not a guaranteed plan for success.
Some of what he says is true, though. The projects are getting more complex, the teams are getting larger. Both development teams AND management need to look how large scale non-games software development companies tackle scheduling, design, documentation, feature change requests, bug tracking and other aspects. There may be some improvements that can be applied to their own projects. All too often, I've had time scheduled at the beginning of a project for game/tools code design and planning thrown aside in order to hack together a half-baked demo because someone up the chain doesn't want to spend the time reading the game design.
For the creative side of games development, this needs to be as free from business related restrictions as possible. Coming up with a game design that is well received by your peer group - other games designers/developers and gamers themselves - is key to a good game. However, good is not always successful, and who wants good when we can have success with YetAnotherSportsSim 2008, with realistic sweat physics?
Bah. I need a cup of tea.