When I take a look at game developers a majority of the staff are generally artists and designers who come from every creative field you could imagine, and it keeps showing in the games. If you only play doom and quake you might not see that there are a lot of more artistic and creative games available. But a game designer (or at least a lead designer) needs a ton of experience to know how to create things that work in games, if you just bring in a famous script writer you're just going to get one long cutscene with no room for gameplay.
If anything, we need designers that have more technical skills so they are more able to put their creative skills to better use.
My guess is Linux: Used in the ps2 tool, used for the original set of tools (which were quickly recompiled for windows), and it is cheap:) And IBM seems to like it too.
It is not really so much about designing a pipeline to push polygons and textures for a generic target as it is about how to find the optimal pipeline and vertex/texture/feature balance so that content can be created to fit perfectly to take the most advantage of the machine.
On a PC you generally can't determine an exact balance and load for rendering so you more or less have to create art that can scale with the machine but on consoles you don't have to do that and you can work with a known target.
The best-looking console games are always the result of a lot of time spent with the real hardware.
Not mario sunshine... it looks exactly like the ingame art but then you see the mpeg compression over it. I think all the N64 games were realtime but I'm not so sure about the NGC ones. Nintendo don't really rely on their cut scenes to make an impression as much as some other publishers do.
I think they mean development tool like the ps2 tool, which is a linux pc you can't access (no video out, no keyboard or mouse interface other than the ps2 USB & firewire) but that handles debugging over LAN. You still need another computer to interface with the machine.
They are not in the business of making cheap development systems - the more expensive to the developer the fewer low-budget developers.
As far as I can tell the phantom looks like a gaming PC for people who don't have a PC, or choose not to play games on their PC but still want to play PC games (the subscription service doesn't list any games that would be exclusive enough to make value of the cost).
Is it really likely that people without PCs would have broadband? and if they have a PC and broadband but do not use it for gaming would they spend the money for a router? I didn't see anything about it but does phantom support wireless networking? or do they expect everyone to lay networking cables to their tvs? (I know most of slashdot have done that already, but most of you won't buy a phantom).
It wouldn't make much sense for publishers of poo-games to do that, and even if games were potential hits I don't think the publishers would want to risk the loss of people only paying 1/20th of the game and get bored with it (Prince of persia is a nice game but I probably would only have paid for a third before getting bored).
I think some people are getting tired of the same-old from Nintendo. The games are new but the characters are the same, and people usually want new faces, and the DS and PSP have equal chances of becoming the major handheld because some people prefer known brands while other people will buy the latest hype. Both Nintendo and Sony seem to have many 3rd party partners that are eager to bring their home console games to another platform (like reselling cds to people who already bought it on vinyl).
I also think 'the market' will gladly accept two handhelds and put them both in its pocket as long as the games are different and appeals to different people. I think many 3rd party games will come out for both handhelds but have different interfaces to deal with the different screen layouts.
If Sony is successful, microsoft can't be far behind with a prototype of their version of the same thing which will probably have 3 screens, and the reason we haven't heard about it yet is that they don't have the final specifications for the PSP.
Even if there is less money to spend per copy you may very well sell so many more copies on consoles than PC that the profit for the console production is much higher than the profit for the PC production. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will make big profits, but I doubt a lot of PC titles earn much more than break-even with production and marketing costs.
I don't think the estimates are the minimum spec to run the OS, the spec is to run the applications that MS expects will exist by the release of the OS.
"Ya, SCO OS, etc., has always sucked. Generally low quality software."
Are you saying linux sucked on slashdot? SCO invented the whole thing you know, and then they licensed it to IBM who released it illegally to Linus Thorvalds who changed a few files and released it publicly as his own.
"think a swarm of hundreds of bees, where each bee has it's own AI, they are not just a clump)"
Surely you mean hundreds of thousand? Bees aren't all that intelligent and besides most of them would probably be in the hive tending to the queen.
A few hundred bees flying around collecting nectar from a few hundred flowers, occasionally swarming wouldn't really be that stressful on a PS2, even as a background thing.
per-polygon hit detection isn't too hard as long as you don't have too many polygons.
I think there are a lot more movies not based on games that are REALLY bad and the worst ones are probably not the ones based on video games.
What I am curious about is whether the ratio of decent videogame-based-movies vs bad videogame-based-moves is really higher than decent or better non-videogame-based-movies vs bad non-videogame-based-movies.
In my taste, the videogame-based movies that stand as decent are resident evil and tomb raider 1 (I find it better than fast&furious for instance)
you get a lot of "Is pepsi ok?".. it is starting to get annoying and I for one would like to see some teens get together and decide on a new term for ordering either pepsi or coke.
I tried to play racing games on a tv-card through my computer before, and the delay made it impossible to play.
Any delay will cause problems for twitch-style games, but if it is more than 1/10th of a second it gets too hard (I was playing Gran Turismo 2 at the time).
Is the display delay still present with progressive scan component signals on HD tvs? Those shouldn't have to deal with any image processing, right?
That's maybe the idea but not the practice. E3 is for showing games to media and retailers, but most of the retailers at the show are from local stores and their friends, the wal-mart and eb games have their own things where they have presentations of games. You don't see a lot of suits standing in line to try the games, do you? Some years it seems it is all raggedy game developers playing their own games though...
E3 is about building hype and has always been fully directed by marketing departments, including the game development months prior to the show where I've been involved.
I think the blockbuster shelfspace is based on shared marketing deals between the publisher and blockbuster: if the publisher dedicates a high enough amount to advertising the game and agrees to share certain blockbuster advertising costs for the game you get the shelfspace, they don't care so much about early alpha hype.
templates makes for some pretty tough debugging. if debugging tools don't fully handle templates you may not be able to see how the code works, and can be a valid reason not to use them. other issues may be that you're not very good at using the advanced features offloading bad programming choices on the people that use your features.
The parent mentioned games as a reason C++ is here to stay. I can't think of a single commercial game created entirely in Cobol, or anyone saying Cobol was the better choice for game programming.
It does sound like a nice topic for one of those game programming books though, like "Black art of Cobol videogame voodoo".
Doesn't H***Radio need to prove trademark confusion, as in intent to confuse, mislead customer complaints or business lost to the accused before arguing that such confusion exist? Microsoft couldn't really argue that a company renovating houses could not refer to a windows update as part of their business would be confusing, could they?
== MS Windows should really be MS Shutters because you can't see through them ==
But if it is rare, why not buy the cd & manual online and have it shipped?
I can't really think of any software that is so rare AND I need instantly that I can't find it in a local store.
I don't think this way of buying software has much of a future as long as software is 20 times more expensive than the shipping rate when buying online.
Funny, none of my games are in your list of categories, mine's all filled with plumbers, secret agents, weird creatures with the same voices as celebrities, robots, disney characters, and all my simulation games are either rally games or golf games. And that druggie Pac-Man..
Ah, but I am talking about the Genesis PSG which you had to read a timer (not interrupt) in the Z80 to know when to put the next sample byte into the digital sound channel. Ever done a multiplication function with a timer check in it?
Slashdot Mirror
When I take a look at game developers a majority of the staff are generally artists and designers who come from every creative field you could imagine, and it keeps showing in the games. If you only play doom and quake you might not see that there are a lot of more artistic and creative games available. But a game designer (or at least a lead designer) needs a ton of experience to know how to create things that work in games, if you just bring in a famous script writer you're just going to get one long cutscene with no room for gameplay.
If anything, we need designers that have more technical skills so they are more able to put their creative skills to better use.
My guess is Linux: Used in the ps2 tool, used for the original set of tools (which were quickly recompiled for windows), and it is cheap :) And IBM seems to like it too.
It is not really so much about designing a pipeline to push polygons and textures for a generic target as it is about how to find the optimal pipeline and vertex/texture/feature balance so that content can be created to fit perfectly to take the most advantage of the machine.
On a PC you generally can't determine an exact balance and load for rendering so you more or less have to create art that can scale with the machine but on consoles you don't have to do that and you can work with a known target.
The best-looking console games are always the result of a lot of time spent with the real hardware.
Not mario sunshine... it looks exactly like the ingame art but then you see the mpeg compression over it. I think all the N64 games were realtime but I'm not so sure about the NGC ones. Nintendo don't really rely on their cut scenes to make an impression as much as some other publishers do.
I think they mean development tool like the ps2 tool, which is a linux pc you can't access (no video out, no keyboard or mouse interface other than the ps2 USB & firewire) but that handles debugging over LAN. You still need another computer to interface with the machine.
They are not in the business of making cheap development systems - the more expensive to the developer the fewer low-budget developers.
As far as I can tell the phantom looks like a gaming PC for people who don't have a PC, or choose not to play games on their PC but still want to play PC games (the subscription service doesn't list any games that would be exclusive enough to make value of the cost).
Is it really likely that people without PCs would have broadband? and if they have a PC and broadband but do not use it for gaming would they spend the money for a router? I didn't see anything about it but does phantom support wireless networking? or do they expect everyone to lay networking cables to their tvs? (I know most of slashdot have done that already, but most of you won't buy a phantom).
It wouldn't make much sense for publishers of poo-games to do that, and even if games were potential hits I don't think the publishers would want to risk the loss of people only paying 1/20th of the game and get bored with it (Prince of persia is a nice game but I probably would only have paid for a third before getting bored).
Won't work, the main restrooms are outside of the blocked off areas.
I think some people are getting tired of the same-old from Nintendo. The games are new but the characters are the same, and people usually want new faces, and the DS and PSP have equal chances of becoming the major handheld because some people prefer known brands while other people will buy the latest hype. Both Nintendo and Sony seem to have many 3rd party partners that are eager to bring their home console games to another platform (like reselling cds to people who already bought it on vinyl).
I also think 'the market' will gladly accept two handhelds and put them both in its pocket as long as the games are different and appeals to different people. I think many 3rd party games will come out for both handhelds but have different interfaces to deal with the different screen layouts.
If Sony is successful, microsoft can't be far behind with a prototype of their version of the same thing which will probably have 3 screens, and the reason we haven't heard about it yet is that they don't have the final specifications for the PSP.
Even if there is less money to spend per copy you may very well sell so many more copies on consoles than PC that the profit for the console production is much higher than the profit for the PC production. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will make big profits, but I doubt a lot of PC titles earn much more than break-even with production and marketing costs.
I don't think the estimates are the minimum spec to run the OS, the spec is to run the applications that MS expects will exist by the release of the OS.
Would be practical if Nintendo and Microsoft weren't actually neighbors (used to live across the street from both).
"Ya, SCO OS, etc., has always sucked. Generally low quality software."
Are you saying linux sucked on slashdot? SCO invented the whole thing you know, and then they licensed it to IBM who released it illegally to Linus Thorvalds who changed a few files and released it publicly as his own.
"Their products and support sucks."
I hear they ask other users to volunteer support.
(I'm kidding)
"think a swarm of hundreds of bees, where each bee has it's own AI, they are not just a clump)"
Surely you mean hundreds of thousand? Bees aren't all that intelligent and besides most of them would probably be in the hive tending to the queen.
A few hundred bees flying around collecting nectar from a few hundred flowers, occasionally swarming wouldn't really be that stressful on a PS2, even as a background thing.
per-polygon hit detection isn't too hard as long as you don't have too many polygons.
I think there are a lot more movies not based on games that are REALLY bad and the worst ones are probably not the ones based on video games.
What I am curious about is whether the ratio of decent videogame-based-movies vs bad videogame-based-moves is really higher than decent or better non-videogame-based-movies vs bad non-videogame-based-movies.
In my taste, the videogame-based movies that stand as decent are resident evil and tomb raider 1 (I find it better than fast&furious for instance)
you get a lot of "Is pepsi ok?".. it is starting to get annoying and I for one would like to see some teens get together and decide on a new term for ordering either pepsi or coke.
I tried to play racing games on a tv-card through my computer before, and the delay made it impossible to play.
Any delay will cause problems for twitch-style games, but if it is more than 1/10th of a second it gets too hard (I was playing Gran Turismo 2 at the time).
Is the display delay still present with progressive scan component signals on HD tvs? Those shouldn't have to deal with any image processing, right?
That's maybe the idea but not the practice. E3 is for showing games to media and retailers, but most of the retailers at the show are from local stores and their friends, the wal-mart and eb games have their own things where they have presentations of games. You don't see a lot of suits standing in line to try the games, do you? Some years it seems it is all raggedy game developers playing their own games though...
E3 is about building hype and has always been fully directed by marketing departments, including the game development months prior to the show where I've been involved.
I think the blockbuster shelfspace is based on shared marketing deals between the publisher and blockbuster: if the publisher dedicates a high enough amount to advertising the game and agrees to share certain blockbuster advertising costs for the game you get the shelfspace, they don't care so much about early alpha hype.
templates makes for some pretty tough debugging. if debugging tools don't fully handle templates you may not be able to see how the code works, and can be a valid reason not to use them. other issues may be that you're not very good at using the advanced features offloading bad programming choices on the people that use your features.
The parent mentioned games as a reason C++ is here to stay. I can't think of a single commercial game created entirely in Cobol, or anyone saying Cobol was the better choice for game programming.
It does sound like a nice topic for one of those game programming books though, like "Black art of Cobol videogame voodoo".
Doesn't H***Radio need to prove trademark confusion, as in intent to confuse, mislead customer complaints or business lost to the accused before arguing that such confusion exist? Microsoft couldn't really argue that a company renovating houses could not refer to a windows update as part of their business would be confusing, could they?
== MS Windows should really be MS Shutters because you can't see through them ==
But if it is rare, why not buy the cd & manual online and have it shipped?
I can't really think of any software that is so rare AND I need instantly that I can't find it in a local store.
I don't think this way of buying software has much of a future as long as software is 20 times more expensive than the shipping rate when buying online.
Funny, none of my games are in your list of categories, mine's all filled with plumbers, secret agents, weird creatures with the same voices as celebrities, robots, disney characters, and all my simulation games are either rally games or golf games. And that druggie Pac-Man..
The thing about 3dstudio is that it has a complete lack of gameplay while scenes can be manipulated in any way imaginable.
I fear that the future of videogames are doomed by the very same things.
Ah, but I am talking about the Genesis PSG which you had to read a timer (not interrupt) in the Z80 to know when to put the next sample byte into the digital sound channel. Ever done a multiplication function with a timer check in it?