Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
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Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 1
Hello-
First off, in a static business such as id's, patches are very expensive to make. They are effectively lost revenue, as the time you spend on patches is time you cannot spend on new, money making endeavors. For a company that's making an MMO, a patch is supposed to help you keep your existing (paying) customers, and help you attract new customers. Also, realize that the game industry is small. There's only about 30,000 of us, and we all kinda know each other. And we know each other's business.
The rate at which Blizz burns through hardware is irrelevant--they don't own the hardware they're running on. World of Warcraft is hosted by AT&T's high availability clusters (at least in the US), as reported back in press release here, and mentioned quite a lot during the closed beta.
You must realize that if an area is not going to be a commercial win for Blizzard, they are not going to provide service there. It's one of the reasons they have not added servers in Australia. They mention this on their forums time and time again.
I think you misunderstood my chastising you for not spelling out the word 'fuck.' It was not to insinuate that you were young, but rather to insinuate that when you write something like '****ing', it just makes you look foolish. Cuss words only have negative meaning because we give them negative meaning. I'm certainly not going to take less offense because you chose to write it out or not. The thought was there either way, which is what is offensive (if anything). Just write it out, and be explicit. The only people who aren't going to take offense because you wrote 'sh*t' instead of 'shit' are most likely dimwits who are too wrapped up in appearances to have interesting or meaningful opinions anyways (or moms, who always take offense at that kind of thing.. Although your opinion is very valid mom, if you're reading this).
I'm comparing the rate of content releases by Blizzard to the rate of releases by NCSoft for Guild Wars, which is--by the way--free of subscription charges. They have a million subscribers, and they manage to release 2-3 updates a month. Blizzard, on the other hand, failed to get any patches out for the first 3 months, and still--9 "major" and 2 minor patches later--has failed to address issues that were plaguing WoW during beta. Then there's also City of Heroes, which releases the equivalent of Expansion packs *for free,* and has released 6 of them since their inception. They've also released patches that are too numerous to count. The MMOs that you cite with terrible patch times are the forerunners of the MMO industry. They were--by and large--the first guys out onto the pitch. Of course they were going to take longer to patch. But compare them to any of their competitors now, and they are sadly lacking.
Oh, and before I get any comments like "if you hate it so much you should quit..." I did. I cancelled my subscription a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, I'm on the six month renewal, so I still have 'till January before my subscription actually ends. I now play WoW about an hour a week, if that. And mostly that's just because I still pay for it. (I did, however, miss the entire 1.6 and 1.7 patches as I didn't play at all during that time).
Anyways, cheers!
Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
on
Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 1
The logic that the $120 makes sure that only the hardest-of-the-hardcore attended is broken.
Supply & Demand only promises that as the price goes up, the demand goes down. If we all had the same amount of money, then your logic would hold. But we don't. The determining factor of whether someone is willing to pay the $120 entrance fee then is opportunity costs. What does someone have to give up in order to pay the money to get in? And the wealthier you are, the lower your effective opportunity costs. (Your actual OC is the same regardless of income).
But for example, if you had budgeted the $120 on strippers and booze, that's different than someone who had budgeted that $120 for gasoline and bills.
Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
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Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 1
You work for Blizzard, don't you? Assuming you don't, I'll answer your post. Although I only give it a 2/10 on the troll-o-meter.
Based on Blizzard's own statistics, they have approximately 1M US subscribers. Even if every one of those subscribers is paying the lowest possible rate ($12.95), blizzard is making a cool $12.95M a month. (See how that worked out?) That works out to ~$40M a quarter. Even assuming everyone else pays $0 (they don't), Blizz is still doing pretty well for this one property.
Frankly, if they are spending $40M a quarter on their hosting and content development, then they are fucked. (PS: You can say 'fuck' here, it's okay. Your mom probably isn't reading). And actually, compared to any reasonable analysis of id's revenues over the past 15 years, you'd see that Blizz is on track to make in a year what id has made during pretty much their entire tenure in the game industry.
You mention that Blizz could be reinvesting, which is certainly possible. But you fail to see how throwing a 'for-free' con is investing. It's advertising to the Nth degree. You create incredibly loyal fans, who are much more loyal and fanboish than if you make them acutely aware of your love for the almighty dollar. Also, if you consider the rate that Blizz is releasing new content to be fantastic, then I pity you. It's definitely at least an approximately acceptable rate. But fantastic? (This was where you gave away your employment, for future reference).
You also don't seem to understand how cons work, so let me explain something. Blizzard is making money from the vendors who showed up to pimp their wares. A lot of money. That's how Quakecon manages to stay free. The vendors (+id) cover the costs so that the attendees don't have to.
Bottom line: Don't assume that a company smart enough to make millions of dollars a month is stupid enough to blow through it all. And don't assume that random people on the internets are cheapskates due to their rantings about expensive tickets. Honestly, I would've bitched if the entrance fee had been $5 due to the reasons I've already mentioned. The issue is not that the prices were exhorbitant (which they were). The issue is that the con is a shill, and comparing them to the likes of id makes that obvious.
Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
on
Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 1
I have friends who've been at quakecon (in the BYOC) every year since '99. They indicate that it has been free every year. I personally have only attended 3 quakecons (all in the BYOC), in 2000, 2001, and 2005. They were free the years that I went.
Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
on
Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'll bite the AC troll stick.
Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, Quake, Doom, Hexen, & Heretic. Plus all of the associated sequels. Actually, pound for pound, id has had more successful games than most studios.
Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
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Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 5, Interesting
This is a post that I made on WoW's general forums a ways back, but which was silently deleted after it received several pages of responses.
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Blizz should take a page from id's book
It really irritates me (and several people I know) that Blizz is charging $120 for a ticket to Blizzcon. Why? A little history...
Back in the 1990's, there was this company (which still exists today, actually) called id software. id had some really kickass people, and wrote several wildly popular games. You might have heard of several of them; they're names were generally single words, things like "Quake" and "Doom" (and several sequels). After id made their millions (and millions, and...), they decided that they would start throwing an annual event to celebrate the people that had made them successful, their fans.
And thus, Quakecon (http://www.quakecon.org/) was born. Every year around August, id software throws a big ass, multi-day con for their fans. For free. FOR FREE. This past year, there were approximately 10-15,000 attendees. Over 6000 brought their computers to enjoy the largest LAN party in the western hemisphere. Attendees heard keynotes from key personnel at id, Raven, as well as many other companies, browsed through companies' newest products and got to play--for the first time ever--id's newest title Quake 4. For free.
Blizz, take a page from id's book. With revenue in the millions every month from all of your subscribers, the $120 per ticket isn't just wrong. It's plain greedy. And it's disgusting.
Has nothing to do with symlinks at all. The important question is, will SMB2 finally use the underlying verification for correctness when being sent across authenticating protocals (ala TCP/IP).
I hate the fact that I can FTP a file between windows boxes at approximately 10x the speed that I can "copy" them in explorer.. At the very least, the mid-level (API) copy functionality should do the determination itself as to which method *should* be faster, and do the appropriate thing.
No offense, but I think you're mistaken. Real was--at its best--on par with its competition. But it's competetion was not just WMP. It was competing with QuickTime, which was pretty much always superior.
With Quicktime, I can play a large number of formats in a lightweight player that has fairly small file sizes (for its native format). The player starts up quickly--although it does do the pesky Mac thing of having a new instance for every video I open.
With WMP, I can play virtually infinite formats in a slightly heavier player that has arbitrary file sizes (based on the file type). I don't have to install anything, and if the player comes upon a format it doesn't know how to use, it will attempt to go out and look for a codec. It usually doesn't work, but the concept is right. Oh, and its not like WMP is something that's newly bundled with the OS. Windows Media Player has been bundled with Windows since Windows 3.1... That's right, before it was an OS.
With RP, I have to install kludgy software that runs all the time, has slow startup (and always has), and now connects to the internet whether I want it to or not. I have to hunt through their website to find a link to install the free version (or at least I did the last time I used RP). And the native format has very 'tinny' audio. The file sizes aren't generally great, but then that makes sense because their file format is basically a wrapper around mpeg-3 audio (which adds overhead and makes it icky) and a crappy video codec.
RM claiming that MS's choice to bundle WMP with the OS as killing their application is similar to me claiming that GM is killing my radio business because they bundle their cars with radios... It's not GM's fault that I didn't look at the market before I decided to sink millions of dollars into an unworkable business model. Neither is it MS's fault that RM decided to try to release a media player when one already came with Windows.
But hey, maybe your definition of 'way ahead' is different from mine.
Yeah.. This headline is exactly why the media today pisses me off. Sensationalism at its worst.
From TFA: "If the KFTC enters an order requiring Microsoft to remove code or redesign Windows uniquely for the Korean market, it might be necessary to withdraw Windows from the Korean market or delay offering new versions in Korea," Microsoft said in a U.S. regulatory filing on Thursday. (Emphasis mine)
First off, that was disclosed in a regulatory filing, which was the responsible thing for Microsoft to do. They're warning their investors that should the ruling be against them, they will have to take steps to deal with the ruling which would cost them and their investors money.
Secondly, Microsoft isn't really being unreasonable. Irrespective of whatever reasons they chose to bundle these three pieces of software in the first place, they're bundled together now. There are many issues with decoupling them, not the least of which is the fact that the SDK for WMP and MSN are now included in Windows, and could cause breakage to non-Microsoft applications when removed. But let's assume for a second that not one app in the entire world uses either of these extensions to the standard Windows SDK. There's still the issue that decoupling these pieces of software will be expensive... If only Korea requires their decoupling, it may make more business sense to simply pull their product from South Korea rather than pay the costs associated with it.
Finally, Real Media (also mentioned in TFA) doesn't have a leg to stand on. Their product is inferior to their competitors' products in every way, so they chose to stay in business the old fashioned way: lawsuits.
I'm not pro-Microsoft. But I'm definitely anti-sensationalist media and anti-idiot.
I've bitched about it on the forums over at worldofwarcraft.com since beta (when it was started)...
The policy is stupid, harmful to the overall community and just lame. It is one of the reasons I cancelled my WoW subscription.
You vote with your dollars, folks. If you find this policy stupid--or it has affected you in a negative way, VOTE. Stop paying Blizzard money to Violate you.
Re:Too bad the installation is failing for people.
on
Quake 4 Linux
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· Score: 1
My new disks work. Here's hoping you guys required high standards from Raven. I've been a big fan of the Quake brand pretty much forever.
Is it to provide fallback for games that are 10 years old? Certainly you don't expect id to port their renderer to an DX9.
Is it to provide fallback for games that are cutting edge (DX9)? If so, then the marketting claims you've made are erroneous. The engine cannot simply be dropped in. Are you telling me that your renderer can process 120M polys/sec at 1600x1200? That would be shockingly impressive.
Is it to provide fallback for games that are a couple of years old (DX7/DX8)? If so, I wish you luck with that, but unfortunately RAD Game Tools beat you to market by about a year and a half.
Is it to provide a method for people who are currently doing 2D graphics (ala Commander Keen)? If so, I think I should point out that people doing that would be better off using GDI or the 2-D OGL API, for any of several reasons. One is that the emulating 2-D in 3-D is necessary for some applications, but generally not preferable due to complexity. Another is that using GDI allows the hardware--should it exist--to potentially improve performance of 2-D "for free."
And although you didn't make a reference to the ref rast comparison in your reply to me, you certainly did in any of the other 17 replies you made on this thread.
Finally, if you believe that DX9 shaders won't decimate performance because DX8.1 shaders don't, you are kidding yourself. Beyond the fact that DX9 shaders support more texture fetches (causing cache misses), branching (causing pipe drains and cache misses), and dependent texture lookups (totally hammering any semblence of cache performance), you're ignoring the obvious factor that DX9 shaders can and typically are orders of magnitude longer than DX8 shaders.
PS: I don't know Daniel, and it's quite inappropriate for you to bring mention of my employer into this conversation. That requires me to post-fix this post with a 'the statements I've made herein do not reflect the opinions of my employer.' Yada, yada.
That's the part you're missing, I'm afraid. 'Best possible performance' on the CPU (for rendering) is a joke. Best possible is irrelevant. It's not acceptable at all.
SwiftShader is touting that it's the fastest CPU renderer around with DX9 features... Except that the code doesn't support DX9 features. (DX9 features include VS2 and PS2, neither of which are supported by SwiftShader). And if you think for a second that I could just drop SS in without reworking a ton of code to get over the 0.01 FPS mark with a software shader, you're a fool--or at least without any experience in the matter.
I'm gonna disagree with your usage of the term 'valuable.'
As many others have indicated, their speed comparisons are not actually favorable for them. Being 50 times faster than the reference rasterizer is like saying that you're speakers can generate sound 50 times louder than a piano. While true, the purpose of a piano is not to be loud, but to generate accurate pitches.
Similarly, the purpose of the reference rasterizer is not to be fast, it's to be accurate to the bit level. This lets you determine whether the problem you are diagnosing belongs to you (incorrect image when rendered with the refrast), or the hardware vendor (correct image when rendered with the refrast).
Too bad the installation is failing for people...
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Quake 4 Linux
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· Score: 4, Informative
A lot of people (myself included) are having issues with the second installation disc. It basically just won't read in any CD drive I can get my hands on. And I'm not alone.
If this turns out to be a result of SecureROM, I'm going to send my box back to Activision with a piece of poo inside.
The problem that people don't seem to realize is that marketting is the determining factor of how well a game will do. The art of a game is part of that marketting. Saying that people don't buy games on graphics is BS, which is obvious to anyone who looks at the sales of Doom 3, Half-life 2, Farcry, or any other top seller.
The big publishers have marketting budgets that rival the development costs of the title itself. For example, I worked on C&C Generals. The development budget for that title was ~25M USD. The marketting budget for that title was ~15M dollars.
Indie games simply can't compete with that kind of marketting, and word of mouth sales only grow the community that you already have. If you've only sold 10,000 copies of your game, WOM sales might grow your community to 100,000. But if you'd already had 100K sales, you would've hit the million mark instead.
There are several lessons that the author--who is clearly little experienced in the work force--should take away here. For one thing, posting about the "signs" that he should've seen, particularly when those signs are generally wrong, doesn't come off as good advice to people who've been professionals for awhile. It comes off as sour grapes. Why is he wrong? Let's find out.
Cubicles are of the devil
Repeat after me: No, they're not. With proper soundproofing tiles on the ceiling and carpetted floors, you should be able to hear only your closest neighbors, and drowning them out is what comfortable headphones are for. If you can't get into the zone and do quality work, that's a personal issue, not your employer's. If you are having a hard enough go of it, you should talk to your manager about the problem.
Management is stupid
Generally, you can't get away from this. However, the cases that he cites as management incompetence really weren't necessarily icompetence at all. The author was upset because people like working the way they're most efficient. He seems to think that every new piece of technology makes people more efficient, which is a belief that is only held by recent college graduates. The problem with new technology is that it requires time to retrain your brain. And if the technology really is more efficient (and I would argue that few new languages truly have resulted in massive productivity increases), the question becomes: is the new technology so efficient that the retraining costs will be overcome by the productivity increase we'll get when everyone is running full speed? Usually, the answer is no, or at best "maybe." That's not something you want to stake the future of the company on, which is what you're doing at a small company.
Further, he was upset that after he studied for a few hours, management wasn't convinced that he was the right person to do a full reformat/install of their primary development server. WHAT A SHOCKER! If he were a real go-getter, he would've come in anyways, so he could've learned what the actual problems were going to be during the procedure. Then next time he was somewhere where this came up, he could've at least had cursory experience with the issue.
Personal Growth
I can't really disagree when he says companies should provide mechanisms for personal and professional growth. But what I can say is that when management is telling you that you are in the middle of the pack, look inward. If they're telling you that you're middle of the pack, you're probably actually closer to the bottom. If you feel you're working your hardest and management is telling you that you're not doing a great job, it might be that it's time for a career change.
Compensation isn't everything
That's true, but on the other hand, no one wants to be paid less than they're worth. The key here is that if you're at a job that makes you happy, you'll be more productive and a better employee. Consequently, you'll be recognized by your employer, and generally compensated more.
Final thoughts
It seems to me that what happened in this situation is the author was inexperienced and didn't realize what he'd gotten himself into. His job was a high-risk, high-reward situation. The company promised him ground-floor entry into what they thought was going to be a big hit. Turns out they weren't right, and he hadn't done his due diligence first. The theory with startups is that you churn and burn, and when you're done you can retire at 25. Of course, the reality is that 99% of startups fail and employees are left with nothing but the experience.
When interviewing for a position, the most important thing is to realize that you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. During the interview, when asked if you have any questions, ask if you can meet some of the other team members you'll be working with alone. Tell them you'd like to get a feel for the l
A) If I'm homeless, I've certainly been posting from the library for a long time (5 digit UID and all), and have been posting consistently about game development with said UID for "awhile." You're not going to find a link to a respectable website citing the information I've given. It's not publicly available information (although it's not covered under NDA either).
B) We're talking about games at the $50 initial price offering here. As it is a royalty fee, that cost goes down as the sale price of the title goes down. I thought this was obvious, but I should've realized that someone outside the industry wouldn't get it.
Anyways, you can believe me or not. I could really care less.
There's more to box costs than a simple bill of materials. It's definitely true that the cost of DVD production is not significantly different from CD costs. (In fact, in games with multiple CDs, it's generally cheaper to ship DVDs rather than CDs).
The box costs for console development also include the licensing fee charged by the console manufacturer. Specifically, Microsoft, Sony and/or Nintendo. They charge a license fee that amounts to a hefty royalty fee per box. That's how they get away with selling the hardware at a loss to you, they make it up on the backend from developers/publishers. That's actually where the bulk of their money comes from. For every copy of a game sold on their platform, they get ~$10-15 (depending on which console you're selling on, and how many copies the console manufacturer expects you to sell).
Slashdot Mirror
Was I the only one who read the headline and then tried to recall who EBay was sueing?
It's the greatest time of your life. Never again will you have leisure time to pursue whatever you want, whenever you want.
Not only that, but you're on your own, you're surrounded by other people on their own.
Seriously, for any of a thousand reasons, don't shortcut college.
Life's a journey, not a destination. Stop running. (Obligatory Demotivator
Hello-
First off, in a static business such as id's, patches are very expensive to make. They are effectively lost revenue, as the time you spend on patches is time you cannot spend on new, money making endeavors. For a company that's making an MMO, a patch is supposed to help you keep your existing (paying) customers, and help you attract new customers. Also, realize that the game industry is small. There's only about 30,000 of us, and we all kinda know each other. And we know each other's business.
The rate at which Blizz burns through hardware is irrelevant--they don't own the hardware they're running on. World of Warcraft is hosted by AT&T's high availability clusters (at least in the US), as reported back in press release here, and mentioned quite a lot during the closed beta.
You must realize that if an area is not going to be a commercial win for Blizzard, they are not going to provide service there. It's one of the reasons they have not added servers in Australia. They mention this on their forums time and time again.
I think you misunderstood my chastising you for not spelling out the word 'fuck.' It was not to insinuate that you were young, but rather to insinuate that when you write something like '****ing', it just makes you look foolish. Cuss words only have negative meaning because we give them negative meaning. I'm certainly not going to take less offense because you chose to write it out or not. The thought was there either way, which is what is offensive (if anything). Just write it out, and be explicit. The only people who aren't going to take offense because you wrote 'sh*t' instead of 'shit' are most likely dimwits who are too wrapped up in appearances to have interesting or meaningful opinions anyways (or moms, who always take offense at that kind of thing.. Although your opinion is very valid mom, if you're reading this).
I'm comparing the rate of content releases by Blizzard to the rate of releases by NCSoft for Guild Wars, which is--by the way--free of subscription charges. They have a million subscribers, and they manage to release 2-3 updates a month. Blizzard, on the other hand, failed to get any patches out for the first 3 months, and still--9 "major" and 2 minor patches later--has failed to address issues that were plaguing WoW during beta. Then there's also City of Heroes, which releases the equivalent of Expansion packs *for free,* and has released 6 of them since their inception. They've also released patches that are too numerous to count. The MMOs that you cite with terrible patch times are the forerunners of the MMO industry. They were--by and large--the first guys out onto the pitch. Of course they were going to take longer to patch. But compare them to any of their competitors now, and they are sadly lacking.
Oh, and before I get any comments like "if you hate it so much you should quit..." I did. I cancelled my subscription a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, I'm on the six month renewal, so I still have 'till January before my subscription actually ends. I now play WoW about an hour a week, if that. And mostly that's just because I still pay for it. (I did, however, miss the entire 1.6 and 1.7 patches as I didn't play at all during that time).
Anyways, cheers!
The logic that the $120 makes sure that only the hardest-of-the-hardcore attended is broken.
Supply & Demand only promises that as the price goes up, the demand goes down. If we all had the same amount of money, then your logic would hold. But we don't. The determining factor of whether someone is willing to pay the $120 entrance fee then is opportunity costs. What does someone have to give up in order to pay the money to get in? And the wealthier you are, the lower your effective opportunity costs. (Your actual OC is the same regardless of income).
But for example, if you had budgeted the $120 on strippers and booze, that's different than someone who had budgeted that $120 for gasoline and bills.
You work for Blizzard, don't you? Assuming you don't, I'll answer your post. Although I only give it a 2/10 on the troll-o-meter.
Based on Blizzard's own statistics, they have approximately 1M US subscribers. Even if every one of those subscribers is paying the lowest possible rate ($12.95), blizzard is making a cool $12.95M a month. (See how that worked out?) That works out to ~$40M a quarter. Even assuming everyone else pays $0 (they don't), Blizz is still doing pretty well for this one property.
Frankly, if they are spending $40M a quarter on their hosting and content development, then they are fucked. (PS: You can say 'fuck' here, it's okay. Your mom probably isn't reading). And actually, compared to any reasonable analysis of id's revenues over the past 15 years, you'd see that Blizz is on track to make in a year what id has made during pretty much their entire tenure in the game industry.
You mention that Blizz could be reinvesting, which is certainly possible. But you fail to see how throwing a 'for-free' con is investing. It's advertising to the Nth degree. You create incredibly loyal fans, who are much more loyal and fanboish than if you make them acutely aware of your love for the almighty dollar. Also, if you consider the rate that Blizz is releasing new content to be fantastic, then I pity you. It's definitely at least an approximately acceptable rate. But fantastic? (This was where you gave away your employment, for future reference).
You also don't seem to understand how cons work, so let me explain something. Blizzard is making money from the vendors who showed up to pimp their wares. A lot of money. That's how Quakecon manages to stay free. The vendors (+id) cover the costs so that the attendees don't have to.
Bottom line: Don't assume that a company smart enough to make millions of dollars a month is stupid enough to blow through it all. And don't assume that random people on the internets are cheapskates due to their rantings about expensive tickets. Honestly, I would've bitched if the entrance fee had been $5 due to the reasons I've already mentioned. The issue is not that the prices were exhorbitant (which they were). The issue is that the con is a shill, and comparing them to the likes of id makes that obvious.
I have friends who've been at quakecon (in the BYOC) every year since '99. They indicate that it has been free every year. I personally have only attended 3 quakecons (all in the BYOC), in 2000, 2001, and 2005. They were free the years that I went.
I'll bite the AC troll stick.
Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, Quake, Doom, Hexen, & Heretic. Plus all of the associated sequels. Actually, pound for pound, id has had more successful games than most studios.
This is a post that I made on WoW's general forums a ways back, but which was silently deleted after it received several pages of responses.
...), they decided that they would start throwing an annual event to celebrate the people that had made them successful, their fans.
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Blizz should take a page from id's book
It really irritates me (and several people I know) that Blizz is charging $120 for a ticket to Blizzcon. Why? A little history...
Back in the 1990's, there was this company (which still exists today, actually) called id software. id had some really kickass people, and wrote several wildly popular games. You might have heard of several of them; they're names were generally single words, things like "Quake" and "Doom" (and several sequels). After id made their millions (and millions, and
And thus, Quakecon (http://www.quakecon.org/) was born. Every year around August, id software throws a big ass, multi-day con for their fans. For free. FOR FREE. This past year, there were approximately 10-15,000 attendees. Over 6000 brought their computers to enjoy the largest LAN party in the western hemisphere. Attendees heard keynotes from key personnel at id, Raven, as well as many other companies, browsed through companies' newest products and got to play--for the first time ever--id's newest title Quake 4. For free.
Blizz, take a page from id's book. With revenue in the millions every month from all of your subscribers, the $120 per ticket isn't just wrong. It's plain greedy. And it's disgusting.
Has nothing to do with symlinks at all. The important question is, will SMB2 finally use the underlying verification for correctness when being sent across authenticating protocals (ala TCP/IP).
I hate the fact that I can FTP a file between windows boxes at approximately 10x the speed that I can "copy" them in explorer.. At the very least, the mid-level (API) copy functionality should do the determination itself as to which method *should* be faster, and do the appropriate thing.
No offense, but I think you're mistaken. Real was--at its best--on par with its competition. But it's competetion was not just WMP. It was competing with QuickTime, which was pretty much always superior.
With Quicktime, I can play a large number of formats in a lightweight player that has fairly small file sizes (for its native format). The player starts up quickly--although it does do the pesky Mac thing of having a new instance for every video I open.
With WMP, I can play virtually infinite formats in a slightly heavier player that has arbitrary file sizes (based on the file type). I don't have to install anything, and if the player comes upon a format it doesn't know how to use, it will attempt to go out and look for a codec. It usually doesn't work, but the concept is right. Oh, and its not like WMP is something that's newly bundled with the OS. Windows Media Player has been bundled with Windows since Windows 3.1... That's right, before it was an OS.
With RP, I have to install kludgy software that runs all the time, has slow startup (and always has), and now connects to the internet whether I want it to or not. I have to hunt through their website to find a link to install the free version (or at least I did the last time I used RP). And the native format has very 'tinny' audio. The file sizes aren't generally great, but then that makes sense because their file format is basically a wrapper around mpeg-3 audio (which adds overhead and makes it icky) and a crappy video codec.
RM claiming that MS's choice to bundle WMP with the OS as killing their application is similar to me claiming that GM is killing my radio business because they bundle their cars with radios... It's not GM's fault that I didn't look at the market before I decided to sink millions of dollars into an unworkable business model. Neither is it MS's fault that RM decided to try to release a media player when one already came with Windows.
But hey, maybe your definition of 'way ahead' is different from mine.
Yeah.. This headline is exactly why the media today pisses me off. Sensationalism at its worst.
From TFA: "If the KFTC enters an order requiring Microsoft to remove code or redesign Windows uniquely for the Korean market, it might be necessary to withdraw Windows from the Korean market or delay offering new versions in Korea," Microsoft said in a U.S. regulatory filing on Thursday. (Emphasis mine)
First off, that was disclosed in a regulatory filing, which was the responsible thing for Microsoft to do. They're warning their investors that should the ruling be against them, they will have to take steps to deal with the ruling which would cost them and their investors money.
Secondly, Microsoft isn't really being unreasonable. Irrespective of whatever reasons they chose to bundle these three pieces of software in the first place, they're bundled together now. There are many issues with decoupling them, not the least of which is the fact that the SDK for WMP and MSN are now included in Windows, and could cause breakage to non-Microsoft applications when removed. But let's assume for a second that not one app in the entire world uses either of these extensions to the standard Windows SDK. There's still the issue that decoupling these pieces of software will be expensive... If only Korea requires their decoupling, it may make more business sense to simply pull their product from South Korea rather than pay the costs associated with it.
Finally, Real Media (also mentioned in TFA) doesn't have a leg to stand on. Their product is inferior to their competitors' products in every way, so they chose to stay in business the old fashioned way: lawsuits.
I'm not pro-Microsoft. But I'm definitely anti-sensationalist media and anti-idiot.
I've bitched about it on the forums over at worldofwarcraft.com since beta (when it was started)...
The policy is stupid, harmful to the overall community and just lame. It is one of the reasons I cancelled my WoW subscription.
You vote with your dollars, folks. If you find this policy stupid--or it has affected you in a negative way, VOTE. Stop paying Blizzard money to Violate you.
My new disks work. Here's hoping you guys required high standards from Raven. I've been a big fan of the Quake brand pretty much forever.
I'm not sure I understand your market.
Is it to provide fallback for games that are 10 years old? Certainly you don't expect id to port their renderer to an DX9.
Is it to provide fallback for games that are cutting edge (DX9)? If so, then the marketting claims you've made are erroneous. The engine cannot simply be dropped in. Are you telling me that your renderer can process 120M polys/sec at 1600x1200? That would be shockingly impressive.
Is it to provide fallback for games that are a couple of years old (DX7/DX8)? If so, I wish you luck with that, but unfortunately RAD Game Tools beat you to market by about a year and a half.
Is it to provide a method for people who are currently doing 2D graphics (ala Commander Keen)? If so, I think I should point out that people doing that would be better off using GDI or the 2-D OGL API, for any of several reasons. One is that the emulating 2-D in 3-D is necessary for some applications, but generally not preferable due to complexity. Another is that using GDI allows the hardware--should it exist--to potentially improve performance of 2-D "for free."
And although you didn't make a reference to the ref rast comparison in your reply to me, you certainly did in any of the other 17 replies you made on this thread.
Finally, if you believe that DX9 shaders won't decimate performance because DX8.1 shaders don't, you are kidding yourself. Beyond the fact that DX9 shaders support more texture fetches (causing cache misses), branching (causing pipe drains and cache misses), and dependent texture lookups (totally hammering any semblence of cache performance), you're ignoring the obvious factor that DX9 shaders can and typically are orders of magnitude longer than DX8 shaders.
PS: I don't know Daniel, and it's quite inappropriate for you to bring mention of my employer into this conversation. That requires me to post-fix this post with a 'the statements I've made herein do not reflect the opinions of my employer.' Yada, yada.
That's the part you're missing, I'm afraid. 'Best possible performance' on the CPU (for rendering) is a joke. Best possible is irrelevant. It's not acceptable at all.
SwiftShader is touting that it's the fastest CPU renderer around with DX9 features... Except that the code doesn't support DX9 features. (DX9 features include VS2 and PS2, neither of which are supported by SwiftShader). And if you think for a second that I could just drop SS in without reworking a ton of code to get over the 0.01 FPS mark with a software shader, you're a fool--or at least without any experience in the matter.
I'm gonna disagree with your usage of the term 'valuable.'
As many others have indicated, their speed comparisons are not actually favorable for them. Being 50 times faster than the reference rasterizer is like saying that you're speakers can generate sound 50 times louder than a piano. While true, the purpose of a piano is not to be loud, but to generate accurate pitches.
Similarly, the purpose of the reference rasterizer is not to be fast, it's to be accurate to the bit level. This lets you determine whether the problem you are diagnosing belongs to you (incorrect image when rendered with the refrast), or the hardware vendor (correct image when rendered with the refrast).
A lot of people (myself included) are having issues with the second installation disc. It basically just won't read in any CD drive I can get my hands on. And I'm not alone.
If this turns out to be a result of SecureROM, I'm going to send my box back to Activision with a piece of poo inside.
You're confused. Cards that don't support pixel shading are low-end.
You can get an ATI or NVIDIA card for around $20 that supports both vertex and pixel shading.
It doesn't get much lower-end than that.
The problem that people don't seem to realize is that marketting is the determining factor of how well a game will do. The art of a game is part of that marketting. Saying that people don't buy games on graphics is BS, which is obvious to anyone who looks at the sales of Doom 3, Half-life 2, Farcry, or any other top seller.
The big publishers have marketting budgets that rival the development costs of the title itself. For example, I worked on C&C Generals. The development budget for that title was ~25M USD. The marketting budget for that title was ~15M dollars.
Indie games simply can't compete with that kind of marketting, and word of mouth sales only grow the community that you already have. If you've only sold 10,000 copies of your game, WOM sales might grow your community to 100,000. But if you'd already had 100K sales, you would've hit the million mark instead.
It's kind of sad that you consider someone futzing with the interned to be scary, but you don't seem to find a unilateral attack on a nation scary.
Hint: One of them involves people being dead.
Americans will experience losses like they've never seen before as banks go belly up under the burden of the enormous losses they take on.
Two other companies you've never heard of have merged. Film at 11.
There are several lessons that the author--who is clearly little experienced in the work force--should take away here. For one thing, posting about the "signs" that he should've seen, particularly when those signs are generally wrong, doesn't come off as good advice to people who've been professionals for awhile. It comes off as sour grapes. Why is he wrong? Let's find out.
Cubicles are of the devil
Repeat after me: No, they're not. With proper soundproofing tiles on the ceiling and carpetted floors, you should be able to hear only your closest neighbors, and drowning them out is what comfortable headphones are for. If you can't get into the zone and do quality work, that's a personal issue, not your employer's. If you are having a hard enough go of it, you should talk to your manager about the problem.
Management is stupid
Generally, you can't get away from this. However, the cases that he cites as management incompetence really weren't necessarily icompetence at all. The author was upset because people like working the way they're most efficient. He seems to think that every new piece of technology makes people more efficient, which is a belief that is only held by recent college graduates. The problem with new technology is that it requires time to retrain your brain. And if the technology really is more efficient (and I would argue that few new languages truly have resulted in massive productivity increases), the question becomes: is the new technology so efficient that the retraining costs will be overcome by the productivity increase we'll get when everyone is running full speed? Usually, the answer is no, or at best "maybe." That's not something you want to stake the future of the company on, which is what you're doing at a small company.
Further, he was upset that after he studied for a few hours, management wasn't convinced that he was the right person to do a full reformat/install of their primary development server. WHAT A SHOCKER! If he were a real go-getter, he would've come in anyways, so he could've learned what the actual problems were going to be during the procedure. Then next time he was somewhere where this came up, he could've at least had cursory experience with the issue.
Personal Growth
I can't really disagree when he says companies should provide mechanisms for personal and professional growth. But what I can say is that when management is telling you that you are in the middle of the pack, look inward. If they're telling you that you're middle of the pack, you're probably actually closer to the bottom. If you feel you're working your hardest and management is telling you that you're not doing a great job, it might be that it's time for a career change.
Compensation isn't everything
That's true, but on the other hand, no one wants to be paid less than they're worth. The key here is that if you're at a job that makes you happy, you'll be more productive and a better employee. Consequently, you'll be recognized by your employer, and generally compensated more.
Final thoughts
It seems to me that what happened in this situation is the author was inexperienced and didn't realize what he'd gotten himself into. His job was a high-risk, high-reward situation. The company promised him ground-floor entry into what they thought was going to be a big hit. Turns out they weren't right, and he hadn't done his due diligence first. The theory with startups is that you churn and burn, and when you're done you can retire at 25. Of course, the reality is that 99% of startups fail and employees are left with nothing but the experience.
When interviewing for a position, the most important thing is to realize that you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. During the interview, when asked if you have any questions, ask if you can meet some of the other team members you'll be working with alone. Tell them you'd like to get a feel for the l
A) If I'm homeless, I've certainly been posting from the library for a long time (5 digit UID and all), and have been posting consistently about game development with said UID for "awhile." You're not going to find a link to a respectable website citing the information I've given. It's not publicly available information (although it's not covered under NDA either).
B) We're talking about games at the $50 initial price offering here. As it is a royalty fee, that cost goes down as the sale price of the title goes down. I thought this was obvious, but I should've realized that someone outside the industry wouldn't get it.
Anyways, you can believe me or not. I could really care less.
There's more to box costs than a simple bill of materials. It's definitely true that the cost of DVD production is not significantly different from CD costs. (In fact, in games with multiple CDs, it's generally cheaper to ship DVDs rather than CDs).
The box costs for console development also include the licensing fee charged by the console manufacturer. Specifically, Microsoft, Sony and/or Nintendo. They charge a license fee that amounts to a hefty royalty fee per box. That's how they get away with selling the hardware at a loss to you, they make it up on the backend from developers/publishers. That's actually where the bulk of their money comes from. For every copy of a game sold on their platform, they get ~$10-15 (depending on which console you're selling on, and how many copies the console manufacturer expects you to sell).
I got the numbers during my tenure at EA.