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Page (of 13): 1 2 [3] 4 5 ... 13
| Bioshock (Jare) | August 13th, 2007 - 22:05 |
| The 360 demo is available on Live, and it kicks some serious ass. Combat can get a bit confusing, and there was some odd problem with the timing of subtitles, but I'm sold.
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| XNA (Jare) | August 9th, 2007 - 20:37 |
| CoDe Magazine has published a rather large article about XNA games development, with a lot of input from professional developers like Jamie Fristrom and Raph Koster (both linked in the left sidebar). There's a lot of repetition, but it does bring home the point that XNA and C# can be useful even for professional developers today, and will most certainly become more useful in the future. I have only done a couple of minor experiments with XNA 1.0, but I know a few other developers who use it regularly for prototyping or testing ideas.
The biggest problem? Microsoft only; no support for Sony or Nintendo platforms.
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| Raid and Boss Design (Jare) | August 7th, 2007 - 21:39 |
| I just ran into this writeup of a presentation by Blizzard lead designers about their processes and criteria for creating instances and bosses. Short but very interesting.
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| Smart Shooters (Jare) | August 8th, 2007 - 00:18 |
| By now I have finally accepted that I don't like them. What's a "smart shooter"? A First Person Shooter type of game where the emphasis is more on atmosphere and story (the environment in which you do things) than on raw gameplay (the things you actually do). The classic examples were System Shock 1 & 2... I tried SS1 and had zero fun with it. The story bits and character progression in SS2 kept me hooked for about 2 hours, but at that point the cruddy combat just got to me. In comparison, games like Doom, Quake, Half Life or even the venerable Dark Forces were fun to play every minute, and the story and / or atmosphere just added an extra layer of enjoyment. Recently, The Darkness was about halfway in both narrative and gameplay, but the two aspects met at the sweet spot. I loved that game, and I thought perhaps the years had made me more patient and less action-dependent.
Yesterday I played the demo of Marathon: Durandal on XBox Live Acade. This game was originally released for the Mac one year after Doom rocked the PC world. Many people have praised it since, with the number of innovations it brought to the shooter genre (story, dual wielding, more sophisticated scripting...), and as a precursor of what Halo would be. I remember seeing a later PC port and not thinking much of it, visually or gameplay. The XBLA version was souped up graphically, and since I had already played (and greatly enjoyed) Doom on XBLA, I thought Marathon would be worth another shot.
Oh my. It was even worse than I remembered. Everything from the Field of View to the way textures are designed and used was hideous. Weapons lacked punch, enemies were laughable, and the whole "atmosphere" thing just flew past me. Other than being a pioneer on the Mac, I don't see anything of value in it. Just like the first time, 10 years ago.
SS1, SS2 and Marathon are to this day praised as some of the best games ever made. So, with Bioshock coming soon, to great anticipation by the same crowd who loved these other games, I wonder if it will break the spell.
In the meantime, I'm replaying Quake 4 and having a blast.
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| Sunshine (Jare) | July 28th, 2007 - 01:54 |
| Despite a number of oddities, Sunshine is the best Science-Fiction movie in many years. Visually stunning, excellent music, and a story with a lot of personality despite being essentially a mish-mash of sci-fi topics already used in previous movies.
The commercial success of this movie is doomed due to the strange way in which distributors have handled it, with late and staggered releases and a marketing campaign that tells too much. People will love it, hate it, or be ambivalent, but I hope it will become a cult classic.
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| Games and demos (Jare) | July 24th, 2007 - 00:45 |
| The Darkness: it's fun, it's creepy, it's quite good. The 360 version looks way better than what I remember of the short PS3 testdrive I did a few weeks ago. Cutscene animations are very stiff.
Tomb Raider Legend: I finally sat down to play it through to the end. Very good platforming and puzzles, simplistic combat, and weird bosses with pretty bad (accelerated?) animations. Quite nice overall, and great value at $19.99.
Flatout Carnage demo: does all the things that made the original fun, with much better production. Might be worth it until, and even could coexist well with, the new Burnout.
Virtua Tennis 3 demo: fun but too simple. Perhaps the full game will have more depth, but I'll to try a real demo first.
Blue Dragon demo: entertaining but repetitive, and with many quirks: crappy sound effects, way too much repetition in encounters. Final Fantasy X was the first japanese RPG that I enjoyed, and this doesn't appear to beat it unless you just love Toriyama character designs.
Ace Combat 6 demo: nice visuals but I didn't find it any fun.
Carcassone for Live Arcade: very neat little board game.
Oh and Prototype, the next game from Radical, has just been unveiled in the Game Informer cover.
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| E3, Transformers and a new JJ Abrams Mistery (Jare) | July 15th, 2007 - 10:50 |
| Voodoo Extreme has collected a fantastic index of coverage and trailers from E3. I suppose the new E3 format sucks for game fans and small/hobby game sites and bloggers, but looks much better and useful for developer and publishers doing actual work. As a visitor I'll miss the old E3, as a developer I think I won't.
The Transformers movie was exactly as expected: cheesy, long, boring and mostly irrelevant script, fast and erratic editing, saturated colors, and excellent CGI and explosions. I never watched Transformers in my youth, so I had no idea who was who, and the movie didn't make me care one bit. In the middle of all that, Shia LaBeouf manages to put out a decent performance, and John Turturro is like a bad joke that still makes you laugh.
Before the movie, we were treated to JJ Abrams' latest mind-bender: a surprising movie trailer (accurately described as "Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla"), without a name. When I came home I immediately went to IMDb to find out about the movie in IMDB; I found that 1-18-08 (the release date) and Cloverfield are the work-in-progress names for now, and that it *might* (JJ Abrams denies this) have something to do with some Ethan Haas prophet. Those sites spearhead a web-based ARG marketing mistery, which thousands of people already seem engaged in. Wild speculations include: a "Lost" movie, a "Godzilla" remake, Stephen King's "The Dark Tower", a "The Host" remake, the "Gears of War" movie, the "Halo" movie, the "Rampage" movie, the Cthulhu myths, the Bible's End of Days, and who knows what else. I for one think it's something new.
It would be funny (and interesting) if two ARG marketing campaigns for different products somehow got mixed up.
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| From zero to... a f*ng mess (Jare) | July 13th, 2007 - 09:04 |
| A week before E3, someone unveils a Circuit City ad with a PS3 announced for $100 less. People speculate of a PS3 price drop. Sony categorically denies. E3 arrives, and Sony formally announces a $100 price drop. Ok, the deny-then-confirm tactic is old and tired, but hey... the PS3 needs all the help they can get, because they are simply not selling like they should.
E3 goes well for Sony, with a number of interesting exclusive games, and the general impression is that PS3 is going to start taking off. Details about Europe are sketchy, but I just assume that either I missed the confirmation of a price drop in Europe as well, or they left it as "announcement" for the Leipzig Games Convention in August.
Some things don't click quite right, though...
Some Capcom boss is quoted as saying that $100 is not enough and that they expect another price drop before Christmas. Rumours of Metal Gear Solid 4 going multiplatform because of the small PS3 installed base also surface. And Sony announces a new PS3 model with 80GB instead of 60GB and bundled with Motorstorm, for the old price. This means people will pay $100 more for an extra 20GB and a game that, in market terms, is old news and will probably be the first in a hypothetical platinum line launch around christmas. Frankly, that's a weak package to pay $100 for. Ah well, people will probably ignore it and buy the 60GB model.
And then someone gets SCEE president and does this interview. It's too honest for someone in that position, really; They must have got the guy drunk or on drugs.
"...SCEA has given US consumers, i.e. the option to pay a lower price?
- Well, they're not really are they, because what the US are offering from the 1st of August is a USD 599 version with one game. All they're doing is taking their stock in trade that they've got at the moment of the 60GB model, marking the price down and it will all be gone by the end of July."
"- The difference between 60GB and 80GB is not really necessary. The difference in cost between a 60 and 80 is just Euro cents; it's nothing, because the cost of memory is so small."
"- [SCEA] felt that by going down for 100 to 88 [% backwards compatibility], for example, that they'd have to add something in."
"Isn't there a problem with the perception that [GBP 425] is an awful lot of money to shell out?
- It is, but surprisingly, people are paying that amount of money for it."
"- ...because the difference in cultures is you have to go, 'Ra-ra, I'm the best.' We in Europe, and especially the Japanese, don't necessarily accept that."
"- We owe a debt to Nintendo for keeping the industry going in the last couple of years."
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| Ratatouille (Jare) | July 10th, 2007 - 23:38 |
| Call me a fanboy if you want, but I just came out of the movie theater feeling that Ratatouille is the best animated movie ever made, and one of the best movies of any kind in many years. Script, characters, visual design, animation, rendering technology, pacing, humour... I absolutely loved all of it. I spent the entire movie with an unmistakable feeling of pure joy in my chest.
It does many things against what we may consider "mainstream business sense", from the rat theme, to the french accents and the adult themes in an animated movie... and it's probably going to pay for it with a less than stellar box office. But god bless Brad Bird and Pixar for taking the risk and giving us such a masterpiece.
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| Canada Day (Jare) | July 2nd, 2007 - 23:28 |
| July 1st is Canada Day, so there was lots of partying all over the city. At night they put out a neat fireworks show up over Canada Place. I took the Nikon and a tripod, and went over there with Sergio and Diego. You can see a little gallery here. This is just a sample:
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| Funky Visual Studio 2005 bug (Jare) | June 22nd, 2007 - 01:32 |
| I ran into this today with VS2005 SP1: if you define the body of a specialization of a template class' member function in a separate cpp file, the linker will barf:
template<class T> struct A { void f() {} };
template<> void A<int>::f(); // body in a separate cpp
void main()
{
A<int> a;
a.f(); // Linker complains that this function is undefined.
}
You have to define the body in all source files (or at least one) that actually use the specialization of that function, normally in the header file:
template<class T> struct A { void f() {} };
template<> void A<int>::f() { }
void main()
{
A<int> a;
a.f();
}
Not sure if I have explained correctly, but I hope you get the idea.
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| Region locks (Jare) | June 18th, 2007 - 01:07 |
| My european copies of Gears of War, Lego Star Wars 2, King Kong and Tomb Raider Legend work on an american 360. Burnout and PGR3 don't. I hope the PS3 marks the end of region-locked games forever; I hate them. Actually, I'm not sure if Wii games are also region coded. Anyway, that's the mini-rant before going to sleep.
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| State of the Next Gen (Jare) | June 16th, 2007 - 16:34 |
| No more Vista posts for a while. :)
It seems that my bold predictions for the Nintendo Wii were only half right. The Wii is a runaway success (it is still impossible to find one on the shelves here in Vancouver), but in terms of software sales, Nintendo games are the only real sellers for that system. Add to that the impressive numbers for the Nintendo DS.
Meanwhile, the XBox 360 and the especially the PS3 are having a hard time penetrating the market. Both Sony and Microsoft are playing bait and switch with the idea of a price drop, but at some point they will have to stop the wordplay and just do it. My personal feel is that there are simply not enough great games to make people want to pay for a next gen system. Gears of War was fantastic, and Halo 3 will sell lots (and hopefully be very good too), but the rest, in general, are little more than PC ports and bumpmapped, hi-res versions of last-gen games. I will pay for that, but the average gamer is not in a hurry.
In other news, XBox Live Arcade has received a few really cool additions to its lineup: surprisingly good remakes of Prince of Persia and Pac-Man Championship Edition; and a little gem, in the form of an oldschool action game, called Heavy Weapon.
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| Firefox and Vista (Jare) | June 10th, 2007 - 10:27 |
| Another annoyance gone now: with Firefox installed and set as the default browser, clicking on links in applications would result in an annoying error message from Vista despite Firefox opening the link correctly. Same happens if you type a URL in an Explorer window. This popup only happens if Firefox was not already running. The fix is to remove or rename the registry key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL\shell\open\ddeexec
This key will reappear when Firefox is updated, so you may want to prepare a .reg file like:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL\shell\open\ddeexec]
(Remember to leave an empty line at the end)
The Firefox people are aware of the problem, so hopefully this hack will soon be unnecessary.
In other news, I finished the Supreme Commander campaign yesterday. In a weird parallel, it left me with a similar feeling as the book I am reading (Blue Mars): fascinating but boring. The main problem in SupCom's campaign is the lack of variety; every mission feels the same. The main problem in Blue mars is that there is very little story and an awful lot of description; Red Mars was already heavy on this, Green Mars went even further, and Blue Mars goes too far in my opinion.
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| Blizzard does it again (Jare) | June 4th, 2007 - 22:08 |
| I know a few people got the Starcraft urge after the SC2 announcement; a couple of them even went and bought it again. I might have done likewise if I didn't have Supreme Commander. But this?
Starcraft Battlechest and Warcraft 3 Battlechest up in the top 10 PC sales. The former is 9 years old, the later 5. And of course WoW and its expansion taking the top 2 spots. It's just insane. How do they do it? Quality, polish, attention to detail, support, marketing, and of course making an active effort to create and maintain a rabid community of fans.
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| Tower Defense (Jare) | June 3rd, 2007 - 21:55 |
| If you have never played a Tower Defense game, now is the time to check them out by downloading the demo for Immortal Defense (via Indygamer). I believe this game concept originated as a mod for Starcraft and later Warcraft 3, but it has become a subgenre of strategy games in itself. The idea is simple: place and upgrade static defenses and destroy the incoming enemy waves. Different towers have different abilities, and the amount of enemies can be overwhelming at times, so make the most out of your limited resources!
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| Vista fun and the missing PowerToys. (Jare) | June 3rd, 2007 - 01:47 |
| I am getting used to Vista by now. Some annoyances are inevitable, but after turning off the dreaded UAC (User Access Control or something like that) it feels quite comfortable. Aero is nothing groundbreaking, but pretty and elegant.
If you are a Vista power-user wanabee, you may want to check out the tips collection in TweakVista. In the past, many users learned to love the TweakUI powertoy, but alas it is not yet available for Vista.
Speaking of PowerToys, most of the classic ones are also not available in Vista. What's more, even though they are simple applications (like the Power Calculator), they refuse to install in Vista. Funnily enough, people who have upgraded their XP installations to Vista can't uninstall them either. :)
I miss my Power Calculator with graph capabilities and whatnot. I even tried changing the msiexec.exe compatibility options to Windows XP SP2, but the installer still refuses. I will probably try to copy the installed exe from my XP-powered laptop.
Some PowerToys have become standard in Vista, most notably the "Open Command Window Here" Explorer add-on. Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided to hide it by default, but if you hold the shift key while you right-click on a folder in Explorer, it will show up. This works only in the right pane, not in the folder tree pane. 99% of the time I open a Command Prompt like this, I do it in the folder tree pane, so along with the annoyance of having to press Shift, the "feature" is nearly useless to me.
Or not?
Open RegEdit, go to "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd", and you will see a little empty string key named "Extended". Remove it and Open Command Window here becomes available without the Shift key, AND in both panes. There is another hidden utility called "Copy as Path" which I haven't yet uncovered. If you need this desperately, you can use ClipText (Change the .reg file to the correct exe path).
Edit: you may also want to remove the "Extended" key from "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\cmd" (for the context menu with no file selected) and "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd" (for drive letters). Nothing is ever simple.
There are a million little details like this that may or may not affect you as a user. In a year or two, Vista will hopefully be polished, and tweaking tools will be plentiful so you can make the system as comfortable for you as possible. In the meantime, share what you can, and have fun exploring and Googling!
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