I don’t jump at Black Friday video game deals that often unless I think they’re really good (I can’t afford to!). This one, however, definitely seems to be worth it, so I figured I’d share it. cheapassgamer.com (yes I know what it says… it’s still a good site) has a list of offers from gamequestdirect.com, along with a code that takes a considerable amount off at checkout. Head over to their post (http://www.cheapassgamer.com/?f=1678) if you’re interested. The Fatal Frame series is done in the Japanese style of horror (i.e. actually scary, as opposed to American “buckets-o-blood” horror that anymore just seems comically ridiculous), and all three games were very well crafted and all received high marks. You typically can’t get all three for less than $80 used, let alone new.
So glad I came across DigitalFoundry. Their most recent post goes over the performance of the Left4Dead 2 demo on 360. However, that’s not what I found was the most interesting. They link to Valve’s GDC 2008 presentation on cross-platform development. They go over the pros and cons versus PC development, along with many issues a console dev has to be aware of when doing a cross over. Very interesting read. Check it out!
In keeping with one of this blog’s themes of game development, I’ve added an RSS feed here for EuroGamer’s DigitalFoundry blog. Lots of gaming sites do videos that compare ps3 games to 360 games, what technology goes into the games, etc, but most of those sites and their features only scratch the surface. DigitalFoundry on the other hand takes things up a few notches and gets into the design of game engines, how and why certain visual effects were used in certain places, what hardware techniques were used to achieve different aspects of gameplay, and lots of other topics that more programming-centric gamers with an bent towards game development would have an interest in. If you have any interest in game development, I think you’ll find their blog to be well worth a frequent visit.
Just wanted to drop a quick post on some nice FireFox add-ons I came across. If you’re like me and are trying to squeeze the most you can out of your aging P4, grab Firefox (awesome browser), and then get the Adblock Plus add-on, and the Flashblock add-on. Both are set up to block all that CPU-hogging Flash garbage that’s so popular on web sites nowadays (yes I know there’s some on this site as well, but that doesn’t mean I like it in general). More on these and other speed-up tips after the jump. Read more…
My last post was when??? Holy cow, I need to get on the ball. Well it looks like my forever-coming tutorial on Amazon Web Services will have to wait and change a bit. Recently they goobered up the API some more so that only signed requests will be processed, and of course the service I made using their API (Amazon Price Targets) doesn’t use signed requests, and so now doesn’t work at all. Just another way of ensuring legit traffic through their API I’m sure, but it’s also a good way to weed out lazy devs like me who don’t want to update their software services every few seconds… ok so maybe I just made the service at a bad time. Typically I don’t think the API changes that often. Read more…
Alrighty! You should see a new link at the top of the blog for the free service I created, Amazon Price Targets. This is the Amazon.com service I was talking about in an earlier post. I dug into amazon’s web service API for a few weeks and hammered out as simple and usable a service as I could without allowing the project to bloat into a mammoth. I’ll try to put up a few posts with some useful code related to amazon’s web services, so be watching for that.
Anyway, here’s the gist of the service. You make a wishlist on amazon.com, make it public (they are by default), then you come to the service, enter the e-mail address you use for amazon.com, wait for account activation, then start entering price targets for new and/or used items. A price target is simply the price you would like to get an item at. The service makes price requests to amazon during the day and later compares that with the price you enter. If it’s at or below your new or used target price, the service sends you an e-mail with a link directly to the item you wanted.
Tell your parents, tell your friends, tell your dog!… ok, now maybe that that distraction is mostly done with, I can get back to fiddling with neural nets, 3D graphics engines, physics, audio, and controller inputs… It’s like having A.D.D. in a room full of shiny keys! Adieu.
Just heard this yesterday in a commercial for the Toyota Venza. It’s a pretty cool mix of electronic, latin, and country of all things. The piece is called Thrive and was done by Elias Arts to be used internally by Toyota (as far as I can tell anyway). As such, you can’t really buy it anywhere, but luckily Toyota has made it available to download for free. To get it you need to go to the Toyota Venza web page at http://www.toyota.com/venza/. Near the bottom left corner you’ll see a “What’s New” ticker with an arrow on the right that you can click on to cycle through the tickers. Cycle through until you get to “Download free, full-length Venza music here.” and click on it. You’ll have to click through an agreement and then you’ll be able to download the song in a zip file. No telling how long it’ll be there, so get it while you can. It’d be nice if more companies did this for their music, as many pieces like this one are quite good on their own.
THIS is why the gaming industry now dwarfs Hollywood, video game technology and innovation has grown at nearly the same rate as the people who first seeded the industry are aging. Seemingly every year there’s another giant leap in some area. Putting the CryEngine on consoles is something that people said just couldn’t be done. Witness CryEngine 3, coming soon to a PS3 and Xbox 360 near you. CEO interviews behind the curtain. Read more…
GameTrailers really has a knack for producing retrospectives on game series that have served as the pillars of innovation in the industry. This time around, we get Resident Evil, starting with the first game (and its prequel) and going all the way through the recently released Resident Evil 5, then ending with a timeline to wrap everything up. Enjoyable as always! More episodes behind the curtain. Read more…
Yeah, it’s been a while since the last post, but I can’t help myself from getting into new stuff, and I have a limited amount of time to work with, so I end up hopping from working on projects, to doing blog posts, to posting on YouTube, etc., and I typically do each of those in chunks, maybe a week at a time or more. Anyway, I’ve been digging into the amazon.com web services API recently and decided I would try my hand at offering a service based on that platform. More after the beep.
With all the hype currently surrounding the World of Warcraft phenomenon, don’t you want to know how it all started and how it got to where it is now? Hmmmm? Sure you do! Parts II and III are after the beep.
Anyone who’s had their interest piqued by Fallout 3 may want to check out this Retrospective from GameTrailers. I never got into the earlier Fallout games myself, but it’s interesting to see how it started and how far it’s come.
Just some minor notes on the direction the site/blog is heading. I’ll update the “Want to Learn Game Programming?” article soon, as I’ve finished going through all of the Ogre3D tutorials and starting learning some of the sound and physics aspects. Also, some of you have probably figured out that there is a pheedbaq.com YouTube channel. I’ve stopped posting the video playlists here because it’s too much trouble to have to do that in more than one place. I’ve also stopped posting screenshot galleries because it’s simply too time consuming for the direction I want to head. Instead, I will have a link (or possibly an embed) to the YouTube channel on this site, as well as a link to the channel’s RSS feed in case you want updates on gameplay video uploads. The YouTube channel has always been up to date, and I continue to post videos regularly, so there’s no point in not linking to it in some way. I don’t really see me not playing video games at any point in the future, and the process I have setup right now for recording video while I play, and then posting that video to YouTube is very streamlined and easy to keep up with.
Down the road you may see some video walkthroughs for various video games, as well as programming tutorials in some video format, and most certainly more resources regarding the subject material above. Until all that content begins to arrive, if you’re interested in game programming, I suggest you read the earlier post, “Want to learn game programming? Start here…” and get to crackin’ on those tutorials Never have so many resources been available to accomplish what you can today with intermediate programming skills. Fantastic stuff!
Episodes IX and X wrap up GameTrailer’s retrospectives of the massive Star Wars family of video games. Episode IX covers the Rebel Assault and Rogue Squadron games, and X gets into some of the more obscure titles of the series, as well as the actors that voiced the most well known roles in the games. Episode X is after the beep. Enjoy! Looking forward to more of these retrospectives from GameTrailers, they do a great job!
Never have so many resources been available to accomplish what you can today with intermediate programming skills. Fantastic stuff!
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