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!
I am by no means a guru of game programming, nor have I been at it for very long. But, if you’re the type (like me) who has intermediate programming skills and a big interest in video game programming, but you happen to be lacking in math skills, you may want to follow along with the rest of this post. I always felt that game programming was wayyyy too math-centric for me. I’m not exactly horrible at math, but I don’t have the skills that would allow me to figure out how to program my own shaders for a 3D game or anything. I’m pretty much an application programmer, not a systems programmer or a computer engineer. Another way of saying it is, I can build the house, but don’t ask me to build the tools I would need in order to do so. If the tools are already available, I’m good to go. Luckily, the landscape of game programming has changed a lot since the internet came along, and there is a wealth of information and tools available for anyone with intermediate programming skills to use for game programming.
GameSpot has taken a look at the full versions of The Force Unleashed for the 360, PS3, and Wii, and decided to give everyone a runthrough on each version and their differences. Be warned, it’s over 2 hours long, so you might want to have some snacks handy
I tried finding the video of the commercial, as I’m sure many people would be able to positively identify the source that way, but I couldn’t find one. Kind of odd, since it was on during the olympics as well as the superbowl I believe. Anyway, this is Hoops by the Chemical Brothers. Typical techno/electronica
Never did play the original Fallout games. For whatever reason, they just never caught my attention. To be honest, the 3rd iteration in the series hasn’t interested me up until this point. I knew Bethesda was developing the title, and I knew how good Oblivion was, but I never bothered to take a look and see how the game was coming along.
That being said, with these videos you can definitely see Bethesda’s influence. Oblivion comes to mind because the character interaction is very similar, and the questing looks like it’s done in much the same fashion as well. The setting and combat really set this game apart from Bethesda’s previous endeavors though. I don’t know if this is their first shot at a post-apocalyptic environment, but it seems they’ve adapted very well.
Anyway, this is certainly one to try out after it’s October 28th release, so take a look at the quest and gameplay walkthrough videos (4 after the beep) and see what you think.
Since they announced that The Force Unleashed would be available for the less powerful consoles, namely the PS2 and PSP, many have been wondering how they’d turn out. These GameTrailers producer walkthroughs should put to rest any worries. Obviously they aren’t going to measure up to the experience you have on PS3 or 360, but so far, they’re looking very good in their own right. The PSP walkthrough is after the beep.
Never have so many resources been available to accomplish what you can today with intermediate programming skills. Fantastic stuff!
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