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! [Via DigitalFoundry]

Read More »

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... Read More »

 

[UPDATE: Added AdobeARM and Bonjour to the list of junk that can be turned off]

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. Flashblock blocks all flash, so you may find that one alone is good enough. It swaps out the Flash widgets with a place-holder and a Flash-looking play button. So if you want to see the Flash content, you can just click the play button. If you refresh the page, the Flash will be blocked again, which I actually like, because I usually know what content I want to see anyway, so I just click play on that and I don't have to worry about anything else getting through. I did run into a glitch or two while trying to play some things, and the Flash content just didn't want to play, but I was always able to open to a new tab and get it to work, or it would eventually just work on its own, kinda wierd but hey it keeps browsing fast. The Adblock plugin just checks the site you visit against a public list of content that's been recognized as ads, and blocks them accordingly. The benefit is that you block the ads, but still immediately see the Flash content you are likely to be interested in. In case it turns out to be junk, there's a little "block" tab that sits right above the Flash content pane, and you can click that to get your block on.... Read More »