Visitors will no longer be able to register on the old pheedbaq.com, as I have permanently disabled registration there. The new site is now open for registration, however, so new users should go there. If you’re currently a user on the old site, please re-register on the new one if you wish to have an account there. I will not be transferring accounts over, in order to weed out spam registrations and users who no longer wish to retain their account.
You’re reading the pheedbaq.com archive. The new site is at http://www.pheedbaq.com. The old site will only be available temporarily, and will be taken down at some point in the future. Thanks for visiting!
Well, say goodbye to the old site. The new one is juuuuust about ready, and I think I’m going to go ahead and have it come up as the main site. The current site will still be accessible from http://www.pheedbaq.com/wordpress for a while. I have yet to move any users over, but I will be looking at that soon.
I’ve decided not to move over all of the old posts, but instead just the ones I think were the most useful. Any previous news posts will be gone, links to retrospectives will be gone but may show up at some point as their own page instead of their current form (a series of posts), old site updates will be gone. Any posts detailing where to find the music that’s used in various commercials or games will be moved over, posts on various aspects of programming (other than me announcing a new project) will be moved over.
I also hope to break my habit of announcing things that I haven’t even started on yet. Over the last year, most of the posts basically say “stay tuned, I might do something that I’ll post about.” Any tutorials or projects I think to do on my own will be posted when I’ve either gotten a good way through, or when they’re completely done and ready.
Well, all that to say I hope everyone enjoys the new site and finds it more useful
Got with my host to make some changes in preparation for the site update. There could be some downtime. Once the host changes are done, then I can proceed with setting up and testing the new site. Most likely, all user accounts will be migrated over, but passwords won’t be able to transfer, so I may have to send out e-mails notifying everyone of what their temporary passwords are and how to change them.
Overall I definitely think this change will be worth it. Along with all the syndicated content the new site will be aggregating (GameTrailers reviews, Joystiq news, DigitalFoundry tech analysis, and my own blog posts), I’ll be putting in pages devoted to .Net and C/C++ programming resources, retro gaming, 3D modeling, and game development.
Well I’m finally getting around to it after probably a year or more of saying that the site would change. I’m looking to move the site from WordPress, which is programmed in PHP (not my favorite framework), to DotNetNuke, which is programmed in the .Net Framework (something I’m much more familiar with… me likey). DNN just seems more well-rounded to me, plus I can do custom modules easily since I work with .Net all the time. I’m not sure yet if I’m going to move all the existing posts over to the DNN blog module, because even if I did, all the old links won’t work. I’ll have to try a few things and see how that goes.
Anyway, I think the biggest thing to notice on the new site will be the integration of other content. I plan to have syndicated content from GameTrailers, Joystiq, DigitalFoundry and others, and perhaps some customization features that would allow members to choose which site they want to see reviews from, which site to pull news from, etc, although that’s going to be low on the priority list. My own YouTube content as well as my blog posts will still be an integral part of the site, and hopefully I’ll be able to get better integration by using APIs from YouTube, Amazon, etc. Overall I think the site will be much better and more interesting than it is now. Stay tuned
Just a note that I recently acquired a twitter feed and a facebook page. Also don’t forget I’ve got tons of gameplay and walkthrough videos on my youtube channel.
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…
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