Two Software Development Methodologies That Everybody Can Use

There are many different kinds of development methods from waterfall to circular, but in the past few months I have found-out about two which I wasn't taught at school, yet everybody can use. From large development teams to lone developers working on personal projects, both of these methodologies work and are very effective.

• Test Driven Development
  The core of this methodology is to create an automated test method that will actually give you a green light telling you wither your application works or not. This is very useful when you are writing an application that needs to conform to an input specification or automates a task that is difficult to check by human means. Large teams can use software on their build server to run use-cases against their codebase that provides feedback, but lone developers can use test driven development just as effectively.
  
  As an easy exsample, when I wrote my table compression algorithms for my Compilers Class I needed to know wither the data stored in the compressed table matched what was inputed from the source table. Obviously if the data retreived from my compressed table did not match the source table then there was something wrong with my algorithems. I tried checking by using my own eyes, but I was dealing with tables 1024x1024 in size so I soon rearlised that I needed to automate the task.
  
  I created a button on my form called 'Test'. This button called a method which in turn methodecally called every cell in both the compressed and uncompressed tables and looked to see wither what was returned from both matched. Obviously there was nothing wrong with the sorce table so any mismatches where the result of a bug in one of my algorithems. Thought creating this I was forced to spend an extra two weeks trying to get all the bugs out, but that is because I could find bugs quickly simply by the press of a button (I also had t create a lot of different test data, but that is a another talk).
  
  When I wrote my last Tic Tac Toe game I also added a test button which took the place of a player and played random moves against my AI for 100,000 games a time. Because of this I know that my AI is unbeatable.
  
  The trick is to have your test method provide useful feedback. In the case of my Tic Tac Toe game when the test method which is making random moves wins against my AI, the test method will append every move made in that game to a text file so I can easily replicate the game and see where the AI made a mistake.
  
  
• Burn Down Graphs
  In order to create a burn down graph you must first create a list of features that you want to include in yourr application. This should include all necessary and desirable features. Then each feature should be broken down into tasks and a time alloted to each task. This will give you a list of features, how long it will take to implement each one and indeed the entire application.
  
  With a burn down graph you don't need to choose how long you want to work on your application each day like with a gant cheart, but it is important to update the graph regularly otherwise it won't track progress. Update the graph daily, weekly or however often you feel is appropriate. This will form the time scale that runs along the bottom of the graph.
  
  
  
  So along the bottom of the Burn Down Graph you have a time sale running from when the project was started to your desired deadline. And up the left side you have hours until completion. As features are completed, added or removed the graph will reflect how many hours you have left to work on your application against your progression to your deadline. And over time you will see a nice line appear that will give a very good indication as to wither you need to put more hours in to complete the project on time, move the deadline or cut features to meet the deadline.
  
  In the picture above you see a nice smooth line, but real burn down graphs aren't like that. There will probably be a few occasions when the time needed to complete the project will increase as difficulties are encountered, that is ok because the graph will always communicates clearly where you are, where your deadline is and by looking at the line you can clearly judge wither you will meet your deadline or not by the work you have been doing.

So there you have it, two methodologies that even a lone developer making an application for themselves can find useful.

3D Tertis

Of all the Tertis clowns I have played over the years the 3D Version is by far the best. Still not as good as the original.

I have a similar version to this on my BBC so this is the first time I have played it in colour.

50GB Storage

Microsoft announced today that the next 360 dashboard update will add support for 1080p output. I assume this is just for HD-DVD playback. Sony then rebuttaled by saying that support won't be native (I don't know how they would know that if that is true) and that at least the PS3 still has 50GB game disks.

I was a little surprised they actually did a rebuttal, but everybody knows that all developers will use the extra room for is FMV.

Additional: I should have mentioned that it is eastern developers that will fillup the game disks with FMV. It has never been fashionable in western games to have gameplay broken up between long RPG segments and long FMV sequences. There have been a few western games that have tried to do the whole interactive movies thing that doesn't work. But Eastern gamers look on FMV sequences as a reward for their long hours of killings hundreds of whatevers so such a large disk capacity will only suite eastern developers, and not in a way that breads innovation or originality.

Going For "IT" (Good Rant)

Mr Bleszinski over on his 1UP Design Diary talks about working "IT" into Gears of War. That special thing that makes a good design something brilliant in the eyes of the player. Everybody has ideas on what "IT" it, but nobody is sure. Yet everybody agrees that "IT" can make an instant hit. So going for "IT" on a project is always good because if you get "IT" (whatever "IT" is) then you have an instant classic.

I mention this because there is a notion that games have lost the tantalising excitement that they used to give people with gameplay had "IT". I have heard a lot of explanations, but currently the notion that talent isn't maturing in the games industry is a good one. Most industry professionals carriers only lasts five years maximum and that takes into account all the moving around between companies that happens. People enter the video games industry enthusiastic about working on video games, don't have the maturity to produce a bonafide classic with "IT", their first few creations are lackluster and then they leave before reaching their potential after being burned out by the software development lifecycle and unrealistic expectations. Then their replacement comes in and makes the exact same mistakes.

Another idea about "IT" that I also agree with is that games don't have strong enough source writing material. The game designs that are being produced are good, but the story elements aren't there and the dialogue is terrible. Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith both say they are best at writing dialogue, both have produced several films that have "IT". In Quentin's case very few of his films don't have "IT", so to say game developers need better writers on staff is probably a very true statement.

So if "IT" can be bottled and worked into a game as suggested above by developing talent and hiring a good writer to write good dialogue then why doesn't "IT" happen more often!
The answer to that is simple when you look at games that have "IT". With Half Life, when it was nearing the end of development and became playable from start to finish. Gabe Newell sat down and played the game from start to finish. He concluded that the game sucked was not as fun as the team wanted it to be. So the whole team promptly redesigned the entire game from start to finish just a few months before release. In this instance the team had learned a lot from their first iteration of the game by effectively building an elaborate prototype and this allowed them to build "IT" into the release game because the playable prototype although exstensive (it was going to be the game) taught them a lot about the mechanics of what they where creating.

Publishers don't like "IT" because it doesn't necessarily sell more units as in the case with Psychonauts and can extend a development cycle beyond what was originally envisioned on a project. And a game from a marketing standpoint that can be described easily can be marketed better wither it has "IT" or not. Games with "IT" are sometimes very difficult to market and so fail without gaining the sufficient revenue to justify the added cost of working "IT" into the game. And that is why I believe all these things mentioned contribute to the falling standards of game design and by falling standards I mean the expectations of players isn't being raised by newer games.

CG Water

This Computer Generated Water is incredible.

Random Thought

I wonder if international negotiations would go better if politicians had small fifteen minuet breaks between discussions for kitten time, where each diplomat would be given a kitten to pet before continuing discussion.



By harnessing the relaxing power of kittens, diplomats could quickly destress and relax, putting them in a good frame of mind for more talks.

Retro-Encabulator

I have seen the Retro-Encabulator Video a few times, but never linked to it because I wasn't 100% certain that it was a joke, but I just looked at the Wikipedia Page which states that it is indeed a joke.

My thinking is that this is an internal video made by Rockwell Automation as something to be played at the Christmas party, much like Rainbow Twangers Video was.

Defcon Pre-Order

Defcon, Introversion's newest creation is a simple game of Thermonuclear War. And is now available for pre-order. A link to the pre-order site can be found on Defcon's appropriately named promotional site everybody-dies.com.

I know I don't have much money, but I have been waiting for months to get a copy of this and it's only £10. If you get it now you get the digital download copy for £10 and you get sent a free physical copy of the game too (should be £15). So it's a reasonable amount when you consider it is a modern interpretation of the game from the 1983 film WarGames and thus allowing you to recreate an authentic 80's atmosphere in your computer's vicinity if you so choose.

Defcon will be available to download and play to everybody who pre-ordered September the 29th at 6:00pm (GMT).

Additional: Defcon MIGHT be cheaper on STEAM, but I don't know because I am yet again having that login problem (started just now) that will require Valve to do something on their servers for me to be able to login again. Here is a pre-order link to their pre-order if you are interested. It says $9.95 on that page, but I don't know if that is before they add UK VAT if indeed they add UK VAT. So I don't know if it indeed cheaper from STEAM or Introversion. Still you don't get a boxed copy and I hate giving money to Valve.

Update: Valve go their ass in gear kindly enabled fixed my Steam account and I am still not sure if Defcon is cheaper from them, but from what I can tell it is about £2 cheaper. So if you want it dirt cheap you know where to go.

The Second Coming of The Monkey God

There is a new teaser animation on Microsoft's Comming Zune Site that is very nice. Zune if you didn't know will be part of Microsoft's attempt to gain some market share of the downloadable music market from iTunes.

I don't think that going after iTunes is a healthy distraction for Microsoft, but this is what happens when a company has all the available money it needs and a lot of share holders.

World of Warcraft New Dance Routines

For the Burning Sea expansion pack Blizzard is adding some new dance routines to the ones already in the game. There is a crappy video of them Here on YouTube. That is crappy until you watch the last elf dancing on the video. Then it becomes very cool.

EDIT: Blizzard has has asked YouTube to take the video down. I don't want to spoil Neapolitan Dynamite for anybody who hasn't seen it so I won't say any more here about what it was.

Skillz Hitch

Been trying to learn XNA, don't know C# too well, tried learning it quickly at a higher level, found stupid things that I don't get right because I don't understand some basic stuff. So it looks like it could be a few weeks before I will have a crack at XNA again and actually get something working as my working knowledge of C# programming is ass and I can barely make anything. Need to find a job too, will phone somebody Monday about that as my desire to see my 360 games in HD just won't relinquish.

PS3 Update (Diagnosis: Not good)

I have been off the RSS reader for a couple of days while I sort-out what i want to do with my life, but just reading the PS3 headlines today it doesn't sound good for Sony. Here are just a few things I read today:

• PS3 Blue-Ray drive 25% slower than the 360's.
  This shouldn't bee too much of a problem because of the massive hard drive the PS3 has, which gives the possibility of pre-caching, but this issue is compounded by the fact the PS3 only has 256MB of RAM compared to the 360's 512MB. Sony talks about bigger textures, but they have failed to provide the space to put them.
  
  
• Delayed Launch In Europe.
  Look for them on eBay sometime March 2007.
  
  
• Shortage of units for launch.
  There will only be 400,000 PS3 units available for the US launch. Microsoft sold 326,000 XBox360 units in their first week of the US launch. So if we assume that Sony will be doing large boated shipments like they usually do, then this is going to be a big problem for anybody trying to get one before 2007.
  
  
• No 1080p games at launch.
  The launch lineup is already weak so this won't come as a shock to anybody. But the odd thing about Sony's hyped HD resolution is that although the screen resolution has 40% more pixels on the screen than 720p, because the refresh rate is slower it makes it less suitable for watching fast moving video like sports and video games. 1080p is best suited for nature shows and Opera.
  
  
• No HDMI Cable In The Box
  One of those really annoying things about buying cheap electronics is that sometimes they don't include the necessary cables to use them right out of the box. You get your new DVD player home, open the box and then realise you have to go back to the shop you bought it at to buy the correct cable to connect the player to your TV. Well anybody wanting to use the PS3's HDMI connection right out of the box will have to do just that because Sony won't be including one. They will be including a composite cable, but because of the perceived cost of owning a PS3, I think many customers will feel a little ticked off.

The interesting thing I find in all this is that despite what is happening in the news analysts are still predicting a PS3 win. This all assumes Sony has market allegiance with many customers. I think that is a flawed assumption and that consumers don't care who makes their console as long as it has the games they want.

HDMI Is A Trojan Horse

I have read a few comments by audio, video, TV, HD film reviewers/engineers that content piped through a HDMI connection doesn't look or sound any better than a standard composite cable. They have all then said that it is probably still too early in the standard's implementation to properly tell, but I just found out about a feature that comes along with HDMI.

The extra feature is called HDCP which stand for High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection. This means that the signal travelling along the cable from your HD player to your TV is encrypted. Thus preventing a signal recorder from being placed between the player and the TV to capture the signal. This is most certainly another serious attempt by the industry to stop high quality pirated rips of films appearing on the internet. My initial reaction was that this is a little bit subversive, so I did some more reading to findout more about HDMI.

The idea of HDMI is that video and audio is digitally transmitted along one cable to prevent electrical interference. I had some Creative speakers that where digital and could switch between a Digital and Analogue signal on the fly. When no sound was being played, I could turn up the volume and there was always much less static on the digital setting. Using the speakers at a standard volume setting however I never could noticed the difference just like everybody who has commented about HDMI so far. So that begs the question, was HDCP the catalyst for HDMI or was it is just an extra feature someone thought of when the HDMI standard was being written, we will probably never know, but I am fairly certain that the uptake of HDMI would be a lot slower if more consumers where aware of HDCP because this stinks of corporate capitalism.

Dangerous Ideas

For a long while now I have been trying to put into word what I think is wrong with American Politics and what could be done to fix it. I haven't come up with much, but that doesn't matter now because Roy Eidelson a PhD Physiologist has.

His Google Video Titled Dangerous Ideas talks about what is wrong with American politics. This video could be seen as an attack on right wing conservative politics, but they are just the subject matter of the video as they are the ones currently in power. This video talks about how core concerns of Vulnerability, Injustice, Distrust, Superiority and Helplessness are exploited by politicians to gain support from the public. I have always referred to this as keeping the American people is a perpetual state of fear that is used to makes them think their government is doing a good job, but this video shows that it is simply a mechanism politicians use to get support and not something they do purposefully do to make the public subdued or obedient.

The solution proposed by Dr Eidelson to solve the current state of American politics is for the American public to vote for politicians that don't spin phantom issues, but instead address real concerns that American society and individuals have. The threat form Iran for example is a potential threat, but there is little evidence that warrants action. Yet real social issues like the 46 million Americans that are without anykind of health insurance are ignored, which I believe proves that the politicians have stopped serving the people.

Left Behind Eternal Forces Demo

I have been playing the Left Behind: Eternal Forces Demo and it is broken bad.

You start with a Disciple who will convert Neutral characters to your side. You do this by walking up to them and preaching. This is where the demo has a fatal bug. If the path to a neutral character is blocked by whatever then the game freezes. Anyway once converting the neutral character they become a Friend who can be trained to be come several types of unit. There is however a strange qwerk of the game where women can't be trained as Builders or Priests. No reason is given and so I can only assume this a religious thing and sexual discrimination. From what I can tell there is nothing women can do that men can't in the game, so I actually found myself not recruiting women because of this.

All the left behind citizens have life stories and I found this to be the only interesting aspect of the game. Although the writing is fairly bad. Below are two which caught my attention.

Red Dwarf's Hidden Message

Tonight on YouTube as well as seeing a Stupid Cat and a Posessed Cat (mind your ears if you are wearing headphones) I found This Video from the Red Dwarf Episode Backwards where the crew go to an alternative dimension and everything happens backwards. There is a hidden message in one of the backwards tracks for anybody who took the time to play the episode backwards and it's funny.

Saints Row Rating

Been playing Saints Row which is a lot of fun and very buggy. Right now I can hear rain in the game and it is not raining, but anyway I was just reading the XBox Forum and there are a few teenagers talking about the game. I wouldn't let my kids play it, certainly not when the radio talks about banning immigrants religious costumes and has reference to burning fags. In the UK the game has a big 18 sticker on it so obviously parents are going to seriously consider the game before letting their kids play it.

However in the US it has an M for mature. If you read the Description of a Mature title then you know what you are in for, but when you look at the box it just has a little M in the corner and that doesn't communicate anything like the 18 sticker does in the UK. So there are going to be a lot of parents buying the game for their kids who aren't aware of the game's contents because the rating doesn't accurately communicate that at the point of sale.

XNA , Working Hard and Jesus

On one hand I am very pleased with XNA because it removes all the plumming that I stumbled on when I last tried to learn Managed DirectX. However the documentation is weak and I am frustrated at how little I am grasping. This is normal whenever I try to learn something new so proably isn't such a negative comment.

I still have some in-roads to understanding the structure, but I would do better with more C# exsperiance. I can read the code, but formulating my own is a little tricky because I have only just learned C#.

Nobody ever mastered anything in a day so it's just something I have to stick at. And that got me thinking nobody talks about wither Jesus was a good carpentor or no. He seemed to spend most of his life walking around the holy-land and there isn't any mention of his carpentory in the bible or any pices still in exsistance. So he couldn't have been that good. Maybe if he had applied himself a little more he could have produced some great works like Chippendale.

Flight Simulator X Beta

I just got my beta key for Flight Simulator X and the download is 8.2GB!!!
On my download stream of 250KB/s that's nine and a half hours!!!

Additional: Didn't get around to playing any of the beta because the install was just too big.

XNA Studio Beta1

I just finished having a play with SpaceWar, the XNA redux version of 1962 original. Seems poinient to use the worlds first direct input video game as the starter kit game (starter kit means that the code has more comments than usual).

Anyway if you are curious to know what XNA looks like, below is a screenshot.



Yes it's just C# Express with a project loaded. If you want to give it a go Here is a link to the beta, but you are also going to need to install C# Express and the DirectX Software Development Kit before you are able to play around with it properly.

.Net Debug Mode Performance Hit

Been running some memory intensive code (not a lot of memory, but a lot of calls to memory) in Visual Studio and from running my application in Debug Mode to compiling the application to a Release Build there is a 60% jump in performance.

Random Fact

Chickens are easier to pluck just after death, when their bodies are still warm.

Evaluating Battlefield 2142

Although I can't say anything about Battlefield 2142 because of the Confidentiality Agreement. I can tell you that I was playing it all day. And that during that period I got very angry, shook my fist a lot, threw my arms up in the air repeatedly and stormed out of the room several times.

I can also say after reading the Beta Forums, that Battlefield 2142 is simply a modded versions of Battlefield 2.

Another Reason To Stay Up

I WAS going to go bed, but I just checked my email and got my Battlefield 2142 Beta Key!

Been reading the Licence Agreement (hay it's a 1.2GB download) and the Confidentiality Agreement stops me from posting screenshots:

(ii) you will not use the Beta-Test Materials for any purpose other than for Evaluation

(iv) you will carry out the Evaluation personally and will not provide access to the Beta-Test Materials to any other person

So although subsection two alone doesn't say anything about not publicly evaluating the beta by posting details here, subsection four stops me from doing that. And there is another part that says I can only review the beta material for the purposes of evaluating the product as part of the beta program which means I can't say anything about it here either. Darn those lawyers, they think of everything.

Gamers Too Lazy To Play Wii

Peter Molyneux Says the biggest hurdle the Wii has to face is the fact gamers like to be lazy.

I agree with him 100% purely because my laziness is the only reason why I don't play any Rockstar Table Tennis. See if I didn't have to physically put the disk in the drive I would be playing that instead of so much Geometry Wars.

Texas Hold 'em

If you have an 360 Live account you can now download Texas Hold 'em free for another 24 hours. If you don't download it tomorrow then you will need to pay 800MsPoints to get it. I have played it an no way it it worth 800 points, but as a free game it is ok.

Microsoft Blocks Sony

Back in the late 70's and early 80's when Atari started the home console revolution Nolan Bushnell founder of the company made sure that he has exclusive contracts with all five of the companies on the planet that could make the chips needed for production of a home console. This blocked competition for years, but when the company was sold to Warner Communications the new company didn't see any point in spending $50,000 to $100,000 a year in keeping those contracts so this brought rise to competition.

Anyway Microsoft is doing a similar thing. They Just Announced that they have exclusive next generation rights to both FIFA 07 and Pro Evolution Soccer 6. So although both these games are coming out for current gen consoles as well, they will not be making an appearance on the PS3.

This is going to make a huge dent in PS3 sales in the UK and other Football loving nations.

Internet Trouble

My ISP Wanadoo got bought by Orange and things where good for a time, but then they tried moving me over to some new servers and that stopped me from being able to access a load of websites including:
http://www.gamevideos.com
http://www.3dgamers.com
http://www.ign.com
http://www.gamespy.com

Which I use daily so I was fairly annoyed, but I thought I would give them a few hours to get it sorted. However after a week it has become a right pain so I went looking for a solution on OrangeProblems.co.uk. I knew at this time that it was a DNS issue, but wanted to see what other people where doing to fix it.

My thoughts where towards setting up a local DNS server, but someone pointed to OpenDNS a project that speeds up DNS access, blocks phishing sites and corrects misspelled URLs. They make profit from placing adverts on a page when you request a site address that doesn't exist.

This thing is SO much faster. MySpace (which is the site they say people will notice the most difference on) loads almost instantly. DNS lookup is loads faster. So even when Orange sort this problem out I will be sticking with OpenDNS.

Internet Explorer 7 Feature Compleate and Locked

The IETeam is Locking-down IE7 meaning that once it is locked nobody can touch it because it has gone through all the standards testing and has come through clean. There is always the change that somebody will find something, but this will happen after it is launched.

The launch will come as a Critical Update from Windows Update Service. If you don't want IE7 then you had better download IE7 Blocker soon because there is no telling when it could be released.

Nickelodeon Video Game Coverage From 1981

YouTube has a Nickelodeon LiveWire episode from 1981.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The thing that surprises me is that Video Game coverage hasn't improved any in the years since this was made and that even then there was a force of concerned parents that where afraid of the effects of video games.

Free Energy Not an ARG

There is currently a lot of speculation around a company in Ireland called Steorn that says it has created a way of making free energy with the use of magnets, is really an Alternative Reality Game for Halo3, LOST or something else.

The Halo guys are going made because because Steorn's Registration Page has a picture of a honeycomb at the top and Team XBox posted about it.

I do not believe this is an ARG not because they have registered a Registered Job Page, not because they Registered The Company in 2000, not because this was News Back In May, not because they have a US Patent or EU Patent with a Diagram, but instead because they have a Forum.

Never before have I seen an ARG with a forum and for that reason I do not believe that this is an ARG.

Presentation Nightmares

Scott Guthrie a General Manager at Microsoft has just posted a link to some Presentation Nightmares and they are some good stories.

FBI's Computer System Case Study

I thought the NHS was in a bind with their computer systems, but the FBI's Problems detailed in This Case Study are far more serious.

In 1995 they had a mainframe system installed that had a green screen text only interface, it doesn't do photos or scanned reports. When this was installed it was out of date, but this is the same system that even now after 9/11 the FBI is trying to catch terrorists with. When 9/11 hit they had to FAX photos of the suspects because they couldn't send secure email.

Learning C#

Have started learning C# so that hopefully by the 30th I can do some stuff in XNA. I don't expect by then to be as good in C# as I am in VB and I have no idea what new paradigms I will need to learn to use XNA, but by the time the Beta comes out I should be able to explore it a little. Maybe even complete the tutorials that come in the documentation, if any.

For learning C# I have bought Inside C# which assumes the reader can already program some C, C++ or Java. I can't so have started off with some beginner videos over at LearnVisualStudio.net and I completely forgot how good that site is. I started off by doing a console application and I then realised that I haven't ever done a .Net console application before because in VB you traditionally start by programming forms.

It's going to get some getting used to, but I think I might like C# a lot.

Star Wars III: A Lost Hope

I have seen a few Star Wars parodies and most of them are very bad and most of the the others are just bad, but A Lost Hope (checkout the mirrors for a good download) is great because they didn't try to redo an entire film, but just a parody trailer. So maybe there is a lesson there.

Shipping Vista Song

For some reason Programming and Playing Music seem to go hand in hand. Musicians seem to be able to apply themselves to programming easier than it takes everyone else. So it is no surprise to me when a song like Shipping Vista comes along once in a while as there are some very talented musicians behind a lot of the applications we all use every day.

Microsoft Knows What It's Doing

There is a lot of talk at the moment about Nintendo changing the video games industry and opening up new demographics, but I just finished listening to the Gamefest Keynote where Microsoft made the XNA Express announcement and it is very clear that they really know what they are doing.

They know very well that by making game development more accessible they are going to be opening doors, start to fill the skills gap in the industry and give a lot of gamers exactly what they have wanted for years. Microsoft has yet to prove itself on wither it can deliver in bringing game development to the motivated and my main concern is with the documentation because that is where I have failed when I have repeatedly tried to get to grips with DirectX previously.

My favourite part of the presentation is where the Garage Games guy (Mark Frohnmayer) talked about their experience with porting Marble Blast Ultra to C# and their amazement that there wasn't much slowdown. I love this because this is a developer standing on stage saying to other developers that there is another way than Assembler and C++.

Code written in Assembler is faster than code written in C++, which is faster than code written in C# and other .Net languages, but considering that .Net code takes less time to create (always), it gives more time for work on bug fixing and performance tweaks. For this reason I think that within a year there will be some game or tech demo out that is written in C# running on XNA that looks just as good, if not better than the best looking AAA title on the 360 written in C++ and assembler.

Nintendo might be rolling the dice with changing the industry by developing quirky new hardware, but on Microsoft's part it is a firm concerted effort.

XNA and C#

I have been reading the XNA Express FAQ and it appears that XNA is a copy of the .Net Compact Framework which was originally made for use on PDA and other portable devices that run off of battery. The team has taken that version of the .Net Framework and added a few features to support stuff like 3D Acceleration and other stuff associated with games. As of right now the team only has a C# compiler for the XNA Framework so the coming express edition will only support C#, however they are considering supporting other languages and it is very likely that someone other than Microsoft could write a compiler to support other languages.

This means of course that within a week I will be steeped into learning C# as the only reason I got into computers to begin with was because of video games and I have repeatedly tried and failed to learn to program 3D games using DirectX.
Interestingly is that because XNA is built on the Compact Framework, supporting Mobile phones would be very easy if they started to use 3D chips in them.

If you are a developer and want to get into Beta 1, send me an email and I will tell you where you can signup. I would link here, but there is probably only going to be a limited number of slots for Beta 1 and that shouldn't be filled up with people who will just download the application and then never use it.

XNA Studio Express

On August the 30th Microsoft will be releasing Beta 1 of XNA Studio Express that is a feature cut version of XNA Studio Professional so that anybody can make games for their PC using more centralised tools.

When the product is released later this year users will be able to pay Microsoft $99 to join the "Creators Club" which will probably have documentation and a forum for people who are trying to make games using XNA studio, but will also allow members to run their code directly on the XBox360.

The press release is Here

The language or languages that Microsoft will be supporting or providing documentation for has not yet been said, but to put a slight lid on a lot of the excitement people have been having today about the prospect of making games at home, game development up until now has only been done well by teams of dedicated individuals for a reason and although this centralises all the tools and skills necessary to produce a game I don't think it is going to make the task any smaller.

All Geometry Wars Achievements Are Belong To Me!

Just got the 'Earn x10 multiplier' and 'Earn 1,000,000 points without dying' achievements on Geometry Wars. Meaning I have finally earned all the achievements on Geometry Wars!!!
I almost beat my Highscore too, but I think that is high enough as it is now.



O' yes and I was listening to a debate on the game censorship. While playing I again went into a lethargic state of mind because the debate isn't covering any new ground at all. Parents must control what games kids play. Games are no worse than other mediums. All any informed panel does in these debates is agree.

Lego Head in Dead Rising

The Lego head that can be placed on Zombie's Heads in Dead Rising (See Screenshot). Is not a Lego head at all, but a Servbot head from Mega Man Legends.

Obsessive complusive cat flushing the toilet

Obsessive complusive cat flushing the toilet

Arcade Release Schedule

This week Pac Man is this Wednesday on XBLA. And here is what comes for the next four weeks after that:

Aug 16th - Texas Hold em Poker
Was going to be free, but the sponsor pulled out so now everybody is going to have to buy it.

Aug 23rd - Time Pilot
That old game where you are a plain and have to rescue pilots in different time periods.

Aug 30th - Scramble
I had this on my BBC and as much as I loved it I never completed the first level.

Sep 6th - Lumines Live!
The PSP game, but on the 360 with some downloadable stuff.

GameCube: A Video History That Never Was

This Page as a load of GameCube preview videos of cancelled projects. And looking at the first video it is VERY clear why everybody thought that the first Zelda game on the GameCube wasn't to be cell shaded. The video of Link fighting is clearly separate from the Smash Brothers video.

Samorost That Artsy Flash Puzzle Game

There is an artsy flash puzzle game that you might have played called Samorost where a small guy has to stop a floating thing from crashing into his home. This has spawned a few poor imitators like Haluz where you have to rescue a satellite dish from a bird, but now Samorost 2 is out.

It is much like the first only the guy's dog is stolen by some aliens. After completing the first level you will be asked to purchase the full version. I have and I can tell you that by that time, you have already played through the best of the game so it probably isn't worth the purchase, but as a whole Samorost 2 is everything the original was. The only good thing about buying the full game is that the audio is much better.
3/5

Read Rising Demo

There are lots of Zombies. All items in the game have two actions to them depending on wither you press or hold the X button. It's good, but it's out September 8th and Saints Row is out on the 1st. So I will already be playing that and I don't want to be in a situation where I am playing two games (that never goes well) so I won't be putting down a pre-order, but I will be buying Dead Rising when I don't have anything else to play.

Additional: Dead Rising is out in the US the 8th this month and in the UK the 8th next month. For some reason.

Geometry Wars High Score

Just beat my Geo Wars high score again and just like Last Time I was again listening to a Programmer Podcast this time on reflection. My highscore now stands at 2,158,680 points.

The odd thing about me listening to code related podcasts and doing well at Geo Wars must be mindset. Another odd thing with this is that on both occasions these where podcasts that where talking about code related stuff that is still way over my head. I still listen to them in the hope that I can pickup something and understand more about an area that I am not familiar with. This normally fails, but it puts me in a very lethargic mindset.

Always Work Safe

There is this guy who has just had is office change to an open plan so his boss can keep an eye on what everybody is doing on their computers. So he made this site called workfriendly.net which makes all websites look like a word document.

The site is being hammered badly right now so it might be a little slow to load, but it is worth the wait.

Minor Vindication on Game Difficulty

Back in the early 90's I always believed that games where too hard and now with the released of Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting (that's the first version of SF that allowed special moves to be preformed in mid-air) on XBox Live Arcade the SF Forum on XBox.com if full of people complaining how difficult the game is. I played the trial version earlier, it is exactly as I remember it and I still barely get past the first opponent on easy.

Sometimes when playing games from that period I feel like it is only me that had a problem with them, but people complaining about SF being too difficult makes me feel a whole lot better.

It's funny how a lot of people complain how easy newer games are. Making a game very difficult was ok in the 80's where a game world consisted of just one level, but not now with large free roaming environments. The necessity of limiting a player's exploration no-longer exists so games can be made more fun by lowering the difficulty and allowing the player to explore the virtual environment that has been created for the game. Through this they can discover a lot of small nuances about the game and follow deep storylines.

This however makes old-school gamers feel somewhat frustrated because they aren't used to playing games where they aren't dieing every nine seconds. Well boo hoo to them, viva la revolution. No-longer do I have to play the same level day in and day out just to get my moneys worth from a title. I can actually sit down and follow the plot from start to finish and games actually HAVE plots now!
Ok difficulty balancing is a fine art, certainly the end boss in a game should be hard and the start of the game should be easy, but those days where everybody had three lives to complete a game with is dead, gone and good riddance.

Saints Row 360 Demo

Just been playing the Saints Row Demo from Marketplace and after posting this I am going to put in a pre-order down because it is one very nice game. Saints Row is a blatant GTA rip-off, but I don't care because it is so much better. The combat is done really well and without a gun lock-on mode anywhere in sight.

The last GTA game I properly played was GTA3 which I had for the PC. The one thing I hated about it more than anything was the stupid floaty boat cars which would always rock from side to side on the road because the car suspension was simulated so badly. It was like all the cars floated on a cushion of air. The cars in Saints Row however drive very well indeed and feel great. The game has a GPS mapping system so you can always get to your destination quickly and in the full game you will be able to customise and properly pimp-up cars. Even get them rescued if your baby blows up.

Sound Card on a Cable

If you have a guitar and haven't got the money for expensive music equipment then imagine a cable where at one end you have a 1/4” sound jack and a USB head at the other. This cable would do analogue to digital conversion inside the cable and come with drivers so it would be an independent sound device connected directly to your musical instrument of choice. Well that's what a LightSnake is.

I seen this yesterday and it sounds very cool. An even cheaper option however is to plug your guitar or musical instrument of choice directly into a sound card. All you need is a 1/4” to 3.5mm Converter Adaptor.

To Delay or Not To Delay Windows Vista

Robert McLaws over at LonghornBlogs.com has an interesting post titled Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write. Which talks about how Vista needs to be delayed just a few more weeks to make it right for launch.

This is an interesting problem in most kinds of development because the product is already delayed, but there is call for a further delay. The problem with a decision to delay it further is that some projects never get launched because there is always something that could be done better with a bit more development time. One of the first things anybody should realise is that the most important feature of any commercial project, is that it must ship. So the choice to delay by even just a few weeks will be a difficult one to make. As in Vista's case there are probably other companies that are going to suffer further because further delays. It is not uncommon for some to go under because of such things.

Microsoft has a reputation of releasing new versions of it's OS unfinished. This always plagues early adopters and the reputation of the OS throughout it's life. I am not sure wither first impressions are the most lasting impressions, but certainly a good out-of-the-box experience helps all products. So in my view Vista is already late so they might as well make it worth waiting for. It's like being late to an important interview. You can either be five minuets late and be unprepared, or be twenty minuets late and have all your shit together. You are already noted as being late so wither that is ten minuets or half an hour might not make that much of a difference.

E3 Cancellation

So a few publishers said they weren't going to bother turning up the the 2007 E3 because it s so noisy and chaotic that they don't feel that they are getting enough exposure out of what is costs to exhibit. The organisers have chosen to make a few changes because they don't want to loose the customers and there will be an announcement today on what those changes to the event are.

My money is on a move to Las Vegas and employees of retail shops not being allowed in anymore.

Update: The announcement is that it won't move from LA, but will be moved from May to July, the trade show floor is no more and attendance is by invitation only.

PS3's Entitlements

Sony has seen fit to adopt an Achievement system like that on the 360, but call them 'Entitlements' instead. Makes sense, now I just wonder wither Nintendo will do similar.

Brighton Road Trip

Ok here we go, the weather has been VERY hot and I am now running my computer on a dual 12" fan open case setup (yes two fans pointing at my graphics card). On the trip I took about 119 pictures on a 64MB card so what you are seeing here is just the best of those pictures. The k750i has a good camera, but still suffers from that photo delay problem where the picture preview on the LCD display is about half a second ahead of the picture that is actually taken when the camera button is pressed.


I believe this was still in Leicestershire.


Some cones.


A Porsche. Not the most expensive car we seen. That was a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.


A TVR, I think it could be a Tuscan although it's difficult to see from that angle.


More road.


A Plane.


Panoramic shot of hotel room. We stayed at the Paskins Hotel simply because it was the cheapest one we could find. No en suite bathroom, but that made it cheaper and honestly it was a nice clean room and walking to the bathroom wasn't a problem.


View from hotel room.


View up the road from hotel window. Yes that' Brighton beach. I still find it hard to believe how cheap it was, because last year in London I payed more than double for a lot less.


Panoramic shot of Brighton Beach and Brighton Pier. I have messed up on this with the both pictures here so have had to do a little splicing. When I take a panoramic shot with my phone I take the first shot then it draws an outline on the left edge of the screen so I can match the next shot. Then it blurs the results together to make something that looks like one picture, but I am still getting used to matching things up.


A sign for the conference at the Hilton.


The Grand Hotel, the Hilton is on the left. Apparently the Prime Minister's bathroom was blown up by the IRA at the Grand in 1984 at a conservative party conference. There is a good webcam on the Grand's site showing you how nice the weather is right now.


The old burned down West Pier.


Beer on the beach.


A helter skelter on the pier.


Brighton Beach as viewed from the pier.


SeaLife centre.


Inside the SeaLife centre.


Fish.


Fish.


Crab.


Tunnel.


Fish.


The Royal Pavilion which is an ex royal palace.


Bill (FooFly).


Beer.


Sunset as viewed from a bar on the ground of the Grand Hotel. Not sure if they rent the space from the Grand or whatever, but it was nice.


Some girl in a tank trying to grab bits of yellow paper. Not sure what was going on, but it looked fun.


One of the conference rooms. A little blurry, but it's the only shot I took of any of the conference rooms.


I was going to upgrade my phone's memory to 1GB while I was there, but they wanted £60, so I left it until I got home and bought a 1GB Memory Card Off Amazon for £26 instead.


This was a free guest listed party that we where invited to. It was sponsored too so all the drinks where free for most of the night.


Bill and Beer.


Me and Beer.


Brighton Beach.


Some Chalk Cliffs at the very edge of Brighton. I seen these for a distance so forced Bill to walk for twenty minuets so I could get a clear shot of them. And I actually thought this shot would come out better.


Walkway.


Steps from beach to road. Not sure why she is covering her face, didn't notice that when I took the picture. Maybe she was brushing something out of her face or maybe she doesn't like her picture taken, who know.


My Tom Tom GPS with the route home plotted.


Another plane.


Motor Home.


Panoramic of countryside.

It was a well worth while trip. And I am very pleased with my k750i even if the pictures are a little bit of a hit and miss. Having a 2MP camera with me at all times is great.
As far as Brighton goes I wouldn't mind living there at all. It's a very nice place and in the current hot weather has a nice cool seabreeze to keep everybody cool.

Need Job

Was going to buy air-conditioning today as the forecast for the rest of the week is much the same as today. So knowing that I would be spending about £220 on a unit I though that having a quick check on my last bank statement to see if I had the cash was a good idea. Now I know that I only have £500 in the bank. This means I need a job and I haven't really started looking yet. I could right this very minuet chase up on a few possibilities that could lead to me getting an interesting job that I liked, but IT'S TOO HOT! Instead of finding a job I will instead be laying on the ground sweating for a bit.

2nd Birthday Today

Post number 1425 and I have now been doing this for two years. When I think of this yearly post I always think that I should take a picture of something like a cake or something, but I also think that would be too predictable.

Got memory card reader, have transfered pictures across from phone, have also made post with pictures linked in. But I still have to write comments and it's too hot for that. Once again it is nice and cool outside (being dark and all), but if I open a window I get attacked by moths. Yes I have opened the window a little, but it's not wide enough to cool the room sufficiently. For the room to be cooler the window gap aperture has to be at moth flying-in size or greater. Anyway so far tonight I have killed one spider and moved three flies in the past hour. They are attracted by the heat and light. This annoys me emencly.

Additional: This is post number 1438.

Bullet Vs Katana (very impressive)

What happens when a bullet hits the blade edge of a Katana? Click Here to findout.

What happens when lots of bullet hit the blade edge of a Katana? Click Here to findout.

half-Real by Jesper Juul

So a few weeks ago I finished reading half-Real and it took me a while to get around to writing about it because I had other stuff going on, but now I have finished reading it I can tell you that it is an excellent introduction to the field of video game theory. The book represents Jesper's Ph.D research into how the fictional and rule based elements of games exist as separate elements and then how they interact with each other to create the wonderful graphical gaming experience that we know and love today.

The title of the book half-Real, is a statement about game characters. The Queen character in chess is both a fictional character and part of the rules. So is not fully rule based (real) or fully fictional (not real).

A lot of what he talks about is very academic, but I didn't find fault in any of his arguments as he always backs-up his statements or discusses alternative viewpoints. Unlike A Theory of Fun where statements are made and then never discussed or where the reader is asked to make several big leaps of faith, half-Real has loads of references all the way through and I have since bought a few of the books Jesper references.

Normally when reading a book like this I will be writing notes and arguing points all the way though the book, but with this I only have about five markers, all highlighting very statements on Jasper's part which I found poinient.

Simply put, if you want to be able to talk about games on an academic level then you need to read this book. It covers the whole academic debate of what games are, and nicely defines, points out and discusses some of the sticking point of modern gaming debates around gameplay and narrative.
5/5

Religion Vs The World

So I just watched This Video of some woman ranting about the current conflicts in the world with Muslims. She is saying that the current conflicts are conflicts between modern society and Islam, which teaches that all unbelievers must be fought until all are believers. She says that the conflicts are being fuelled by calls for Muslims to rise up against none believers and Takfir (Muslims who no-longer believe).

She then talks about how the Jews did not take revenge after world war 2 and how the Buddhists did not take revenge on Muslims when they turned three Buddha statues into rubble. So why must Muslims defend their beliefs by burning Churches and destroying Embassies. Although I don't understand most of the religious aspects of these conflicts I know that there is no reason to fight and that she is speaking the language of peace which all of us have inside each and every one of us. Conflict is wrong so the instigators of conflict are also wrong, and I am not talking about instigating as in name calling, I am talking about acts of violence. Shooting someone in the head for something they said is not justified. Things get a little hazy when it comes to shooting someone in the head for something they might do, but the world isn't about Right vs Wrong, it's about people and society.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV

I know a lot of people are pumped about the new Transformers film, but as a kid I never much cared for transforming trucks. No as a kid my number one cartoon was always Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And now they are making the fourth turtles film!!!
Get the trailer Here.

Warning Addictive Game

Been very busy for the past few days graduating and all. Picture journal will now be up early next week now as City Link will now be delivering my card reader Monday.

Anyway Motherload is a game here you are in this little minor machine thing and mine for minerals and upgrade your minor machine. If you dig far enough down you will face Satan who you will then have to kill to win the game.

Portal

Half Life 2 Episode 2 has a new portal weapon, and ValVe look like they are also releasing what looks to be a free game attached to it called Portal. If you have played Prey than you know how cool portals can be, but earlier this week I had heard that ValVe was demoing something that was way cooler and Here it is.

This new weapon is way cool and the game attached to it look like a lot of fun.

Developer Conference in The News

Ok so it's going to be maybe Wednesday before I can post my photos, but I can at least mention what was talked about in the news at the develop conference while I was there. And no I wasn't asked not to talk about anything or asked to sign an NDA.

Epic's Mark Rein Not an Episodic Fan
Mark did the opening keynote and he was supposed to talk about the pitfalls of next generation development, but it turned into a discussion about episodic content. Mark was of the opinion that episodic games are bound to fail because they don't offer a complete experience and that developers should be discouraged from doing episodic games. And why bother because games and sequels to games continue stories anyway without giving the gamer the game in parts with a six month gap between episodes.
I have heard this point from other developers, but episodic content is a new thing, it hasn't been proven and is just one of those ideas that must be proved or disproved for us to learn from it. Interactive films is a good previous example that needed to be tried a few times before we can stand back and judge wither it was a good idea or not. In the case of interactive movies they don't work because they ask the player or viewer to be passive for a time then pickup the controller and make a choice. It is disconnected while still requiring action. If the viewer is sitting eating while watching the movie part, when an interaction point is reached they must then wakeup, consider their choice, put down their food, find the controller and make a choice. I only mention food in this example because that's what happens to me.

XBox Live attach rate has grown 50 percent, from XBox to Xbox 360; Live Anywhere the next step
I was in this talk, handing out feedback forms and generally being on hand to help. And yes it's nice to know that Arcade is doing so well, but Jeff also talked about being able to preview downloadable content in the future and that soon games will be able to show achievements in game. For example there might be a trophy cabinet with a gamer's achievements in game as 3D objects.

Everything you know about MMOs is wrong
While this was going on I was scanning ID badges and giving out bags & shirts, but from what I have read since it sounded like a good talk.

Joystiq interviews Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios
I actually got to meet Peter, I shook his hand, I said I loved Dungeon Keeper and he said thank-you. Peter is my favourite game designer purely because I love some of the games he has made so absolutely. His talk was about how his approach to game design has changed over the years from sitting on pizza boxes and having a bowl full of cigarettes, to communicating with a large team and trying to maintain a conservative vision without getting distracted. Very interesting and he put a lot of heart into his presentation.

what inspires Mizuguchi
I missed this one, but FooFly said it was good.

Game design ideas worth stealing
I missed this one to go to the XBox Live Arcade talk, but FooFly also said it was good.

Sony's Phil Harrison: "I don't think we're arrogant"
He is a very tall man. And talked on the conference debrief panel. Hearing him talk honestly instead of being on stage doing the PR thing at E3 was incredibly refreshing.

28 Days Later: it could've been a video game
I missed this one to go to a talk about the PS3 cell chip.

Joystiq interviews Rob Kay of Harmonix
He took part in a talk about designing games for the masses and I missed this one too.

PS3 dev kit BSOD... sorta
I seen this demo running and it was actually running an ocean simulation (hence why the screen was blue). The demo wasn't receiving input when I picked it up, but the PS3 controller is much lighter than even the original PSX controller. There is a little PS3 logo in the middle of the controller that when pressed brings up an overlayed system menu just like the XBox360. The analogue sticks don't feel as floaty as before. And the lower shoulder buttons are now analogue triggers which is nice.

Pledge Bank The Right to Protest

Boris Johnson has setup a Pledge Bank to get 6,000 people to hold hands and form a ring around Parliament's Anti-Protest Zone early next year, protesting the right to not protest within 1KM of the building without giving six days notice.

Photos Update

The Sony Ericsson software that I use to get photos in mass from my phone is broke so I have ordered a memory card reader as this phone stores all the photos on a Pro-Duo memory card. With the reader I should be able to transfer everything across very quickly too so this is actually better.

Update

It's going to take about two hours to transfer all the photos and videos from my phone so I think I will leave it running over night tonight. Otherwise it ties up my computer and I got Prey to play.

I heard about the XBox Live Arcade Wednesdays which means that every Wednesday at 8:00pm (GMT) a new game will appear on arcade. Not sure if this will continue past the schedule they have released, but currently for the next few weeks it looks like this:

Frogger (out now)
Cloning Clyde (19th July)
Galaga (26th July)
Street Fighter 2 Turbo: Hyper Fighting (2nd August)
Pacman (9th August)

This is excellent news obviously. I downloaded Frogger and it's good, but the controls need to be better. Currently they are using the squishy D-pad to control Frogger and this can't be reassigned. I want to be able to use the A button to move Frogger forwards.
Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting, is the SF version that first allowed players to change character mid-match and perform special moves in mid-air.

BACK!

Just checking my email now and I have 55 unread emails and 204 bits of SPAM. I took lots of photos so I will probably post a photo log tomorrow or the day after.

Microsoft Points Conversion and Start of Road Trip

I have a little spreadsheet that does all the currency conversion from Microsoft points to real money so I know how much I am spending when buying stuff from XBox Live Marketplace. This Site does the same thing with a web interface. Which is handy if you aren't used to checking the price of stuff yet.

Anyway will be back Friday maybe Saturday. Am taking my new phone with me so should have plenty of photos to post of The Event and Brighton when I get back. TTFN

Random Fact

After death the Human body cools two degrees in the first hour and then one degree every hour after that.

Bluetooth Transfer Speeds With My K750i

I managed to get the bluetooth file transfer working between my PC and K750i. Below as a picture I took yesterday of my 360 for a comparison against The Picture I Took in Currys of their broken 360.



So as you can see the image is much bigger. Looking at the number of pixels on my new phone against my old, the new one has 95% more pixels.
I took the same picture with my two mega-pixel digital camera and both images look surprisingly similar. I would have posted that too as a comparison, but where as the image from my new phone is 233KB, the one from my camera is 1.13MB. To post that here I would have to compress the image and that would make it an unfair comparison.

The cut-up mouse pads under my 360 are there as vibration/sound dampening to stop it rattling the stuff on my desk (it's near whisper quiet now).

Anyway I have been transferring files back and forth for a good part of the day. And transfer is slow over bluetooth. I worked it out based on knowing how big a file was and how long it took to transfer that the transfer rate over bluetooth is 9.71KB/s which is ok, but when transferring a 10MB MP3 file takes nearly 20 minuets. I might try the USB data cable that came with it. And that's odd, normally you have to buy the data cable separately for mobiles which is why I bought a bluetooth adaptor for my PC in the first place, but with this phone the data cable came in the box.

Interesting Day

I have passed this year at uni. Despite failing my Security Module test (still find that puzzling, but whatever) that is ok because it was the only bad mark I got and it wasn't under 30% so that means I pass, apparently.

Been waiting for an email from an organiser that should be able to get me and FooFly into the UK's first Develop Conference next week. I will have to do some chasing tomorrow as I haven't received all the details yet, and I still need to find someplace to stay, but it's happening.

And because I might be going someplace interesting next week and got my graduation the week after I thought now would be a good time to buy a new mobile phone. My Sony Ericsson T610 has served me well, but I wanted it to have a better camera and it takes too long for me to take pictures with it. So I have bought a Sony Ericsson K750i which is very much the same, but has a wicked camera. Simply move the shutter and the camera wakes up and goes into camera mode. Plus the pictures it takes are great and comparable to my digital camera. Am still trying to get it to talk to my PC as it wasn't seeing my Belkin USB adaptor earlier, but I should get something working tonight or tomorrow.

Curry's Issues

So I happened to go Currys today and I noticed that they had a slight issue with their XBox 360 display. So I took this picture:



They have a lot of nice HD TVs in there, but most of them are running video from DVDs. I was talking to one of the guys and he was saying that the only HD signals that where being displayed where on the 360 and four LG sets that had somekind of Compact HD Streaming box connected to them. Not sure if it was HD-DVD, but it was by Toshiba. My point is that if I went in there to buy a HD TV I wouldn't be able to choose one because the picture on all of them is shockingly bad. They are all displaying upscaled standard definition signals. So choosing a TV based on picture quality is near impossible.

Guy's Super Secret Special Power

Of all the uber skills to have in the world and This Guy can strip all the cloths from his body almost instantly.

Optical Illusions

Just some random Optical Illusions. My favourite is the one from the bottom.

BSplayer Alternative

WARNING: I had sound ISSUES that are possibly related to VideoLAN so I would recommend creating a restore point before installing it.

My favoritest media player in the whole wide world BSplayer has started requiring systems to contain spyware to be installed to use their software. Even if you install BSplayer with the spyware, once you remove it BSplayer stops working. The pro version which allows usage without spyware is £20 so I have found an alternative.

I need an alternative because Windows Media Player doesn't support external subtitle files.

The one I have been playing around with is VideoLAN which is an open source project. And because of that has lots of useless effects and features that just clog up the interface and make things difficult to find. i.e to get to the brightness and gamma control sliders you have to go: Settings -> Extended GUI
I am still getting used to it, but it seems ok.

Prey 360 Vs Prey PC

I really loved the Prey demo on the PC and 360. And because the game runs better and looks better on the 360 I was going to get it for the 360, but then I seen the £39.99 price tag for the 360 version and the £24.99 (38% cheaper) price tag for the PC version. And because I refuse to buy any-game over £30 unless it is either excellent or the price can't be avoided, I will now be pre-ordering the PC version. If it was £29.99 fine I would have gone with the 360 version, but I play a lot of games, I don't have a job, I just bought a 360 this year and I am not made of money!

Incidentally the physics on the 360 demo suck. It sounds odd and it is, but it's true.

Friday's Post on Blitz

So Friday I went to Blitz Games for the day and they gave all of use a mug each! Which is great because I wasn't expecting to come back with any prizes.



Obviously I had to sign an NDA and if you have been reading my blog for a while you know that I will honor it entirely, but I can still tell you anything that has already been press released or is public knowledge. And make the rest of this post sound as if it is giving you some inside information.

Blitz Games is an independent developer. This means that they are a development house for hire and that means they have to compete against other developers to get contracts for most of the games they develop. Hence why most of their games are franchised titles. The company is split into three main devisions, Blitz who are family game orientated, Volatile who deal with mature games and TruSim which produces (or will produce) serious games for training purposes. And all divisions use the same set of internally developed Middleware Tools. Which obviously cuts down on cost, but their middleware is one of the few tool-sets which is cross-platform. This obviously gives them an advantage when it comes to creating games on multiple platforms and the games benefit because there is going to be little to no difference between the different versions.

Anyway the future looks bright for Blitz in general because their work creating such classics as Barbie's Horse Adventures (which is one of the few child friendly XBox titles) is allowing them to push forwards into other projects like Reservoir Dogs which is obviously based on the film, but allows the player to play through the action that was not seen in the film and Possession which allows players to control hordes or Zombies.

I had a great time on Friday and learned a lot.
Blitz is still talking Applications for future open days so if you feel inclined towards a career in the video games industry and are a UK University student I can highly recommend applying.