Life’s been getting mighty busy lately. Remember that job I mentioned in my last post? Well, the money’s been coming in and i’ve been spending it. Got me a new HDTV (LG 42LB5D), new printer, new camera, and a new PS3. Oh, and my 360 died just weeks before Mass Effect’s release, totally bumming me out. I haven’t replaced it yet, though, i’m waiting for the slimmer, quieter model. See you in 2010, Mass Effect!

In general site news, i’m debating whether or not to upgrade to Wordpress 2.3x since it has a lot of awesome features I could really use but I don’t want to mess with the site in case anything breaks. Decisions, decisions… (more…)

More in-depth impressions to come soon.

Yup, just chalk it up to me losing interest… but don’t worry, things will be back to normal soon enough. This whole HD-DVD thing was like a blow to the head, reminding me of the power the web community can have. This thing is spreading like wildfire, causing a shit storm on Digg, and making more than a few corporate shills nervous. And I love it. I don’t run Linux and this key is of no use to me personally, but I hate DRM with a passion and i’ll support anything that helps send the message that this sort of content restriction isn’t what us common folk want. It should be interesting to see how this situation will work itself out, maybe it could be the start of something much bigger…

This whole thing has rejuvenated my love for blogging and reminded me of the reasons why I started doing this in the first place.

Keep up the good fight.

Folding@Home Comes to the PS3
Finally, after months of wondering when it would show up, it pops up as part of the 1.6 firmware update. The results? Well, see for yourself. The PS3 is dominating every other platform and, at the time of this writing, is providing an additional 435 TFLOPS of performance to the project. Incredible. What’s even more incredible is that people are actually taking notice and talking about it, giving the project massive amounts of exposure. If you have a PS3, do your part for the cause. Oh, and Microsoft, hurry up and fix your goddamn system so it’s not so loud and won’t blow up randomly so you can pursue something similar. We’re dealing with huge amounts of processing power this generation and it’s refreshing to see it being used for a noble cause, and used well. Every bit counts.

The PS3’s European Launch
Is it a success? Is it a flop? How the fuck am I supposed to know? People who want the PS3 to fail will look at the bad launch in France as evidence of that. People who want it to succeed will look at the strong showings in Spain and the UK. I think both sides are nuts and everyone should be waiting for official sales numbers instead. Last time I checked that’s still the best way to figure these sorts of things out. Right? Anyways, whatever, the damn thing is finally available “worldwide” (I really hate that term, it’s never true, dozens of countries are always left out) so more people can enjoy it, that’s all that matters. (more…)

Game 3.0
It’s a new name for a simple concept PC gamers are very familiar with. It’s basically a combination of software and hardware that allows for community, communication, and user-created content. Like Web 2.0, it’s an idea meant to empower users and, if LittleBigPlanet is any indication, it looks like it’ll definitely be making an impact later on this year and early next year (the best user-created content will be shipping with the retail game in ‘08). PC gamers are have been accustomed to this sort of thing since the early days of Doom modding, but not in such an easy-to-use, accessible package. I’m all for giving more control to users and this really excites me. It’ll be interesting to see how other developers apply this philosophy to their titles over time. Can’t imagine certain games being able to pull it off though. How would something like God of War 3 implement user-created content? Well, I guess that’s for them to work out, after all. (more…)

EGM: in regards to HD-DVD as an optinal add-on, you said in the past, “We’re not forcing movie technology on game players, but instead are letting them choose how to personalize their experiences.” If this is true, why not sell a Blu-ray player as well?

Perter Moore: Well, because… when we look at HD-DVD, we’re looking at a superior format. Microsoft is a backer of HD-DVD for a number of reasons, and I don’t see any reason why we should support something that we don’t believe in. We believe in HD-DVD.

EGM: Why not give customers the choice, though?

Peter Moore: Because the consumer’s choosing HD-DVD. [Laughs all around] Look… we’re not going to get embroiled in a movie-playback war. We’re very clear on this. If you’ve already got your 360, $199 put you in the high-def movie playback scenario, but i’m not burdening the box with it as our competitor’s done. This is about games. It’s not about movies.

EGM: Does that mean you wouldn’t include a built-in HD-DVD player in future iterations of the Xbox 360?

Peter Moore: No, no, it’s about choice. We’re absolutely focused on consumers that want to play games, and if they’re fortunate enough to be the small minority right now that have the equipment to take advantage of the new generation of high-definition movie playback, then at their choice they can buy an HD-DVD player for $199.

Later on in the same interview Peter Moore was asked about why they didn’t include a hard drive with the Core unit. Again, the answer was “choice.” Recently they’ve given users another “choice”, 512MB of flash for $50. Totally great for users, right? Pure bullshit. (more…)

First and foremost, there’s this HOME thing. Kotaku leaked it and everyone thought they were full of shit… until Sony stepped in and said they were cutting Kotaku off from all of their Sony-provided privileges, including their PS3 debug unit and upcoming one-on-one interview with Phil Harrison. Whoops. Don’t worry though, they’ve kissed and made-up. So I guess this thing’s true? It sounds like a pretty cool idea, combining a little bit from Microsoft and little bit from Nintendo. Apparently, you’ll get this 3D room, be able to create a 3D avatar of yourself (like Nintendo’s Mii idea), and by completing certain in-game objectives (like the 360’s achievements) you’ll be able to decorate your room with trophies or whatever else developers decide to give out. So basically instead of just having a Mii or just having a Gamerscrore you’ll get your own virtual trophy room that you’ll be able to share with other users somehow. Pretty nifty.

The other huge news was the Sony and Immersion have settled their litigation and, yes, rumble will be coming back. It’s hard not to imagine the horrible amount of spin that’ll be coming out of Sony’s mouth, but the end result is that this is great news for gamers who know the importance of rumble and desperately want it back. Personally, I couldn’t possibly imagine playing Gran Turismo 5 or Metal Gear Solid 4 without it so i’m really happy about this one. When this will happen is still up in the air, maybe an announcement at GDC?

It’s been a pretty big, positive day for Sony, though i’m sure someone somewhere is hard at work trying to find something negative about all of this. It’s the trend.

A little background first. I started coding when I was 16, using nothing more than Sams Teach Yourself C in 21 Days. I got into it, enjoyed it, and decided that programming was what I wanted to do as a career, with game development being my ultimate goal. So I majored in computer programming in college - while continuing to study things not covered in my coarse on the side - and graduated in June of ‘05. So far I haven’t had any luck finding a job in the field, which is pretty depressing. Anyways, back to the topic at hand.

First, I took at stab at LuaPlayer as that seemed to be the unanimous choice when it comes to getting results quickly and easily, but i’m honestly not going to give it another look until there’s some major improvements made to it. As a test, I ported this title screen concept I made for Windows to the PSP using Lua. It’s nothing more than a PNG image that fades in, some text on the lower-right corner, and a .wav file playing in the background. Only took me half a day to set up, as apposed to the week it took me to do the same thing on Windows (had some major problems getting certain libraries to work well together). Unfortunately it didn’t work very well. (more…)

Backward Compatibility
Everybody’s up in arms about today’s Sony announcement saying they’ve dropped hardware backward compatibility in favour of software emulation. First of all, I don’t know why everyone’s shocked, it was either Phil Harrison or Kaz Hirai who made it pretty clear months before the system even launched in November that they were going to go with software emulation down the line to cut costs. This wasn’t a shocking move by any stretch of the imagination, it just came sooner than expected. What bothers me, and most people I would imagine, is this:

It also embodies a new combination of hardware and software emulation which will enable PS3 to be compatible with a broad range of original PlayStation® (PS) titles and a limited range of PlayStation®2 (PS2) titles.

Broad PSX support, limited PS2. Limited. Oh boy. While I don’t think it’ll be the cluster fuck that Microsoft’s backward compatibility effort’s been, it sure doesn’t sound good considering the PS3 currently has something like 98% compatibility with all titles through it’s hardware implementation. Good thing the PS3 is firmware upgradeable… plus, software emulation does lend itself to some nice positives like the possibility of increasing resolution, adding texture filtering, etc. Right now there’s no official list of what will work and what won’t, but right now I think the whole thing’s been blown out of proportion. (more…)

I’m disappointed.

I’m an old-school kind of guy when it comes to RPGs so i’m not complaining about the gameplay at all, but visually… damn, it hasn’t aged well at all. In fact, it looks absolutely horrible, even on the smaller PSP screen. Now, I knew it wasn’t going to look very good from the start, which is why I opted not to play it on my TV with my PSX or PS2, but sometimes it’s just painful to look at. It really makes me wish Square stuck with 2D for a little while longer, seems 2D gaming has aged a lot more gracefully. Zelda: A Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger and two excellent examples of this, both are still beautiful to look at and play today as they were in the early and mid-90s. Things like texture quality and model complexity can always improve, but that’s one of the big reasons why a lot of the early 3D titles we all enjoyed playing a decade ago look like complete shit today. The technological gap has become so huge, it’s only natural for earlier titles to look like garbage in comparison. I think the whole “3D era” got started a few years too early and 2D gaming got tossed aside before ever reaching it’s prime. It’s a shame, really… Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a nice glimpse of how 32-bit 2D gaming would have evolved.

I’m still going to get through FFVII, it’s still a great game, but what I wouldn’t give for a 2D remake. Yea, it’s unrealistic and it’ll never happen, but still, it’d be nice.