30/Oct 2008
By admin
1 min. read
So, it’s official now, as you can read in Edge. Pretty nice number for an Eastern Europe RPG on “dying” PC platform, I’d say ;)
Old comments Aras Pranckevicius 2008-10-30 17:59:38 Congrats! Now, what’s next? :)
Maciej Miasik 2008-10-30 19:14:20 Another million perhaps? :)
js 2008-10-30 23:18:12 Congrats!
The Witcher got a very good reception !
Miguel 2008-10-30 23:27:21 Wow, that just awesome!
26/Oct 2008
By admin
10 min. read
When I started my gamedev adventure I wanted to be a rendering/3D programmer. This was where I felt most confident. Just like 90% of demoscene coders, I didn’t have much experience with AI, physics or gameplay, it wasn’t really needed for demos. Later it turned out that other areas are very interesting as well, I ended up doing them all at one point and nowadays I don’t really code much 3D stuff.
15/Oct 2008
By admin
1 min. read
If you’re familiar with MemTracer project you may be interested to know there’s a version that can be actually hooked to external application without much hassle. It has been created by Jean-Silvestre Zirani, visit project page for details. Jean contacted me some time ago, we had nice chats about issues with debugging memory related problems, I sent him latest sources and he decided to move MT to a more usable state.
10/Oct 2008
By admin
1 min. read
Seems like I’m mainly pimping RDESTL recently, but that’s all I’ve time/power to work on when I’m back at hotel. Quick update:
latest hash_map included in Attractive Chaos benchmark (+bug fixes). It did quite well. One problem is it consumes memory like crazy, but benchmark works on a really huge set. Anyhow, memory/performance ratio can be controlled via load factor parameter.
I’ve added simple stack class (built on top of other generic container, like in STL).
4/Oct 2008
By admin
4 min. read
As stated before, I’m a big fan of oversensitive warnings and try to compile my projects with the highest warning level (/W4) under MSVC. However, as it turns out, even at this level there are still warnings that are not enabled. For a complete list of warnings that are off by default, see here. The easiest way to enable them all is to use /Wall switch, but it’s too much even for me (mainly because of C4820, feel free to give it a try, though).
1/Oct 2008
By admin
9 min. read
I’ve been reading lots of interesting stuff on hash tables recently and was trying to improve my RDESTL implementation of hash_map. At one point I had 5 different versions, but finally managed to create something that’s good enough for most applications. Granted, I exploit the fact that performance’s the most important factor, so I can live with some limitations that wouldnt fly in any more general library. I effectively “ban” two hash values (0xFFFFFFFE & 0xFFFFFFFF) for example and use it for my own purposes.
20/Sep 2008
By admin
2 min. read
I didnt have much time to work on RDESTL recently, but I try to commit some new stuff every now and then (usually bug fixes). One rather interesting recent addition is a fixed_list class. Basically, it’s a rough equivalent of already existing fixed_vector. It never allocates any memory and works only withing given buffer. Let’s try to create linked list of integers, that can hold up to 64 elements:
rde::fixed_list<int, 64> lst;
lst.
16/Sep 2008
By admin
2 min. read
Just a bunch of useful links/ideas that may help you if you need to make a quick prototype in C++ one day. I know, it may sound stupid, but sometimes it really is a good idea, especially if you’ve the engine+ compatible assets ready.
Digression: of course, initally, you may try to be a smart ass and have this idea of making your prototype in C#/XNA. After all, it doesnt have to be very fast and it’s 100x more friendly with better turn-around times and so on.
3/Sep 2008
By admin
1 min. read
XNA Gamefest 2008 papers are finally online. Get them while they’re hot. (this year with recordings, too!)
Old comments Riddlemaster 2008-09-03 16:36:00 This time they are really nice. Of course much is about XNA (bleh) but the rest is very interesting. However, I’m a bit anxious that the way of DirectX development they chose is not the very best one… It seems they lack fresh ideas. Yeah, they introduce many new things but the core is still unchanged.
30/Aug 2008
By admin
7 min. read
Year 2005, last months of Playstation 2, next-gen consoles are coming. This is usually a good moment for ‘farewell hit’. Developers know the platform inside-out, there’s huge userbase. Sure enough, Sony Santa Monica creates God of War, game that later would be considered one of PS2’s greatest titles. I must admit I’m not that big fan of GOW’s gameplay (I suck at action games, though). Technically, however, it’s one of the most impressive games I’ve seen in the recent years.
28/Aug 2008
By admin
1 min. read
NVScene 2008 done. Results here. If you watch only one production, make sure it’s Texas by Keyboarders, it’s damn impressive. Word of warning, though, demos may look a little pale in comparison after this, but still worth watching (make sure you’ve powerful rig!).
22/Aug 2008
By admin
6 min. read
This year our company introduced a nice tradition - lucky folks who went to GDC referred talks they had attended to interested people. One of workmates presented Bungie’s conference - ‘Life on the Bungie Farm: Fun Things to Do with 180 Servers’. Basically, it’s an interesting talk about Bungie’s distributed build system (deals with code builds, lightmap calculations, resource packaging and some other tasks). It’s not a new concept of course, one popular commercial example of similar environment is XGE.
18/Aug 2008
By admin
3 min. read
I always try to take some books with me when flying for vacation, this year I finally managed to read Real-Time Collision Detection. I’ve never been a “true” physics programmer, I am not one now and I doubt I ever will, so I thought it’s not a book for me. After few pages I already knew I had been wrong. Turns out it’s book that every game programmer should read.
8/Aug 2008
By admin
2 min. read
Just a few interesting links I’ve found recently:
Visual Computing blog - a cooperation between Intel and Gamasutra. Links/articles mainly on topics of multicore/rendering, slightly focused on Intel’s technologies (TBB, Thread Profiler, Thread Checker, VTune). Worth checking out, to see what’s going on. They’re obviously people of great taste, too, as they linked to yours truly and that’s how I found about it :)
Parallel Rendering with DirectX Command Buffers - Gamefest 2008 paper/source code by Vincent Scheib (of Demoscene Outreach Group fame).
6/Aug 2008
By admin
6 min. read
There’s an interesting entry on Christer’s blog about graphical shader systems. It reminded me of another issue that bothers me for some time now – visual scripting languages. They seem to be gaininig popularity recently and I am not really convinced it’s a way to go. Now, I am a programmer, so obviously, I’m biased, perhaps designers see it differently. As I understand it, main motivation for such systems is to let people, who are not familiar with programming (designers) to easily implement all their crazy ideas.
4/Aug 2008
By admin
1 min. read
If you read comments to my CRC32 article, you’ll notice that the most important thing there is MSVC color scheme appearently. Some hate it, some like it, it seems to be Paris Hilton of color schemes. I also got several mails asking about my settings, so instead of replying in the comments I’ll just post here. It’s not really ‘my’ scheme, original version has been made by Oren Ellenbogen. I made some minor modifications, but they’re really miniscule, so I link to Oren’s version instead.
1/Aug 2008
By admin
6 min. read
For every bigger project, sooner (if you’re wise) or later (if you’re, errr, not that wise) comes a moment when you need to answer yourself one very important question: ‘why the hell is it so friggin’ slow?!?’. Most common methods for determining bottlenecks in games/demos evolved with time. Back in eighties/early nineties, when we were young, restless and beautiful, the most common method was counting scanlines. Those were the times when we were not really interested in finding out how many frames per second we’re running.
31/Jul 2008
By admin
1 min. read
Wonderful place, reminds me of Sicily (weather, architecture, it’s much greener, though). I could easily see myself retire there. Few photos:
Paleokastritsa
Lakones. Pictures dont really do it a justice, perspective's distorted. Its damn high, you literally see half of the island from there.
View from The Achilleion (Sissis residence on Corfu)
Aah, lifes beautiful. Sitting in the shade, enjoying sip of cool beverage and view of Greek koritsis passing by.
18/Jul 2008
By admin
1 min. read
I normally dont do this, but this time my inner nerd is way too strong and…just…cant…resist… Watchmen trailer is here! (and I feel everyone should know this)…
16/Jul 2008
By admin
4 min. read
First, there was an essay by Joel Spolsky. Joel claims that #1 cardinal criteria your potential employee should satisfy is: Smart, and Gets Things Done. It became a popular saying, then Joel wrote a whole book on this topic. Finally, some weeks ago Steve Yegge wrote some more about it (and paraphrased to Done, and Gets Things Smart). Now, if you’re familiar with Steve’s blog, you should realize that “some more” is euphemism, basically, it’s another of those 10 page articles (although, as usually, it’s really interesting and personally, I enjoy his writing style).