12/Aug 2009
By admin
3 min. read
I must admit I kinda agree with Charles Bloom - information is so dispersed these days. Now it seems that in order to follow you not only should read various blogs and news, but there’s lots of useful stuff going on at Twitter. Tried to defend myself from that, but it’s pointless, it really is a valuable source of info. So, from now on you can also find me here.
9/Aug 2009
By admin
1 min. read
First, there was a NoooN (Ra only, hoped for Karl coding)+Excess+Andromeda invitation… Now, results & releases are available. So far I’ve only seen a winning demo. It’s nice, with some cool ideas and impressive fluid/smoke simulation, but I must admit I expected more from CNCD/Orange/Fairlight cooperation (then again, no Wili/Tsunami/Hoplite participated). Still worth checking out, obviously.
7/Aug 2009
By admin
1 min. read
You know the drill, will keep adding links here:
Beyond Programmable Shading 2009,
NVIDIA papers,
SG 2009 paper list by Ke-Sen Huang, (both links courtesy of gamedev.pl folks),
Light Propagation Volumes in CryEngine 3 (A. Kaplanyan/Crytek),
Inferred Lighting: Fast dynamic lighting and shadows for opaque and transluscent objects (S. Kircher, A. Lawrance/Volition Inc.)
Old comments Link Mini-Dump 08/17Jeremy Shopf 2013-08-06 02:25:30 […] Maciej Siniloâ?
5/Aug 2009
By admin
1 min. read
Pretty interesting internal presentation on Netflix company culture. I’ve only heard about them because of their Netflix Prize contest and now I’m trying to find some more info. A company that treats its employees as grown ups, shocker. There are some pretty slogans at the beginning (company values etc… hard part is to actually obey them, not to chisel them in marble), but then it becomes rather interesting (I especially like slides 27-28 and salary review system).
2/Aug 2009
By admin
4 min. read
New Polish development studio, founded mostly by Painkiller veterans, who later worked with me at CDPR for a while as well. Not much at their site yet, but keep an eye on it, those guys are cooking something really interesting. Also, they seem to be hiring, so if you’re looking for job – go for it, they’re a great, very talented bunch. I don’t think it’s very official yet, but nothing can hide from my detective powers…
25/Jul 2009
By admin
4 min. read
Today I’d like to write about source code scalability in its most literal form, as in true source code scalability, ie - how much one would have to type if he’d want to extend existing codebase. It’s an often forgotten, bastard sibling of ‘true’ scalability, but an interesting topic nonetheless. There are certain constructions that don’t really lend to modifications that well. I’d like to list some of them here’
5/Jul 2009
By admin
1 min. read
Just little fix (see original note comments for details) and one column more - padding/size ratio (lets me to find what structures waste most space, in relative terms). Same download URL as before.
Old comments sconosciuta 2010-04-01 03:24:27 […] Place. Gregory on Data breakpoints. GameCoder.it L'assert, questa sconosciuta on Chromed editor …Cruncher# update | .mischief.mayhem.soap.Just little fix (see original note comments for details) and one column more - padding/size ratio […]
2/Jul 2009
By admin
1 min. read
Dropbox - wanted to make some weekend experiments, so finally gave it a try and it really is as good as people say. Sharing files between different computers without hassle. It can either work completely in the background or you can treat it as a file server. Great piece of software.
Paris Game AI Conference 2009 - report, highlights, presentations. Worth checking out even if you’re not AI programmer.
25/Jun 2009
By admin
7 min. read
As you’re probably aware - there ain’t such thing as ‘too much memory’. It doesn’t matter how much there is, it’s never enough. Even if we fit, it still pays off to use the smallest structures possible, as they’re more cache friendly. The more we can squeeze them (without wasting too much time for depacking of course) - the better. Recently, I’ve been optimizing some X360 code and one of main problems (as usually with consoles) were related to cache-usage.
22/Jun 2009
By admin
3 min. read
Actually, the trap I’m going to write about is a little more subtle and doesn’t apply only to lazy calculations, but it’s one of the most typical scenarios. Consider the following situation:
1float Rectangle::GetArea() const
2{
3 if (m_isAreaDirty)
4 CalcArea(); // Calculates area (width * height), clears isAreaDirty flag
5 return m_area;
6} That’s rather typical (albeit very simplified, of course) example of performing calculations only when they’re really needed.
14/Jun 2009
By admin
6 min. read
Some months ago I’ve read this article by Elan Ruskin, when he measures the overhead of virtual functions. There’s also a follow-up with test code, make sure to check it out as well. I’ve decided to extend the test application a little bit and add one more solution - direct function pointers. Instead of having global per-class vtable, we can store function pointers in each object, thus removing one level of indirection.
13/Jun 2009
By admin
3 min. read
OK, the weird things. Please remember, they’re weird from me, which usually means they’re simply different to what I’m used to. It may very well turn out it’s Poland/Italy/France that are weird.
(you all just knew it’d come first, didn’t you) Buying alcohol. You can not buy beverages stronger than 3.5% by volume in “standard” shops. There’s a special store network called Systembolaget where you have to go (government monopoly).
11/Jun 2009
By admin
2 min. read
Finally got my laptop back, so let’s restart with a quick warm-up note. I’ve been in Sweden for over 1 month now. When I came here I realized it’s almost symbolic, because I started my first gamedev job in May as well. 7 years have passed and here I am again. Different country, different company, different weather, but same feeling.
Sweden’s a very nice, quiet country. There are some weird things here, but in general it’s very foreigner-friendly.
5/Jun 2009
By admin
1 min. read
This word is usually enough to send shivers down the spine of most developers. This time, however, it’s something nicer. Check out the session program for Siggraph 2009 (bottom of the page). If I’m not mistaken it’s the first case that Polish gamedev is represented here, so it’s a kind of milestone for our small industry. My mate - Michal (we spent 5+ years at CD Projekt Red) - wrote paper together with Peter-Pike Sloan (yes, this PPS) and he’ll be presenting it.
29/Apr 2009
By admin
1 min. read
Doh, I got like 10 e-mails already asking about “The List” I mentioned… A little tired with explaining it’s just a very incomplete, totally subjective, personal list. Visit gamedevmap.com, scan Scandinavia/Netherlands area and you’ll get most of them :). Several people asked if I considered other Polish companies. I did, actually, but ultimately it doesn’t seem right now like there’s any company here able to produce game matching The Witcher scope and recognition.
29/Apr 2009
By admin
3 min. read
(…or continuation of this note)
Damn, it seems like that laptop thing is more serious than I expected - motherboard died. They’re not sure yet if they can replace it, when or how much will it cost. I had a tiny note about virtual functions there, but cannot be arsed to code samples/write it again, so it’ll have to wait.
In the meantime, other things have been cleared out, contract has been signed, so I can as well make it official.
11/Apr 2009
By admin
1 min. read
Damn, it seems like my Dell died. It just won’t start, something with power most probably (it doesn’t matter if I try with AC or battery, though). I’m going for quick vacations on Monday, so won’t have time to fix it before… Hopefully next week I should have it back. I had an article 90% ready there, but HDD should be OK, so I’ll publish it as soon as I can retrieve it.
7/Apr 2009
By admin
9 min. read
I normally don’t try to link to every interesting industry story, there are better sites for this. However, I’m gonna make an exception, because it’s worth notifying. Scottish developer - Realtime Worlds (Crackdown) has just announced they’ll be offering paid overtime for its employees. While “no overtime” would probably be ideal, it’s still very commendable move in our industry. Publishing it here, to help spread the word, they surely deserve every bit of PR.
5/Apr 2009
By admin
1 min. read
“Almost perfect…” - story of Word Perfect (competitor of MS Word, for young readers), interesting read,
Two-part blog entry from Jeff Vogel, if you’ve ever wondered on indie RPG sales - this one’s for you (Jeff’s owner of Spiderweb Software, probably the most famous indie RPG developer),
Superannuation - great source of information about top-secret/canned projects. Usually data-mined from resumes, but not only. People are really careless sometimes…
1/Apr 2009
By admin
1 min. read
Wow, kudos to GDC folks, they’re really fast this year, many presentations can be found at the official conference site already. Even better, documents have meaningful names for a change, instead of typical s1533262.pdf. I’ve updated original post with some more links. I didn’t put separate entries for new publications that can be found on tutorial/slide page, if you’re interested – see comments, some additional links there.
Old comments ed 2009-04-15 18:19:59 They just blocked access to slides.