Posts by JamesL

  • Crysis editor

    From where I am sat working on first party PS3 stuff it seems to be going the other way. To be effective at my job I need to have a high level of skill with a wider range of packages and bespoke tools than ever before.

    Seems to me like every time the tools reach a point of maturity such that Joe public can effectively use them, the technology moves on a significant leap, meaning that a lot of your old skills are now redundant. Only your experience can be said to be truely transferable.

    /2p

  • Playstation 3 - Home

    I disagree. (I am really not trying to start a flame war here just giving a different point of view ).

    I think there has been a lot of bad press and a lot of hate directed towards Sony, but if you look at whats been going on I believe there has been a large shake up in the corporation. As the hardware has moved from PS2 to PS3 a lot of the old Sony old school has failed to make the transition, sitting on top of the market thinking that PS3 was untouchable. A ridiculous thing to think of course, but when you've been Market leader for so long, kind of understandable.

    Ken Kuteragi the Godfather of PS 1&2 made a few very bad press comments, the "Next Gen starts when we say so" being the worst. If you've followed the news, he has very recently been shunted to a position of no real direct power anymore and Kaz Hirai is now dealing with the practical day to day rollout of PS3 tech. Heard a bad word from this guy? Nope he's shut up and dealt with getting shit done.

    Over here in the UK we've had a few what I personally would call "dumb" comments come out recently too. David Reeves (Sony Europe Boss) telling the press that the emotion engine (PS2 hardware) would be removed from the PS3 and software emulation would take its place, with a consequently reduced range of backwards compatability (AT LAUNCH) was a dumb thing to say. Also the press release was very badly skewed in its coverage. The point of this chip removal and replacement by emulation was that it removed one of the barriers to producing cheaper PS3's. Everybody has been screaming out that PS3 is too expensive and that Sony needs to make it cheaper. Well this change to the machine removes one of those barriers to turning out a cheaper future versions.

    As I understand it from Phil Harrison's subsequent comments PS3 will have 1000 titles backwards compatable on European launch, with the internal test depts looking at something like 5k titles as an ultimate goal. What does 360 have? one hundred and something?. Sony were just stupid to say it would be fully backwards compatable in the first place, something I once again attribute to the old school of management being arrogant and not really in touch with the practicalities or realities of the tech.

    Behind all the stupid comments from execs and unfullfilled promises made by dinosaurs from the previous generations of management there are still a bunch of people working real hard to try and make PS3 a really cool and good fun console. I for one, just wish that the management and marketing would STFU for a bit because as Fletch so clearly puts it everything Sony say right now sounds like PR bullshit and no one believes them anymore.

    Anyways this is a long post for me. I generally don't like getting too involved in this kinda thread but I just wanted to post something that didn't say SONY= LYING CHEATING SCUMBAGS SCREW THEM.

  • Playstation 3 - Home

    At work I sit next to the guy who wrote the original design for Home. Three years ago.

    He's kinda gutted that everyone (understandably) thinks that Sony have ripped off the Mii concept as a knee jerk last minute thing, when that's not actually the case at all.

    Personally I do think the Mii's look cuter though.

  • C&C 3

    Quote from dux

    Look alike and are obscured by hundreds of unnecessary trees.

    Heh, playing Company of Heroes last night the first thing I found myself doing on every campaign was getting my tanks to blow the crap out of every single piece of "scenary" anywhere near my base. Visibility for the win.

  • Crysis editor

    Quote from Izuno

    I would rather have two 17" screens than one 24" widescreen monitor any day. It makes working with multiple applications sooooo much better.

    For dev yeah certainly, but for home I'd rather just have one large panel to game on. Got dual 21"s in the office one 24" at home. Of course I'd happily go to dual 30"s at home, but sadly the missus would kick me in the nuts (at best).

  • Running games well on behemoth resolutions (1920x1200+)

    I'm running a Dell 24 on an:

    AMD64 3700+ San Diego

    Asus A8N Mobo

    GeForce 7800GT 256m gddr3

    1 gig on Corsair XMS 3200 @ 2,2,2,5 (If I remember correctly...)

    I run CSS / Source at native res 1920x1200 with 2x AA / 4x AF / High on most settings and HDR and get around 50-60 fps on most stock maps but lower (30-40) on some of the heavier custom ones (like my own)

    Company of Heroes I run with most stuff on high or medium high, but I had to turn off the AA since when things got hectic it kinda ground to sub 10 fps and wasn't nice to play.

    If I had cash I would probably go for an 8800 with plenty of memory on the board. I believe (can someone confirm?) that when you are running very high res screens the extra ram on the card really helps performance. You probably want to make sure you have a bang up to date CPU, mobo and RAM if you are going to go with the 8800 series though since I understand you can get some pretty heavy cpu bottlenecking on older chips.