wacko

I was pretty sure that U2k4 used Unreal 2.0 and that 2.x big changes came with some console specific upgrades... like support for XACT etc.... but your right in that there is not much difference between the two other then the added support for specific purposes.

as far as I know UT2k4 uses 2.0 and not 2.5

You know they had another MMO engine that was free that was made by the guys who made that Ryzom MMO it was pretty interesting. Was a little more graphical I think in my last viewing. you gave a nifty project I will say. I noticed James Cameron was on there Advisory board So I am sure it can't be 100% ass and OMG how can you not have PVP for god sakes PVE is lame... LAME!!!!! Its like what the hell is the point of playing an MMO when you can kill the otherside. I mean look at WOW, PVE blows because once you get to the top level and then you get all your raid gear YOUR DONE, thats it there is nothing left to do. Now with PVP you are left with something to do. Now if you had a good world PVP model, that did not suck total balls, something where like it was a specific zone per say that players had to pass through in order to get to something... I am going to use my l33t paint skills for this folks. http://www.thewacko.com/pvpmap.jpg The reason this works so well is what ever faction is controlling the world PVP section gets some affect on there side, the reason why this would work out well is you could quest and stuff in the non-pvp areas and then when your all done with that stuff you have something to do. I mean there is a reason why PVE servers have like million of high level characters because there is nothing to do and its so easy to level. I just thought I would comment on that. Anyways nifty project keep us posted on its status and good to see ya posting again, and tell David Marsh HE ROCKS!!!!!

Just to follow up on a conversation we had in the channel last night about how the cross-platform stuff from windows to the Xbox 360 works It was said that the 360 does not do a re-compile of the binary when it copied over since the FAQ claims that you would compile on windows and then copy over the binary. I was not convinced that this was the case because that’s just not how cross-platform coding works. You still have to re-compile the code on the specific platform. This is why we can't run native windows applications natively in Linux or why applications like Firefox etc... are compiled for the different platforms even though it all comes from the same code base. So in finding out the answer I e-mail a friend of mine who is a manager on the XNA team. According to him you send over the IL to the 360, and the JIT compiler takes control. for those of you who are not programmer oriented, JIT stands for Just in Time Compilation, its used in a good amount of programming languages; to name a few: LISP, LUA, PERL, VB.net. JIT is platform independent, AKA ByteCode for nothing specific, we send the IL to the Xbox 360 and what this allow for is at Runtime the compiler for that platform translates it into native code. Which would mean that it does recompile the binaries for the platform, when it’s moved to the Xbox 360. Not that anyone cares how this all works but I just thought I would let Cascade know he is WRONG, and just giving an insight to how the inner-working of the XNA framework and its cross-platform abilities 

you know just to comment on this, programs like this are just utter crap and they do no teach you anything that could be useful later on. I would suggest modding or small game creation using something like DirectX. Now of course this would seem like a huge undertaking, but DirectX is really a nice framework at making small titles really easy to do. It will also allow you to learn some other languages outside typical c++. Which is something that maybe useful in the long run. I would agree with SpellBinder, its going to take a good amount of time. A lot of late nights, asking yourself why does this shit work and then come to find out you spelt something wrong. ITS GOING TO HAPPEN.

to give an update to this, MS has released a beta version of the XNA framework and the XNA studio http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gse/

aside from all this pirating talk, I think the game will be good.

so very true

I always find it funny when I start to think about why I enjoy working in this industry, reason being is that I always told myself prior to getting hired that I did not want to be a part of it. Computers were to be a small part of my life; yet for some reason I kept coming back. My declared major while in college was Political Science with a minor in Economics and yet some how I ended up working for a video game company doing programming of the sorts. I think the reason I enjoy it is more of the feeling of being a part of what zaphod calls the machine. Knowing that even thought my work may play a small part in the grand scheme of things; I am still a part of it and I can go out and say hey I helped make that. I would also say that I enjoy the people in the industry, you meet some of the brightest minds and the most creative of people. I mean looking back on something such as mapcore and I can say that during my time here I have gotten to know some of the smartest/creative people out there. That may never have been if it was not for this drive to be a part of it all.

well I think that the people who will be making these game are the people who see value in there idea.. I mean most MOD/Indie game never make it beyond a year and the ones who do I think should get a chance to become a little more well known. I mean we saw a lot of shitty shareware titles A LOT, but we also saw a lot of good ones and I think this will be the samething. I think we will see a good couple shinning starts and who knows maybe some of us will get out work up there

I knew one of these days the good old David vs Goliath conversation would make its way to these very forums. But what surprises me is that both advocates for either side prove to each other why one side is more or less worthless then the other. I think we can all agree that the linux operating systems have their fare share of issue. I work with it everyday both at work and at home and I can say while I enjoy the freeness; I also enjoy the idea of it just working, which is something linux does not always provide. While this same argument could be made for windows. But since we are not talking about windows I shall just make a few minor points in regards to why I have issue with linux. I work with about 16,000 HP server class blades that all run Red Hat Advanced Server 4, I also work with about 40 or so other machines that run Ubuntu Server. I have worked with Cent OS, Gentoo Debian, Suse, whatever they can mandrake now, a SElinux variant, knoppix and if you want to include the mac OS X backend that as well. To me they all suffer from the same issue and the reason why I will not be switching to linux anytime soon. First off the open source world prides itself on standards and seems to take a pot shot at those who go off and do there own thing. I mean a great example is IE, or the browser in general. We see all these open source browsers just because they feel that Microsoft and their IE browser was not standard compliant. Well because of this whole standards issue this creates my first bitch about linux. They can’t make up there damn mind. Its like every distribution you install has a different browser, every distribution you install has a different method of distributing their applications, we Yum, Rug,apt,yaste and many many more and they all use a different standard way of going about obtaining there files. I just feel that for an OS that is so big on standards you would think that they could at least figure out a common way to get updates to there applications. I mean Microsoft does not have 800 ways to update the OS we have ONE way aka windows update and we can choose whether we want to update or not. Second thing that pisses me off, Desktop, we have KDE, we have GNOME, we have blackbox, we have all the damn Desktop managers that when it comes down to it OFFER THE SAMN DAMN THING. Its not like going to one or the other provides me anything new or spiffy, no they could all provide the same thing. So I ask you linux folk to explain to me why is it every time I install a new distro I have to figure a new Desktop manager. On top of having a new Desktop manager, every distro customizes theirs because its free and open and everything is different and not in the same spot on every OS…hmm with windows I do not have to deal with this pain. One Desktop manager, one location for everything, the same fing control panel dialog boxes I do not have to re-learn my OS every time I install it. Third and final thing, I have to ask WHY WOULD I WANT TO COMPILE EVERYTHING ???? I mean explain this to me, I am developer I compile stuff all the time. Why would I go home and want to compile more; my browser or my document editor. Well because then you will optimize it for your system, and my question to that is… SO WHAT. Unless I am using some task that requires a huge optimization to my system why the hell should I give a rats ass about compiling my word editor or my browser. My final thoughts, now sure these maybe some harsh rationalization of the OS and here again I use the Linux OS’s everyday and I enjoy using them but these are a few of the issue that I think will prevent me and others from migrating. I do a lot of development on linux systems. I understand why its there and what purpose it serves but in my opinion it has spawned a lot of bloat software, pretty UIs and that’s about it. It has not saved me money, it has not saved me time or heartache. It has not improved my computer using by any large amount. The only think I can say I have learned from it is the vim shortcut keys since that’s the only worthy tool that comes with linux, well that and SCONs and GCC but I can get that for windows as well. So how can all you pro-linux people get on your horns and preach the words of free when your OS suffers from many of the same issues the non-free one does. And finally LONG LIVE THE AMIGA, AMIGA DOS PWNS YOU ALL

well with Microsofts Gamefest start today(monday) it seems some major annoucments are to come. One big one with be the XNA framework. for those of you who are not developers/coders this most likley does not mean much BUT IT SHOULD. The XNA framework is a Direct X sub-set built on top of managed code aka c# , which is a high level programming language that spawned off delphi in early 2001. The reason this is a big thing is it will make creating games on the DX platform EASY... but thats not all that comes with the XNA framework, to start it will allow people to distribute there games to the xbox 360, of course you must pay a small fee of 99 bucks a year but the tools and framework are free and you get a place on the Xbox Live market which will do wonders for small time game devs that want to get there name out. a lot of people could argue that this will also allow for a lot of shitty stuff to start popping up, but if anyone is will to put the time to create an engine or a game from scratch there is no SDK here folks they should get the chance to show it off and let the players see if its crap. The other big annoucement will be the free tools, if any of you have used visual studio(anti-ms people kiss my ass VIM SUCKS BALLS)you will be familar with the tools as its a sub-set of there express line which is free. these tools will also allow remote debugging of your 360 games as well. I think this is a big step in the right direction for the small time developer. and yes I understand you anti-microsoft people out there I am sure are just bahing at this; I see this as the new shareware model of the future its what allowed games like quake, doom and companies like ID, 3D realms etc... to become what they are today. I think this will help in an industry that is hurting. here is some info http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/pres ... dioPR.mspx http://www.gamespot.com/news/6155590.ht ... ws;title;1 http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/168 ... Gamers/p1/ http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=10458 http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene ... logyNews-3 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/ ... are14.html http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback138.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00002.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/techn ... f=business http://news.com.com/Play+your+own+Xbox+ ... 04939.html http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0806/352510.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060813-7490.html http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 122D44.DTL http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/ ... 267974.htm

this application is built on some really cool tech, using the Windows Presentation Foundation which is really just a markup lang. You can build applications just like this one now with current MS CTPs

Andrew Spiering - Blizzard Entertainment

Well two major things about the title... one its a Windows Vista only game at the current moment. Since it uses Directx 10 which right now is only in Windows Vista; Vista hardware reqs are a little higher then current day windows, but the major thing about these screens is that they are running on shitty quality hardware and by that I mean, everything we see of Crysis is being emulated across DX 9 hardware which means its not running at its tip top... since there really is no DX 10 hardware yet we should really wait and cast judgement when the game is running on its actual hardware.

having played the demo at E3 of this wonderful title, I must say it really does look that good. Its almost sad really because you spend more time drawn in by the looks then you do the actual game.

that mutli-lingual code is there just need to point to the xml stuff since I i did not have any time to get it all done... but i pointed ya in the right direction

well the nice thing about Supreme commander is that you can set it up that so when your units get built they get transported to the frontlines automaticlly. The game says okay where are the most units dieing lets send stuff there when its done getting built.

http://tinyurl.com/pprrz link to the presentation and no there is nothing offically online from them yet

i am telling you the demo was awsome... they showed some land battle that you were controlling on one side of the world and then you could come over to some ocean on the otherside of the world and telling your ships and subs to be attacking something else, the game looked good and the idea seem to play well in the demo.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/supreme-comman ... 958p1.html has a good look at it

While some of what you say is true; in that MODs do not need NDAs as most of the content they have is already pretty much owned by the original game creator anyway. But I will not say that non-commercial products do not need NDAs as there is a need for internal projects or projects that could have sensitive data to be protected. While there is some merit to some projects who use modding as a tool for prototyping their ideas and those should be protected under NDAs. I do here again agree that there is just no need for mods having any sort of NDA. Now as far as your comments in regards to agreements on the net not holding up as legally binding contracts, your are just wrong there. We have seen many cases in the court of law; that have allowed conversation on the internet to be admissible as evidence. E-mail conversation are just as usable as Phone conversation or face-to-face conversation. Along with that in many small claims court verbal agreements are upheld as legally binding contracts and the supreme court has stated in the US that internet conversations are just as admissible as verbal ones; which means that in many cases agreements on the internet could be held as a legally binding contract. While this is only true of course if your over the age of 18 or under the age of 18 and have parental consent(which in the case of a NDA a parent signing on your behalf). Just thought I would throw that in there.

Chris taylor gave a nice demo of supreme commander at E3 and it looks hot... The idea of the game is cool and the whole global mass scale thing is rather nifty. I do bet that it will do well among some of the more hardcore RTS players. as far as the game in this topic there is nothing they can do to salvage the Tiberium Suns Storyline NOTHING.

I'm sorry but its hilarious to hear that from a Blizzard employee. Wait, you are a Blizzard employee right? yes

I do and dissonance who are you ?