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Comment Re:Lame article (Score 2) 150

I am a game developer, and i fully agree. This article didn't teach me much...

Also, it's funny how non-developers looks at the concept of a "game engine". Any time that a game studio releases a tech demo and proclaims "this is our new game engine!" it's almost always the old one with improvements. Might be as little as tweaked shaders and new 3d-art.
A game i worked with got a "best technology" award from a magazine in the end of the last year. What the frak do the reviewers know about our tech anyway? For all i know, we used some quite instable and often non-revolutionary tech to piece together a game that looks different from others.

Comment Re:Let's Be Honest (Score 1) 261

It appears to be much easier to simply spend oodles on marketing and advertising rather then produce something original.

Blame it on the market, history tells us that good games and games that get good reviews does not necessarily sell. Well advertised and hyped games, however, DO sell.

Comment Re:Fuck you, developers. (Score 5, Insightful) 261

As a senior game developer, i can tell you that no game released nowadays is EVER complete. And trying to making a game complete is like trying to write all the digits of Pi. It cant be done, you just have to draw the line somewhere and say "this is good enough". We work until our employers pry our hands from the keyboards and force us work on a new project. Then we sneak back and work a little bit more on the old one either because we are ashamed of the quality or because we love the project. And we HAVE to move on to new projects, otherwise game development would not be economically feasible and there would be no AAA projects such as the ones mentioned in TFA.

And the point of doing minor DLC is not to make money from it directly. The point is to give a promise to the consumers that there will be DLC shortly, and make them hold on to their copies instead of reselling them, which would bring zero money to the publisher. This is not some theory of my own, it is what our publishers tell us when they are ordering us to do minor DLC. Why they charge so much for stuff that would have done it's job perfectly when released for free is beyond my understanding though.
It's funny that the example in TFA where the true strategy was most obvious, the DLC for Alan Wake, was where the author was most happy with the product...

Comment Re:I would approach teaching that course... (Score 2, Insightful) 172

To be a successful artist in game development you need a sturdy technical foundation. No need to be a engineer, but you definitly need to be a geek and have a strong passion for games.

I have been a game developing 3d-artist for many years, and i'd rather hire a geek that became an artist than a "fine artist" that learned to do 3d.

Comment Re:Project Offset (Score 1) 184

Yes they had some impressive tech and good artists, but about every experienced game developer in the field (including me) realized that super-ambitious projects started by a handful of indies in a basement rarely makes it to the shelves nowadays.

If you want to create a hit as an indie startup, you make something like Braid or Limbo.
Math

7 of the Best Free Linux Calculators 289

An anonymous reader writes "One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function. However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more. Occasionally, the calculator tool provided with an operating system did not engender any confidence. The classic example being the calculator shipped with Windows 3.1 which could not even reliably subtract two numbers. Rest assured, the calculators listed below are of precision quality."
The Military

US Tests New Missile Defense 278

pumpkinpuss writes "The US military yesterday shot down a missile in a test simulating a long-range ballistic missile attack by a potential adversary such as North Korea or Iran. The target missile was launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, at 3:04 PM Eastern time, tracked simultaneously by several ground and ship-based radars, and intercepted by a 'kill vehicle' 3,000 kilometers away over the Pacific 25 minutes later, according to the Missile Defense Agency. Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly said, 'The kill vehicle was sent to a very accurate spot in space giving us great confidence.'" Reader gilgsn points out the testing of a different "multiple kill vehicle" by Lockheed Martin, which was able to hover over the ground and track a target. Video of the test (WMV) is also available.
Medicine

Surgeons Weld Wounds Shut With Surgical Laser 151

Ruach writes "The promise of medical lasers goes beyond clean incisions and eye surgery: Many believe that lasers should be used not just to create wounds but to mend them too. Abraham Katzir, a physicist at Tel Aviv University, has a system that may just do the trick and is proving successful in its first human trials."
Games

Review: Gears of War 2 193

The original Gears of War was one of the most popular games of 2006, helping to solidify the Xbox 360's place in the console market. Since then, it's sold about 5 million copies. When word leaked out that a sequel was in the works, many wondered if Epic Games could reach the bar set by the first game. As it turns out, they could. Gears of War 2 will feel very familiar to those who have played its predecessor. Games often have a way of reinventing themselves as sequels come and go, but Epic stuck to the basics of what had already worked so well, and simply set about improving, polishing, and fleshing out the Gears world as much as they could. Read on for the rest of the review.

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