hughperkins - Slashdot User

Submission + - Requirements for a game development startup

Submitted by

Ti

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @02:29PM

Ti writes: "We are a group of four people who are planning to start a game development company. We have been negotiating with an established multimedia company regarding the finances for the past few months and they have finally agreed to finance the whole thing(the exact amount is still to be fixed though). To give an idea about the scale of the whole setup, we will be starting with mobile game development(flashLite and java based) at first, along with a flash games website mainly for publicity purpose, and then move on to the PC game development (hopefully in an year).

I am trying to work out the details of what will be required before we actually start the whole thing and will really appreciate if the people familiar with this field can help me out with the details regarding a few points listed below, and any others if they feel they are important

1. What is the initial investment we should be looking at? (Both for mobile games development and the later pc based ones)
2. What are the resources required for such a setup, inluding the hardware we should be getting ready to buy.
3. What sorts of skills should we be looking for in people we are going to hire.
4. What is the structure of the company in terms of people and their skills.
5. The details of a game development process.

I realize that some of these points may seem absurd for one reason or another but I am trying to find out if I am missing something important before start working on this thing (very likely considering I don't have working experience in this area).

All helpful suggestions and pointers are very much welcome. Feel free to be blunt about the lack of planning :)

Thanks."

Journal Journal: Thrill of the Grill 10

Journal by ces on Sunday April 22, 2007 @01:30PM

Fired up the grill for the first time this year.

Some comments/lessons learned:

Mesquite charcoal burns much faster than the regular stuff. Stick with the regular stuff if you need/want a long fire. I'll use the mesquite if I'm doing steaks and otherwise use regular charcoal.

While grilling oysters is kind of cool, you can get the same effect in a hot oven. Save it for when I am using a gas grill or when I want to impress guests.

Submission + - Video Card Repair Guide

Submitted by

Christopher Lewis

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @01:29PM

Christopher Lewis writes: "For those with lots of guts and no hope of warranty, this interesting little article may yet save your precious video card . I know how it feels to drop your vid card and lost a capacitor. My MSI 7600GT lost a capacitor recently. It's still functioning but if it does break down, I'll know how to fix it now that I have this guide .

Pitch from the article : If your expensive graphics card ever pops a capacitor after its warranty expires, is that the end of the road? Fear not! All is not lost. Let Empire23 show you just how you can turn your dead card into a fully-working graphics card. All you need are a few cheap tools and some chutzpah."

Submission + - Music formats and the future

Submitted by

dheera

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @01:18PM

dheera writes: "In digitizing my CD albums to my computer for personal use on portable devices, I'm debating whether I should encode them to MP3 or Ogg format. While I support patent-free formats and have a feeling that Ogg sounds better at a given bitrate, I fear that in the long-run, Vorbis will be forgotten, especially now that very few hardware players natively support it, and that my entire collection will have to be re-digitized to MP3 or some other format too soon. What do you recommend — will Ogg Vorbis continue to hold up and will it continue to be an accessible format for, say, the next 10 years?"

Feed Nano-nose sniffs out sickness (pheedo.com)

From feed by nsfeed on Sunday April 22, 2007 @01:12PM

A panel of nanoparticles is being trained to detect the 'scent' of illness by detecting particular combinations of proteins in body fluids

Submission + - Drummer for The Germs arrested for carrying soap

Submitted by

dwrugh

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @12:55PM

dwrugh writes: "Ah sweet irony:

http://www.ocweekly.com/news/news/don-bolles-keeps -his-nose-clean/27038/
http://cbs2.com/topstories/local_story_102004047.h tml

A field test indicated positive for GHB, the date rape drug. Using the same test kit, available on the web for $20 for a pack of 10, according to Bolles' attorney on NBC this morning, other soaps tested positive for GHB but of course since it is just soap when you test it in a real crime lab it comes back negative. Makes you wonder what other common household products also test positive; and how many others have been arrested based on faulty test kits who didn't have the resources to defend themselves."

Submission + - Personal data exposed! Can legislation fix it?

Submitted by

rabblerouzer

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @12:35PM

rabblerouzer writes: "Millions have had their personal information stolen because of lax security and may not even know it because of the patchwork of state laws that fail to mandate timely notification of victims. Boston-based law firm Mintz Levin is seeking feedback on what you would like to see included in draft legislation. You have a stake in this; speak up."

Submission + - climate change, international security

Submitted by

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @10:38AM

An anonymous reader writes: Today's Sunday Washington Times (the premiere paper for security issues if you work in the U.S. defense industry) is carrying an Op-Ed about the intersection between climate change and national security and the military. A shift in thinking may make the Defense Dept a leader in "saving the whales", so to speak, because environmentalism and changing climates have the potential to make stressed states into failed states, and therefore influence war and terror. This Op-Ed by a Brookings scholar in the area of climate change, Bryan K. Mignone, and a Defense Dept scholar based at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University, Mark D. Drapeau, is available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20070421 -103141-6343r.htm and also at http://climateofsubtleconlict.blogspot.com/. Like current energy issues, and challenging issues in the past (secure communications, internet, sonar, GPS) if enough people at the DoD get behind this, the DoD may become a leader im climate change, perhaps encouraging a generation of "green hawks".

Submission + - Dell will be selling PCs with pre-installed Linux

Submitted by

Elbethil

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @01:23AM

Elbethil writes: "Dell has recently announced that they will start to sell PCs that are pre-installed with Linux, in response to consumer demand from a 2007 survey as well as feedback given on IdeaStorm. According to Dell, "our first step in this effort is offering Linux preinstalled on select desktop and notebook systems." They have not yet announced which distros they will be offering, nor which specific computer models they will come on, but did promise an update in "the coming weeks.""

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