NO ATARI NO!

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

Could they pick a more boring location to show..

[Volourn]

"They can play it while heading to their PnP sessions. Or if they are waiting for other people to arrive."

 

LOL :D

 

 

"Hmm, this doesn't actually sound like a load of crap."

 

Too bad it's for the PSP.

 

Hopefully, they'll transfer it to another machine - be it PS3, XBOX 360, or PC.

Edited May 3, 2006 by Volourn

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

"Hmm, this doesn't actually sound like a load of crap."

 

Too bad it's for the PSP.

 

Hopefully, they'll transfer it to another machine - be it PS3, XBOX 360, or PC.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Other handheld makes more sense.

[Missy]

I've been looking at the DS today, and the available games, and trying on one hand to justify spending the money on it, and then on the other hand trying to talk myself out of it on the grounds that I'm not likely to play it that much...Oh the confusion.  Oddly, and on a vaguely related note I do regret selling my GameCube - sometimes a girl gets a craving for some Nintendo fun.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well if you still have all your old GBA stuff it plays that too. Although on the lite model the cart sticks out and catches on things.

 

Wi Fi is also fun , you don't have to listen to anyone who dosnt have your friend codes. Kills the batteries very quickly though.

 

There is a new Zelda, Mario , Metroid game , either coming out or already out so most of the classic Nintendo names are there.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You are a very bad ShadowPaladin - you are not meant to add to the list of reasons to purchase one...And yes, I still have some of my GBA games...

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

You are a very bad ShadowPaladin - you are not meant to add to the list of reasons to purchase one...And yes, I still have some of my GBA games...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sadly I cant really think of any negatives...

[metadigital]

I guess Atari figured all the DnD fans are on the PSP.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No, Atari saw how small the developer costs were for the PSP, and decided that as it was less than one of their executives spends on lunch in a week, that it was worth the gamble.

 

Now Carmack's talk changed gears completely. He recalled that several months ago he tinkered around with developing a game on a cell phone. (One nice thing about cell phone development is that it's still a very open platform - anyone who wants to learn can download Java and start programming.) Carmack says his experimental cell phone game was done in four months using just a few people. "There are a lot of really neat aspects to that," he says.

 

Here he drew a comparison between the computer games industry and his other favorite field, aerospace. Aerospace development is very, very slow because so much money is on the line with every mission. Every project is so mind-bogglingly expensive that there's no point where an engineer can walk up and say, "Hey guys, I've got this crazy idea..."

 

Game development isn't as costly as aerospace but, as game development budgets spiral toward the hundred million dollar per title mark, a similar culture is developing. "There is a strong incentive not to do something nuts," Carmack explains. Which is why we see so many sequels and follow-ups on game shelves. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that: Carmack asserts that Doom 3 or Quake 4 are fun titles that'll appeal to a lot of people. But it's hard for companies to bring fresh new titles or experimental genres to life.

 

Things are different in the cell phone space. Carmack put together a simple turn-based combat game for cell phones, small enough to fit into a 300K zip file. He described it as "almost a pure design exercise," and said that it got his creative juices flowing until he had "a backlog of a half dozen ideas" for other simple games. He theorized that small developers can create games on these platforms as test concepts, possibly channeling them into larger titles down the road.

 

Learning to code for the platform was easy and the results were fast. "I had the feel I had when I first started programming," he claims, pausing to talk about how hard it is for new programmers to come into the industry and figure out today's complicated AAA games.

...

http://uk.gamespy.com/articles/641/641662p5.html

 

... And the post mortem:

So, for the past month or so I have been spending about a day a week on cell phone development. Somewhat to my surprise, there is very little internal conflict switching off from the high end work during the day with gigs of data and multi-hundred instruction fragment shaders down to texture mapping in java at night with one table lookup per pixel and 100k of graphics. It

[Kaftan Barlast]

Iva talked to some Cellphone game devs and so on and I can say that its nothing Id EVER want to be involved in. Its like being transported back in time to 1981 except you have this tiny screen and no decent controllers.

[metadigital]

Mr Carmack doesn't seem to like Java very much, either ... still, with Qualcomm's BREW devs can use C/C++ instead! [/feeble excitement]

[alanschu]

Java I find is quite sloooooooooooooooooooooooow compared to C++.

 

I do find it quite a bit more "user friendly" and whatnot though.

[metadigital]

It's exactly the same, with pointers removed.

[alanschu]

I disagree. Syntactically they are similar. Which makes sense, given that the idea was to make something that looked like C++ so that people familiar with C++ would have an easier time switching over.

 

Technically pointers aren't removed at all, as everything except for a primitive is a pointer.

 

Java really limits the direct access to memory, which can be an excellent way to speed things up. The built in garbage collector, while also a nice convenience, tends to slow things things down. The upside of course is that memory leaks are more difficult to come by.

 

I'm not a 100% sure on this, but I think it is also easier to incorporate assembly code into a C/C++ program. AFAIK, everything compiled in Java runs through the Java Virtual Machine. Which is nice, as things such as little/big endian becomes a moot issue, as the JVM acts as an interface for the hardware. Theoretically, things that run well on one machine in Java shouldn't have much of a problem running on a different architecture that the JVM can run on (I say theoretically because I definitely am not an end-all/be-all user of Java. I haven't had a problems, and I know it is an advantage, but I'm sure there's some way to make sure this isn't the case).

 

This can be important because optimizations on blocks of code that get used a lot can be made by coding it directly in assembly.

 

 

All in all, C/C++ tends to beat out Java in game development because of the intrinsic speed advantages that it has. And with games (especially today), you want to get the most out of your cycles as you possibly can.

 

I find Java very popular in business applications though.

[metadigital]

Ah, the memory access stuff: that was what I was getting at. Thanks.

 

Oh, I've used Java in business. But you can't implement assembler in it, that's for sure (otherwise it woudn't be platform-independent), and even C/C++ is pretty poorly implemented in machine code (especially by a certain Redmond compiler) ... try dissaembling parts of Windows, for example, you'd be amazed at how much decidely un-optimized junk is in there ... "

 

So any real speed is generally garnered by a direct assembler-coded manipulation of the registers ... which is fiddly and generally only used for high-traffic subroutines (unless you are a friend of mine who prefers to programme in assembler).

[alanschu]

I'm well aware of the nuances of assembler. Though I only have experience with MIPS assembler, not x86 (or any other architecture).

 

While nothing will really compare to assembler (except maybe machine code....but assembler is basically the quasi-engrish version of it to make it minimally understandable), C/C++ are still relatively fast in my experience. Especially compared to Java.

 

Heck, C itself is quite a bit faster than C++, especially when dealing with I/O (though C++ has gotten better).

[Diamond]

and even C/C++ is pretty poorly implemented in machine code (especially by a certain Redmond compiler) ... try dissaembling parts of Windows, for example, you'd be amazed at how much decidely un-optimized junk is in there ... "

I can't tell for sure about Windows binaries, but Redmond compiler isn't bad.

Heck, C itself is quite a bit faster than C++, especially when dealing with I/O (though C++ has gotten better).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Really? Hmmm. I have just had a lecture, and the lecturer was ranting about a common misconception that I/O with C is faster than C++.

[Dark_Raven]

OMG! Computer languages. Oh how I disliked those courses I took in college.

 

What was the topic again?

[alanschu]

Really? Hmmm. I have just had a lecture, and the lecturer was ranting about a common misconception that I/O with C is faster than C++.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

My lecturer did comment that C++ I/O has made a ton of improvements in its performance that C's advantage is pretty much gone. I was under the impression that C still had a slight advantage, though that was 2 years ago now.

[metadigital]

Ditto Visual C++ ... Mircrosoft's marketing strategy is to barnstorm the niche with a loss-leading entry-level user-friendly-smiley application, then proceed to add more and more bells and whistles, until the product competes with the market leader, and they aim for best-of-breed. Borland used to be the duck's nuts, but that was before most of you were born ... "

[alanschu]

I use gcc/g++

[metadigital]

BSD Unix native C compiler ... " ... anything is better than the FTL* Modula-2 compiler.

 

*Faster Than Light

[Meshugger]

I use gcc/g++

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Are there any graphic-based interfaces for this compiler? Sure it's fast and relient, but doing everything from the command prompt is messy.

 

And P.S.,

Java rules at application programming (C# is quite good aswell), C/C++ is very good for for A.I. and API though

Edited May 4, 2006 by Meshugger

[Volourn]

WOW! From me whining about what looks to be an actual good turn base D&D game being on a silly handheld to.... to... THIS?!?:

 

 

"Are there any graphic-based interfaces for this compiler? Sure it's fast and relient, but doing everything from the command prompt is messy.

 

And P.S.,

Java rules at application programming (C# is quite good aswell), C/C++ is very good for for A.I. and API though"

 

'Nough said. "

Edited May 4, 2006 by Volourn

[Haitoku]

Um...

 

Back to the topic?

 

This game will probably do all right. The PSP gamers are starved... For just about every genre.

[mkreku]

The PSP is such a fantastic piece of technology (except for the UMD format) that it's an absolute wonder it hasn't gotten more third party developer support.

 

Good to see Atari at least trying to breath some life into the unfortunate machine.

[Haitoku]

The PSP is such a fantastic piece of technology (except for the UMD format) that it's an absolute wonder it hasn't gotten more third party developer support.

 

Good to see Atari at least trying to breath some life into the unfortunate machine.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo was up to it's old "No Cross-platforming" tactics again.

 

Poor PSP.

[alanschu]

I use gcc/g++

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Are there any graphic-based interfaces for this compiler? Sure it's fast and relient, but doing everything from the command prompt is messy.

 

And P.S.,

Java rules at application programming (C# is quite good aswell), C/C++ is very good for for A.I. and API though

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I'm not familiar with one. There may be an IDE somewhere that wraps on top of it somewhere.

 

I am enjoying using Eclipse for Java, and will likely look into the C++ side of it when I get back into programming in C++