barrettcolin

7 ms·

1.
by barrettcolin 14y ago
I see this new note on the Adobe Alchemy labs page: "Domain memory (used by Alchemy) and Stage3D hardware acceleration – when used in combination – will be part of a premium tier of capabilities for gaming in Flash Player, enabling a new ge
2.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
That reminds me: I noticed that humblebundle.com is apparently involved in the purchase transactions for the recently released 'English Country Tune'. So maybe there's more afoot than just the bundles themselves: http://www.englishcountryt
3.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
For the sake of completeness, here is where I read that: http://www.ode.org/old_list_archives/2004-December/014735.ht... From looking at the game code, I see odd things like rolling barrels animating their rotation as though the physics e
4.
In Some Virtual Worlds, the Thrill Is Gone(businessweek.com)
2 points by barrettcolin 15y ago|0 comments
5.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
The slightly longer and more correct answer is the source release contains the game engine source and the Doom 3 and RoE game DLL source. The Doom 3/RoE game data is still required.
6.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
It includes the source code for the expansion pack game dll (in d3xp). You'll still need the original RoE assets (when I went to install them on Windows, the installer crapped out because I wasn't on Windows 2000 or XP, but you can just cop
7.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
I'm not sure where I picked up the info, and I haven't looked at the code to confirm it, but I believe the physics engine implementation is tied tightly to both the collision detection system and the entity update, both of which are quite s
8.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
You don't. It's only implemented for Win32 (see neo/tools/edit_stub.cpp).
9.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
Surprising? I wouldn't say that; C# is used in lots of non-Microsoft places these days: http://www.fastchicken.co.nz/2011/09/15/c-its-just-not-porta...
10.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
Unexpected, but not without precedent. XNA on Xbox/Windows Phone 7/Windows, Unity3D across its range of supported platforms; it'll be interesting to see with Sony come up with.
11.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
You can get a pretty good idea from looking at the mod sdk code, which is available from here: http://iddevnet.com/doom3/ There's quite a lot available in the game code; the physics system at least, maybe also the script interpreter? I ha
12.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
He may be referring to Scaleform (or another Flash GUI library; I don't think he specifies), but he's also talking about his experience with scripting in Doom 3- which I'm fairly sure didn't use Flash.
13.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
RAD game tools, purveyors of lots of 'middleware' for games, have developed their own Flash playback engine called Iggy. I don't know how it rates, but its an option: http://www.radgametools.com/iggy.htm
14.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
My understanding is, "drawing" (in-view composition) is largely, if not completely, software (Quartz2D). Composition between views is (can be, at least) handled by the GPU; and that may well include animation of views. I don't know how abso
15.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
This isn't new news if you've been following this business since the start: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552563
16.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
As a complement, Chris Hecker has kept some of his notes regarding OpenGL vs. Direct3D around: http://chrishecker.com/OpenGL It seemed quite important at the time that he- who begat WinG, which begat DirectX, some of which is covered in R
17.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
Reportedly, it isn't restricted to just in-app purchase: http://twitter.com/#!/jamesthomson/status/70095343605391360
18.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
I'm not an IP lawyer, but according to this other post the patent at issue was filed in August 1992: http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-opinion-in-several-bl... Won't that expire in August 2012?
19.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
It was recollection on my part; not backed by empirical evidence. For this exact case, though: wouldn't you better handle this with floating point exceptions?
20.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
I've had fairly heated arguments about this in the past and I'm curious to know if anyone else holds the same opinion: I contend that a normalize function is a really bad place to put an assert. Chances are the normalize will be called freq
21.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
Digital Foundry has a series of interesting articles about measuring input lag in console games; I think this is the first: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-...
22.
by barrettcolin 15y ago
Another excellent resource is the archive of Erin Catto's GDC presentations (Erin is the author of Box2D). Box2D was first presented in 2006; the 2005 presentation is about an iterative method for constraint solving in 3D. Zips are here: h
23.
10 startups awarded €50k each by Enterprise Ireland "Competitive Start Fund"(siliconrepublic.com)
2 points by barrettcolin 15y ago|0 comments
24.
by barrettcolin 16y ago
Spot on, I think; I would add that as well as being a subject matter expert, you will also need to be intimately familiar with the hardware architectures of the Xbox 360 and PS3, since 'optimized' solutions for these platforms will need to
25.
by barrettcolin 16y ago
To my knowledge, this is actually the second such fund being made available since late last year. I guess the first one was oversubscribed, which (I hope at least) augurs well. If you're in Ireland and you didn't hear about the first round
26.
by barrettcolin 16y ago
Also, Java as a language is - unless I've missed something in my experience of it - a very bad fit for interacting with the OpenGL API. In particular specifying data in tightly packed or otherwise specifically arranged (interleaved, in part
27.
by barrettcolin 16y ago
You might also find this useful: http://jet.ro/2007/08/13/immediate-mode-graphical-user-inter...
28.
by barrettcolin 16y ago
I'd read up on the concepts behind Immediate Mode GUIs; here's a handy tutorial: http://sol.gfxile.net/imgui/ You trade some flexibility and input latency for a simple imperative structure that is easy to implement.
29.
by barrettcolin 16y ago
"Stupendously inefficient" is a bit of a stretch for me in regards to Unity; I think it has a fairly well thought out - if admittedly rudimentary - GUI system (in its second iteration, upon which the editor application interface is also bui
30.
by barrettcolin 16y ago
Broadly speaking, simpler is better on modern CPUs and GPUs. Testing an array of spheres against a view frustum is cache friendly, can be sped up considerably using SIMD instructions and is easily parallelizable. Submitting superfluous data

More ›