Here’s my notes from the first day of the Austin Game Developers’ Conference:
Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category
Austin GDC Notes: Day One
Sunday, September 21st, 2008Back from Austin
Friday, September 19th, 2008Got back last night from the Austin Game Developers’ Conference. The AGDC this year was amazing; every talk was either full of useful information, entertaining, or both. (more…)
VMWare Fusion Beta 2
Thursday, July 31st, 2008VMWare Fusion is an application for the Mac that lets you run Windows as a virtual machine. No need to reboot into Windows to play games, you can just startup Fusion and run any Windows app right from your comfy Mac OS desktop.
They’ve launched a new public beta (version 2), which you can download and try out for free. It’s beta software, so it’s not for critical stuff, but should work fine if you’re curious about the software.
I gave it a go on my work machine. Installation was easy, and it automatically detected the Boot Camp partition I’ve been using to run Windows with. Starting the Windows machine was easy, and it felt prety responsive.
…Until I tried to run a game, that is. I started up Fable, a not-too-recent game with low graphics requirements. After a few screen hiccups, the game started, but Fusion warned me that “some shaders are not supported, and some elements may not display.”
I clicked past the warning and started a game anyway. Lo and behold the missing shaders were: me! The main character displayed as just a pair of eyeballs floating in space. Really creepy, and kind of a deal-breaker for me.
So I shut it down. Or rather, tried to shut it down, but had to force quit and reboot my Mac to regain control of the machine.
It didn’t perform well for me, but I’d still suggest giving the free beta a shot. Who knows? You may find it does everything *you* need it to do, and be worth picking up a copy of Fusion 2.0 when it comes out.
Quoted
Friday, June 27th, 2008Erin Hoffman at The Escapist put up a new article in a “Tools of the Trade” series that has a quote from yours truly.
The article has a good rundown on the tools indie developers are using to solve their problems without breaking their budgets. Check out Erin’s previous article giving a general overview of game tools, as well.
Oddly enough (to me), my quote came out of a series of emails sparked by my response to a question Erin put up on LinkedIn. Score one for Web-based Social Networking!
ToT Reviews EVE
Saturday, December 22nd, 2007The Trackball of Truth has posted a review of EVE Online that sounds all too familiar: great graphics, steep learning curve, klunky user interface. Naturally, he’s stopped playing the game.
I had a similar experience with EVE. I didn’t think the learning curve was too bad (maybe I’m too used to number-crunching my way through a BattleTech game), but even though the graphics were stunning, I spent most of my time flying through space, looking for something to do. I stopped playing because I was bored, something I didn’t think was possible in an epic space opera game.
What about you guys? Any of you tried EVE, or another MMO, and quit because the interface was too hard to figure out or the gameplay was too boring?