"I dig my toes into the sand. The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds, strewn across a blue blanket. I lean against the wind. Pretend that I am weightless, and in this moment I am happy, happy.

I wish you were here."

- Incubus

• 5Nov 09

  Level Up!

  I do love a bit of shamless self-promotion! I'm now level 15 - hurray!

  • Posted Nov 5, 2009 8:15 am GMT
  • 1 Comment
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• 26Oct 09

  Pro Evolution Soccer 2010

  Just got the new PES game last friday (launch day, of course) and I've been playing for a couple of days now. I'm still going to wait until the end of the week before I consider writing a review, but so far it looks like a vast improvement over 2009's edition. Still a few issues that need worked out and a couple others that I'm unsure what to think of, hoping I will come the end of the week.

  • Posted Oct 26, 2009 1:04 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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• 20Oct 09

  Universal programming enviroments - the future of gaming?

  As a PS3 owner I've been a little dismayed by the quality of some of the ports the console has seen. Last year's RPG juggernaut, Fallout 3, is a prime example. The initial PS3 version was riddled with all sorts of issues from frame rate drops to freezing. Having played the game on my Xbox 360, I know that whilst many of these problems of problems affect 360 users, the PS3 version was especially bad. Sony's console has never been to far from the limelight this generation in regards to its notoriously difficult programming environment, and it's because of this I'm willing to cut Bethesda (and any other developer who has released a port of poor quality) a bit of slack – well that and the fact that I'm studying programming just now.

  I've just started my second year at university and after 6 weeks I can honestly say that the first couple are the toughest. I've studied programming right through high school using a common language Visual Basic (VB). After 6 years of creating programs with VB I had a real hang for it. Then of course, I started university and I was introduced to another language – Python. Looking back on my first year, I certainly found the first couple weeks tougher than the rest of the year. I know it sounds odd, surely the course should have increased in difficulty as I progressed through it? However, having used one language for 6 years, I found it very hard to kick all of my habits from VB. Whilst the logic for most of your operations was almost identical, the code and the syntax were not. Now in my second year, I'm working my way through Java and it looks to be the same story, the first 2 weeks were tough and since then I've found it much easier. But why am I boring you with programming? Simple, because my problem is one that affects programmers within the gaming industry.

  I can only imagine the difficulty that a programmer must have when switching from the Xbox 360 version of a game to the PS3 version. Whilst C and its variants are used by most major developers, each of the console's programming environments are different. So why not have a uniform environment as well as a uniform language? Then not only could developers jump easily from project to project but porting a title would be an extremely easy matter. Instead of splitting their time between multiple formats of a project, developers could focus on one, making sure to optimise it prior to porting it to which systems the game was to be released on. It would also result in vastly reduced development times, which means it's in the interests of developers.

  Mind you, getting Sony and Microsoft to agree to such an idea may well be impossible. Both invest countless sums of money into developing their machines to be top of the line consoles, and I doubt either would be keen to relinquish control of the programming environment to universal system. The other issue is a question of system optimisation; having built their respective consoles, Sony and Microsoft both build their environments to get the most out of their machines and extremely unlikely that a universal set-up would be able to produce the same kind of results. In order for a universal system to push both machines to their limit would require both machines to be the same, and that certainly, will never happen.

  But with the technology in console advancing with every generation, I can only see programming becoming more and more difficult for a multi-platform title and that worries me. Aside from the gulf in quality that this could result in between two versions of a game, all going well, I'll be one of the poor sods who has to endure these difficulties!

  -RK

  • Posted Oct 20, 2009 12:45 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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