Archive for August, 2008
Playstation Slim
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Uncategorized on August 23, 2008
I got my monthly paycheck today so I went to the shops and came back with one of the new Playstation 2 slim models. This is a bit of an event because I haven’t owned a games console since the Sega Megadrive some 12 years ago.
And while I’d like to have one of the next gen consoles, the PS2 has an extensive library of games and is priced at NZ$200 (Roughly twice that of a cheap DVD player.) And I don’t have to go out and buy a new HD TV to take full advantage of it’s capabilities – Made it a far more attractive purchase.
Thankfully PS2 titles are also alot cheaper than their next-gen counterparts, and as the PS2 lifecycle is essentially at its end – Much like how some people think that 70s music is better than modern music, time can be my filter and I can pick up the ‘must have’ titles with the full retrospective advantages of hindsight. Nice.
So I picked up two games Kingdom Hearts and Shadow of the Colossus and am enjoying them very much. I had to keep giving the controller to my flatmate in Shadow of the Colossus, not traditionally being a console gamer has made me somewhat retarded when it comes to 3rd person action titles. But the game is very epic with an amazing art style and accompaning score.
I also noticed when I was at the games store was how annoying it is when the store doesn’t have the games I want – I looked in the PC section and there was just nothing I wanted (they didn’t even have the Orange Box in stock) its like I’m not being targeted as a consumer anymore.
Thankfully the PC is an open market and anyone can develop for it – And with the exception of some really big titles, It looks like indie games and digital downloads are going to be the primary source (for me at least) for PC games.
Getting back into the swing of things
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in rQuest on August 2, 2008
So its been a few weeks since my last post. I mentioned before I have started a new job so I’m slowly transitioning into working out how to schedule my freetime. Work on rQuest has slowed as I’ve spent the last couple of weekends doing some research for work in order to better get up to speed in that area.
I did get some coding done today which was great, I added some wordwrapping capabilities to my SFML extended string class. Now I know what must feel like to be working on browser text rendering or even word processing software AKA the killer app of the late 80s. Text is such a fundamental part of computing that we often take much of it for granted – That is until we have to write our own text controls.
I spent the other half of the day evaluating tools for project management. This is the first time I plan on working with anyone other than myself so tools to assist in this area will be a vital part of development cycle.
I’ll probably use Google Docs to share information and specification sheets amongst team members. Documents can be made public or you can make them viewable by invite only. So I can store all my design documents and required asset lists there.
I signed up for a free account with Acunote – A project tracking tool which is based around the idea of doing short sprints. (If you are familiar with the Scrum process, Acunote is a Scrum-based project tracker.)
I like having to-do lists as I don’t have to try remember where I was up to when I sit down to do some work. The nice thing about sprints is that you can filter by “Assigned to user”. That way you can make your to-do list not seem so daunting by leaving jobs unassigned until you are ready to tackle more work.
I also installed Mantis a free php based bug-tracking tool. Mantis probably won’t get too much use until later on. But I might start testing it out with Caverns of Underkeep – There are a couple of bugs in that game that could probably do with fixing and I’d like to get it out of Beta sometime this year 