Session Notes: Life on the Bungie Farm: Fun Things to do with 180 servers and 350 processors
Feb 22, 2008
**Speakers: **Luis Villegas, Sean Shypula from Bungie Distributed client/server system split up, runs it in parallel * processes user submitted tasks in parallel * 180 rackmounted machines 300 processes * can use * Advantages speed up time consuming tasks - (rendering goes from day to a few hours) * see results of work more frequently which means more iteration which enables adding more polish * Automates complex processes and reduces human error, ( * click a button and get email when job is complete Main processes on the farm…more
Session: Star Wars, The Force Unleashed
Feb 21, 2008
**Full Title: **Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: How LucasArts is Building a Game Development Team and a Technology Pipeline…at the same time Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a new, upcoming title **Storyline: **Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, between episodes 3 and 4 Designing the Game Big 5 questions - What’s the story, what thing is going to always be fun (using force powers) * unchecked ambitions * Concept art - Lots of images and they’re beautiful, some landscapes look like Wow’s Outland concept art * Pre-Vis work * Rapid prototyping - If I had to do it again, I would have devs prototyping gameplay planning and scope - Add a step to milestones to cut off scope - we shot for the moon, it was too hard, make it decreasing scope a part of every milestone.…more
Top 10 Interesting Nuggets from the Microsoft GDC Keynote
Feb 21, 2008
The US video game industry revenue is now $18 Billion and continues to grow. 2. Games have not only surpassed the movie industry, they have also surpassed the music industry (source: Jupiter Research) 3. 7 different Xbox titles sold over 1MM units in the 2007 holiday season 4. Xbox has the highest number of games rated > 80 by Metacritic 5.…more
Session: Taking Xbox LIVE Arcade Games to the Next Level
Feb 20, 2008
Note: I’ll be regularly blogging on session at GDC (Game Developer Conference) _Rough _notes Speaker: Scott Austin: Xbox LIVE Arcade, Microsoft I just interviewed Scott and we’ll be posting the video on Channel 9 in the next few days Games N+ - Level editor * P2P versus server (doesn’t need to be policed) * RezHD Input Achievements GeoWars * Pacifist - 60 seconds of living * Drives different behavior * Tetris Splash * Every unlocked achievement adds new fish to your fish tank * Small Arms * Buzz around non-descript achievement * You had to play against someone who had the achievement * Then play against someone who has the achievement * Indirectly played against someone that has the achievement (2 devs had it and achievement spread from there) * Braid * Coming out soon * 65 levels * Uses time as part of the game mechanic * Parallel time stream, distort time, reverse time * Meta story - find the meaning of life * Similar to bioshock * Ikaruga * Polarity - Black or white * Black kills white * White kills black * White ship shooting white actually helps you * Schitzoid - * Co-op - only black can kill black, only white can kill white * Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4) * Allows you to integrate your music into the game, not allowed to integrate your music into rhythm game, (ex: can’t do guitar hero with your music) * Rip music off your DVD - E4 will figure out rhythm and analyze the music automatically * Texas Hold ‘Em - Statistics * Analyze win/loss, flop, turn, bankroll, hands you’ve received * Undertow * Art/graphics to a new level for an arcade game * Cut scenes in-between levels, immersive experience * 16-person multiplayer game * Double Dragon (retro games) * Extras section - read storyline, original artwork, hints and trips * Take away * Innovation is really important to us * Innovate in any direction * Push the envelope * Questions * Statistics - Do we have stats on how many games are selling?…more
This Week on Channel 9: Feb 8th Episode
Feb 08, 2008
This is Episode #2 of This Week on Channel 9 a weekly recap show of our favorite things for developers including Channel9 videos, samples, bloggers, news, and much more. This week we cover: Changes to the show based on feedback, our name courtesy of Ian and ChadK, and Benny Hill style set adjustments including more light! (0 - 2:45) Microsoft and Yahoo: What could it mean for developers and Brian Shapiro’s Coffeehouse thread (2:45 - 7:59) Windows Server 2008 Launches, Alex Hinrichs, Windows Server Project Manager talks about Server Core, his favorite feature (7:59 - 9:32) Under-Reported Windows Vista SP1 features for developers via Tim Sneath including new kernel, and 3.…more
Personal Note to Joystiq: There is no Coding4Fun Wii60 Conspiracy
Dec 20, 2006
Some of you may have seen the recent Joystiq post “MS gift guide suggests Wii controller”, also linked to here and here quoted below. _Ever since Peter Moore made his famous statement ostensibly _[_encouraging people to buy a Nintendo Wii_](http://www.joystiq.com/2006/05/11/microsoft-befriends-nintendo-in-fight-vs-sony/)_, the _[_Wii60_](http://www.wii60.com/)_ ideal of Nintendo/Microsoft solidarity has become something of a phenomenon. The idea of the the two companies cooperating against Sony has persisted despite few public signs of any sort of alliance.…more
XNA Open House Pictures, and the XNA Acronym
Dec 13, 2006
As Major Nelson mentioned in his blog post, XNA had an open house on Monday night at the Xbox campus. Here’s a video of the launch event including Major Nelson interviewing Dave Weller. Unfortunately I only had my camera phone, so the pictures aren’t great, but here’s an XNA game running on the Xbox Here’s a blurry picture of Channel9’s Rory Blyth doing a video interview Big props to Dave for getting the event organized on such short notice.…more
XNA Game Studio Express RTM'd - Create Pong on your Xbox
Dec 11, 2006
Congratulations to the XNA team for getting XNA Game Studio Express out the door! You can Download Game Studio Express here Clint has a good summary on the Coding4Fun blog XNA Blog Announcement Details To get you started, Coding4Fun’s ZMan has a how-to article on building your firstXNA game, Pong, err, TinyTennis. **XNA Party Tonight (Monday Dec 11th) **Anyone and everyone is invited to the XNA Open House party tonight, in Building E from 6-8pm PST.…more
Xbox 2 and XNA Studio at GDC
Mar 10, 2005
Xbox 2 will have a multicore processor and be able to perform one trillion calculations per second. Not only that, you can use XNA Studio, built on Visual Studio Team System to develop games. Sweetness. Quoted from the Microsoft press release * _A well-balanced system that will deliver more than a teraflop of targeted computing performance _ * _A multicore processor architecture co-developed with IBM Corp. that provides developer “headroom” and flexibility for the HD Era _ * A custom-designed graphics processor co-developed with ATI Technologies Inc.…more
Summer of Express Contest
Jun 29, 2004
In coordination with the launch of the Express products, I’m “Super-Excited"™ to announce the Summer of Express Contest on Channel9!!! It’s time to break out the hot dogs and belt out some code as the good folks at Channel9 our hosting the Summer of Express Contest! All you need to do is write code and you could win an Xbox, 1 year of Xbox Live, and a copy of Halo 2!…more