Tag Archive for 'Bit-tech'

Bit-tech: iPad gaming review

By Alex McLarty on April 15, 2010 in News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

While other websites with bags of blood money are able to get iPads shipped over from New York, here at TMG I outfitted each of our writers with a large magnifying glass for their iPhone instead. I’m not cheap, I’m cost conscious.

Anyway, Bit-tech have put together a decent look at the iPad and some early games. They’ve even got some moving pictures, also known as video:

The iPad has been covered extensively throughout the media, and as with all our coverage, we wanted anything we wrote to be unique, technical and interesting to you, our readers, so we’ve initially decided to take a look at how the iPad fares as a gaming device. This area has been under-explored in other reviews, or dealt with quite badly - so Joe and Alex have spent the last few days playing a variety of games on the iPad, and we’ve got both our impressions of the device for gaming, and how the games themselves are.

We’ve reviewed eight different iPad games over the next few pages, and we also took some video of the games in action…the video will give you an idea of how the iPad runs, how quickly the games load up and what they’re like…

Bit-Tech: porting games

By Alex McLarty on August 18, 2009 in News and Thoughts. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Interesting article on Bit-Tech about porting:

Once the basic code is written, it goes through an automated process of recompiling, which is often created in-house by a developer as a part of its tools pipeline, in order to make it run on other processor architectures. In this case, compiling refers to the process of transforming high-level source code into low-level code that can be understood by the processor. After that, there’s usually a bit of tweaking in machine code (the native language of the processor architecture) or assembly code (a low-level, symbolic representation of numeric machine code), but this apparently occurs less frequently now.

“It’s all done in C++,” explains Visceral’s Colin ‘Bozz’ Boswell, technical director on Dead Space, adding that “we do write a very small amount of assembly code. Very occasionally, we’ll go in and do spot optimisations on functions that are used a hell of a lot in the game, but we try not to do that because the compilers are pretty good at optimising now, and sometimes you can actually make matters worse by doing [it yourself]”.

Games can be dismissed easily, so I enjoy articles that talk about the nature of development. So much goes on behind the scenes (like in any great endeavour) that it’s often a disservice to try and summarise or judge.

For the future, yo!

By Alex McLarty on February 5, 2009 in News. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Eating breakfast and scanning my RSS feeds. Ain’t I the modern man. I am not however applying moisturiser, I’m not that modern. So, before I pop off to University to learn about lovely OOP and SQL, here’s a tid bit from Bit Tech:

…it’s important to remember that the 8800 GT was a fine graphics card at launch. And although getting a little long in the tooth since its October 2007 release, is still able to slug it out with the ATI Radeon HD 4830.

Although the article was about a revamped, pornographic 9800 GT 512MB XXX Edition GPU, this one paragraph surprised me a little. My Mac Pro, the beast of the Apple lineup, uses a one and a half year old GPU. And that’s the crème de la crème. I knew the card was aging, but I’d somehow just let it slide…

And while Bit Tech are right, it’s still a decent card, it’s by no means a halfway decent for gamers. We need more power. More pixel pushing. More effects! We need more! More! Mo!

Windows still a first-class gaming platform

By Alex McLarty on January 28, 2009 in Thoughts. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Bit tech report:

Microsoft may not have got Games for Windows Live right yet, but is still standing by PC gaming.

Although Microsoft has made some rather substantial cut-backs in their gaming divisions, terminating the entire Flight Simulator studio in the process, the company says that it still believes that Windows is a first-class gaming platform. 

The comments come at the same time as Microsoft appoints a new general manager for the controversial Games for Windows Live division which has been met with scorn from many gamers. Chris Early is apparently being replaced with Ron Pessner, who is being taken from Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, according to Kotaku.

“Moving ahead, Microsoft will continue to invest in Windows as a first–class gaming platform through great Windows out of box experiences, our online gaming services including Games for Windows – LIVE, MSN Games, and Messenger games, and through new games for Windows developed by Microsoft Games Studios,” an MS spokesperson said in a statement.

Imagine Windows and Mac gaming is cinema.

Now showing on the Mac would be the occasional indie classic with the odd blockbuster every six months. Going to the cinema is expensive on the Mac.

Imagine going to Windows and seeing hundreds of movie posters, critics, reviewers, countless creative studios, hype and of course, movies of every kind that are always released first and are IMAX, 9.1 surround sound. Oh, and it’s cheaper.

Which would you visit?

bit-tech: game release dates

By Alex McLarty on January 8, 2009 in News. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

2009, the year of the Ox: hardworking, patient, and second in the race to cross the river, beaten by that pesky little rat that sat on his nose. Maybe Apple is the Ox? Hardworking, patient and usually second in terms of games?

Completely unrelated, nonsensical comparison? Bah! No! Look, game release dates from Bit-tech!

Sega of Europe today announced in a press release that the Gearbox-developer shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines would be out in time for Q1 2009. That’s Q1 by the financial calendar though, which means the title should be with us by July by Sega’s current reckoning. 

At the same time, Atari have laid down a more concrete release date for the upcoming Ghostbusters game, pledging that the multiplatform title will be released on all platforms at the same time. Mark June 19th in your calendars…unless you’re a PSP gamer that is, in which case you’ll have to go without. The good news though is that Ghostbusters will be hitting practically all other platforms. 

Electronic Arts meanwhile has given a rough date for the first big expansion pack toSpore. According to Kotaku Electronic Arts is readying to release Spore: Galactic Adventures in time for Spring.

Not much Mac there. We’ll probably get Spore: Galactic Adventures though. And by “multiplatform” for Ghostbusters, that means “everything but Mac”.

Yes, news is slow! Year of the Ox!