GDC 2011 Report

2011-03-10

Here are some notes from attending GDC 2011.

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TGA Thumbnails (and viewer) for Vista and Windows 7 both 32 and 64 bit

2009-12-04

Several years ago I wrote a TGA Thumbnail plugin for Windows 2000 / XP. I skipped having a Vista machine and just recently upgraded to Windows7 64bit. I thought that now that I finally have a 64bit machine to do development on I'd try upgrading the plugin to work there.

I started researching how to do it and found out Microsoft added this subsystem they call the Windows Imaging Component. It basically lets developers make plugins to both read and / or write any image format, plug it into Windows and then any app which uses that system can start loading and/or saving those formats. The cool thing is Vista and Windows7 use it for both thumbnails AND for viewing images.

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O3D Presentation at Google I/O 2009

2009-06-03

I gave a presentation at Google I/O about O3D. In it I show getting started creating a small game in about 20 minutes.

(the sound cuts out for 30 seconds at 16:48)

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Video Games in Legos

2008-02-24

I was searching for photos on flickr and I stumbled on these images by some guy who goes by the name of Skinny Coder

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Russell's Quarterly.

2008-02-16

Tom Russel is writing a quarterly magazine about video games. The first issue, available here, is 74 pages long, 28 of which are about M.C.Kids.

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Magic Highway

2008-02-11

I have SOOO wanted to find this short animation for YEARS!!

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Best Buy S.N.A.F.U.

2007-11-12

So, I went to Best Buy today to pick up Super Mario Galaxy and they claimed it wasn't coming out till tomorrow 11/13. So I called Gamestop. They have it. I checked Nintendo's website it says 11/12. So I give this info to the robots at Best Buy hoping I don't have to drive across town to get it. Nope, their computer says 11/13 so they are not putting them out on 11/12 even though they have them. I'm curious what the story behind that is. Stupid mix up at Best Buy HQ or some other reason they are not allowed to put it out on release day. Oh well, Best Buy loses my sale. Worse for them, I was going to buy COD4 and the Ratatouille blu−ray but I'll get them all somewhere else.

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An Open Letter to EA - Open Source EASTL!

2007-06-14

I was recently made aware of something really great. A version of the C++ Standard Template Library that has been modified and redesigned to deal with the issues of game development. It was created by EA and is called the EASTL (Electronic Arts Standard Template Library)

Dear Electronic Arts,

Please make the EASTL open source with a BSD style license. You'd be doing the game industry and the software industry at large a HUGE public service. You'd be our heros!

I know that on the one hand you've put lots of work into it. You might even see it as a competitive advantage so you might be asking why open source it?

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Definition of a Super Computer - 1984

2007-06-11

cray.jpg

Wow! My cell phone has 128meg of ram. I guess it doesn't have 4 processors. It's hard to imagine that something so cool as a Cray−XMP only has a fraction of the processing power of first gen XBox (a 700mhz Pentium).

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Don't get mugged at GDC

2007-02-28

2 years ago 4 of my friends at Sega got mugged the day they arrived in San Francisco for the Game Devlepers Conference. One of them got a broken tooth and a concussion.

I don't know San Francisco that well but in the interest of trying to prevent something like that happening again here's a map.

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