Sauce

Well I rocked up for a lecture today at university and the guy in front of me opens up his laptop and loads some game game which appears ot be using the Source engine! Alright I didn’t think the Orange Box was out yet, but it does appear that he was playing portal. The entire lecture nobody sitting near me was paying attention to the lecturer, we were all watching this guy play portal. Must say that it looks pretty cool.

What I’m surprised about is the lack of enthusiasm about the Orange Box! Seriously, I forgot that it was coming out, but I am still waiting until next week for the Xbox 360 version 🙂

Australian Gaming Industry

I would like to write a little about the gaming industry here in Australia, and in Queensland in general.

Many of you who are interested in game development might not realize what the bigger picture is like and who is involved. I myself was quite surprised to discover the number of game development companies in Brisbane alone. Quite interesting.

Firstly I would like to draw attention to the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) and to the Australian Game Developers Conference (AGDC).

Steam Update

I knew for ages that Valve Software was planning some cool new community and clan features for their distribution platform Steam. Every now and then I would load up steam just to see if anything had changed, and this morning was different, something had actually changed!

Initially I though that they would just make the friends system a little more stable and do some lame excuse for a clan system with no real benefit. I was indeed suprised when almost every aspect of Steam had changed in some way! The features I liked the most …

• Add links for other games on your computer
• See statistics about your friends playing habbits
• In-game interface which pwns Xfire up the ass

I always had an idea in my head of what Steam could potentially be, but every new update was never any closer to what I wanted. I can now say that Steam is very close to what I want it to be. Good job boys.

Focus Testing

Got my first chance today to take part in a focus test for an unannounced game being developed by Halfbrick Studios. We were originally going to test two games but what was supposed to be a one hour focus test session turned into a few hours of playing and talking about ideas which was really fun. So we only got a chance to play with one of their games.

Halo 3 Cheap

Want to get Halo 3 cheaper than usual? Well this is not cheap, but sorta is at the same time. Electronics Boutique is currently running a deal where they will give you a free Halo 3 pre-order if you trade in any three old Xbox 360 games. So I took my three games and asked how much they would buy them from me for. Apparently they would only buy me three games for about AU$35. So I put them on a pre-order for Halo 3 instead which is valued at about AU$90! Bargain?

XNA Game Studio Express

For those interested, I had previously started a blog with the intention of posting tutorials using XNA Game Studio Express. I did not continue with that series for a few reasons, but for anyone interested it can still be found at this address. In its current state of completeness it will be most beneficial to beginners who have never used XNA before. As always, some programming knowledge is required.

Fake Gamers

I would like to vent my frustration about the sort of people who call themselves “gamers”, but who will not accept the existence of a game unless it is on their favorite platform. For fuck sakes! Console controllers are just as awkward for you as a mouse was when you first picked it up! I am tired of converstions that go something like this:

me – “Mate have you heard about game x? I have been playing it for days straight. Awesome game!”
person – “Nope. Must be new? Maybe I’ll download it tonight”
me – “Cant download it… PS3 only release.”
person – “Oh cmon! How was I expected to hear about it? Why would they only release on PS3? Real gamers use PC’s!”

Its bullshit, really. I dont care that someone would not have heard about something because it is not coming out on their favorite platform, but to run the game down for the same reason is really pissing me off.