Snowball - The Blog

Did you know that over at Coding4Fun they have been doing a series of articles on DirectX development for the past months? Well, at least, now you know!

At the moment of writing, the 10th article is up, talking about "Beginning Game Development Part X –Direct Sound Part III" and it can be found here.

The previous entries can all be found using the links below:

1. Beginning Game Development Part 1 - Introduction
2. Beginning Game Development Part II - Introduction to DirectX
3. Beginning Game Development: Part III - DirectX II
4. Beginning Game Development: Part IV - DirectInput
5. Beginning Game Development: Part V - Adding Units
6. Beginning Game Development: Part VI - Lights, Materials and Terrain
7. Beginning Game Development: Part VII –Terrain and Collision Detection
8. Beginning Game Development: Part VIII - DirectSound
9. Beginning Game Development Part IX –Direct Sound Part II

Enjoy!

Normally, rumors start somewhere in a dark corner of the internet. This time, Nintendo is starting one themselves.
How, will you ask? Well, head over to http://press.nintendo.com/articles.jsp?id=9938 . The big N claims that the actual launch date is hidden somewhere in the press release. While the article claims to be about release dates for the Cube and the DS, in the first sentence the release of the Wii is mentioned. By saying a few lines further that it might all be a little scam, it remains unsure whether the date is really hidden in there anyway.

Now, how does October 2nd come forward?
For starters, this is the release list for Q4 2006.
Oct. 9: Clubhouse Games
Oct. 16: Nintendogs (Dalmatian)
Oct. 23: Magical Starsign
Oct. 30: Pokémon Ranger
Oct. 30: Children of Mana
Nov. 6: Elite Beat Agents
Nov. 13: Yoshi's Island 2
Dec. 4: Custom Robo Arena
Dec. 4: Kirby Squeak Squad

Q4 starts October 1st. In the article, they mention that almost every week, a game is to be released, only on October 2nd, November 20th and November 27th, there isn’t going to be a release. If they would like to have the Wii released on a date that no game is released, these 3 dates are possible.
However, since Nintendo wants to have the Wii out there before Sony releases the PS3, only October 2nd remains as possible launch date!

If other puzzlers see some more in this press release, please come forward!

Now that Beta 2 has been around for some days, more and more tests are coming out. ExtremeTech did a special on games in Vista: installation, performance and the eventual problems were investigated.

We feel that Beta 2 is the appropriate time to start looking at compatibility and performance issues in Vista, and that goes for gaming (one of the big selling points of Vista) as well. So we spent the better part of a week installing a bunch of modern, popular games on the upcoming OS, noting what works and what doesn't, and trying to find some simple workarounds. Has Vista got game yet? Let's find out.

A lot of modern games are tested, like WoW, Black & White 2...

The conclusion: Overall, we're pretty happy with the state of gaming on Vista. This isn't a release candidate yet – we're still at beta 2. This is where most things should work, with only a few minor problems to work out between Microsoft, the games makers, and the hardware driver writers. On the whole, that's exactly where it's at.
...
So, while the current Vista gaming situation is encouraging, there is clearly still plenty of work to be done. Most games work, but there are some tricky bits with Punkbuster (run games as admin to work around), a big problem with StarForce copy protection, and some performance kinks to work out. With Microsoft proclaiming a "PC gaming renaissance" around the launch of Vista, they need to really deliver a fantastic experience, and it's not quite there yet. They need an A+ games platform, and it's a B- right now.

More here.