Dead rising on the XBOX 360 has been consuming a fair amount of my time over the past couple of weeks. Its a fascinating game, and is extorting an unusually wide range of emotions in me.

As a game, it doesn’t really match the way I like to play. I like taking my time, exploring areas, and slowly mopping everything up. I’m an explorer and collector. I like to be able to say “Yep, I’ve done that, no need to go back to it”. Dead Rising thinks I play like a pussy and hates me for it.

The save system is utterly horrible. Capcom, as usual, have created an extreme solution for storing your progress. Thankfully falling short of Steel Batallions “wipe your save if you die” system, it only allows you to have one save at any time. If you play a while through the game and decide that your save has left you in an impossible situation, you have to choose start again. Now, while you start at the beginning again, you do retain your status (gained from saving people, killing zombies, psychopaths etc), so will have more health, a larger inventory and new skills. But….. you have to go through everything again.

The second problem is with the clock. The initial game lasts 72 hours (in-game time), and at certain times events will happen. These are setup as either “cases” (the central plotline - where did the zombies come from) and “scoops” (people to save, and random psychopaths doing their thing - this is where capcom have excelled themselves in creating some wonderful characters. love the tubby lezza cop). Anyway - I admit I’m pretty rubbish at the game, but this turns into a complete onslaught when you start playing. There is so much going on everywhere that until you get used to the way the game is structured its overwhelming and its easy to thing you’re playing it wrong. Its also really easy to get stuck in terms of strategies to employ. Most of the human characters are impossible to kill without guns. But guns are really not that common, unless you read an FAQ to find out where the hidden ones are located around the map - or knock-off the gun shop owner (who of course, requires a gun to take out).

I can see why they’ve made these design decisions. The pressure of the pacing and sense of vulnerability that the game creates is hugely effective and helps to create a really unique experience. But, its just so frustrating as it clashes with my playing style so much. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the story mode. I keep playing a bit further then deciding not to save as I don’t think I’m in a good situation. I don’t want to restart the game as I don’t want to have to go through all the sections I’ve already beaten again - so I’m making no progress. I really think they should have created a “pressure off” mode as an option. Let you play through the first time with time passing at half the speed and allowing multiple saves. Get comfortable with the game and then go through it again.

Don’t get me wrong - in many respects I love the game. The joy of driving a bike round the mall, or slicing up zombies with a Katana is extremely good, but I just wish I could make progress a bit easier without all this stress.

I’ve had a bit more of a chance to have a dig through XNA game studio express, which has been an interesting experience. This is the much-publicised “hobbyist” dev-suite from Microsoft, which significantly can target both Windows AND the Xbox 360. The next dashboard release will include a “Launchpad” feature, which allows you to send over software created in Visual Studio Express and execute on your 360. The output is in the form of managed .net 2.0 code, which gets dynamically recompiled on a virtual machine on the target platform, much like Java.

This version doesn’t contain all functionality. Xbox 360 execution is missing, as is the Content Pipeline, a key component to making hobbyist development much easier. It may be that the functionality of this release has been significantly reduced, in which case any criticism here may not be warranted for the final release.

Currently GSE only supports Visual C# 2005 Express. This means that if you want to create games, you have to learn C#. I’d never touched it before, and armed with the online C# Tutorial, I gave it a go. If you’re familiar with C++ or Java, it shouldnt be a big deal to make the switch. I won’t go into C# in much detail, but in general it seems very tidy - unlike C++ there are no pointers or header files, and no need for memory management (theres a garbage collector). Autosense works wonderfully in the IDE and compile times seem extremely quick.

I was really surprised with some of the decisions made in terms of what to include in the package. While most operations are made really easy for you (Texture loading, Polling gamepads, playing Audio), graphics operations are simply a NIGHTMARE for beginners. First of all, theres no fixed-pipeline, you have to use shaders to render anything on-screen. This is a massive headache to those just learning 3D programming, and requires a shitload more code. I learnt to make 3D things a while ago by playing around with Shockwave3D (to get a good understanding of models, textures, scenegraphs, lighting etc), then moving onto OpenGL thanks to the Nehe tutorials. The fixed pipeline and existance of immediate mode help introduce concepts slowly. With XNA GSE, theres no opportunity to provide this gentle learning slope. There’s also no camera class provided (as far as I’m aware), and world/view/projection matrices need to be passed directly to the vertex shaders to render anything in the correct position. While I’m aware that it doesnt claim to be a game engine, and that products such as Torque X will exist to bridge this gap, its a shame that more wasn’t bundled in with the release to make graphics development easier.

Hopefully the next version will address some of this, and I’ll do an update when its available. There’s more info on the XNA team blog, and samples from XNA spot. Download from the official XNA Game Studio Express page.

Inspiring. Found at Muttpop. You can read more of David Lynch’s experiences of Maharishi transcendental meditation here.

Once again, Pingmag has a interview with a photograper specialising in capturing buildings that appear to be more in-keeping with the output of the pens and paints of Syd Mead than than contemporary architecture. This time its the turn of Frederic Caubin.

These pictures are mostly of Soviet buildings constructed in the 70s and 80s - a lot of them are particularly striking and posess a wonderful retro-futuristic aesthetic. There is a real sense of hunger for the future, and something quite laputa/shadow of the colossus of their lonely existance, in a future that didnt quite live up to the dreams of their architects. Caubin himself believes they convey some sort of nostalgia to the viewer.

Finally got round to having a more in-depth look at ActionScript 3, having been dedicating most of my time recently to more game design, virtual worlds and 3d development (I’ll try and post a first-look at XNA Game Studio express over the next week or so).

Anyway, I’ve got the Flash 9 Alpha installed at work, and wanted to get a look through whats going on with the new release. Theres a nice overview here on Adobe. Ugh - I still can’t believe Adobe bought macromedia. I still shudder everytime I load a PDF in my browser. Obviously the rendering engine remains unchanged (hence why it used to be called Flash 8.5), but with the new display lists functionality is a godsend and negates the need for some of the hideous workarounds that used to plague Flash development.

The Good

Strict-typing - allows for more robust code and reduced use of dynamic types (which are extremely slow)
AVM2 - The new virtual machine has JIT (just-in-time compiling), allowing for much faster code execution. I’m not sure why its not faster still - it really pales in comparison with Java
Display Lists - Hugely useful, these allow you to add/remove visual objects (MovieClips or the new Sprite class) without deleting them or setting them to invisible, and most importantly allow reparenting of visual objects.
Proper MovieClip object initialisation - When you create a new object that is a subclass of a MovieClip, you no longer need to use attach movie to create it with its associated movieClip - you can just use its standard constructor and use addChild to add to the display list of the appropriate displayObjectContainer. Very tidy.
Binary Data Loading/Sending - If you can be bothered, you can now load any file you see fit. Want to write your own TGA file reader? Go for it. Want to open and expand zip files? No problem

The Bad

No access to shape data (as far as I’m aware) - I wanted to write a few bits of code to access items in the library and create some interesting effects (animation, manipulation). While some of these (particularly shape deformation) are possible with displacement maps, it would be nice to have the opportunity to have the equivalent of vertex shaders.

Theres an article on fxguide discussing Lightstage 6, capture technology for the special effects/post production industry that allows a figure to be captured and then completely relit and viewed from any angle within a scene. It includes a treadmill to allow the actors to perform locomotive actions such as running or walking.

The result is hugely impressive - producing hugely convincing scenes and provides those working in post-production with huge amounts of flexibility and the ability to make significant changes to shots after shooting or re-use assets from previous shots.
You can view a quicktime overview here. (Well worth watching)

Thanks to Nick for the link