last post! Tanzania was splendid, and climbing Kilimanjaro was a terrific although exhausting experience. I have added some photos to my rarely updated photo gallery in case you want to see some proof.

On the projects front things have naturally been standing a bit still these last few weeks – but not any more!

My friend and collaborator Nick ‘Lost’ O’er There is actively working on something new, a musical video of some sort but it’s still unknown exactly what this means. We – yes you heard right, we – also have a new musical piece in the works, with me arranging and Nick playing the violin. Hopefully it will please your ears when it’s ready.

Last but not the least; we’re back on track with Pivot development! The last major change was an upgrade to the latest version of Game Maker, GM8.  Doing this cost us a couple of hours of work, but it paid off! One problem that we kept facing while working in GM7 was its sprite engine. All the sprites we drew in Flash and Photoshop would have jagged edges in Game Maker – it just wasn’t possible to make them look smooth. GM8 however comes with full PNG alpha transparency support, allowing all our sprites to be silky smooth. Apart from this feature the new version also fixes a heap of bugs and saves both CPU and memory.

]]> http://cheesemedia.net/newsblog/?feed=rss2&p=296 3 http://cheesemedia.net/newsblog/?p=264 http://cheesemedia.net/newsblog/?p=264#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:09:35 +0000 LostOverThere http://cheesemedia.net/newsblog/?p=264 If you’re a frequent Ubuntu user chances are you’ve heard of people suggesting that Ubuntu has gotten decidedly buggy and broken, with even The Register commenting on the lack of polish in Ubuntu 9.10. But when it comes to bugs – how does the latest version of Ubuntu compare to previous editions of the distribution? Using statistics provided by Launchpad, lets find out exactly how buggy Ubuntu has really become.

One of the first things people look at in regards to bugs are how many open bugs reside in each version of Ubuntu.

Interestingly enough,  the amount of open bugs has stayed relatively steady since Ubuntu 8.10, with Intrepid (8.10) containing 290 bugs compared to 272 in Karmic (9.10). In contrast to this, the last Long Term Support edition of Ubuntu (Hardy – 8.04) contained the most open bugs with a whopping 466 bugs remaining open to this day.

Consequently, Ubuntu 9.10 faired decidedly worse when it came to the number of Critical Bugs, with a total of 3 critical bugs in comparison to 0 in Hardy (8.04).

Despite what would appear to be a worsening condition in terms of critical bugs, it is evident that the number of new bug reports has dropped substantially in previous releases.

In Hardy (8.04), a phenomenal 172 new bugs were reported. Since then, this figure has been steadily decreasing with 101 new bugs reported for Intrepid (8.10), 63 for Jaunty (9.04) and then on to 55 in Karmic (9.10).

So there you have it – despite what might be said, statistically, Ubuntu is not getting more buggy and is in fact improving when it comes to total open bugs and new bugs. It should be noted however that these reports don’t necessarily demonstrate precisely how many bugs exist in Ubuntu, and are influenced by many factors including how well each version was tested prior to the time of its release.

Source: Launchpad (Data correct as of 22nd January, 2010).

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Sometimes in life, its good to reflect back on what has happened over the year – and what better time to reflect then your first year’s anniversary. Yes, exactly one year ago on the 2/2/08 Cheese Media was officially launched by two delicious developers who envisioned the year only getting better. How wrong we were. But why hide your mistakes when you can look upon them and laugh. Not all of these moments have happened in this past year as many of them have happened before Cheese Media was alive in the days of the old Cheese Games. But who cares, the fact that they’re rememberable seems to justify their absurdness.

Let’s get started.

5. Getting a Fan Email

You have no idea how happy Pete and myself were when we got our first fan email about Cheese Media. It was not long after we read the email that we both realized that we had reached out to someone. Yes. We reached out to someone. I remember opening the email and read it out loud. “w0uld u b intested in sum disc0unt v1@gra. i sell chep 5 cnts a p0p u by now”.

4. Hiring Pete (Petter West)

This has got to be one of the greatest moments and rightfully deserves a place on our Top 5 Moments. Some monkey that used to program for me had died and I was walking down the streets at 4am at night when I bumped into Pete and said “Wow, nice T-Shirt. Do you like the Who?” naturally he replied: “I also make video games and animations” then I said “So what?” and he said “So maybe I can join your company” and I said “What makes you think I own a cheap multimedia company?” and he replied “The Pants” and then I said…well actually this conversation isn’t that interesting but I’ll write it down anyway.

3. Earning 5 Cents in One Day

There is something incredibly satisfying about Google Adsense. Not just the fact that you make money, but the fact that we live in a world where anyone can slave away all day making craptacular games, films, music and animations and earn 5 cents in a whole day. A million thoughts rush through your mind over all the things you could possibly do with that 5 cents. Will you buy a single grain of rice? Buy 1% of a Big Mac? Take you friends out to a coffee shop claiming “I’m paying” and when they drink their cups of coffee and the bill arrives you can tell your friends you only paid for the hand wipes? Or Buy an Easter egg, fill it with thumb tacks and give it to the person you love most? The possibilities are amazing.

2. Predicting the future

If there’s something developers like to do, it’s estimating release dates and looking ahead. So when we launched Cheese Media, what would be more natural than writing a blog post about how many releases the year would have. The Cantor, tons of films, Pivot ‘as well as another game or two’. Sounds orgasmic! But how well did we really do?

Well, guess what! The only release we had in a whole year was a single song. And what happened to all that awesome content we had to promote Cheese Media? The Last Eagle had to be taken down only a few weeks after release and the Pivot demo was later intentionally removed due to pure suckage. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking – there are fortune tellers who can predict the future better then us. For what’s it worth though, Pivot is still in development and is set to be released on the same day that Duke Nukem Forever is out, and we do intend to release The Cantor and a few new films eventually. But until that day comes, we’ll both have to keep predicting the future.

1. Releasing Splat Attack

Imagine you have just finished programming the worlds greatest arcade game, imagine you are about to release the most graphically advanced game yet and imagine the world has stopped to watch you release it. Well stop imagining, because that never happened. On the contrary, people were expecting the worst game in history – and that was being optimistic.

Now days, both Pete and I agree that it sucks. Unfortunately though, at that time we really thought that, or at least tried to think that it was decent because deep down we both knew we had just made something as thrilling as an invisible roller-coaster. Idiotically, we sent it to Mr.Chubigans to be included in his mini website “Simplex Bits”

“Its not quite what Im looking for in the SB line…It needs to appeal more…” -Mr.Chubigans

Everyone had pretty much the same opinion on Splat Attack, see if you can catch the blatantly obvious similarities in these quotes.

“Splat Attack sucks” -Blueflare

“It’s not the Ultimate Arcade Game. That much is for sure. It wasn’t great in gameplay. It wasn’t visually thrilling.” -Captain Ventris

We were torn, we knew that it sucked, and that last element of hope was dying. But just before we thought that all hope was lost we got another fan email, I was as eager as ever to read it, I opened it and read it aloud.

“What the f*** was that crap you call Splat Attack? You owe me 5 minutes of my life you bastard! I hate you!!!”

Once again I sighed and noted that we were getting real good at reaching out to people.

Sure all the consoles had their flaws, but nobody’s perfect. The new age of gaming had come, and it’s only a matter of time before they will mature. Predictions based on interviews and claims by analysts and company executives is what this article is about. Shedding a bit of light of what could be to come for the three major super powers of gaming – Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

Sony – The Playstation 4

Before we get started, let’s point out what the PS3 did wrong as a means of what Sony might be encouraged on improving upon next time. Unfortunately for many eager gamers, Sony’s PS3 was way over priced, sure, the PS3 blew everyone away with it’s incredible technology which was well ahead of time, but it certainly didn’t come cheap and that heavily impacted on sales.

If you asked me last year what the Playstation 4 would have contained, I would have claimed that Sony would turn their next console into the ultimate media centre. Let’s face it: when it came out the PS3 was by far the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market, and I would have guessed that they would try to make the PS4 something to compliment your HD TV. However, Sony have since released Blu-Ray players for as low as $300 Australian Dollars which blows that theory.

However, during the end of September, Japanese tech site and analysists PC Watch announced that the next Playstation would contain the same if not similar processor as the PS3 and would only add minimal technical advancements. Suggesting that Sony would focus more on innovation as Nintendo did with their Wii console while trying to price their console at something more understandable to people who aren’t wanting to sell their house in order to buy one. If you ask me, a cheaper and more innovative Playstation with the same manly power doesn’t sound bad.

Nintendo – The Wii HD / <Insert Suggestive Console Name Here>

In my opinion, Nintendo mastered their seventh generation console the Wii – well, almost. The motion controls were exciting and innovative, and the pricing was just sweet. But Nintendo by all means didn’t get everything right – certainly not. Sure the Wii was considerably more powerful than two Xbox’s, but that wasn’t enough this time around. Compared to it’s competitors the Wii felt like something from last generation.

Legendary Nintendo employee Miyamoto has spoken out about what he sees Nintendo’s next generation console will look like. Obviously, Nintendo’s next console has already been announced to be in Full HD. In addition to this, a report on What They Play claimed Nintendo are researching whether 128GB flash ‘hard disks’ are feasible, suggesting a bigger focus on digital distribution and mass downloading. Rumour has it Nintendo are planing on jumping into the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD battle backing their digital distribution system as a way to obtain games and possible even the ability to purchase other items such as movies. However this has yet to be confirmed and until then, will remain a rumour.

After the release of the Wii, a large scale survey was done asking people what they thought of Nintendo’s WiFi. The result was that people did not appreciate the friend code and didn’t think it was beneficial in child safety. Ashida, an artist who helped designing the Wii stated they are planning on giving the Wii HD a slick appearance in addition to future Nintendo consoles to come. Citing high quality surfaces.

What is known though, according to Nintendo is that the Wii HD development cycle will work on majorly beefing up the visuals and power of the console so it’s up to scratch with its next generation competitors, while keeping the Wii’s unique controls that made the Wii successful in the first place. An interesting move for a ‘casual’ gaming platform. However, if Nintendo can woo us with their amazing pricing as they did with the Wii, power mixed with casual gaming certainly wont be a problem.

Microsoft – The Xbox 720

Sure the Xbox 360 didn’t have any problems like being overpriced or underpowered but the console had its fair share of mistakes. In 2008 it was revealed the console was released early so it could have a head start over the PS3. It proved to work with sales scoring well for the first year. They were right, and sales slipped by 60% after the release of the PS3 with many hardcore games realising the PS3 was considerably more powerful, damaging the 360′s hardcore gamer badge. I will avoid talking about the mass hardware failures and 3-month warranty as it’s unrelated to the features of Microsoft’s next console.

Unlike Sony and Nintendo, the staff at Microsoft haven’t hinted to any specific features with different employees giving different stories. If you ask Shane Kim, President of Strategy and Business Development at Microsoft, he’ll tell you that Microsoft are exploring the idea of launching a digital system over the normal expensive piece of hardware. (Someone say Cloud Computing?). Microsoft have stated they intend to develop their own chipset for their next console in an attempt to lower the price of their next generation console.

Another Microsoft employee has stated that they’re aiming to make the next Xbox improve backwards compatibility, making Xbox 360 games run smoother, faster and look nicer. Sounds weird? Apparently they’re aiming to improve anti-aliasing and draw distances while making graphics sharper. I thought this was a given for new consoles. In addition to this, it is also speculated that the new Xbox will use interactive voice technology however this is currently a mere rumour.

One thing that is up in the air is what disc medium the new Xbox will use. The Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD competition has shown that Blu-Ray is the winning format. Newer Xbox’s have removed HD-DVD support and Microsoft has started backing off from the medium. If Microsoft decides to take a step back from the hardcore gamer approach, DVD’s may still be the adequate format in addition to a digital download service. However, if the new Xbox chooses to become a multimedia powerhouse, Microsoft will have to make the choice whether DVD support is enough or not. A decision which wont be taken lightly.

One thing’s for sure though, if the next Xbox is titled the Xbox 720 someone will need to go to jail for a very long time.

Conclusion

Nintendo have been relatively lucky with the Wii this generation, leaving Microsoft and Sony to battle out with hardcore gaming. The next generation could be considerably different though, with Nintendo wanting to beef up their console, while the other two still contemplating what direction they’re trying to aim for. If Sony keeps their current processor like PC Watch predicted, and they focus on innovation and Microsoft decides to focus on an improved processor as well as focusing more on a digital system, there’s no doubt we’ll have a straight out death match. But until these educated predictions can be confirmed, for now it will just have to remain as the Cold War of Gaming.

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