This podcast has a little storminess to it, as it was recorded during a thunderstorm. There’s also tons of interesting news.
This week’s items include:
Let us know what you think.
This week’s Gaming Podcast is exciting as we’re giving away a copy of the Xbox 360 version of Borderlands 2, which Jordan Lund drools over, while Jonah Falcon urges players to check out Kerbal Space Program. The Gaming Flashback is none other than the classic The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
As far as game news:
Finally, the Question of the Week is, “What is your favorite game from the decade of the 2000’s”. For some help, check out this article.
So, a day before the Xbox Series X preorder launch (which after the podcast was a complete shitshow), Microsoft drops the mic by announcing they just essentially purchased The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Prey, DOOM, and other major properties. Not much else to talk about, really.
The game news includes:
Let us know what you think.
Nothing is more annoying than going into iTunes to see what video games are available for the iPod Touch and iPhone to find it cluttered with hundreds of duplicate games. Developers seem to find it most useful to release two games instead of one single game: a full version and a “lite” version.
Developers know gamers want to try before they buy, so many will create a game they’re hoping to sell, then a limited “lite” version with partial levels or stripped of features. They’re obviously trying to work around the fact that Apple released a half-assed game shopping experience. These pro and lite versions assist in cluttering the shopping space.
iTunes App Store should allow users to trial a game by allowing them to download a neutered version of the game title or using a time-trial like many other downloadable game services. Electronic game downloads are usually non-refundable because you can never give back a product which you can make infinite copies. The solution to getting users to buy into your product is to allow them to try before they buy.
Apple’s obviously enjoying the immense game sales from the application store but they may be able to increase their sales by allowing gamers to see what they’re buying before they walk away empty handed. This would also limit the total products found in the App Store because developers won’t have to post to revisions to their game title to allow gamers to try before they buy them.
There are some obvious downsides, Apple wouldn’t be able to boast the thousands of products in their store because many would be substituted for a real game download system. Okay, that’s really the only download I can think of… any others?
Developers may opt out of a trial system, forcing gamers to buy it before they try it based on the text and screenshots or utilize a time trial or limited featured version.
Thoughts?
I like using keyboards for racing games that have simplified acceleration, braking, reversing, and turning such as TrackMania (four keys for all), but fighters and etc. are difficult for me via keyboards.
Mice allow for more angular granularity than controllers because of the area of movement across the mousepad/surface when using an adequate sensitivity, and mice can be polled around 1KHz or more versus controllers being polled around 250Hz, as far as I know.
If mouse sensitivity is set too high above 800 CPI or so, noise becomes an issue (quantization occurs at too low of CPI), so I recommend mice equipped with the 3360/3366 sensor as the older mice with 30×30 or less pixel/photo-diode arrays might have more trouble with noise because correlation imaging sensors will always be imperfect.
Here’s a thread regarding mice with said sensors from a reputable forum:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1602282/lets-compile-all-3360-3366-and-their-release-dates-for-everyone/0_100
The reason of 800 CPI or so being the sweet spot for current mice is, each pixel on the tracking surface or “matrix” is approximately 30 microns in diameter because of the lens magnification and sensor height from the tracking surface, so 25.4mm to convert an inch / 0.030mm = roughly 846.666 of these pixels are able to fit in an inch on the tracking surface, and the aforementioned sensors should be the same.
Each pixel is divided to achieve a higher resolution, so noise becomes an inevitable issue making a larger photo-diode array more ideal.
http://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-mouse-myths-busted/#page-1