Most games are written in Excel



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @serguey123 said:
    Hmmm, it has a memory incorporated inside big enough for savegames

    If you take an Xbox 360, unplug the HD, unplug any memory cards, it has NO storage for save games. And every game released for the platform has to work in this configuration, although what "work" means is a bit subjective-- but it can't just say "sorry bud, no way", it has to let the player enter a game. Of course some games don't save anything anyway-- like Hexic, or Geometry Wars, etc.

    Correction. The "Arcade" versions that come without HD do not have memory card slot either, they instead have some Flash memory hardwired as the "memory card". I think it does report as Internal Memory in that case. I was researching that part for a friend who had one and was shipping it off for repair.
    Good news is that you can plug in a USB stick and backup the savegames to it.


  • @bannedfromcoding said:

    Correction. The "Arcade" versions that come without HD do not have memory card slot either, they instead have some Flash memory hardwired as the "memory card".

    Bunk. The version sitting in my living room not 15 feet from me is an "Arcade" version. It shipped without a HD, but WITH a memory card. And it (obviously) has a memory card slot-- all Xboxes do. It also (obviously) has a HD connector, to which I've connected the HD from my older "Pro" version that died. The only difference between the "Arcade" version and the other versions are: 1) it ships with a memory card instead of a HD, 2) it ships with a disk full of Xbox Live Arcade games. The Xbox 360 hardware itself is identical to the others.

    Now, the Xbox 360 has been around for many, many years and has had many, many different versions. I'd be willing to believe that maybe, in some country, at some time, in some configuration, the Xbox 360 you mention with internal memory and no memory card reader existed. But I doubt it. And if it did exist, and if it was called the "Arcade" version, then there are at least two "Arcade" versions.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I'd be willing to believe that maybe, in some country, at some time, in some configuration, the Xbox 360 you mention with internal memory and no memory card reader existed. But I doubt it. And if it did exist, and if it was called the "Arcade" version, then there are at least two "Arcade" versions.

    I grabbed one of the non-HD ones to replace a red ringed 360 (slap old HD on it like you did) and it did have an internal space to save at least some things to.  So in the US at least there have been ones with internal bits (and no card), basically the normal memory card that it would have come with was built in rather than using the slot.  These differences could also be due to the fact as you point out that they've been on the market for years so a few different configurations of the same basic stuff, I dunno.



  • @locallunatic said:

    So in the US at least there have been ones with internal bits (and no card), basically the normal memory card that it would have come with was built in rather than using the slot.

    Well, it normally has 2 memory card slots. Maybe they just glued a memory card into one. Still, I've never seen that before.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Maybe they just glued a memory card into one.

    I'll have to take a look and see when I go home, but that does sound like the quick way of doing it.





  • I can offer some more first-hand info.
    I bought an Xbox360 Arcade two years ago. It came with two memory card slots and no memory cards. It does have built in flash memory. I can't recall of the top of my head right now how much internal memory it has (like so many, I've bought a HDD) but i think it was 256 MB. i'm 100% sure it wasn't below 128MB. Which is quite enough for all your save game needs and most game updates.

    It's worth noting that I live in Serbia. I'm pretty sure my Xbox was imported from Germany, though, and did not come from an official retailer. At the time that was cheaper.

    Another useful tip i haven't seen mentioned yet is that you can get a regular (and regularly priced) 250 gb 2.5" hdd, flash it's firmware and stick it in an Xbox360 HDD case and voila, 250GB HDD for way less than half of what official ones cost.



  • As I recall, the first xbox 360 I owned was the first version of the Elite, it came with ample HD space but no inside memory, after that one died of the red ring of dead I had one european model (I can't recall the model) but sold it because PAL has always pissed me off (it was a present so there).  Then a couple of years ago I bought an Arcade, and yes, it has a memory inside, as I also bought later a 60 GB hd I don't use it but it is there (I think is near 256 mb).  I don't know if there are ports for the save cards, I'll have to check



  • That was a poorly-worded statement but it has some truth to it. Most parts of Game Design can be and are generally made in Excel, from items to enemy statistics and spreadsheets about game difficulty over time (stuff that is actually very useful for game and level designers, for balancing the game).

    Most programmers will hear that and say "WTF?" instantly but that's because they consider the code to be the foundation of everything. Games are created fairly different than your average business ERP, SCM or [3 letter acronym here]. Programmers may create the engine, but the "game" as a whole requires levels, assets, game logic, data etc. Stuff that is often conceived by a game designer in Excel or Word. That was probably what her teacher meant.



  • @LegacyCrono said:

    That was a poorly-worded statement but it has some truth to it.

     

     Erm.. no.

    What you are proposing is that people use various tools (like Excel, for its tabular formatting/presentation capabilities) as a means of capturing and tracking data (such as Game Design artefacts).

    I accept the statement that "most people track and organise things in Excel", even "some games designers use Excel to assist their planning" or "some game design is performed outside of coding languages and in utilities like Excel".

    I think you'll find that the phrase "MOST games are WRITTEN in Excel" is so poorly-worded that it is in fact totally incorrect and wholy inaccurate.

    If the teacher meant as you say, then that's what the teacher should have said. Good communication - in particular the effective delivery of accurate and correct factual information - is a fundamental skill required by all teachers, and for a teacher to translate "some games designers use excel as a planning tool" into "Most games are written in Excel" gives me concern about how they are misleading their students, especially when teachers are perceived as being a font of knowledge.

    I'm surprised nobody else challenged that fact when the teacher stated it.

     

    (frist post, BTW...)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @serguey123 said:
    Hmmm, it has a memory incorporated inside big enough for savegames

    The XBox? No. It has only memory for its own OS. (And now, its OS is actually bigger than that memory allows, which is why things like Netflix streaming is an application that needs installation instead of part of the core.)

    If you take an Xbox 360, unplug the HD, unplug any memory cards, it has NO storage for save games. And every game released for the platform has to work in this configuration, although what "work" means is a bit subjective-- but it can't just say "sorry bud, no way", it has to let the player enter a game. Of course some games don't save anything anyway-- like Hexic, or Geometry Wars, etc.

    That said, I think this was a dumb move on Microsoft part, since the original Xbox had built-in storage, the PS3 has built-in storage. In fact, the entire reason the original Xbox was shitting all over its competitors is because of its ability to use virtual memory to make it look 3 times more powerful than an equivalent console without a HD would. But eh.

    Not entirely accurate.

    The first gen this is true, but the new Slimline 360 has 4 GB of Flash Storage on the core model, or the premium model has a 250 GB HDD.

    And while that fact is far into pedantic dickweed territory, this isn't.

    As I suspect most of you don't spend a lot of time with an XBox, let me enlighten you.  It would seem that any serious game would need hard drive space, not just for an instance of SQL, but plenty of other things too.  And that's because they do, which is why Microsoft caught so much flak way back for the 360 Core version.  If any of you got that for a child, you probably went out and got a hard drive not too long after.

    The 360's hard drive was optional largely to encourage people to make use of the Live Arcade (this was done again with the 360 Arcade, which came preloaded with a bunch of Arcade games on a flash ROM.  Though that was much better.)  and ended up causing a lot of problems, because of all the reasons already stated that most larger games needed a hard drive, if only for temporary storage.



  • @Master Chief said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @serguey123 said:
    Hmmm, it has a memory incorporated inside big enough for savegames
    The XBox? No. It has only memory for its own OS. (And now, its OS is actually bigger than that memory allows, which is why things like Netflix streaming is an application that needs installation instead of part of the core.)

    If you take an Xbox 360, unplug the HD, unplug any memory cards, it has NO storage for save games. And every game released for the platform has to work in this configuration, although what "work" means is a bit subjective-- but it can't just say "sorry bud, no way", it has to let the player enter a game. Of course some games don't save anything anyway-- like Hexic, or Geometry Wars, etc.

    That said, I think this was a dumb move on Microsoft part, since the original Xbox had built-in storage, the PS3 has built-in storage. In fact, the entire reason the original Xbox was shitting all over its competitors is because of its ability to use virtual memory to make it look 3 times more powerful than an equivalent console without a HD would. But eh.

    Not entirely accurate.

    The first gen this is true, but the new Slimline 360 has 4 GB of Flash Storage on the core model, or the premium model has a 250 GB HDD.

    And while that fact is far into pedantic dickweed territory, this isn't.

    As I suspect most of you don't spend a lot of time with an XBox, let me enlighten you.  It would seem that any serious game would need hard drive space, not just for an instance of SQL, but plenty of other things too.  And that's because they do, which is why Microsoft caught so much flak way back for the 360 Core version.  If any of you got that for a child, you probably went out and got a hard drive not too long after.

    The 360's hard drive was optional largely to encourage people to make use of the Live Arcade (this was done again with the 360 Arcade, which came preloaded with a bunch of Arcade games on a flash ROM.  Though that was much better.)  and ended up causing a lot of problems, because of all the reasons already stated that most larger games needed a hard drive, if only for temporary storage.

    My Arcade came with 256 mb (most of it is empty as I use the 60 gb hd that I buyed later on) of internal storage, and no it is not a slim version (it has at least 3 years) and no, both ports for the memory cards are empty so it is in fact an internal memory build inside the big white box.  So there.  At least I tend to copy the games I'm currently playing into the hd.



  • I have the Business Ultimate version of XBox 360° and mine came with 366 MB of DDR plus another 12kB of bubble memory. It has only one memory slot card, but you can buy a USB adapter for its LPT port to plug in an external hard drive. The built-in arcade only has MS Pacman, but it's still fun. I've been thinking about hacking its firmware with a mod chip, but I really don't have the time anyway. Mostly I just use it for playing Angry Birds.



  • @Master Chief said:

    It would seem that any serious game would need hard drive space, not just for an instance of SQL, but plenty of other things too
    Just in case this discussion isn't boring enough already, I'm not a big console gamer, so perhaps this is commonplace, but for the first time recently I ran across a two disc game - Forza Motorsport 4, which incidentally is jaw-droppingly brilliant - where half the car/track content is on the second disc. Unlike others I've played before, that second disc only has additional content, and you can't play the game without putting the first disc back in. It's still playable with only half the cars - no saves would be a much bigger problem - but certainly the second disc requires a hard disk to use at all.



  • @MascarponeRun said:

    @Master Chief said:
    It would seem that any serious game would need hard drive space, not just for an instance of SQL, but plenty of other things too
    Just in case this discussion isn't boring enough already, I'm not a big console gamer, so perhaps this is commonplace, but for the first time recently I ran across a two disc game - Forza Motorsport 4, which incidentally is jaw-droppingly brilliant - where half the car/track content is on the second disc. Unlike others I've played before, that second disc only has additional content, and you can't play the game without putting the first disc back in. It's still playable with only half the cars - no saves would be a much bigger problem - but certainly the second disc requires a hard disk to use at all.

    That is retarded, most multidisc games I have seen are for either RPG (love them!), aditional content (like HD textures), or multiplayer and of course they allow you to play normally without switching discs all the time (well in Rage if you wanted to go back you needed to put disc 1 again but that was somewhat understandable due to the odd engine).


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