Dev Links: Getting With The Program

Playing time, programming languages, and procedural generation are just some of the topics covered in today’s Developer Links.

Cook, Serve, Delicious Update #7: Boosters and Detractors (Vertigo Gaming)
“Today I thought we’d take a look at a new segment of the game called Boosters and Detractors, which will change up the strategy of Cook, Serve, Delicious in a whole new way. When you’re shopping around to buy the latest foods to serve on your menu, you’ll notice a cluster of icons on the left, as shown last week. These are the Boosters and Detractors, and they’re very important on deciding which foods you should serve, and which ones you might hold back on.”

Detail Textures and Tank Cornering… (Cliffski.com)
“This is much better explained through video so here goes…”

Updated Playing Time Estimate (Instant Kingdom)
“When buying games, people often have a look at playing time estimates to see how much gaming time they’ll get for their money. But there are many problems with this approach. More is not always better, the same game spread over more hours doesn’t make the game any better. If a game playing time is inflated by useless grinding for 200 hours, only a select few will like that more. And of course, if you have a huge backlog of games, shorter games might actually be preferable. With Driftmoon our target has always been to get as much fun and adventure into each minute as possible.”

Behold, Countryside Generator Screenshots! (Big Robot)
“A dozen screenshots of Sir, You Are Being Hunted are here for you. These are taken from the past thirty minutes of us running around in the game. Nothing here is hand-placed. The screenshots haven’t even been particularly agonised over. We just ran and fired off the screenshot key. This is what Tom‘s procedural British Countryside Generator creates. Details of how he’s done this will be coming up in the next few weeks. For now though, click for full size – and do click, the visuals become much clearer at higher res!”

E3 2012 Debriefing (Unknown Worlds)
“E3 is one of the ‘big ones.’ Everyone is there. Everything is big. The halls are filled with more lights and sound than the crater of an active volcano. Into the Las Angeles Convention Centre we marched: Suitcases full of if demo machines borrowed from Alienware; Monitors ripped off desks; Speakers scrounged from around the office. Our room was humble, but the response from press was universally positive. For all three days, we met new people every minute. Here is a round up of some of the early coverage of NS2 from E3 2012. We hope more articles will pop up as the week goes on, and as they do we will add them here!”

Why Do Programming Languages Survive? (The Verge)
“Why is it that some programming languages like C stick around despite being ostensibly obsoleted by newer ones? Wired takes a look at the work of Princeton and UC Berkeley researchers Leo Meyerovich and Ari Rabkin, who try to address the question by polling programmers and scouring SourceForge. The answer? According to the pair, despite “enormous leaps” in software and OS design, in language design there’s a tendency to focus on uniqueness, at the expense of practicality. The researchers also note that poor documentation is a frequent barrier to the adoption of new languages. It’s probably worth pointing out that The C Programming Language was co-authored by the language’s designer, Dennis Ritchie, and is still frequently cited as one of the best programming books available, nearly 35 years since its release.”

The Inferno Launch Week Report (Radiangames)
“Inferno+ has been out for a bit over a week, and I thought it’d be a good time to report on how the launch went, particularly compared to Ballistic SE’s launch.  The summary: It sold fewer copies but made a bit more money than Ballistic SE.”

LUFTRAUSERS Questionnaire (Vlambeer)
“Last week we asked you for questions about LUFTRAUSERS for a blog post. We got so many questions we decided to do a video instead of a blogpost. Answering all the questions on camera took us an hour, but we distilled it into these six minutes of LUFTRAUSERS questionnaire.”