Bungie Hiring PC Developers 73
Gamespot reports that Halo-maker Bungie Studios is seeking PC developers for an unnamed project. From the article: "Taken in and of themselves, the listings are merely interesting. However, the wording of the graphics programmer job description has many positively convinced that Bungie is porting Halo 2 to the PC, in-house. 'This is an opportunity to influence the direction of Windows gaming technology in MGS [Microsoft Game Studios],' reads the post after first teasing, 'Want to work on the biggest franchises for Microsoft Game Studios?' Since becoming part of Microsoft Game Studios, Bungie has worked on only one franchise for the division--Halo."
No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:3, Informative)
And, FWIW, I really hope Halo 2 comes to the PC. They bumped up the graphics for Halo 1 and playing online with a full screen was lots of fun.
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Now, think of how much better it would have been if they'd just released it for Mac OS to begin with. At the very least, it would have been available about two years earlier than it was; most probably it would have been a higher-quality gam
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:1)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
The Xbox GPU was a custom NVIDIA chip which resembled a GeForce, but had an awesomely fast memory architecture (as well as a few features that weren't available on PC GPUs for quite a while).
Additionally, using the Xbox means you are dealing with console-isms - a controller, memory cards, etc... So a PC port needs to account for all of that.
Also, the Xbox used a custom NVIDIA sound chip. Have to redo all of that for PC.
Xbox networking is all through Live, which is a layer on top of
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
At least, that's the way standardized (or "standardized," in this case) libraries are supposed to work -- are you saying Microsoft fucked it up?
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
I'm just saying that the hardware has special capabilities that don't necessarily exist on PC.
There's no API that exposes a fast memory architecture. It's just a property of the system that doesn't typically exist on PCs.
In short, APIs aren't all they are cracked up to be. Most game programmers will exploit the unique characteristics of the system to make a certain optimization.
PC porting from Xbox is then taking those specific cases and extrapolating to the genera
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
So... what do you call a developer using vxWindows or Qt or any other of the cross-compiling toolkits? It is not as if Java has a monopoly on being platform-independent.
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:3)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
UT? UT 2k3/2k4? ET? Quake 3? Quake 4? Alpha Centauri?
All of the above work fine with my 2.6 kernel, and most certainly aren't new. Or are you referring to glibc versions, not kernel versions? In that case, the problem can be fixed in various ways, such as making available an older version of glibc for use by that game.
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
They should have put the parts tightly tied to the kernel and external libs in a place that could be easily upgraded later even if they went out of business.
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
"I will cover updating loki_update, but this should apply to updating anything from Loki.
First, download the update file.
I did this with the command: wget ftp://sunsite.dk/mirrors/lokigames/updates/loki_up date/loki_update-1.0.12-x86.run [sunsite.dk]
Make it executable, and then run it with the --keep paramater. This will create a directory named loki_update-1.0.12-x86. Enter that directory.
Get the version of loki_p
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Really, there's very little excuse for PC games not being cross-platform, except that short-sighted developers are somehow convinced to use proprietary Microsoft libraries (al
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
Re:No, they're not hiring "PC" developers... (Score:2)
There is a lot more to DirectX than 3D graphics and, while I find OpenGL nicer to work with than DirectX Graphics, it's worth noting that even the likes of ID use it for non-graphics things on Windows.
oh good (Score:2, Funny)
Re:cue (Score:1)
Re:cue (Score:4, Insightful)
This is also news to the fairly large group of people that unfortunatly purchased Gearbox's incredibly horrible port of Halo 1. Most of those people would likely breath a large sigh of relife to know that Bungie will do Halo 2 PC in house.
So, given your inability to parse the relevant information out of that headline and assosiated blurb, I have to wonder why you even care. If gaming news does not interest you, simply block it, don't come in here and troll around as AC.
Re:cue (Score:2)
I liked it.
Re:cue (Score:2)
It was Halo, on PC, and thus fun. But the fact of the matter is that geabox screwed it up in about every way possibl
Re:cue (Score:2)
Compared to a couple of movie tickets I thought (and still do) it was money w
Re:cue (Score:2)
Re:I thought... (Score:2)
I didn't know that Bungie was still around...I have somewhat fond memories of playing Marathon, since it was one of the first games I ever really played on a computer. So this isn't just any gaming company, it's Bungie.
Unfounded Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unfounded Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
Programming for a single-processor, general purpose machine with gobs of slow RAM gives you very little applicable expertise for these multiprocessor or massively parallel SIMD monsters with limited high-speed RAM. Honestly, Cell is NOTHING like a regular PC architecture. You'd be better off with a background in programming Crays than PCs.
The best thing that PC programming will prepare you for is working with the graphics hardware on both platforms, and even there most people are used to generalizing their code.
Re:Unfounded Speculation (Score:2)
Re:Unfounded Speculation (Score:2)
Re:Unfounded Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I completely agree with you, it should be noted that XBox 360 is basically DirectX/XNA development, and a good PC developer that is familiar with DirectX technologies would do well in both environments.
MS was fairly smart to continue to use the PC metaphor for the consoles, as developers have that level of hardware abstraction that they are getting use to with DirectX and OpenGL for Video.
Sony has tried to bridge this gap with their technologies as well, but all they are providing is development technologies and not the level of hardware abstract that an underlying OS and DirectX provide.
It would be easier to take advantage of scaling out the Cells for example, if the basic technology set Sony provides supported traversing more of this than relying on the developer to do it. Bascially letting an OS technology that already knows how to split threads off would be a bonus to the Sony tools to compensate for developers that even don't consider things from a single process perspective.
But I agree with your argument.
Even though the XBox 360 is able to recompile PC games to it fairly easily that were developed in DirectX technologies, there will still be all the console issues to deal with, from basic things like a limited memory set, storage constraints, to controls via controllers and load performance with DVD driven loading times - all the little fun stuff that is the gap between consoles and PCs, even if the Console is running a PC OS like the 360.
Re:What's Teh Point? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's Teh Point? (Score:1)
Working for the 'Bunge'... (Score:1)
Re:Working for the 'Bunge'... (Score:2)
Why wouldn't they port Halo 2 to Windows? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why wouldn't they port Halo 2 to Windows? (Score:1)
Re:Why wouldn't they port Halo 2 to Windows? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why wouldn't they port Halo 2 to Windows? (Score:2)
Nothing coming to the PC (Score:3, Interesting)
They're probably hiring people to work on their next game for the 360, I doubt MS would be too thrilled that resources are being spent on a PC title. But then again, I didn't check the link so I could be way off.
Re:Nothing coming to the PC (Score:2)
Re:Nothing coming to the PC (Score:2)
Actually this is because (Score:5, Funny)
P.S. I'm full of crap
ABOUT DAMN TIME! (Score:1)
Re:ABOUT DAMN TIME! (Score:1)
Westlake Interactive did.
Re:ABOUT DAMN TIME! (Score:2, Insightful)
For Bungie, "selling out" would be throwing off a Mac port on which they lose money.
Re:ABOUT DAMN TIME! (Score:1)
Good to hear from you, Mr. Jobs!
Selling Xbox360 (Score:2, Insightful)
Count me out (Score:2)
Re:Count me out (Score:1)