DodgyG • Comments

• Trends of 2012: What the Analysts Say

• DodgyG 20/01/2012

  I'd rather trust Mystic Meg's lottery numbers than anything predicted by this bunch of shysters... Reply +1

• Tech Analysis: Crackdown 2 demo

• DodgyG 23/06/2010

  @DrDamn - Feel free to twitter @gyratory and ask him ;) Reply 0

• DodgyG 22/06/2010

  @DrDamn - It's a heavily modified version of Renderware. Reply -1

• No Project Natal or DLC plans for F1 2010

• DodgyG 11/06/2010

  '. . . locked me in a room for 2 hours . . .'
  
  Sounds like Codies tbh Reply -1

• Videogame BAFTAs live online tonight

• DodgyG 19/03/2010

  Pirates were robbed! Reply 0

• DodgyG 19/03/2010

  Mon the Pixel Pirates! Reply +1

• Virtual Console: N64 Most Wanted

• DodgyG 25/01/2007

  Body Harvest had a crash bug, which meant you couldnt finish the game. Hi Steve! Reply 0

• Football Manager 2007

• DodgyG 18/10/2006

  The Mac version is a universal binary Reply 0

• FM 2007 out now

• DodgyG 18/10/2006

  We're not releasing a patch on day of release. Reply 0

• Devs at risk of burnout

• DodgyG 24/07/2006

  re-train, get a differant job.
  
  simple as really.
  
  Not quite so simple when you have a family to feed and bills to pay... Reply 0

• Tomb Raider: The Osiris Codex

• DodgyG 17/07/2006

  Are we getting a Puzzle Paradox review? How about FPR or Le Mans? Reply 0

• Thompson writes to Bono

• DodgyG 10/02/2006

  JT is already a TT shareholder, he bought some so he could ask/harass Paul Eibeler (sp?) about GTA... Reply 0

• Play Galaxies or get a refund

• DodgyG 17/11/2005

  Just the tutorial, if you want to leave the space station you have to take out a subscription Reply 0

• Sony PSP: The games to look forward to

• DodgyG 07/09/2005

  SI say that the DS isn't powerful enough to cope with a Football Manager, hopefully someone else will come out with a title that utilises the touch screen. Reply 0

• PSP street-date still in place

• DodgyG 30/08/2005

  At prices ranging from £29.99->£39.99 for games, I'll be getting mine imported... Reply 0

• PSP 2.00 update out in Japan; European PSPs will be 2.00

• DodgyG 27/07/2005

  Update works fine, monging from the PSP really needs a keyboard though... Reply 0

• SEGA wants your face

• DodgyG 27/07/2005

  You should try www.hattrick.org for an online football management game. I can't see an MMO-esque FM game for quite sometime... Reply 0

• DodgyG 26/07/2005

  Eh?, you can play multiplayer, and have been able to since CM3... Reply 0

• VIS goes into administration

• DodgyG 08/04/2005

  Still plenty of other game devs in Dundee... Reply 0

• Championship Manager 5

• DodgyG 15/12/2004

  You can't, there's not an official one yet... Reply 0

• Football Manager 2005 patched

• DodgyG 11/12/2004

  Add -windowed -small_screen to the shortcut target Reply 0

• NHL 2005

• DodgyG 22/10/2004

  ESPN NFL is on Amazon for £16.99 Reply 0

• Microsoft slams Halo 2 leak

• DodgyG 20/10/2004

  I doubt that - SA hasn't even gone Gold yet, or rather the inevitable Gold announcement hasn't been made yet.
  
  It went gold last Friday. Only know this because of people who I know work at R* North Reply 0

• EA recalls Tiger Woods 2005 for PS2

• DodgyG 30/09/2004

  From another website -
  
  How to give away your games code by accident!
  Yesterday one of the guys I work with discovered that a recently released PlayStation2 game has a complete *annotated* source listing on the DVD, sitting as a text file for everyone to see (if they put the DVD into a PC).
  This is incredible, the source lists both the games code plus the library code in a format that experienced programmers could easily take and learn from. A kind of involuntary Open Source :-)
  I'm not going to name the game here (contact me by email if you want more info). I'm more interested in the incredibly lax checking of the master disk for that particular product. How this can get through to the consumer is a mystery to me (although do I understand the pressures involved at the end of a project)
  
  To get this file onto the DVD there are several things that need to happen.
  1. The file must be generated and kept (not always done, it's often discarded as an intermediate file by the compiler)
  2. The Lead Programmer needs to place that file into the games disk layout (or whoever does this job) - it would usually reside somewhere unrelated for most projects.
  3. The Producer/QA Lead have to not notice the file is there
  4. Sony have to not notice the file is there.
  
  Now given that the file was called "SOURCE.TXT" you'd think it might be obvious :-)
  
  Then again, on our most recently released game, I never actually searched through the disk looking for anything inappropriate - mostly because we had the process down to a fine art and it was all automated from a clean directory structure... but you can be damn sure I will be looking for ways to improve our process.
  How many people actually get to place files on the disk ? Technically it's just one, but that person relies on other people placing appropriate material in a directory structure that grows and changes over 18 months, and by the end nobody can quite remember which files are needed and which are not!
  
  We've seen in the past that innapropriate material has made it's way onto game disks, and in other cases sourcecode has been stolen, but this is the first time I've seen (first hand) that a company has unwittingly published a version of their source on the gold master and it's made it into the stores!
  
  I'd hate to see the lawyers faces when they find out. I have no idea how this would be dealt with in court, you can just look at the file in a text viewer so there's no 'evilness' on the consumers behalf to look at the source.
  
  If you are responsible for mastering your companies game, take the time to check what you're mastering - make sure there's nothing there thats not meant to be there!
  One technique that can be used is to make a utility to list all the files accessed during a series of runs of the game, leaving you with a list of what hasnt been used - then see if anything there seems 'odd'. Games have been removed from the shelves for having 'adult material' lying around, or for containing copyright material (even though the game never accessed the files).
  
  Does anyone know a better way ?
  Reply 0

• Sensible Soccer (Mobile)

• DodgyG 29/09/2004

  Eh?, I've seen Fifa 2005, which is java based, running on a Sharp GX-30 and it's got a higher res than those in the pics above. Reply 0