Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Blog

  • File Sharing with Central

    Although Mike blogged this already, I wanted to pose a question. After Kenny showed me his creation this morning of sending a JPEG file to another Central user via Flashcom, it was interesting to note that even running local host, there was a 3 second lag in sending a 22k file.

    Now, the player didn’t lock up, and the speed at which Central was displaying the image after writing it and reading back was blazingly fast. What was slow was the actual sending and the time it took from the netconnection.send to the response from the server to call the method to render the file. Now, 22k is a sizable chunk to be sending over the wire, but neither I nor he could figure the exact bottle neck.

    I know this is a question for the Flashcom list, but was curious if anyone knew.

    I think in the future, most would be able to lessen the damage by establishing a link, and then sending over smaller chunks of the byte array, therefore giving you the ability to show a preloader at the cost of transfer speed. Still, just curious what part of it chokes since it isn’t necessarely the player and if that part is identified, what one can do to lessen it’s latency.

    Overall, the ideas here of file sharing applications via Flash and Central are definately cool prospects.

  • Gaming: Console vs. PC

    I read a rumor about gaming companies more apt to focus their efforts on the console market vs. the PC market. This was due in large part to piracy, but also to deployment. Although QA is a bigger deal, since as a coworker said, if you have a bug in a PC game, you can just dl the patch vs. a console game that has a bug, you just made a $50 beer coaster. I remember reading on Director Online about 4 years ago the frustrations of a gamer who loved consoles cause they worked. A software geek by trade, he wasn’t much into hardware, therefore the hours spent confirming your system worked, the patches were in place assuming you could even find a site that housed them and didn’t require registration, and the game’s settings were configured… you could not attempt to play.

    Consoles on the other hand just worked. You place the CD/cartridge in, and turned it on. Geez, that was easy.
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  • Rich Internet Applications vs. Rich Applications

    Had some interesting discussions and observations over the past few weeks. This culminated yesterday into a conversation about games, etc. It just was luck that I garnered an understanding of both of the above comparisons.

    First off, I can see why a lot of applications are going web vs. fat client/win32 etc. I like to think of myself as an applications developer vs. a web developer, as most of my Flash stuff for companies (not contract) tends to run on the client machine via some form of client. All of my contract work is for a website in some form or another, with the exclusion of some rare “niche” fat client projects.
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  • Alienware, Farcry, and Doom 3

    My Alienware Aurora computer came in the mail last week. As someone who is overly aware of one’s own mortality, I find the key to happiness is to lower your expectations for trivial things, but ensure your standards are not subpar. That way, you always have your expectations exceeded, but never lower your ethical standard of living.
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