Yesterday we shooted some high quality photos to the publishing works I did in the past. It was a really nice experience, and I have to say that Sara is a great photographer and Pamela helped us a lot with scene composition, light setup and her hands.
At PlaySys we’ll do some post production and I’ll upload them when ready. I put here a little piece of an image as preview (I aplogize for the watermark but I discovered some “smart” people in this last period!).
Plus two images captured with an old Nokia 6111 phone, showing Sara and Pamela in action.
Yes, it’s official!
I’m writing a new book that deeply explains all the steps behind the making of a videogame. As technical figure, I will concentrate on technical aspects like pipeline and workflow management, plugins and software production, research and development impact, commercial 3D packages Vs custom one, game engine and other interesting subjects.
For thoose who doesn’t know, I just wrote a book about 3ds Max Design and Architecture, in wich I explain in 400 pages all the tricks behind offline rendering. HERE is the link of the pubblisher and HERE is a post about it.
Yes, after long indecision between hundred different themes, I decided to get back to my classical template: minimal, clear, simple 🙂
Hope the previous changes didn’t bothered you…The classical is back! enjoy ;)!
È finalmente disponibile PlaySys Percent, il software che semplifica il calcolo delle diverse percentuali tra lordo e netto. Scaricalo ora da QUI, è gratis! [52.1 Kb, versione 1.1 corretta grazie alle indicazioni di Andrea Benedetti]
Più volte mi sono imbattuto nella trasformazione tra valore netto e valore lordo (9 volte su 10 per via dell’I.R.P.E.F.), così ho deciso di sviluppare questa semplicissima applicazione che mi auguro possa tornare comoda a qualcuno.
Molti cadono nell’inganno che per ricavare il lordo da un valore netto basti sommare a quest’ultimo semplicemente la percentuale (in questo caso 20%). Così non è, infatti quando si calcola il netto di un valore si procede in maniera opposta, ossia si parte dal lordo e si sottrae il 20%. Purtroppo però, se Y = X – 20% non si può dire che X = Y + 20%.A questo punto entra in gioco la mia applicazione: basta inserire il valore netto e la percentuale da applicare e verrà ricavato il lordo.
Ho aggiunto anche una funzionalità incrociata ossia, dato un lordo ed un netto ricavo la percentuale tra i due e dato un lordo e una percentuale ne ricavo il netto.
Non sei convinto? esegui con la calcolatrice 100 – 25%, otterrai 75. Ora fai l’opposto, esegui 75 + 25%, non otterrai 100 :)Buon divertimento con PlaySys Percent! [52.1 Kb]
In questo numero trattiamo diversi argomenti come l’archiviazione e ricerca di file, la virtualizzazione di un sistema operativo dentro Seven per massimizzare la compatibilità di vecchie applicazioni (nel tutorial useremo VirtualBox e parleremo della XP Mode), parleremo di sicurezza e credenziali, discuteremo di cosa si intende per 64-bit e se effettivamente convenga passare a tale architettura, parleremo di Internet Explorer 8 e, come sempre, proporremo interessanti novità, recensioni, domande e risposte più molto altro ancora.
Oggi ho trovato questa intervista che ho rilasciato i primi di Ottobre presso l’Italian Videogame Developer Conference, evento in cui ho partecipato come casa di sviluppo italiana e come sponsor.
Rileggendo quello che ho detto dello startup di PlaySys, mi sono venuti in mente diversi ricordi (alla faccia di chi sostiene che io non abbia un cuore), così ho deciso di pubblicare alcune immagini di PlaySys 1.0 🙂
Today I red the linked interview I had at the end of the 2009 during the Italian Videogame Developer Conference.
I spoke about PlaySys and the videogame development research we did, and was a really important fact for the italian game industry. The previous post spoke about an Italian trouble with business managemant, and is one of the causes behind the videogame undevelopment.
Btw, I decided to post some images of PlaySys 1.0, captured in the firsts weeks of the studio.
Alessia e Maurizio
Gianni
Luca
Pollice tra ALT e SPAZIO, medio su MAIUSC e anulare su CTRL…unica eccezione era Maurizio che teneva tutte le dita, di entrambe le mani, su Alessia 24/24 h
It’s a a long time I want to write something about how difficult is to open and mantain an agency in Italy.
I experienced the first anomaly in the 2007 when I founded PlaySys. That time I had to open a bank position for the studio, based on my agency legal registration. The problem was that to open the activity I must had a bank account for it. So the funny question was “how can i have a bank account for PlaySys if I must have PlaySys to open a bank account for it?“. This reminded me a little the egg and citcken dilemma: who came first? or other computer related troubles like the missing network driver on the old Windows XP, and the computer that asks to connect to internet to find a driver. Who experienced this problem can understand my frustration in that period. 🙂
The second Italian really “cool thing” is what we call Studi di Settore (business studies), and is what I wanna talk about in this post.
This problem is based on a supposition of our State: “If you open an activity in Italy, this mean that you will steal money from me, the State!“
I know this is a non-sense sentence, and there are no tricks or indirect psicology strategy, that’s a non-sense!
So what can do a State to avoid your stealing in cashes? Our politicians invented the Studi di Settore strategy, in poor words, they fix a presumption of money you have to move with your business in a year.
Let’s do an example, I use casual numbers to explain better: 1. You open an import-export company 2. The State automatically presumes that in a year you have to move 1.000.000 €. This presumption is based on national fees, other companies studies and so on…of course this will be a presumption, hard to quantificate and not suitable for your activity because we know, we are all different and so are our business. 3. Now you work for an year and manage your business: you work hard, during weekends, during nights in free time you think about your agency and so on. 4. At the end of the fiscal year, the State comes to you to see how was your business. 5. Let’s say you gained 800.000 € because of global crysis, because you spent some month in hospital, or because of other serious motivations. 6. The State says “what?! only 800.000 €?! I presumed you must be 1.000.000!!!” 7. Now a word about taxes: here in Italy the sum of ALL the taxes, fees, and other things is around the 61% 8. The State says “Now you must pay your taxes, and I want ’em based on your presumed business”, so you have to pay 610.000 € on 800.000! 9. The State, before going away adds “You did less money than my presumption, for sure this is because you stealed in my cashes…now I’ll start an inqusition on your activity”. 10. Some days after you’ll find police at the door, that requests to come inside and look everywere in your business, to discover where you stole.
What does this mean?
This means that here in Italy is really difficult to mantain an activity;
This means that here in Italy you must work 120 to gain 100, and the State requests x>61% of them;
This means that in a year of 365 days, you work for 223 for the State and 142 for you and for people you love and mantain, and this is not bad, because if you live with other people you must produce for them all;
This explains why lot of Italians are unhappy and why they become immigrants world wide;
This reveals a big trouble:
To gain money you must steal somewere, if you are polite and do your business, you will close your activity soon. So where to steal? not with the State of course, the better way is to steal to clients, and to abuse of dependants! And of course this is not correct!!
And this what means?
That clients become more and more aggressive and closed in themselves and dependants becomes more unhappy. The consequence is a really difficult market for everyone 🙁
And so?
Being an amministrator is really cool, but very frustrating for theese things. In my opinion theese Studi di Settore kills the market, and no one gains something on this fact, expecially the State.
10.00.01.00: anno pieno di propositi che non so ancora se difinire buoni o cattivi. Tante cose da fare, iniziative di cui mi dimenticherò, persone da conoscere, bidonate, keygen, sedie, strade, porte, finestre, balconi, banconi, drink, cene, amici, serate, meditazione, bmx, flessioni, docce, fredde, caldo, zanzare ecc.
Tra le iniziative più importanti c’è quella di curare meglio questo blog, scrivendo più spesso e più dettagliatamente dei vari progetti che mi capita di seguire.
Per aprire l’anno voglio postare il link di un blog che ho trovato navigando e che contiene testi veramente toccanti, per chi ha un cuore ovviamente. Per la prima volta nel mio blog appare un link ad un sito esterno!!…è tra i buoni propositi del 2010 😉 We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
(peccato venga aggiornato molto raramente)
La settimana prossima si ricomincerà ufficialmente a lavorare e comincierò a postare lavori aggiornati; anche il sito di PlaySys verrà sistemato a dovere quest’anno…finalmente 😉
Unreal Engine 3 is one of the most powerful and maybe complete game engine available on the market. It is used by the biggest game development studios from all around the world, and it’s power is fully proven by lot of AAA titles.
Last week Epic Games, released a development kit, bsed on this technology: UDK.
This decision is not so much strange, and looks like a move to completely erase the other similar technologies available today.
An important thing to consider is that Unreal Engine is not the only one technology available for game developers. There are plenty of systems to use to develop a game, some less powerfull, other less complete of middleware integrations and other again given at lower price (some freeware too).
Today an indie game development studio (like PlaySys) can benefit of the power of UDK, based on UE3, to develop it’s prototype or, why not, complete videogames.
Is this a good or a bad new?
Depending on if you are a game developer or a engine/technology developer, there will be some pro and cons.
Regarding us, we are very happy of the possibility to develop with UE3, but we must consider the licence cost that we have to pay before selling the game. As UE3 is the most famous and complete engine, it costs LOT of moneys, depending on the size of the development studio or the title, but they remains lot of moneys.
The positive thing is that we can release a quality prototype to better find a publisher, without spending money in tryout licence for other engines.
Some months ago I had to spend lot of money to benefit from an engine for 2-3 months with the idea to develop a prototype.
Of course this availability of UDK, will change the things on the market; Unity developers changed the indie licence, giving out for free the basic version of the engine…that PlaySys bought one or two months before 🙁
I am really courious on what will happen on Torque Game Engine, one of the worst thing I have ever payd for, maybe they will decide to develop an high quality thing to compete on the market instead recycle theyr stuff (saying they are fully rewritting code).
I’m really happy on the availability of UDK, but at PlaySys we have to decide carefully the migration. We are advantaged because we use the editor since version 2Runtime (only for non professional tests), but Unreal is a very scaring kit, so noobs will have lot of troubles to spend over it.
What I want to say is that UDK isn’t everything you need to construct great games, you’ll need competence on every aspect of game development, ideas, a story to tell, lot of time, money to spend and mostly important, lot of passion!
Enjoy with UDK, but remember to give a look to other great technologies:
