Tag Archives: review

EVGA NVIDIA GTX 1070 & 1080 Benchmarks

I’m back with another PC upgrade. It was the beginning of 2015 I upgraded to a 4790k Devil’s Canyon Intel chip and I haven’t had any issues since. Motherboard kicked the dust for a bit after I moved, but the chip has been great. Now it’s time for the bigger upgrade. The GPU. We’re going to look at some NVIDIA GTX 1070 & 1080 Benchmarks!

Pascal from Nvidia is finally here and it’s really awesome. I ended up getting the 1070 and then switching to the 1080 after some delayed shipments from Amazon. Needless to say, I benched both! Read past the break for the numbers.

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Games Played 2015 Page

I have a new page up under the Reviews tab where I will be noting games I’ve played in 2015 to completion, close to, or ones worth noting in either a good or bad way. Each will be accompanied by a tiny blurb about my experience with a game. It will be my way of keeping track of games this year while also doing “reviews” of each in some way without losing interest and time in writing a huge blog about each. I hope someone besides me finds it helpful.

Review: The Art of Naughty Dog Limited Edition

Naughty Dog’s most amazing art, the demonstration of how incredible of a medium games are, is compiled into one crazy set that feels as if the package was handcrafted by Dark Horse.

I searched for this awesome book for several months after learning about its existence. I had given up on trying to find one that didn’t consist of a crazy ebay listing, and due to the fact they’re limited print, I just went and purchased the regular edition. However, while at NYCC 2014, a friend of mine had requested we stop by Dark Horse’s booth to look for something of interest for him. They didn’t have what he was looking for, but just out of the corner of my eye as we walked away, I noticed a really cool looking Final Fantasy art book. I immediately jumped to it, and hidden just to the left of it, was this epic box. I cried out loud like a little girl, I kid you not. Everyone looked at me, and the Dark Horse rep laughed as I lifted the last copy off the shelf.

I am extremely happy with The Art of Naughty Dog.

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Book Review: Learning Unity 2D Game Development By Example

Learning Unity 2D Game Development by Example written by Venita Pereira published by Packt Publishing is quite a wonderful introduction to not only Unity itself but the new 2D game development suite it recently added. I had been meaning to checkout the 2D Unity mode myself for quite some time, and this book gave me a proper introduction.

After being a major supporter of Construct 2, mainly due to how easy it is to approach for new comers and the fully featured sprite editors, I can now easily recommend Unity as well.

Read on to find out why.

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Book Review: Application Development in iOS 7

In my last review about iOS7 development, I held concerns about the platform in regards to Apple locking down the platform so much. I still hold those concerns. However, as Apple moves on we may see the platform available to dev on all machines soon as we move closer and closer to a “cloud” IDE in my opinion.

As Application Development in iOS 7 by Kyle Begemen shows, Apple continually evolves the Xcode platform, the Foundation Framework, updating Objective-C, and so on. Recently announced, they have a new language based off of Objective-C called Swift. I believe this shows how Apple is growing up with their tech and moving it forward. There are a lot of interesting changes here.

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Book Review: Effective C++

Effective C++ by Scott Meyers has been around for awhile and it is pretty revered. With good reason. It is one of the books a lot of C++ programmers, both beginners and adept, read and then never look back after. After being recommended the book several times, I finally got around to picking it up.

Unlike a lot of other programming books, such as the ones I’ve previously reviewed, this isn’t a tutorial or “how-to” C++ book. So there is some technical requirement for the book and if you don’t have interest in C++, it probably won’t do much for you. But if you want to check it out, my review can be found after the break.

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Book Review: iOS7 Game Development

iOS7 is Apple’s latest update to their mobile OS at the time of this writing. With it came huge changes for consumers and developers. Namely ‘flat’ design came about and the entire iOS interface was redesigned with new visuals. The change meant new features for developers too such as SpriteKit – the new 2D game development framework.

iOS7 Game Development by Dmitry Volevodz from Packt Publishing demonstrates how to create an endless runner using the new SpriteKit framework

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Book Review: CryENGINE Game Programming with C++, C#, and Lua

CryENGINE is the popular and insanely powerful game engine used in games such as Crysis, Ryse, and originated with Far Cry 1. Developed by Crytek,  it supports the latest and greatest visual renderers such as DX11. CryENGINE 4 is coming soon as well as Linux support. A modified version of the CryENGINE spawned the Dunia Engine, which is used by Ubisoft Montreal for Fary Cry 2 and 3.

I wanted to try my hand at playing around with the famous engine and thus I am reviewing  CryENGINE GameProgramming with C++, C#, and Lua by Filip Lundgren and Ruan Pearce-Authers, published by Packt Publishing. Read on to see how it went.

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CryENGINE GamePrograming with C++, C#, and Lua Review Incoming

Hey everyone,

Soon I will have a review up for CryENGINE GameProgramming with C++, C#, and Lua by Filip Lundgren and Ruan Pearce-Authers, published by Packt Publishing.

It will be reviewed in the same style as the Unity Multiplayer Games review, and maybe I’ll make this a regular thing to review books I’m given or happen to pick up! Expect the review up this weekend or so.

Sample Chapters

Book Review: Unity Multiplayer Games

Welcome to my first official book review!
*cue streamers and fireworks*

Unity Multiplayer Games by Alan Stagner, published by Packt Publishing is a really interesting and relevant read for anyone interested in multiplayer game programming. Even if you are not the biggest Unity buff, the book explores a lot of great concepts that are critical to designing and implementing multiplayer video games.

Read on to find out what the books covers, some pitfalls, and even play the Pong game the book has you make…..

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