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sjones25 said:
Why C++? Why does everyone use C++? Because in my very limited experience, almost any other language is easier to write, debug, and maintain than C++ once you get the hang of it.
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Well, they could have made their games with some simple language, but while it could have been easier (don't think so though), they would have
lost many of the capabilities that C++ has. And while other languages are easier, it's worth the effort to use C++.

EDIT: And C++ just is a lot more powerful than most other languages. People have said that for example Lua is faster, but it just isn't a
language that should be used in huge projects. Not as the main language anway. WoW addons for example are partly written with Lua.

That's at least what I think. I have used CoolBasic, Python and Java before eventually changing to C++. Very satisfied programmer nowadays. :p
 
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I'm guessing my last question was in the realms of "don't go there" so here's another one ;)

When Paradox is making a new title or expansion, who playtests it? Do you get a playtesting group to help you, do you have individuals from the forums, or do you mostly keep it in-house and playtest it yourself?

A few other unrelated questions:
- What's your favourite food?
- What's your beverage of choice (aside from water)?
- What's the worst smell you've had in the office?
- What pets do you own? If you don't own any, what pets would you like to own?

And I'm spent :)
 
JRHINDO said:
:rofl:

A better question would be: what is your favorite tv show?
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Right now: True Blood and Big Bang Theory.
All-time favourite: Firefly.
Edit - Firefly is super-fantastic and you should all see it. It's very, very short, which is the only bad thing.

Cheexsta said:
I'm guessing my last question was in the realms of "don't go there" so here's another one ;)

When Paradox is making a new title or expansion, who playtests it? Do you get a playtesting group to help you, do you have individuals from the forums, or do you mostly keep it in-house and playtest it yourself?

A few other unrelated questions:
- What's your favourite food?
- What's your beverage of choice (aside from water)?
- What's the worst smell you've had in the office?
- What pets do you own? If you don't own any, what pets would you like to own?

And I'm spent :)
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The beta group assembled from the forum and ourselves for playtesting, and then we have a QA studio that is more focused on the technical aspects, less on the fun and balancing.

- A fine, rare piece of meat. Or pancakes.
- I mostly drink water but other than that.. Milk, wine, beer.
- Don't remember any bad smell from the office.
- None. Would like to have something, be it cat, dog, snake, lizard, ferret or something else. An octopus maybe, those seems fun.
 
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sjones25 said:
Why C++? Why does everyone use C++? Because in my very limited experience, almost any other language is easier to write, debug, and maintain than C++ once you get the hang of it.
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It's the standard in the games industry. It's very close to the hardware which is a necessity when working with games. For example, working with console games, you often want your game to run at 30 fps. That gives you ~30 ms to update game logic and render each frame. While managed languages are easier to program, they do hide functionality which game devs usually care about. For example garbage collection, which can take a few milliseconds when triggered in C#/Java, cause stuttering of frames.

There are other reasons as well, like many libraries which are useful when gamedevving are written in C/C++, so integration is simple etc.

That said, I think we will see more and more hybrid games in the future, using C/C++ for performance critical sections and scripting languages as glue.
 
sjones25 said:
Why C++? Why does everyone use C++? Because in my very limited experience, almost any other language is easier to write, debug, and maintain than C++ once you get the hang of it.
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Oh, also, I don't know if I agree that C++ is harder to debug and maintain. This has usually much more to do with your language expertise and the way the code is structured/coding standards etc. than the language itself. One can argue that it's easier to shoot yourself in the foot with C++ though, but that only applies if you don't know what you're doing :)
 
Cheexsta said:
I'm guessing my last question was in the realms of "don't go there" so here's another one ;)

When Paradox is making a new title or expansion, who playtests it? Do you get a playtesting group to help you, do you have individuals from the forums, or do you mostly keep it in-house and playtest it yourself?

A few other unrelated questions:
- What's your favourite food?
- What's your beverage of choice (aside from water)?
- What's the worst smell you've had in the office?
- What pets do you own? If you don't own any, what pets would you like to own?

And I'm spent :)
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- Pancakes, meat and salads. The Italian cuisine is great too.
- Iced tea, when it's hot outside, and warm chocolate when it's cold.
- It always smells good in the office.
- I don't own a pet, but my boyfriend has a African spiny-tailed lizard called Dabba (the Swedish name for the lizard is Dabbagam, so he picked a very imaginiative name for her ^^).

JRHINDO said:
:rofl:

A better question would be: what is your favorite tv show?
Click to expand...

Big Bang Theory is GREAT. I have watched every episode that have been released, and I hope they will continue making the show for many more years, as long as it doesn't transform into "Friends". I have many favorites; House MD, Grey's Anatomy, The Wire, Scrubs, Dexter, Desperate Housewives and a couple more.
 
Firefly is awesome.
 
Taylor said:
Firefly is awesome.
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Yep.

I love Big Bang Theory as well, but recently that relationship has cooled down a bit. The "rewatchability value" is just too low. With House, Boston Legal, Black Books, Blackadder, etc you can watch those again and again. Not so much with BBT, they get pretty boring and repetitive. Pity.
 
Inner Circle said:
regarding Programing:

Do you guys ever heard of Microsofts XNA Framework? You can do really good stuff and has an Interface for the XBOX 360...
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Yeah, of course we know about XNA, never actually tried to use it either for windows or the 360 though. Then again, I have done some C++ programming on the 360 ;)
 
Kallocain said:
Right now: True Blood
(...)
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Oh, I'm enjoying so much True Blood (though I really don't know why... it's weird). I knew there was a fangbanger deep inside Paradox :-=

In fact, a "Vlad Tepes"-mod would be a very interesting mod for Crusader Kings 2... maybe it could be called "Vampire Dinasties" :rofl:
 
I know that this question won't probably concer you that much, but it looks like a best place on net to ask it

As much as I know about your style of work and given the absence of story-telling in your games, you don't use screenwritters. But I've been always curious how this usually works and you must surely know from other sources ;)

Especially RPG games have a lot of story and dialogues. So do those companies which make them use dedicated writters or is this done by people who also work on other asspects of the game? This can also be interesting career option (probably not for me), but anyway :)
 
telesien said:
I know that this question won't probably concer you that much, but it looks like a best place on net to ask it

As much as I know about your style of work and given the absence of story-telling in your games, you don't use screenwritters. But I've been always curious how this usually works and you must surely know from other sources ;)

Especially RPG games have a lot of story and dialogues. So do those companies which make them use dedicated writters or is this done by people who also work on other asspects of the game? This can also be interesting career option (probably not for me), but anyway :)
Click to expand...

Most often story and dialoge is written by freelancers. I guess for a company that does a lot of text-intensive games, it would be possible to have a fulltime writer on the team, but I think it's more likely they just hire the same freelancers over and over.
 
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