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East Coast Penny Arcade ExpoInternational Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU)International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST)Games Grads North
 | E V E N T C O V E R A G E Game Developer's Conference 2010 by Gamedev.net, posted 3/9/10 Our coverage of GDC 2010. |  | G A M E I N D U S T R Y IGF 2010: Loren Schmidt by Oli Wilkinson, Drew Sikora, posted 3/4/10 We talk to Loren Schmidt, creator of the IGF finalist game Star Guard, nominated for Excellence in Design |
 | P R O G R A M M I N G Deferred Rendering Demystified by Noam Gat, posted 3/1/10 Deferred Rendering is an alternative rendering approach that has many advantages. The theory behind it has been discussed to great detail, but implementing a deferred renderer is still a puzzling task. This article discusses the technique from a design standpoint, suggesting how a graphics engine can be structured to easily integrate a deferred rendering approach, and is accompanied by an open source implementation of one using the Ogre 3d engine. | | F E A T U R E D A R T I C L E S IGF 2010: Daniel Benmergui by Drew Sikora, Oli Wilkinson, posted 2/26/10 We talk to Daniel Benmergui, creator of the IGF finalist game Today I Die, nominated for a Nuovo Award |
| Friday, March 26, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 11:30:44 AM | |
 Hello, everybody! It's the end cap on this week of Dailies. Trent has asked me to drop in and take over for him, but didn't mention why. I'm sure you can all invent your favourite reasons.The Toronto public library is looking for $300,000 in funding in order to start a videogame collection of at least 150 titles. This seems like it would be a great opportunity for some publishers to get positive press by donating huge wads of their games. I just saw the Ghost Recon: Future Warrior live action 'trailer' and it looks pretty cool. I want to shoot robots in a bleak urban hellscape with me and my super-suited buddies. I've never been a huge fan of episodic games; I find them either really "samey," having re-used the same assets over a long period of time, or they never release updates after leaving us on a cliffhanger. Penny Arcade Adventures has unfortunately joined the latter, having been discontinued by Hothead in favour of its (excellent-looking) Deathspank game. It's a shame, but at least the Penny Arcade guys are stepping forward to finish the story themselves. We talked about Love, the user-generated MMO, a few months ago, but it's now achieved actual release. It was a pretty good day yesterday, apparently, because Transcendence hit version 1.0. Transcendence is one of my favourite roguelikes and features Escape Velocity-style hijinks with a disposable, randomized universe. Hot on the heels of the excellent Cave Story for Wii, there's La Mulana for Wii, which takes the brutally harsh torture chamber of La Mulana and puts it on Nintendo's console for the enjoyment of all. If you're looking to grab some funding for your indie labour of love, you could do worse than to read this post about the mechanics of the Indie Fund. Before we go today, everyone should understand that the metric system is better. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Gordon Bellamy Elected New Chair of the International Game Developers Association | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:05:56 AM | |
 Gordon Bellamy, Sr. Producer at Emerging Media yU+co was elected new chair of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) during the board of director’s annual meeting to appoint new officers last week. Tobi Saulnier, CEO of 1st Playable Productions is Chair Emeritus and will serve as Treasurer. Brian Robbins, Founder of Riptide Games, is the new Secretary taking over for Coray Seifert.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land (Returns!) | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 10:00:49 AM | |
| Entries from 3/19 - 3/26 Wow, what a crazy month it's been. Hello dear readers, and welcome back to Weekend Reading! I know you all missed me, because at GDC and the week after while doing my follow-ups people often told me how much they enjoy this weekly feature - which of course chagrined me all the more as I haven't had time to post it for the past two weeks!! Pre-GDC was madness. GDC was madness. Post-GDC was madness... and now here I am sitting in my friend's apartment in Boston with a mere 3 hours before we have to head into the city for PAX East. So unfortunately I don't have time to recap on the weeks I've missed. Apologies! Alright, enough of my prattling - on to the goods: Journal Land Pick of the Week Brainfold - Putting your project out there for public consumption is a big step, and Knarkles has released the first pre-alpha version 0.1 of PyEigen, "a new linear algebra module for Python that’s many times faster than existing solutions" and a "Python wrapper for the C++ linear algebra library Eigen". Congrats! Be sure to check it out if it falls in line with your development needs and send your feedback on to Knarkles. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Thursday, March 25, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 6:30:11 PM | |
| Hey there, Drew is out today so I am here to take his place, I can't promise the same level of awesome to which you have become accustomed, but I shall give it a good college try. Cave Story, WiiWare becomes the number one download. I'm not just reporting this because of my involvement in the port. This game is as indie as indie gets, it was developed by one man (Pixel) over a period of 5 years and eventually grew to be one of the most popular free PC games on the internet. Pixel and Nicalis recently brought Cave Story to WiiWare where it has now become the number one download on the Wii Shop Store Top 20. A definite victory for indie devs! New service; pay to play a girl. A new service has been launched, in which gamers can pay to have a female gamer play with them. The service, called PlayMates, has 1,200 available ladies to game with and $8.25 will buy about 10 minutes of game time. The Xbox Live games which are supported include call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV and Halo 3. Netflix coming to Wii Netflix instant streaming discs for the Wii are currently being sent to the first customers. Although an official announcement has yet to be made, customers who pre-ordered in January are currently receiving emails which indicate that the discs are in the mail and should start arriving tomorrow. Now all three major consoles will finally have Netflix streaming capability. GameStop sued for "misleading" a customer it looks like GameStop are in a little bit of hot water for "misleading" a customer into believing that a used copy of Dragon Age: Origins came with all the downloadable content that is advertised on the box. Since the game has a one-time download code, the downloadble content is only available to first time buyers, but the customer claims GameStop made no attempt to let him know this when he bought the game. PAX East is going on tomorrow through Sunday, so expect lots of news to come out of Boston, Massachusetts over the next few days! Read More.. | 6 Comments | |
| PhysicsFS 2.0.1 released | |
| Posted by: Oli Wilkinson at 4:00:24 AM | |
 PhysicsFS 2.0.1 is now available. PhysicsFS is a cross-platform virtual file system that supports transparent access to many game-related archive formats. You can read more about PhysicsFS on their main website.This is a stable, bug-fix release. As we are still source and binary compatible, all users of any previous version--be it 1.0 or 2.0--are encouraged to upgrade. New features are being added to the 2.1 branch, which is not part of this release. You can grab it here. Read More.. | 4 Comments | |
| Wednesday, March 24, 2010 | |
| GroundWiz RTS (Real-Time Shaders) Released | |
| Posted by: Gugila at 8:44:04 PM | |
 Gugila has announced the release of GroundWiz RTS (Real-Time Shaders).GroundWiz RTS is a set of procedural shaders for rendering nature in real-time applications. GroundWiz RTS is optimized for parallel computing using multiple CPUs and GPU shaders to achieve real-time performance. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Oli Wilkinson at 3:59:50 PM | |
| Wednesday 24th March; the day of UK's budget - possibly the last budget of this current government. Why am I talking about this? It's not because of the extra tax on booze, cigs, fuel and basic stuff we all take for granted - but it's the first story I pick up tonight. Budget promises UK Game Tax Breaks: That's right, Alistair Darling, old Thunderbird eyebrows himself has revealed basic plans for a tax relief programme on the UK Game Development industry. At present, the details are fairly scant - but TIGA's research has shown that the programme will both protect and create jobs in the UK Game Dev industry - an industry that has been hit hard by closures and redundancies over the past few months. The news is extremely welcome and is testament to the hard work that TIGA and some of our prominent developers has put into lobbying for such breaks, including London-based Curve studios who believe that it'll attract more investment. IE9 Preview: Interesting news for web and social game developers - the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview is available for download. The main features for game developers are HTML5 support, GPU-powered graphics and a much faster javascript engine (although still slower than Opera's!). I'll probably be grabbing it to give the ol' HTML5 a bash. 7 out of 10 iPhone Devs...: 9 out of 10 cats and all that, but apparently 70% of iPhone developers are heading over to the Android platform. Now the story isn't a shocking "iPhone devs desert for Android" tale, but more of an indication that iPhone developers are choosing to support more mobile platforms in the next 6 months. I'd be interested to see how this stat changes when the Windows Mobile 7-based phones are with us. PSP Hits 5: So the PSP has been around for 5 years now and has sold 17 million units in North America, with 60 million being sold worldwide. Sony are using their experience in the handheld and research into the 3D gaming market to question Nintendo's recent announcement of the 3DS handheld that Promit talked about yesterday. Sony believe that 3D on a DS doesn't align with the traditional Nintendo demographic - typically younger gamers. Rumours are circulating that the 3DS will use a "parallax barrier LCD" provided by Sharp, the same tech that's in their latest "3d without glasses" TVs. Natal - ummm, 2?: We've not even seen it properly yet (unless you're Peter Molyneux) but Microsoft are already reported to be working on the next version of Natal. Obviously, no details yet - but I'm hoping it features some brain-electrode helmet-thingy. Train2Game ranked: Distance learning course Train2Game has been benchmarked by several UK Universities who arrived at the conclusion that the course represents a HND-standard of education and provides candidates with relevant and useful skills for the Game Development industry today. Interesting information to those thinking of joining up. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| New Texture Collection for game developers | |
| Posted by: Quotix Software at 7:49:54 AM | |
| Quotix Software has released a collection of seamlessly tileable old/dirty wall, ground, brick, floor, concrete and stone textures. Normal, bump and specular maps are included. There are 110 high resolution (up to 2048x2048) textures in this collection. For more information please visit: www.quotixsoftware.com Quotix Software makes resources, including textures, animated characters and other 3D models for game developers. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Jace Hall set to Open LOGIN Conference 2010 with a Big Bang | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:49:24 AM | |
| Enormously popular and irrefutably clever Jason “Jace” Hall will honor the 2010 LOGIN Conference by gracing attendees with his presence as the MC on the event’s opening night. With his quick wit, sharp tongue and undeniable expertise and track record in the gaming industry, Jace promises to provide an exciting start to the widely-regarded conference. The 2010 LOGIN conference is an innovative event for leading game developers and professionals to come together and discuss the latest topics in the online gaming industry. Official Login Conference panels and official business will run May 10 - May 13, 2010 at the Seattle Waterfront Marriott Hotel. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Tuesday, March 23, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 10:11:50 AM | |
| Yet another Tuesday, and you've got no excuse to avoid work! What are you guys working on? Myself, I'm busy making javascript run on XNA so that I can use it across pretty much every platform ever, including the new Windows Phones. Speaking of phones, those things are incredibly expensive without contract. Any suggestions for a nice T-Mobile phone under $400? In return, I'll give you a Undeniably Cool GameDev.Net Daily. I bet you thought that with the DSi XL, Nintendo would be happily sitting on their hands, raking in the cash. Turns out that's not the case. Brace yourselves for the Nintendo 3DS for no-glasses 3D. The new unit will be fully backwards compatible and should be showing up by this time next year. We have to wait for E3 to get details, unfortunately. I'll tell you what though -- 3D glasses don't ever fit over my regular glasses, which throws me out of that market quite completely. It's nice to see that the glasses-free tech is finally starting to bleed out to consumers. Hooray for job openings! Warner Brothers is opening a new studio in Quebec, and they're looking to grow to 300 employees in the coming years. WB is a relatively new entry in the game publisher space, but they are taking things very seriously and are putting a lot of money into the effort. I have some friends who tell me WB is basically the best publisher they've ever worked with. Not bad! I like utterly ridiculous game concepts, and that is why I approve of the upcoming Hamlet game. Yes, that Hamlet. It's an adventure game, which just makes things twice as good. The much-hated Australian attorney-general Michael Atkinson has resigned from his post. Atkinson was fighting against the proposed R18+ rating in Australia, the lack of which has created significant problems for games down under. Hopefully the replacement official will be more sensible about the whole thing. Before I go, I should mention the excellent analysis of the Activision vs Infinity Ward situation at GamaSutra, written by our own Mona Ibrahim. Uphill both ways? Forget that. These kids take a freaking zip-line to school every day. No mention of how they get back, but who cares when your trip there is that intense? Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Monday, March 22, 2010 | |
| Call for submissions for “Game Development Tools” book | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 8:22:52 PM | |
| We invite you to submit a proposal for an innovative article to be included in a forthcoming book, Game Development Tools, which will be edited by Marwan Y. Ansari and published by A. K. Peters. We expect to publish the volume in time for GDC 2011. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Montreal International Game Summit’ Call for Speakers | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 1:48:27 PM | |
| The Advisory Board is seeking submissions from top level professionals interested in speaking at MIGS within one of the five tracks: Visual Arts, Business, Design, Production and Technology. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:08:30 AM | |
| So there's a lot of stuff going on in videogames this week, and in order to keep track of it all, you're going to have to read the GDNet Dailies. We guarantee that protesters will not show up with signs bearing racial slurs and demand that we abandon all attempts at legislation. Many of you realize that I grew up on the Sega Genesis, whose combination of slightly-inferior technology and brutalist American game development led to a renaissance of sorts in platforming. Well, Sega made a couple missteps since then, but at least they're making a cool retro album to honour the 32X's 15th anniversary. In independent video game news, you can catch some indie game developer rants from the GDC if you missed them the first time. There's also Pontifex III coming soon, guaranteeing that GDNet will never again get any work done. Spelunky for Xbox Live Arcade has been making the rounds with its beautiful handmade graphics, and finally you're deluding yourself if you don't think the TF2 sidescroller mod is awesome. My next idea for a game to turn into a sidescroller? Australian politics, as rabble-rousers have ensured that the game-banning South Australian Attorney General has stepped down and presumably run a few screens to the right away from angry voters. In downloadable content news, you can now buy some clothes for Garrus, Jack and Thane. You may think $8 is a lot of money to spend for imaginary clothes, but it's actually a deal compared to how life would be if you hung out with these people in real life. I believe this is mostly because they'd be killing things or throwing chairs at your coworkers while screaming about corporate abuses of science. You might be interested in reading this interview with the guys at Penny Arcade, who have gone from nerds making Descent jokes to virtual kingmakers in the game industry. I've heard people have cried all day after a Penny Arcade strp featured their game. Before you go today, why not watch some Pingu? I'm told that in the countries that Pingu was originally aired in, it terrified small children. This is because Pingu is from one of those Scandinavian countries, just like Techno Viking. Read More.. | 14 Comments | |
| Saturday, March 20, 2010 | |
| Triangle Game Conference Announces Speaker Line Up, New Career Lounge | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 11:31:39 AM | |
| The Triangle Game Conference (TGC), returning April 7-8, 2010 at the Raleigh Convention Center and Marriott City Center, has announced its line up of tracks and speakers for an immersive learning exchange on market innovations, game development trends and the future of the video game industry. In addition to presentations from leading industry experts, TGC 2010 will feature a new and improved Career Lounge with hands-on access to local industry professionals. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Friday, March 19, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:08:24 AM | |
| Hey, that's a GameDev.net Daily! Like, it's in your face right now. Don't be intimidated, though, because despite what people are telling you about me from the Game Developers Conference, I'm not actually that scary or imposing a figure. I did, however, come straight from GDC into Austin's South-by-Southwest festival, so it's been kind of nutball. Yesterday was actually a pretty news-light kind of day. So let's look at some great information on Bungie's upcoming Halo: Reach video game. Primarily, the linked article takes a look at the game's Arena system, which is a system geared almost exclusively to high-ranking, skilled players of the game. Lead Multiplayer/UI engineer Luke Timmins says this of the mode: "It has a different vibe. It is a hardcore, Slayer-only [area]. You are going to be given a rating compared to the rest of the population broken up into divisions." It's an interesting attempt to segregate the multiplayer community based on skill. Also: Reach looks completely great and I'm excited for it. Speaking of that Xbox 360 video game console, it's rumored that the 360 may soon be able to use USB storage devices. Quoth source Shacknews: "any compatible device must have at least 1GB of storage, with the Xbox 360 able to utilize up to 16GB. Each device will need to be specifically formatted--either partially or completely--to be used as an Xbox 360 storage device. Up to two devices can be used simultaneously for a maximum of 32GB of extra storage." If this is true, it would be absolutely fantastic to extend the size of my 360's "hard drive" without having to pay for the ludicrously expensive 60/120GB HDDs. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sold over 2.3 million units. I'm incredibly glad to see that the Bad Company spinoff of the Battlefield franchise is doing well for EA/DICE. The first Bad Company was a spectacular game in both single-player and multiplayer play, and Bad Company 2 iterates well on the design that made the original game so good. I guess Jamie Foxx will be play James Lynch alongside Bruce Willis in the upcoming movie based on Kane & Lynch. So, that's a thing. The ever-insightful Brandon Sheffield took Visceral Games' "Design a Kill" contest for a ride in an opinion piece he wrote for Gamasutra. And while I think the contest is mildly entertaining and could yield some hilariously over-the-top fodder, I agree completely with Sheffield as far as the contest's overall existence and purpose goes. The contest tasks entrants with designing a killing blow for the studio's upcoming Dead Space 2. Sheffield says: "if [EA/Visceral Games] are not aware of the regressive nature of this competition, as the video on the official page seems to suggest, that is incredibly unconscious, and certainly indicative of the immaturity of our industry. This seems like the sort of thing you should really think through. Perhaps we're all so desensitized to violence in this industry that they did not think about it in this light." If nothing else, it seems like a little thought into what a contest actually tasks people with doing would go a long way in our ever-immature industry. Violent games are one thing, but tasking the players and consumers who purchase our games with actively coming up with incredibly violent ways of executing enemies is a completely different matter. As creative individuals, game developers understand what they're doing and why they're doing it; taking the context out of a "brutal kill" is just irresponsible. Speaking of incredibly violent video games, I think it's about that time for some God of War 3. It's, quite simply, a ludicrously well-made game. Sony is quickly getting garnering a reputation for completely and utterly polished first-party products this generation and I completely approve of this. Unfortunately, I have to balance this video game with actual life, Bad Company 2, Starcraft 2 beta, EVE: Online, and Heavy Rain. All of this is on top of starting a new long-ish indie game project of my own (hint: it's a heist game). Sometimes I wish I was independently wealthy. Or someone just gave me a lot of money. Or at least paid off my student loans. None of this will happen, though, so I'm stuck working the streets at night. Read More.. | 12 Comments | |
| Thursday, March 18, 2010 | |
| Hilva XNA Graphics Engine | |
| Posted by: Mahdi Khodadadi Fard at 4:28:49 AM | |
 Hilva XNA Graphics Engine is an extension to Microsoft XNA Framework, 100% written in C# and XNA, offering materials, post process, lights, shadows, skeletal animations, high dynamic range rendering and much more. The lastest release of the engine is able to load motion capture data from Biovision Hierarchy (BVH) files and will support Acclaim's Motion Capture (AMC) files in future releases.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Engage! Conference and Expo Audio Recordings Now Available for Download | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:44:07 AM | |
| The audio recordings for the all sessions held at the Engage! Conference and Expo, the definitive event on youth entertainment technology, are now available for download on the Engage! Expo 2010 website. The on-site interaction for attendees was priceless but this post-event access to such outstanding content is a tremendous value to anyone interested in youth entertainment technology. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Nominated games for Nordic Game Awards 2010 revealed | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:40:56 AM | |
 On 28 April, Nordic Game will present the fourth annual Nordic Game Awards.
Highlight of the conference’s Delegate Dinner, the Nordic Game Awards will consist of four categories: Best Nordic Game, Best Nordic Children’s Game, Best New Nordic Talent and Best Artistic Achievement.
The following games have been nominated by the game producers’ associations of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden: Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Intel announces fifth annual Level Up Game Demo Challenge for 2010 | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:37:51 AM | |
 Gamers are an enthusiastic bunch when it comes to the latest gaming technology, but it’s the developers that make the technology come to life. For Intel’s Level Up 2010: Intel® Visual Adrenaline Game Demo Challenge, independent developers around the world will be pushing the limits to create new experiences and breakthrough game concepts for 2010.The competition, in its fifth year, invites professional, hobbyist and student game developers to submit their original game concepts for a chance to win prizes such as (for professionals and hobbyists) a trip to the Tokyo Game Show, and (for students) a trip to the 2010 Austin Game Developer conference. Other prizes include cash, the latest hardware systems, the newest software packages, and agency engagement packages to help developers market and promote their winning game. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| GDC 2010 Hosts Record Number of Attendees | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:35:12 AM | |
 UBM TechWeb Game Network's 2010 Game Developers Conference® (GDC), the world's largest industry-only event dedicated to the advancement of interactive entertainment, has announced an all-time record of 18,250 game industry professionals attending San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center for the March 9th-13th event. Surpassing last year's total of 17,000 attendees, the event brought together experienced game developers, publishers, deal makers, industry aspirants and working press for more than 400 lectures, panels, summits, tutorials and roundtable discussions.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Discussion » ZGameEditor v1.9.9 for developing small and efficient OpenGL applicatio | |
| Posted by: Graphic Remedy at 2:34:05 AM | |
| San Francisco, Game Developer Conference 2010 - Graphic Remedy, a leading provider of advanced solutions for 3D graphics developers, today launched gDEBugger CL. gDEBugger CL allows OpenCL™-based application developers to deliver complex parallel computing applications and significantly improve application performance. gDEBugger CL offers advanced debugging, profiling and memory analysis capabilities that reduce development time, accelerate time to market, help deploy the application on multiple platforms and boost application parallel computing performance. For more information about gDEBugger CL, visit: http://www.gremedy.com/gDEBuggerCL.php. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| ZGameEditor v1.9.9 for developing small and efficient OpenGL applications | |
| Posted by: Ville Krumlinde at 2:32:02 AM | |
| ZGameEditor is a free game authoring tool that generates native high-performance stand-alone compact executables for Win32, Linux x86 and OS X. Now 3 years after initial release ZGameEditor has reached version 1.9.9 and it's the most feature packed update yet! Read full story for more information. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| pmG Releases messiahStudio4.5 Animation And Rendering Software, With FBX Export | |
| Posted by: pmG Worldwide, LLC at 2:30:45 AM | |
| With messiahStudio4.5, pmG is pleased to bring a Mac OS X version, new AutoRig version 3 system, new Hair Guide abilities with dynamics and collision, Point Animation mask mode and FBX export. "messiahStudio has always been able to do a real-time connection of its animation between other CG software, through our innovative open source connection plugins; now we add exporting of bone rigs, weights, point caches and whole scene elements, through the popular FBX format," says Co-Founder and President Fori Owurowa. "This should open messiahStudio up to an even larger market of game developers, already being known for our interactive animation speed, rigging, and smart bones technology," adds Fori. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Genetica 3.5 Released - Turn Photos into Seamless Textures | |
| Posted by: CJO at 2:29:01 AM | |
 Spiral Graphics Inc. has released Genetica 3.5, a giant leap forward for its flagship seamless texture, animated texture, and HDRI environment map package. A free trial can be downloaded from here.Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Major Update for the NeoAxis Game Engine (0.84) | |
| Posted by: NeoAxis Group Ltd. at 2:27:59 AM | |
| Today the NeoAxis Group released a major update for their NeoAxis Game Engine. The set of new features and the numerous improvements make it even easier for developers to produce high-quality applications and games. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| BotPrize 2010 announced | |
| Posted by: botprize at 2:26:18 AM | |
| 2K Australia sponsors 2010 BotPrize contest in Copenhagen More details at www.botprize.org The third 2K BotPrize competition will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark at the 2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Wednesday, March 17, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Oli Wilkinson at 1:32:37 PM | |
| Welcome along to Wednesday's GDNet Daily. This Daily is fully free of the certain three-letter acronym that you may have heard a lot of over this past week. :) Xbox 360... Slim?: Kotaku (via EDGE) have uncovered leaked images and claims that new XBox 360 "Slim" model is in development. The pictures show that the alleged console features the CPU and GPU combined into a single chip. Microsoft are refusing to comment either way, which is hardly surprising. I do wonder, however, if they can make it just a little bit quieter please! IGN Layoffs: We've been covering the layoffs in the game industry for several months now - this time around it seems even the media aren't immune to the downturn in fortunes we've all been experiencing. Yesterday it was leaked that entertainment giant IGN are to be letting people go "from every part of the company". The effort is reported to be due to a cost-cutting exercise. Rebellion Confirm Studio Closure: It's been ticking on since January and rumours of it emerged last week - Rebellion have officially confirmed our fears that their Derby (UK) studio has been closed and that staff in "junior positions" in their Oxford studio have also been let go; although no numbers were released of the layoffs. Old Dogs, new Trickster: Australian studio Transmission Games, who closed their doors in late 2009, have regrouped and founded a new studio called Trickster Games. Melbourne-based Trickster Games are said to have several games in development and are in the process of recruiting new talent. It's good news for the Australian game development scene, which has been hit pretty hard over the past year. Zynga announce new President: Social game developer Zynga have announced that they have appointed the veteran EA executive Steven Chiang as their new president. The move will no doubt fuel the competition between Zynga and their hottest rival Playfish, who were acquired by EA last year. It looks like the social game arena is going to get interesting this coming year. Gears 3: I don't normally talk about games, but I love the Gears of War franchise (yeah, I'm one of them). There's rumours abound that Gears of War 3 will be out in April 2011 - the 8th to be precise. I'm already looking forward to the carnage and the macho chest-pounding. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Tuesday, March 16, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 2:59:42 PM | |
| Today is a Back From GDC GameDev.Net Daily! This was my first GDC and it was a lot of fun. Long week though, packed with meetings, sessions, summits, talks, roundtables, and so much more. Probably the coolest thing was meeting the tools lead at Zipper Interactive and finding out they're doing their tools on SlimDX. A couple LucasArts engineers were very complimentary as well. It's really nice to have that kind of reputation as a project. Once again, we have tons of GDC coverage up and probably more coming this week as all of us pour through our notes and post coverage. It behooves you to go read that coverage. Meeting all these people I've talked to online for years was crazy cool, too. I'm told the GDC show was much smaller this year, but it sure didn't stop people from showing up. The organizers announced a record attendance of 18,250 game industry professionals. Plans for 2011 are already being laid down, and lecture submissions will open in summer. All of us attendees are waiting for the Vault to open, providing full video of the talks we missed. Myself, I'm hoping they got Mike Acton on video, although I did get the slides. ArsTechnica posted what amounts to an amusing study on how to make a game journalist nervous. No intrinsic value whatsoever, but I laughed. Social was all the rage at GDC this year, and one of the big stories in that arena is free-to-play games -- and the insane amounts of money those 'free' games make. I think the particularly brilliant idea a few people have had is that instead of getting involved in the games, just handle the money! GamaSutra has a feature on Kwedit, which essentially creates credit in a virtual world. Fairly bizarre, but oddly interesting as well. I think my highlight from last week was PlayStation Move, actually. Joystiq posted plenty of information about the new peripheral. Now don't get me wrong, the demos Sony showed were pretty weak. But at a technical level, it seems to offer the best of both the Wii and Project Natal, and lays down some really impressive specifications too. I'm still not sold on motion control in general, but it's fairly obvious that it's coming up in a big way. I am curious to see what game designers can come up with; hopefully we're ready to move beyond the Wii's generic stick waggle controls. For everyone else, check out GamaSutra's roundup of top talks. Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Monday, March 15, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:01:08 AM | |
| They say that the first Monday back after a daylight savings change is marked by a significant increase in accidents; I didn't particularly notice as I was far too busy routing around the usual bunch of accidents on my commute. I'm going to work so I can afford brilliant titles like Deadly Premonition, which is my official GDNet Daily Pick of the Week. If you're an Xbox 360 (or in Europe, PS3) owner, you owe it to yourself to buy this $20 horror game which expertly mixes dry cleaning, socializing and 80s movies while allowing you to play with the turn signals and windshield wipers on your car in what is an obvious ripoff of David Lynch's excellent Twin Peaks series. We're in the aftermath of the Game Developers Conference, and what that means is that we're not going to see a whole lot of news. Apparently this week, we're going to see a little game called God of War 3, and we can take time to catch up on last week's spew of news, including an awesome preview of Metroid: Other M. Also at the GDC was Sid Meier, who told us how our beloved Civilization could have become something completely different. Something something Crackdown 2! Clever remark. I may have gone to a car show over the weekend, but the real show was in this GT5 trailer, which I believe has been mentioned already but bears repetition. Vroom! In downloadable content news, regular denizens of the Daily know that I love Mass Effect 2 for its tense mixture of hard sci-fi, goofy aliens and constantly bickering crewmates. Well, you can throw another crewmate into the mix, and she wants you to come to a dinner party. I must warn you that my Shepard is a little bit of a lush, so it seems ripe for embarrassment. I was trying to download Digital: A Love Story last week, but kept getting angered by the Coral cache's inability to keep large binaries available. Luckily for me, someone else has played it and gives their review above. If you remember BBSes (that aren't developed by Valve), you owe it to yourself to check this one out. I know I'll try to download it again and again until it finally catches. Congratulations to everyone who won an IGF award; Andy Schatz's interview demonstrates that he has let the massive success of Monaco (perhaps buoyed by his rather cryptic death threats) go to his head. Before you go today, don't forget to check out how buff Gordon Brown's kung-fu is. Abusing your staff has never been so entertaining! Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Friday, March 12, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:41:14 AM | |
| It's GDC, guys! It's my first GDC ever and, as a result, I have essentially no idea what I'm doing. If you check out my journal, though, you'll see a lot of words. This is going to be somewhat of an abbreviated Daily since I've been writing a lot of words and it's late and I'm tired and it's totally my birthday! Speaking of GDC, you should check out our GDC event coverage. You have people like me, Ian Overgard, Tim Barnes, Scott Hilbert, and Kevin Hawkins all talking about the sessions we saw, things we heard, and so on. It's fun! PocketWatch Games' Monaco took the Seamus McNally Grand Prize. This was the first IGF/Game Developer Choice Awards I've been to, but Andy Schatz, of PocketWatch games, had such an excited, earnest, and happy reaction to both of the awards he received that it was a fantastic end to the show. Meanwhile, Uncharted 2 absolutely swept the Game Developers Choice Awards. This is, in my opinion, a completely deserved thing. Also Gabe Newell got a Pioneer Award and John Carmack got a Lifetime Achievement Award. I saw these people live! It was glorious! Bioshock 2 rocked the NPDs. Go go underwater world. And that's it. That's all the news. This is not entirely true but, as we discussed earlier, I'm sleepy. xoxoxo trent Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
