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DIG London Game Conference5th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment2K Bot PrizeIEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games
 | S W E E T S N I P P E T Resolution Independence in 2D Direct3D Games – An Alternative Approach by Paul Cook, posted 11/20/08 using StretchRect() to scale a final frame to the proper resolution rather than manually scaling vertices - the upsides and downsides |  | P R O G R A M M I N G Computation of Bounding Primitives on the GPU by Philip Rideout, posted 11/12/08 Nowadays it's becoming fashionable to use GPU's for purposes other than pure graphics. Learn a sneaky trick that leverages the GPU's horsepower to efficiently compute an axis-aligned bounding box. Includes sample code for DirectX 10, but this method can be used with other API's as well |
 | G A M E I N D U S T R Y Lessons Learned – Hobby Game Development by Lloyd Tullues, posted 11/4/08 After creating a game engine to learn and make prototypes, Lloyd has indeed picked up on many good habits he would like to pass along to the rest of the development community, and other hobbyist developers especially |  | E V E N T C O V E R A G E A Look at Game Connection by Drew Sikora, posted 11/4/08 We have a look at what Game Connection has to offer developers and talk with the founder to learn more about this unique event that's all about the business of making games |
| Monday, December 1, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:03:53 AM | |
 Welcome to the first GDNet Daily of December. In order to prepare for the madcap sprint that the Christmas release season will soon bestow upon us, I suggest you start by focusing on your glutes and thumbs. In the event of Wii-related injuries, see a noted chiropractor or just let the neighborhood kids play on the machine, you console-hoarding killjoy. I bet you trampled some dude to death on Friday just to get your hands on it.First off is Microsoft's puzzling announcement that many of the DirectX 10 features will be emulated on the CPU in Windows 7. This is most likely intended to prop up the still-terrible integrated video solutions that are being sold in many "Vista Capable" computers. As you may have seen from other news posts recently, the Montreal International Game Summit wrapped up last week. Gamasutra sponsored a number of the presentations, and as such GameSetWatch has been giving coverage to them. Read up on Army of Two, the gleefully xenophobic buddy shooter which captivated certain GDNet members for hours on end. Also at MIGS was the Gamma 3D event, which I wrote about last week. This could be considered another plug for the event, and you should therefore take advantage of the free games provided. In other independent news, Grand Text Auto had a small competition to produce story generators in 1K of code. Here are those results, which will hopefully compel readers of this space to try their hand at procedural plot. The IGF is in full swing, as you've seen other places, and the list of entrants has been announced. It's quite large, tipping the scales at 371 games total. The IGF might even be more stuffed with games than this video of 100 games sandwiched together into 10 minutes of footage. Don't blink. Midway has fallen on some tough times. Its controlling investor has sold it off for $100K, or about $0.0012 USD per share. Before you do what I did and swear up and down about what a great deal that is, read into the bit where it says the lucky new owner assumed seventy million dollars of debt. I'll leave my rant about there not being any kind of bailout for video game companies to the reader's imagination. Independent developers have another great opportunity -- former Nazi imitators Consolevania will be covering indie games on national television. If you think you're up to it, get your game in there. First you get the coverage, then you get the money, then you get the Child's Play is still running strong this year; I gave myself, but I could have flown out for a stint at the Desert Bus marathon. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Desert Bus was a minigame featured in the unreleased Penn & Teller Sega CD game. The objective of such is to drive, in real time, from Tucson AZ to Las Vegas. This, I am told, takes upwards of eight hours. Upon completion of this task, the player receives one point, and is offered the opportunity to make the return trip for another point. This sounds about as much fun to me as a college football game that includes a built-in band geek simu- oh wait. Before you go today, be sure to check out some retro General Motors ads, made before people realized that spending $7000 out of every $12000 car on self-managed pensions and health care while paying their executives millions of dollars per year in bonuses and salary and keeping the same small car platform relatively unchanged for a decade straight was kind of sort of a bad idea. I'm not bitter. Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Thursday, November 27, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:40:49 PM | |
| Happy Turkey Day to my fellow Americans today, and to all the rest of you celebrating Thanksgiving out there in the wide world. The holidays generally extend for many people through Friday as well this year as it's pointless to travel back from visiting relatives to spend a day in the office before the weekend - that applies to our mittens as well, so there will be no Daily tomorrow. I know, wipe away your tears. Moving onto the news for today, a whopping 226 entries were submitted to the IGF's main competition this year, which is a marked 30% increase compared to last year's 173 entries. Even the student-side of things is heating up, with 145 entries rolling in versus 125 last year. This should come as no real suprise though seeing that over the years the Independant Games Festival has been the launching force behind many successful indie games on the market today, and any right-minded indie developer out for extra exposure should be putting their game up for contention. Good luck to all of this year's entrants, and I look forward to talking with the finalists when they are announced at the start of next year! [Full Story] This is a rather uhm, interesting story on branding - it seems Nintendo of Europe has dropped the red Nintendo logo in favor of... wait for it... waaaiiiit for it... a gray one. Hold up, sorry - "discrete gray". That sounds about right, as I can see this disappearing quite nicely on just about anything. There's been no real reason given as to the change in the logo, and only Nintendo Europe seems to have adopted this new style at this time. Anyone want to venture a guess as to the nature of this decision? Was red finally deemed too bloody and violent? [Full Story] If you're going to be braving the crowds tomorrow for Black Friday, you should probably be well prepared. If you need a more gamer-centric listing, 1Up.com has your Black Friday Videogame Deals Cheat Sheet. If you're too afraid to leave your house for fear of being trampled, you can always logon to XBLA and PSN to grab some deals from both online games stores. Grab some additional Black Friday advice from our resident deal broker John Hattan as well. I must say I'm rather hooked on the theme song for Mirror's Edge, Still Alive. Lisa Miskovsky just has one of those voices that resonates with my soul. Check out the music video and if you're favorable to techno, download the free MP3 pack with 5 mixes of the song. It's worth the registration. Righty then! I need to go gobble down some turkey and pass out in a tryptophan-induced slumber. Here's a question I leave for you: White meat or dark meat? Read More.. | 11 Comments | |
| Wednesday, November 26, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 11:27:44 AM | |
| The Australian Classification Board has refused classification for Monoliths FEAR 2: Project Origin. The decision will render the game banned from being sold in Australia. So far no reasons have been given for the decision but the group is said to have been strict with other games in the past, such as Fallout 3 which later passed with a MA15+ rating. It doesn’t get any higher than MA15+, so any titles that would fall in to the 18+ category will never have a chance of being released. Gamesindustry.biz spoke to Sony’s eye-toy developer recently and they had some interesting things to say about their competitors. According to the GIbiz article, they have said that they expect Microsoft's you’re In the Movies to face difficulties due to unreliable technology. Designer for Sony's EyeToy, Sandy Spangler said "I think that [with you’re In the Movies] they're probably going to have some technical difficulties to wrestle with,", "They're using some technical elements that are not reliable, at least not according to our experience. They're using background subtraction to put you in the movie, and it's not very robust, that's why we haven't done it in any of our games. If the white shifts in the room or something, it can stop working," added Spangler. "Good luck to them." He also goes on to say that he believes the EyeToy is a more intuitive interface for casual gaming than the Wii controller."It's more intuitive, it's very clear, as opposed to trying to figure out how to... use the Wii remote in ways that maybe naturally don't make sense - you wave it a lot to do activities where you wouldn't be waving in real life. "Whereas what we always try and do with our games is make a direct correlation between the motion that you're doing and the action on screen, the effect you're having on the game." Weapon of Choice developer Nathan Fouts has said that downloadable games like Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Castle Crashers are under priced. "I want to go on the record and say I feel like most downloadable games are under-priced," he said, describing 800 or 1200 Microsoft Points for the Capcom and Behemoth titles as "ridiculous to me". "Microsoft does not allow for user-defined price points like 799 Points or even 100-Point increments like 500, 600, 700, etc. For a bigger game like Weapon of Choice, only having two options, one of which is double the first option, makes the decision difficult," he explained. Cool news for indie devs! Bethesda Softworks has announced plans to make both its editor and downloadable content available for Fallout 3. The official editor for Fallout 3, called the GECK, will be available for free download in December and will allow PC users to create and add their own content to the game. Even more great news is that, Operation: Anchorage, the first downloadable content for the game, will be available exclusively for the Xbox 360, Mac and PC in January. Nintendo has announced that it will give out activation codes for Wii Speak to those that have lost the original number, or who have bought a replacement Wii console since activating the peripheral. The Wii Speak microphone comes with a unique activation code which allows users to download and use the Wii Speak Channel, and is the only accessory which will allow access to the new Channel. More Nintendo news, Nintendo is going to release two new DS bundles in the US this Friday, November 28. A Mario Red DS with Mario branding and a copy of New Super Mario Bros., and an Ice Blue DS with custom carry case and copy of Brain Age will both be sold in the region for 149.99 USD. The video link for today is, Destroy all Humans PotF. Enjoy! Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 12:40:05 PM | |
| It's Two Days To Turkey, so let's buckle down and finish this off. To be honest, I'm not that big a fan of turkey. It's got nothing on, say, cornish game hen. However, there are several very awesome games involving turkeys. And then there's that whole Black Friday thing coming up. Are any of you planning to head out to stores and trample lesser human beings in the pursuit of trivially significant material objects? Or are you more internet shopping types? The National Institute on Media and the Family has apparently taken the time to create a list of "Games to Avoid for Children", 2008 style. Never mind that we have a rating system that writes an M on the front of every box that isn't for kids. Never mind that you could generate this list by simply parsing the ESRB listings for M games. You know how these media institute types are -- they assume parents and consumers are morons, and the painful part is they're probably right. In any case, the games listed are hardly a shock. I suspect most of you can guess at most of the list without ever having to click the link. They also recommend a list of family friendly games, which is very hit or miss. (Rock Band is worth buying, yes. Rock Revolution, however, is not.) Bethesda based developer Bethesda has just announced that Mod Tools are on the way. All of you modders looking for a new mod project to start and never complete on the absolute newest technology, this is your chance. We even have a forum here on GameDev.Net for that sort of thing so you can find other like-minded people to help build your mods. And what better time to start than as soon as the possibility of using this engine becomes concrete? Who knows, maybe one of you even has an actual good idea for a game that would go well with the Unfortunately I have bad news again this week. Age of Conan developer Funcom just shed a bunch of US staff. This is mainly support and QA stuff, but they're still part of our industry and important to game creation, and it's unfortunate to see this sort of thing happen. On the bright side, the game industry does tend to take care of its own, so hopefully the people losing their Funcom jobs will be able to find employment at other nearby game developers before long. It's a fairly resilient industry in the face of economic issues, but definitely a rather bizarre one too. According to a report from yesterday, only 20% of released games make a profit, which shouldn't be a surprise to anybody working on games. (Except possibly Harmonix. They may not be aware.) The report also claims that only 20% of games that go into production make it to shelves, which means 4% of all games that begin production turn a profit. I'm not so sure about that number, because most games have preproduction cycles to incubate and sign contracts and such, and it's quite common to run several preproduction games and cancel all but one. I'm not sure if the report is including those prototype games in its figures or not. Of course we're coming up on the holiday season, which is where the big profits tend to come from. And wherever profits are involved, so are analysts, the people who are literally paid to make guesses about the economy and generally be attention whores. These fine gentlemen have gone ahead and predicted who will lose big this holiday season. I would create my own list, but I don't feel like finding out what games are sporting metacritic scores under 75 these days. Being an analyst is very hard work. By the way, the PETA parody game of Cooking Mama is amazingly awesome. I love it even more than I loved Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3. But more importantly, don't forget to watch the Megaman movie trailer. It's awesome. Is that Dark Knight I hear in the background? Hmm. Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Computer Animation Scholarship Offered in LA Film School Animation Competition | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:41:33 AM | |
 The Los Angeles Film School announces that it will offer a $20,000 Computer Animation scholarship to the winner of its innovative LA Film School Computer Animation Competition.The competition, which will be made up of contestants that create and submit themed animation projects, will be open to the general public. The contestant with the most imaginative project will receive a $20,000 scholarship towards The Los Angeles Film School’s Computer Animation Associate Degree program. Artists will be eligible to submit their original work from November 25 to December 22. On December 26, a winner will be announced. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| GCA Games Convention Asia 2009 Extended and Professional Visitors’ Day Added | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:01:54 AM | |
 LMI Leipziger Messe International (LMI), the organizer of GCA Games Convention Asia, today announced that its third convention for interac-tive entertainment and digital media will take place from November 17-20, 2009 in Singapore. This time the convention will take place over four days, with the first day reserved just for Professional Visitors. The Games Convention Asia Conference (GCAC) that runs alongside the public exhibition, will take place from November 17-20, 2009 as well.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Monday, November 24, 2008 | |
| November Indie games Round-Up | |
| Posted by: Russ Carroll at 11:50:49 PM | |
 Game Tunnel has posted the latest in its long-running Famitsu-styled panels that review all the newest Independent PC games. The 10 games reviewed for November include 2D Boy's World of Goo, Mount & Blade from Taleworlds and Project Aftermath from Games Faction. Reviews from each of the 4 panel members on all the games can be found in the article.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Bullet 2.73 released: fast btCudaBroadphase | |
| Posted by: Simon Michelmore at 9:48:43 PM | |
 Bullet 2.73 has been released.Hit the jump for full change details Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| GDC09 Scholarship Program Now Accepting Applications | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 7:11:59 PM | |
 The IGDA has just launched the Student Scholarship Program for GDC09. Twenty-five university students will be awarded complimentary "Main Conference" passes to the 2009 Game Developers Conference. The deadline to enter is Thursday, January 15th, 2009. Recipients will be announced mid February.Applicants are required to be full-time university students (or equivalent) and IGDA student members for consideration. Scholarship applications will be judged by a panel of professional game developers. No, I do not accept bribes. Sorry. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Call for Speakers Announced for LOGIN 2009 Conference | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:15:12 AM | |
| Online game industry professionals are now invited to submit speaking proposals for a lecture, mini lecture or roundtable for the 2009 LOGIN Game Conference. LOGIN 2009, crafted by Evergreen Events and its industry-leading advisory board, is designed to facilitate education, networking, and entertainment for both business and development professionals within the online game industry. LOGIN 2009 will be held May 11th-14th 2009 in Seattle, Washington at the fantastic Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 11:14:53 AM | |
| Those of you who have been putting out bad review scores for my Dailies will soon be without my publisher-provided graft, and I also plan to insult your mothers at our industry-only parties. I demand a high Metacritic score! I figured that was acceptable because, hey, Eidos is doing it. There's no greater sign that Metacritic has "made it" than the fact that Eidos is bullying and leaning on reviewers to only say nice things about their boob-based adventure simulator. You may remember Eidos from such massively immature hilarity as Gamespot's willingness to sell out for ad dollars, firing a bunch of people, and Harvey and Warren's Fun Futuristic Dystopia With Humongous Hitboxes and Ineffectual Plot. So you can add Eidos to the list of publishers that has probably blacklisted my CV. An "industry analyst" has stated that only 4% of games are profitable, which is not really all that big of a shocker. Gabe Newell has a plan to change this: he's going to GAMMA 3D ended this weekend and some of the entries are very promising indeed. I fully expect to derive a screaming migraine headache from Paper Moon, a bizarre platformer which reminds me as much of the obscure Mario Clash as it does David Firth. Also check out Falling, whose monochromatic screenshots are unusually depressing. If you're upset at missing GAMMA 3D, I remind you that the next Ludum Dare 48h competition starts on the Dec 5 weekend. The TIGSource Commonplace Book Competition ends this Friday, so if you have an entry still outstanding, get busting on it. I'll report on the entries next week. Before you go today, make sure to check your local stores for Chrono Trigger DS. Hopefully Square learned from every previous Chrono-related game and will actually print copies this time. But if not, you could be $5 million richer in 2025 when it turns out they only released 6 copies to local 7-11s. Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Help Wanted Picks | |
| Posted by: Jason Adams at 7:44:48 AM | |
| Welcome to the first of what will hopefully be a regular new fortnightly front-page item here at GDNet, aiming to highlight some of the better or more interesting projects from the many that pass through our Help Wanted Forum. I'll be providing a brief description and link to the recruitment threads of Help Wanted projects that I think stand out and may be of interest to the community at large - check today's full article for a partnership with an indie developer with 2 previous succesful titles, a long term OSS RPG project with several succesful releases, several individuals offering their services to help with your project and more. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Friday, November 21, 2008 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:23:14 PM | |
| Journal Land Pick of the Week Gaiiden's Scroll - Yes, I am tooting my own horn. Toot! Toot! This past Tues and Wed I was in Montreal attending the Int'l Game Summit there, and I have summaries and pictures from the event - full coverage coming next week. It seems the holidays are kicking in - journal posts are way down lately. Still some good stuff in what is up though! Read More.. | 4 Comments | |
| Game Design Expo Unveils 2009 Lineup | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:33:25 AM | |
| Building upon the sold-out 2008 event, the third-annual Game Design Expo, hosted by Vancouver Film School (VFS), Canada’s premier post-secondary entertainment arts institution, is shaping up to be even bigger and better. Set for February 7 and 8, 2009 at the Vancity Theater at the Vancouver International Film Centre, the weekend will be headlined by Clint Hocking, Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal (Splinter Cell, Far Cry 2), a popular speaker at industry events, and will feature an exciting lineup of talks and panels with the leading minds in game design. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Flash Tower Defense Creators Launch Casual Collective | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:15:17 AM | |
| World-renowned indie game developers Paul Preece and David Scott -- the creators of blockbuster Web game hits Desktop Tower Defense and Flash Element TD -- today announced the launch of Casual Collective, a free-to-play social gaming site featuring a range of new Web games created exclusively by Preece and Scott. In the coming months, Casual Collective will introduce an ongoing stream of new titles on its site, with features and content exclusive to Casual Collective, as well as distribute titles to a host of other top game destination sites across the Web. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:45:14 AM | |
| I'm writing to you from a fresh install of Vista x64 after a few too many blue screens every day or so coerced me from my ever-comfortable prior install into a the nerd equivalent of a brand new desk chair. Now, maybe I'm just OCD (little bit), but does anyone else have a very meticulous set of settings/programs that absolutely must be installed within mere minutes of the first boot-up of any new OS install? I do. It took me a few hours. At least. A mere handful of months after it's initial launch, Google kills Google Lively citing that the company needs to "prioritize [their] resources and focus more on [their] core search, ads and apps business." Lively.com will be shut down at the end of December and "everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams." All respect to the Lively team but I hope I'm not the target for Lively because, quite honestly, I wasn't aware it existed. Did I write about it here back in July? The 1Up Network division of Ziff Davis, which shut down the PC gaming-focused superb Games for Windows Magazine back in April and shut down their PC platform-focused PC Magazine yesterday is now contemplating shutting down Electronic Gaming Monthly as well. The New York Times report on the topic, despite offering any direct quotes from Ziff Davis CEO Jason Young, says that "Mr. Young said the company was considering taking its other print magazine, the video-game publication Electronic Gaming Monthly, into an online-only format, but would not make a decision before the end of the year." I've been reading EGM since I was seven-years-old and the magazine, in its current incarnations, is the best American gaming magazines I am aware of and the transformation of that into an online-only form would be sad. In more positive news, Rockstar is giving a late Valentine's Day present to gamers in the downloadable form of Grand Theft Auto 4: The Lost and the Damned. The estimated $15-20 USD DLC will place wanton criminals into the shoes of Johnny Klebitz, a member of The Lost (a biker gang from the original game). I can't wait to shoot run people over with the power of Euphoria again. I like zombies and the Xbox 360 game Dead Rising and I was glad to learn that Capcom won the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Dawn of the Dead producer MKR Productions. Some of the similarities between Dead Rising and Dawn of the Dead, as listed by MKR Productions, included: "The mall has a gun shop, in which action takes place" (!), "Both works use music in the mall for comedic effect" (like every movie with an elevator!), and, undoubtedly the worst offense, "Many of the zombies wear plaid shirts" (oh, the horror). I love the world sometimes. As a final, incredibly important, reminder: Canadians are working on Dead Rising 2 -- a game I'd like injected straight into my cerebral cortex. Finally, Sony has realized that if their system of gamer achievements is to take off then, like Microsoft, developers/publishers must support Playstation 3 Trophies in all games. I prefer the simplicity of the Xbox 360's achievement system (pseudo-tiers of achievements determined by a common "gamer points" currency) over the three-tiered trophy system of the Playstation 3 but, really, I just like the idea of achievements so anything is good. You should be playing games this weekend. It's a good weekend for it. We've got Left 4 Dead a zombie game (!) which GameDev.net'ers like myself, Ravuya, and Run_The_Shadows have been playing all week. Alongside that I will also be acting all tactical-like in Valkyria Chronicles. Also zombies. Read More.. | 8 Comments | |
| Firelight Technologies release FMOD Ex for iPhone. | |
| Posted by: Firelight Technologies at 6:38:06 AM | |
 Audio middleware company Firelight Technologies today released its popular FMOD Music and Sound Effects System for the iPhone platform. FMOD Ex is a library and toolset that enables developers to take advantage of the latest audio technologies in their software titles. With this release, iPhone developers can now use the same high quality FMOD audio engine that is widely used throughout the games industry.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 | |
| Women in Games International Launches Online Auction | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 7:56:17 PM | |
 Women in Games International (WIGI) today announced their WIGI Celebrity Ebay Auction, a collection of over a hundred video games and game-related merchandise items -- much of it signed by industry leaders -- being auctioned to raise funds for Women in Games InternationalRead More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:12:43 PM | |
| Although I'm trying hard to change the perception that Thursday Dailies are late in coming, today I didn't get back into the country from my jaunt out to Canada until early this afternoon. So - reasonable excuse? You decide! Speaking of Canada, apparently the Quebec game industry has shaped up to be the sixth largest in the world, according to a recent study reported on by Gamasutra. The top 5 spots (starting from the top) go to Japan, California, South Korea, the UK and then Washington. However, if you replace total number of industry employees with total number of industry employees per thousand people, then Quebec comes in third as the densest concentration of industry members, beaten only by Washington and British Columbia. The province is looking to continue building out its development community. [Full Story] Still on the subject of Canada, and specifically Quebec, I just flew back in from attending the Montreal International Game Summit over the last two days. While full coverage is coming next week of all the sessions and events that I attended, you can catch summaries of MIGS sessions/events in my journal, and of course Gamasutra has their own coverage - although I wish it were easier to list all together rather than searching out MIGS in the headline. MIGS's counter-part conference, the Vancouver International Game Summit, is being expanded next year by Think Services and has been re-branded GDC Canada. A call for submissions for GDC Canada has just been sent out, and while I could link to the Gamasutra report, I find it far more interesting that it's being broadcast as well by IGN Games. [Full Story] Okay, slowly working away from MIGS, Autodesk completes their acquisition of Softimage. This is slightly MIGS-relevant because I happened to be introduced to Autodesk's Public Relations Manager for Worldwide Marketing and she was very excited about the closing of the deal. She'll also be sure to keep us here at GDNet informed of the new developments stemming from the acquisition. The deal closed at $35M, and Autodesk is now in control of Maya as well as all the various Softimage products. [Full Story] So it should be no surprise to anyone that of course Nintendo is running short on stock for their Wii Fit product. The company is hoping to have enough Wii console units this year, however - but Wiitailers aren't so sure. That was a while ago though, so hopefully Nintendo's recent reports hold true for those seeking Wii's this holiday season. Oh, I also find this part confusing: "According to Fils-Aime, Wii owners want to see more games that perform well on rival systems, like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, brought to the Wii." Define "perform well", please. I'm guessing sales, not graphics. [Full Story] Annnd for our final story we have the sad case of a 15yr-old boy going into convulsions after a WoW:Lich King marathon. Sad of course because he couldn't tear himself away from the game before doing himself harm (from which he will thankfully(?) recover). Too bad he's in Sweden and not Vietnam or he could seek help. His binging may have been an attempt to level his character to the new cap of 80, however he should have strategized a bit better like these guys, who did it in only 27 hours and survived to talk about it. [Full Story] Your cool link of the day is - What Photoshop Would Look Like in Real Life | |
| StemCell Game Engine - Oil Platform Demo | |
| Posted by: DevCell Software at 10:45:02 AM | |
| A new StemCell Game Engine-powered demo is available for download. It emphasizes on soft shadows and good illumination, physically driven player control, in-game extensible and configurable GUI, real-time physics and controllable physical machineries, in-game scene loading, multiple rendering viewports, immersive 3d sounds and a lot more. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Xoreax Software Releases IncrediBuild 3.32 Release Candidate | |
| Posted by: Ron Lehrer - Xoreax Software at 5:35:53 AM | |
 Xoreax Software announced today the release of IncrediBuild 3.32RC. IncrediBuild is an easy-to-use platform for accelerating Windows-based processes such as code/data builds, scripts and tools through advanced Grid Computing technology. IncrediBuild 3.32 features enhanced performance and networking, new monitoring options and additional new features.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 11:29:50 AM | |
| I know Promit covered NXE yesterday, but I think it deserves another day of coverage, since the official release is today. As previously stated, Microsoft have launched their latest update to the Xbox Live. The New Xbox Experience, NXE, gives users a few new features, such as the ability to choose their own customized animated avatar, a new interface and play from hard drive. You can also access your Xbox live market place on the web, the Xbox LIVE Party which allows users to talk to friends from the dashboard rather than just in game. In related news, Gamesindustry.biz are reporting that hundreds of titles from Sony Pictures Entertainment made previously available to stream via Netflix on Xbox Live have been withdrawn. The movie titles have only been restricted on the Xbox 360, apparently since the announcement of Microsoft’s NXE. Netflix's VP of corporate communications Steve Swasey says they hope the Sony Pictures Entertainment titles will be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly. Need for Speed: Undercover was released yesterday and its looking pretty hot! Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| MIGS Summaries | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 8:40:58 AM | |
| I'm at the Montreal International Games Summit, which runs through today (it started yesterday), and providing summaries of the sessions that I attend in my journal. They're just highlights to give you an idea of what each session covered so you can see if you'd be interested in checking out the full coverage coming next week, where each of the summaries in my journal will be expanded to cover all the features of each talk. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| New Quotix Texture Collection for game development | |
| Posted by: Quotix Software at 1:06:40 AM | |
| Quotix Software is released the fourth collection of high quality textures for game development. In this collection there are 110 textures in 512x512 resolution. Normal, specular and bump maps are included. For more details visit www.quotixsoftware.com Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Tuesday, November 18, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 11:23:20 AM | |
| Oh have I got good news for all of you. Since you've been such loyal readers, I am presenting to you today the New GameDev.Net Daily Experience! By providing a shiny new Experience for Daily reading, I am confident that I can distract you from basic failings in my Daily posts, such as the lack of content that isn't already highly visible elsewhere. Welcome to the New GameDev.Net Experience. Read in. Of course I'm just following the lead of Microsoft, because word is out that everybody who signed up for the preview of the New Xbox Experience now has access. That's an entire day early! I of course did not sign up because I figured I wouldn't end up getting a preview so screw the whole thing. Oops. Anyway, lots of people are going to get their New Experiences tonight, and I suppose the rest of us will have to wait until tomorrow. The biggest news of course is the Xiivatars, customizable characters that can even be used in games (though sadly they're not supported in XNA right now). I'm very impressed with Microsoft's creativity and originality on this one, which should come as no surprise to anyone who reads my Tuesday Dailies. I just wish they'd creatively add a web browser to the thing. A Blu-Ray addon would be good too. Maybe I'm being unfair to the NXE, though -- it does add streaming from Netflix (including HD), hard drive installation of games, and XNA Community Games. In the world of computer hardware, Intel just launched their Core i7 processors. If you haven't been following the development and previews of this chip line, I will go ahead and summize: they're goddamn processing monsters. They're even unlocked for overclocking, so you can pull out that unused can of liquid nitrogen and go wild if you want. AMD meanwhile is counting on earlier availability of multisocket configurations for their new chips to give them an advantage. This is of course because their processors are simply no match for the Intel offerings one on one. I'm kind of disappointed, personally, because in the Athlon64's heyday, the competition between Intel and AMD was really impressive and interesting. Now it seems to be mostly about Intel pummeling AMD in new and more creative ways while AMD reconfigures itself. Remember that lawsuit against Microsoft about "Vista Capable" branding? Basically it's a class action claiming that the branding of computers as Vista capable was deceptive advertising by Microsoft because those computers could only run the Home Basic edition (which sucks). Anyway, although the details of the actual lawsuit are kind of tedious, it has resulted in a lot of emails within Microsoft being made public by the court system, and there's interesting stuff in there. In particular, it's interesting to see how pressure from Intel on Microsoft caused the rules of the branding to be changed. It's best to read the article (and follow some links) for the full story, but suffice it to say there's a lot of angry hardware vendors, a lot of angry and confused consumers, and one operating system standing very awkwardly in the corner as a storm continues around it and its successor looms on the horizon. This is what makes technology fun. Lastly, we can get back to game development news with a Q&A with the Ensemble Director of Technology, discussing Microsoft's decision to shut the studio down. (Also linked yesterday.) He also talks about the Halo MMO a bit, and openly admits that World of Warcraft was being used as the model. (Personally I subscribe to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's theory that all MMOs want to be World of Warcraft.) It's a fairly short interview, but there's also an interview with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. As usual, Wardell is a pretty cocky and self-confident sort of guy, but it's interesting to see what the smaller independent studios are interested in doing. I have a question. Can you have too much LittleBigPlanet? I'm thinking no. Yes, even despite cheesy Steve Irwin imitators. Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Monday, November 17, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:33:09 AM | |
| It's a slow, cold Monday here, so here is an attempt to put out a GDNet Daily to stoke the flames of righteous outrage. I'm sure I've been blacklisted from 96% of game studios out there, and probably marked for death by Bill Roper's squad of elite assassins. Ensemble, makers of fine RTS titles and the unreleased Halo Wars, is finally speaking out about Microsoft's treatment of them. Insomniac also gave an interview. Am I the only one who constantly confuses them with Naughty Dog? Greatly despised antagonist Games industry juggernaut Nintendo has announced that they won't make a Wii successor any time soon, most likely because the console is still selling like crack-infused hotcakes. If your grandmother is looking for more games to play in the nursing home, therefore, you might want to buy her Guitar Praise, a Christian rock Guitar Hero clone. No word yet on whether Judas Priest is on the tracklist. Capcom made me cry by refusing to put Street Fighter IV in arcades. This is despite the fact that I have no idea where a local arcade stocking fighting games is, other than at a movie theatre several dozen miles from my place of residence. In indie news (finally!) Ludum Dare 13 is the Dec 5 - 7 weekend, so mark off your calendar. I will try to keep notifying you of this advancing date, but the LD squad are nice chaps and you could do much worse than to spend 48 hours straight kept awake through drug abuse and pinching yourself as you wait for your code to compile. Finally, before we go today, I must remind U.S. Americans that Black Friday is coming soon, and many of your favourite game-stocking retail outlets have deals on videogames. You should consider holding purchases off until then, which adds the metagame, I am told, of being forced to brutalize housewives and fight for your life in the parking lot before you even get the game. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Friday, November 14, 2008 | |
| SlimDX November 2008 Released | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 10:08:16 PM | |
 The November 2008 release of SlimDX is now available for download! You can get it, as well as information about the new release, from our Downloads page. The Release Notes cover the changes, although to be frank, they completely miss the important stuff this time around because only code changes are listed. For this version of SlimDX, there has been a heavy focus on making it easier for developers as well as users to work with SlimDX. There are plenty of bug fixes, but the big news is updated and revised documentation, along with a completely rebuilt installation system.Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:00:46 AM | |
| Note: This was a pretty slow Journal Land week so I also pulled entries that were posted today by the time of this writing. Journal Land Pick of the Week Readme.txt - Khawk's been posting coverage of the Software Development Best Practices conference that was held last month in Boston. This week he shares his notes from Joel Spolsky's keynote "Making Great Software". Be sure to check back earlier in his journal for more posts covering sessions from the event Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Blender Game Engine Competition | |
| Posted by: AtomHamster at 8:34:34 AM | |
 Now that the Blender Game Engine got its long awaited overhaul with 2.48, here follows your excuse to play around with it:Mal from CanDo Interactive is hosting a Blender game engine contest. Currently, the prize is 500 Euro, split across three categories. More prizes might me added and you can even add your own. Submissions will start early February and end on March 16th. Rea more about it here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Game_Engine/Competitions/2008_Q4 Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:10:16 AM | |
| Video games. The October NPD results are out now and it shows that the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS continue to absolutely thrash console/handheld sales. That's not much of a surprise. The Xbox 360 vastly outsold the Playstation 3 by about 180,000 units which is actually quite strange considering that the Playstation 3 saw the debuts of two of its bigger exclusive titles: LittleBigPlanet's (a late October release) and SOCOM: Confrontation. Both of these games can be found on the top ten for game sales as well (#8 and #7, respectively), but the big winner this month was Lionhead's Xbox 360-exclusive good/evil fantasy romp Fable 2 which sold through 790,000 units. Also finding places on the list are Bethesda's hugely successful Fallout 3, Volition's vulgar/profane/amazing Saints Row 2, and EA Redwood's Dead Space. It's been a good fall for gamers. In what is yet another blow to the integrity of the PC gaming platform, 2D Boy's superb World of Goo has a staggering 90% piracy rate according to World of Goo co-creator Ron Carmel in a comment to the Rock, Paper, Shotgun story. According to a Joystiq story that picked up on this fact, Carmel went on to say that "We're [2D Boy are] doing ok, though. We're getting good sales through WiiWare, Steam, and our website. Not going bankrupt just yet!" On one hand, yes, 2D Boy does have what are hopefully lucrative sales off of its WiiWare release of the game, though I don't have any real sales information for the typical platform release, but this kind of excessive piracy is going to just slowly drive more and more developers away from the PC platform as a whole -- even moreso as a practical arena for an exclusive release. Piracy is to be expected on any open platform, but numbers like 2D Boy's 90% are just unreasonable. What They Play is a site that functions as a parent's guide to the kinds of video games that kids are playing and, yesterday, released an article detailing their discoveries during their first year of operations. It's a fascinating read that contains various findings from a more parental-focused point of view, such as: "When asked what you would find the most offensive in a video game, you said that a man and a woman having sex would be most offensive, followed by two men kissing, and then the sight of a graphically severed human head" and "Game reviews have a strong influence over your buying decisions." This isn't really news, I suppose, but And a little story wrap-up before I'm off to play more Far Cry 2, Sacred 2, and Call of Duty: World at War (yes, I bit): Left 4 Dead is gold and you should buy it, violent video games have logical physiological effects, and Sony moderates creativity in an E-rated game with a powerful level editor. Read More.. | 10 Comments | |
