WebGL playground is a straightforward idea: type in your WebGL script and see the results. But the cool part is that the editor and the results are just on the same page and that you get a handful of features that make your life easier....
It is with great enthusiasm that we invite you to contribute to OpenGL Insights, a book containing original articles on OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and WebGL techniques by the OpenGL community and for the OpenGL community: from game programmers to web developers to researchers. OpenGL Insights will be published by A K Peters, Ltd. / CRC Press in time for SIGGRAPH 2012....
Our site has the "Resources for developers" section which will be helpful not only to users of our product but many programmers as well. In this section, we collect resources on developing efficient 64-bit software in C/C++/C++0x....
Want to know how to make a game like Angry Birds from start to finish? Now you can find out how!...
iTileMaps is powerfull tile map creation tool. Works with any 2D game genre, whether it's RPG or sidescroller or anything else. Specifically designed for iPad it allows creating maps very fast wherever you are. No need to change anything in your game because it uses popular tmx file format and works well with Tiled.
Best works with cocos2d because it's built on top of it. But any other game engine that supports tmx file format will work aswell....
Teaching collision detection all the way from discrete circle vs circle to continuous rotating/translating poly vs poly!...
Quad Software announced today the release of Grome 3 application. Grome is a game level authoring tool used by professional game developers and companies from 3D simulation industry. Continuous development on the existing proven functionality brings new features like road networks editing, decal texturing system, support for advanced per pixel shading effects, while improvements were made to the user interface to accommodate for the increasing number of new features....
Soundsnap, the world's largest membership-based professional sound effects and music loops library, announces a new collection of royalty-free sound effects from Coll Anderson, sound editor for "Trees Lounge," "The Fog of War," and other award-winning documentaries and films....
A new tutorial has been posted by wildbunny on the Remote Procedure Calling system used in their game PuzzleShare to allow the Silverlight client to communicate with the LAMP server running PHP via JSON. They used it to log user's progress, let them save their own levels and record all kinds of stats in the Mysql database....
New game programming language Monkey simplifies cross-platform development.
Monkey games run on HTML5, Flash, iPhone, iPad, Android, XNA, Windows Phone 7 and OpenGL....
Continuous collision detection but practical, fast and easy to understand....
Mike Dailly posted the design documents for the original Grand Theft Auto on his Flickr photostream. Called Race'n'Chase, the original GTA design was penned by K.R. Hamilton in early 1995 and was originally a multiplayer racing game....
SAN FRANCISCO – March 22, 2011 – Mixamo Inc. today announced the integration of Mixamo's online animation service within the Unity Asset Store digital content marketplace. Mixamo's ever-expanding repository of animation is now accessible to developers immediately in the Unity development platform via a free plug-in, providing an in-editor means to browse, customize and purchase character animation. A quick walkthrough of the process can be viewed here: www.mixamo.com/c/mixamo-unity-asset-store....
The Paris Game/AI Conference is the largest independent conference worldwide focusing on artificial intelligence and gameplay. Now in its 4th Edition, this year's event will feature Torsten Reil of Natural Motion talking about the use of euphoria in BACKBREAKER, open-source evangelist Mikko Mononen talking about how he applied Recast to KILLZONE 3, and one-man-whiz Eskil Steenberg behind LOVE (the MMO). You'll also hear about the AI in turn-based strategy hit GREED CORP, the upcoming NASCAR: THE GAME 2011, and experimental game THE PROM. The Early Bird tickets for the conference will only be available for a few more days, so don't delay!...
Isometric 2d, breaking out of the grid - full source code and working demo...
Isometric 2d collision detection without the regular grid....
Time for a Wednesday dose of news. Spoiler: this post ends with shameless self promotion. You've been warned.
Nominations are now open for the 2011 Game Developers Choice Award. Who would you guys like to see picked?
iOS continues its march towards mobile gaming domination. It's still early, and the DS and PSP both have a substantial lead. My take is that Apple and Android are the future of mobile gaming. Both Nintendo and Sony will have to be creative to remain relevant. It looks like Sony might have their answer. I like it.
Digital sales are also up big, with EA expecting 20% of total revenue for the year from digital. That's a lot of money and a lot of sales. They also sound fairly optimistic about Star Wars: The Old Republic bringing in some serious digital money when it launches.
Does Zynga dominate social games? Yes, it does. Their newest game, CityVille, launched and picked up almost 300K users in its first day.
That's about it, not a lot of news today. My company's been showing off a new demo reel video, so hopefully you guys will enjoy that....
Spiral Blog has released two new free texture packs designed to help game developers create arts-and-crafts themed worlds. Paper World Texture Set includes 17 textures for paper-based worlds. Walking Paper Girl provides the assets needed for creating an animated paper avatar, including a demonstration Unity project....
It's time for yet another delectable mid-week roundup of game industry news. I've actually been a little distracted lately because I'm in the process of modifying my car. It would be nice to turn 25 and get that insurance break already, though.
We'll start with the bad news. After lots of rumors yesterday morning, it was confirmed that Bizarre Creations is on the chopping block, three years after being acquired by Activision. The studio's best known for its hits Geometry Wars and Project Gotham Racing, and is slated to be sold or closed down.
We're also seeing layoffs at LucasArts, described as a "minor adjustment in staffing". Pay attention, people -- your jobs and livelihoods are minor adjustments.
No, we're not done yet. This is the big one: Harmonix is up for sale by Viacom. A year ago these guys were on top of the industry, so ouch. Brace yourself -- Harmonix is being written off as a three hundred million dollar loss, which 175 stemming from the original acquisition, and what I can only assume was a massive cash bonfire to keep the employees warm through a harsh winter.
Combine that with the recent deaths of Emergent (Gamebryo), InstantAction (Torque), and layoffs at Krome, Monumental, EA Canada, Fallen Earth, Ignition, and Namco. It's been a rough couple of weeks for the industry. Did I mention Ubisoft's stock price crashed?
In the realm of hardware sales, the numbers are looking pretty rough. Sales are down 26 percent year over year, with a massive 34 percent drop in handheld sales. The drop might be due to the iPod Touch's interference in that market. Wii sales have flat out collapsed, down 54 percent, and PS3 sales are down 22 percent. On the other hand, Microsoft seems to be riding high with a 30 percent gain and one million Kinect sales to boot.
Yup, we're back to whining about used games. Today's bitchiness is provided courtesy of Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens, and is motivated by Gamestop's (and other retailers') successful conversion of an always present pre-owned market into a massive business. It additionally harms the publisher's ability to wring more money out of the game with special re-releases, and ends with this impressive quote:
Quote:
It's not inconceivable to say that we send out a Formula One game that's not complete - maybe it's got six tracks. Then they have to buy their next track, and you follow it around the world. When you turn up in Abu Dhabi you have to pay for the circuit, and whatever the changes are to the cars that are put through. That, I think, would deal with a lot of it, and also address the pre-owned.
It turns out yesterday was Tuesday and today is Wednesday. It's times like these I start to think maybe I should check a calendar once in a while. I hope all you Americans handled the Daylight Savings Time change over okay, because this is a One Hour (And Day) Later GameDev.Net Daily.
Recently, a series of major fights have erupted as a result of Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems. One of the bigger problems is that Java's future has suddenly wound up in question, and people seem to be increasingly irritated. Oracle filed suit against Google over their use of Java in Android. Most recently, Apache is seriously pissed off and voting against Java 7. The conflict stems from unfriendly licensing of the Java Technology Compatibility Kit, necessary to verify that an implementation is compatible with the Java standard. All I know is that as a long time .NET developer, I've had to listen to a lot of idiot diatribes about how Java is open and .NET is not. How'd that work out for you?
Last week, there was a bit of a furor about Xbox Live's Indie Games section being kicked into the background with Microsoft's new Dashboard. (Which is a thoroughly uninspired update, by the way.) It seems that Microsoft has relented -- the Indie Games are back with the rest of the games. It sounds like the reversal is a pretty positive decision, all in all.
Continuing their determined quest for relevance in an age of digital distribution, GameStop now sells PSN content. Do you get charged sales tax on these?
The first ever Unity conference, Unite 10, is underway and it sounds like there's some interesting announcements. A push to support even more devices called Union, an 'asset store' to help build games quickly, and more.
Lastly, Call of Duty: Black Ops came out yesterday and sold 7 million copies, making it the fastest selling game of all time. I have one question. Why? What on earth makes this game worth paying for as soon as possible?...
Happy New Week! I'm here today, because I'll be off voting tomorrow and so Mike will keep you entertained. I hope you had a fun Halloween weekend, I know I did. In fact, I was at The Rally on Saturday, which was wild. It was at least a quarter of a million people, all milling around Washington DC for poorly defined reasons, but having a lot of fun regardless. Let's move on with a GameDev.Net To Restore Sanity and/or Fear.
Bad news first -- IO Interactive is being hit with layoffs. The developer of the Hitman and Kane & Lynch series claims that the layoffs are part of natural ramp-down for projects, but it's rumored that a canceled Microsoft deal was the cause. Funny how infrequently we hear about big hiring sprees these days though, on that "ramp up" side of the scale. You'd think companies would want to try and spread positive news once in a while.
Remember the US Supreme Court case about whether California can restrict sales of violent video games to minors? Well, arguments in the case start tomorrow and everyone's excited/nervous to see how things go. Game developers are fighting for free speech rights. It seems the battle is drawing some unusual lines, with radio shock-jock Limbaugh coming down in favor of the EMA. At least he's consistent. A particularly interesting quote about the Virginia Tech shooting:
Quote:
You have here a sick individual, an evil individual who committed a random act,” adding, "If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this.
Guess who's back, back again? Promit's Back, Tell a Friend GameDev.Net Daily!
Rock Band 3 is out today. I don't normally touch gaming news, but they've really moved the bar to a new place entirely on this one with "pro mode". Personally I'm holding out until 2011, when Mad Catz and Fender roll out a real guitar that can also play Rock Band. I'm excited, but disappointed it'll take so long. From the Twitter feed, it sounds like there's been a lot of questions and discussions about the new hardware. Still, the Metacritic score is stable in the mid-nineties.
Zynga's valuation was just doubled to $5.51 billion, high than EA. This is apparently relevant to speculation that Zynga will have an IPO shortly. Given Zynga's decidedly slim catalog of games, however popular, I have to question whether this supposed valuation means anything at all. On the other hand, I long ago blocked Farmville from showing up on my Facebook so who knows?
Many years ago, somebody developed a Warcraft 3 mod called Defense of the Ancients which became increasingly popular over time. So popular, in fact, that it's spawned a full blown stand alone sequel game. Wait, did I say game? I meant four games, all in development at once. There's a Valve project called DOTA 2, Heroes of Newarth, League of Legends, and Blizzard just announced that they are also doing a Dota game. Wikipedia's calling it the Dota genre.
So with that many people in the mix, people were not thrilled when Valve applied for the trademark to the name. Riot games (working on League of Legends) immediately filed a counter-application. And Blizzard seems genuinely surprised by the move. Combine that with the publicly aired grievances that Trent mentioned last week, and this is turning out to be an impressive cluster----.
In an interview with Forbes, Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime admitted that they see Apple as a bigger threat than Microsoft or Sony. it makes sense. Microsoft's mobile strategy is non-existent, and Sony's is incompetent. Many people have a DS, but everybody has a phone. Nintendo's in a vulnerable spot competing for the mobile games market, and Apple's pushing hard. The iPhone's hardware is much more powerful than the 3DS, with a streamlined digital distribution model and a consumer-friendly price race to the floor.
I'm a big fan of Telltale Games' work in essentially reviving the adventure genre. They're now giving away Back to the Future episode 1 for free.
I'll leave you today with this hilarious old-time Folgers commercial....
It's early Tuesday evening here, and I just couldn't help but ask myself. What would Jesus write? I think he would write this Not Exactly Biblical GameDev.Net Daily.
Let's get the bad news out of the way -- Raven Software had a substantial round of layoffs. The article says about 20 people. They say they are realigning its workforce "to reflect the studio's upcoming slate", which is exactly the kind of thing companies say when they decide to give you a bullshit line instead of actually explaining that they overhired to finish a project. Not that it's unusual. Good luck to ex-employees in realigning yourselves with upcoming employers who can actually afford to pay you.
DJ Hero 2 was put together in seven months. Apparently development of the first game forced the team to run quite a lot of 15 hour days, and many employees took major holiday time "vacationing in places like Ibiza to get the creative juices flowing once more". (Translation: one guy went to Ibiza with half his life savings, and somebody figured it'd look good in the PR.) But I'm sure that those seven months were all wonderfully non-abusive forty hour work weeks. Right?
I know this will be shocking, but many important government officials are morons. Case in point, the district attorney of Middlesex, Massachusetts. According to this guy, violent video games have numbed youth to crime. Nevermind that most statistics show dropping youth crime rates in the US. Still, it sounds like he's got a promising political career ahead of him.
In 2006, Microsoft bought an in-game advertising company called Massive for a massive amount of money, rumored to be several hundred million dollars. They've now announced that Massive is being shut down, and most employees being reassigned within the company. Chalk this up as another one of Microsoft's pointless acquisitions. Hey guys, I have some legitimately more useful technology to sell. Give me a call.
I don't normally cover iPhone events, but this is a big one. iPhone monster ngmoco has been bought for $400 million by Japanese social game giant DeNA. ngmoco's first investor is also doing very, very well having scored about 100 million from the deal. Ten to one's a pretty solid ROI for any venture capital deal.
And of course, Windows Phone 7 had their big launch yesterday. There are lots of details out -- nine new handsets, EA Mobile support, and of course the much touted Xbox Live. Microsoft's phone division has hit tough times in recent years, handcuffed by an old OS, old approach, and incredibly stupid internal politics. I'm curious to see how this attempt fares, because the new phones sure sound a lot better than my iPhone 4.
And yes, GameDev's forums are ever so slightly broken right now....
Time for your Wednesday fix of news. Maybe I should just move my day officially to Wednesday. In any case, this is a Not Very Good With Schedules GameDev.Net Daily.
Remember the long saga of Tim Langdell's EDGE trademark? Basically the guy was being an ass, suing everyone who used the word in any kind of game title. There was a furor because he took an iPhone game off the store over it, while a member of the IGDA board. A whole chain of emails was made public as well. EA took the case to court over their game Mirror's Edge, and the ruling is harshly against Langdell. Ouch.
OnLive announced yesterday that they are dropping the subscription fee, as well as rolling out a dedicated MicroConsole for the service. The service has gotten a mixed reception; I've heard people say that it's poised to take a huge chunk of market and I've heard people say it's doomed.
Amongst the people saying it's doomed is the guy who wrote a list of ten doomed game businesses. I'm not really sure who this he is, but I found the list interesting in its own right, and apparently Dave Perry tweeted it.
Let's move on to GDC Online, underway now. Do you think Rock Band has a good story? Did you even realize it has a story? That story a critical element of the game's success. I'm not sure I'd use the word 'story'...maybe 'context' would be a more accurate description, but it's an important thing all the same. (Unless you're making a Japanese arcade game. Then you can just do whatever the hell you want.)
Researchers have found that the biggest challenges for adoption of 3D televisions are the glasses, and misinformation. I probably could have told them that, but now we know for sure. By the way, I've said this before and I'll say it again. I wear glasses. Yours do not fit over mine. I am not interested in getting contacts just so I can be impressed by your badly made games that now disappoint me in all three dimensions.
Games and Hollywood have a tense relationship. Hollywood desperately wants to be involved in games, probably because the games industry is twice as big by revenue. The relationship has problems -- both sides want to love each other, but fundamentally they come from different places and have nothing in common. It's also a rather abusive relationship. Designer Ken Levine thinks the game industry is star struck by Hollywood. Or it might be that Hollywood is star struck with games. Who knows? Will the crossover ever make sense?
I sure hope Fez comes out soon. You know what else would kick ass? A Fez flash game. That would be great....
Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps the most middle-ish of the weekday afternoons. This is a Painfully Slow News Day GameDev.Net Daily.
GamaSutra has a feature with The Voxel Agents, an indie studio developing games for iPhone and iPad. It's a very interesting overview of what goes into running a business, a problem I can certainly emphathize with. They give fairly precise breakdowns about their expenses and income, and there's really just one take-away from all of it. Building a business as an indie developer is hard.
Apparently they've opened an exhibition of video games in Dublin, Ireland. The exhibit is called Game On, and features games from various eras (especially old ones). So hey, if you happen to wander past Dublin in Ireland, why not drop in?
This has actually been reported several times in the past, but new studies continue to bear it out -- gamers are better surgeons. You hear that, med school crowd? Don't put your future in jeopardy by not playing video games.
Apparently DLC isn't as popular as we all believed. According to NPD, only 6% of US consumers have downloaded content through their consoles. I'm shocked the number is that low, between DLC packs (Rock Band? Hello?) and Live Arcade/PSN games. The number is just 4 percent amongst smartphones, which I assume is 3.9% iPhones and a remainder of Android devices.
In case you're wondering, the reason I delayed the Daily for so long (other than being distracted) is that there is seriously no real news today, as far as game development goes. But maybe there's something I missed. What's happening that's of interest to you guys?...
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