We're kicking off a three-day weekend over here in the US of A - everyone enjoy the extra time off! You can do so in fact by checking out the journals that were updated this past week from 5/20 - 5/27.

Featured GDNet+ Journal Entry

D Bits - Aldacron runs an interesting journal on the D programming language and this past week he talked about how D sort of has namespaces although he would like real ones, and why every D programmer loves arrays.

Featured Member Journal Entry

mytre's Blog - last month mytre shared some code for a soft particle demo he based off Frank Luna's "Fire Ring" demo from the book "Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct X 9.0c: A Shader Approach". Well he just realized that he forgot to include the main CPP file! He now has this available to complete the demo source

Greetings and salutations to new Journal Land authors affinity, smo97, ebontide, and KingofSwing94!

From the Staff

• GameDev.net Staff Journal - Michael Tanczos has an update on various site stuff including bug fixes, the re-launch of the Image of the Day (yay, right?) and thoughts on contests and XNA resources.

Project Updates

• StarDust DevLog - take a flight through space filled with stars in this entry of the Stardust dev log and learn more about how stars will be implemented in this upcoming space sim RPG game. Space!! It is awesome.
• Journal of Aardvajk - Aardvajk discovers for himself that writing a 3D modeller for a project isn't the greatest idea and nearly goes mental trying to get views working correctly. If you've created a custom modeler for your project before, swing by and leave him some advice/encouragement!
• Rock, Paper, Glue - zarfius puts a good deal of time, thought and effort in this post about what makes his scene editor for OGRE3D different than the rest of the pack
• Disciple of Otanoj - CRYP7IK details the workings of the Flash engine he is working on for his game projects
• Rendering Systems - RSI has completed his SSAO code and will be working it into Leaf Painter to improve textures - he also shows the final interface for the BrushUp utility
• Keeping up with yesterday - looks like a_insomniac is stuck with a complete data loss (maybe) but it's good to see him picking himself back up and getting back to work on Project 60. Rah, rah!!
• Yckx's GameDev Journal - I'm not a fan of the font, but yckx has his PacHedron HUD text in place - he has yet to implement it to update during the game. Placement is good tho
• owl's Blog - owl has a new video demonstrating all three tools (Level Editor, Tileset Editor, Model Visualizer) working together in the same program and also exposes the Lua script that manages the three editor visibilities.
• Walking Towards The Sun - freeworld has an update on his project including short video of the main menu interface. It gets really suspenseful at the end. Credits? Exit? Credits? Exit? OMG WHICH ONE IS HE GONNA PICK!! It's a cliffhanger. He's good. I want the sequel now
• et1337 makes games - et1337 has a second time-lapse video of his modeling the Sig Sauer P220 in Blender 2.57 - watch as he textures the model. I really want to make my own time-lapse someday. I think they're so cool. I'm thinking I'll do it while building a Flight Simulator airport
• Once a Bird - Demosthenes has some videos and info on his latest project (for XBLA I assume) called Graveyard Shift, which us a zombie game with tower defense elements. I personally like the creative use of a cross in the game title.

Game Dev Stuffs

• Not dead... - phantom is deliberating over an idea he has to get around the problem of multithread locking with scripting languages and is wondering what people think. I wish I could summarize it better but it's a bit over my head personally!!
• IfThen Software LLC - InvisibleMan talks about his implementation of cubic shadow mapping and some good resources on the topic and also talks about a "bug" he discovered while using PIX
• /* Why you crying? */ - JTippetts takes a good look at cheap (read: free) graphics tools Blender, Gimp, and Sculptris and how great they are for indie developers looking to create 3D game assets quickly and easily. He makes it look so simple! I couldn't even model clay as a kid I doubt I can handle 3D modeling... but now I want to try.
• New Old Things - Endurion is up to step 6 of his Commodore 64 game making series, wherein he implements collision detection to make sure the player character can't walk through walls and stuff

Thanks for stopping by, Kimmi, __Homer__, and Suspense.