GDNet: Weekend Reading
by Drew -Gaiiden- Sikora · 04/07/2009 (5:39 pm) · 1 comments
And of course, I get back from GDC and all the GG people telling me "love your blogs man! Keep 'em coming!" aaannndd I totally forget to re-post the Weekend Reading from last weeK (which covers the two weeks prior). Coming full-circle, it's all GDC's fault because my brain has been totally fried (in a strangely good way) by the conference this year. So. Here you go!
With just over 3 hours of work, this entry of Weekend Reading weighs quite a few pounds. It's not surprising, given that I had to skip last week and this edition therefore compiles 2 weeks worth of journal entries. It's all great stuff though and I wish I could pick out more than just one to highlight - well actually I got to pick two but I wish I could pick more. Make sure you give the listing a full read to see if anything catches your eye, and keep the good stuff coming journal authors!
Journal Land Picks of the Week
Andrew Russell - Andrew Russell has a new article up on his blog entitled: Easy Physics Based Animation - "The easiest, quickest and perhaps ugliest way to animate an object from place-to-place is with linear interpolation. As I discovered in Sketchable Game 1, this can actually look worse than no animation at all. With a little high-school maths and physics we can create something much more natural and convincing that can still get our objects precisely from A to B.
mittentacular - mittens engages in "a design discussion of emergent gameplay as it relates to player action and the traditionally held message model of meaning." Yes, it's that deep. So deep I couldn't even skim it and hope to comprehend its true meaning in order to write a synopsis in what little time I had - so I instant messaged him for one.
From the Staff
* Gaiiden's Scroll - in addition to the Weekly Sitrep for this week, GDC entries follow from last week
* DavidRM's GDC Coverage - DavidRM was with us at the show again this year and took tons of awesome photos, which he posted in his blog as well as the coverage gallery
* The Bag of Holding - ApochPiQ was also at GDC with us reporting on sessions. He has coverage in his journal as well as a postmortem of his experience at GDC this year.
* Readme.txt - Khawk largely spent his time on the Expo floor manning the booth but he has some GDC thoughts to share in his journal
* The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog - johnhattan didn't join us out at GDC this year (and we missed him!) but this entry has a little bit of everything for everyone - software update on his projects and a submission to a Flash gaming contest; becoming more self-sufficient by gardening and brewing beer; a Bargain Basement penny-pinching tip; and some Flash ActionScript code for setting the tint of a movie clip in one little function
* Frisson - grhodes_at_work, our Master Interviewer, was at GDC quizzing people all over the place, and has a spot of coverage in his journal
* FREE AOL FOR THE MILLIONTH READER! - The Senshi was another GDNet member in attendance at GDC, and has some thoughts on the Hideo Kojima keynote
* There is no escape from the Washu - Washu, our local Tentacled Overlord, was another GDC atendee and shares some thoughts/coverage in his journal
* Continuous Refinement - while superpig's video blog kind of sputtered out early in the show, it did provide two things: 1) us making fools of ourselves on camera and 2) allowing the embedding of YouTube videos in posts. Sshhh!! Don't tell anyone!!
Project Updates
* Radioactive-Software - dgreen02 has tried ODE, Tokamak, Newton, Ageia PhysX, and his own hand rolled physics system in his projects, and is finally settling on Havok. Personally, I'd like to also know more about each engine integration and why he ended up dumping it.
* epic.fail - evolutional has released version 1.0.0 of the gmMulticastFunction library binding for GameMonkey Script 1.25j - which provides a multicast function type and supporting functions to the GameMonkey Script environment.
* Metaphorical Journeys of Happenstance - Ravuya briefly updates on Afterglow and his project racer for class
* Happenings with VBStrider and Crew - the newsletter for the week of March 23rd includes overall progress reaching 59%, a report from the programmer and a look at recent community action, including an art competition
* Happenings with VBStrider and Crew - the newsletter for the week of March 30th includes overall progress reaching 63% and a report from the programmer
* Bennu - Demosthenes has a video of the easy level setting in Bennu, which uses a hippo to rescue the player from dying after falling into the water
* Bennu - Demosthenes shares the "box art" image for Bennu that is required for games submitted to the Xbox marketplace
* Ye Olde Ramblings - Telastyn ponders over whether he should use C# enums in Tangent, and why he's not sold on this idea that most people seem to recommend
* Ye Olde Ramblings - Telastyn posted some sample dice rolling code in Tangent and is looking for some feedback
* Chronicles of the Hieroglyph - Jason Z is working on getting physics actuators set up in his engine, including a motor, thruster, linear actuator and power joint
* Chronicles of the Hieroglyph - Jason Z has implemented scripted physics objects and also has paired up with a modeler for creating the objects he needs for his project
* Oddgames development journal - O-san shows off some nice isometric graphics for his game and then how they appear on the map itself in the Nimrod editor
* Journal of a ToastFlambe - ToastFlambe has decided to jump on the language bandwagon, starting the creation of an interpreter for a simple stack-based toy language called Sculpt. He has a release already that you can play with
* Journal of a ToastFlambe - ToastFlambe continues his work on Sculpt, adding logic operators, comparison operators, anonymous functions, conditionals and looping - along with a list of future items
* Journal of MrCpaw - MrCpaw is looking to ensure that his game will run on everyone's computer, and has a graphic demo you can install and try to run.
* Journal of Aardvajk - has implemented decals in the editor for Squishy (Squed) and also has made some imporvements and additions to the game itself
* Level-Grind Online - JWalsh announces that Level-Grind Online will be more of a framework and part of an XNA Starter Kit rather than a full game, he also mentions a second project and his book, Programming an MMORPG in C# with XNA
* Level-Grind Online - JWalsh has reorganized the forums and made it easier for people to see what assets he needs for the project, what they are, and also details how to submit quest ideas for the game
* Milkshake's Dev Diary - Milkshake is getting ready to take his cow where no cow has been before - outer space! Or, at least that's the assumption. Otherwise why call 'em spaceships?
* Saga City - sneakyrobot has an update on his game and editor tools, is looking to start prototyping gameplay and shares some concept sketches from his artist friend
* Big Trouble In Little Chairtown - Drilian updates on his project, Procyon - a top-down scrolling shooter, with images and video of the game in action.
* Big Trouble In Little Chairtown - more cool images and videos from Drilian's game project Procyon
* Gauntlets of Recursion (+7) - HopeDagger has ressurected yet another project, this one is dubbed Cyberspawn - a small scale 3D first-person shooter
* Journal of dbaumgart - in addition to his usual sharing of artwork (and an unusual but cool pic of his workspace), dbaumgart is letting everyone know that one of his projects, Dredmor is looking for game testers
* Under a ShadowyTree - Black Knight has a new release for Dark Age up for download
* Dot Dot Dot - JTippetts has been playing around some more with map terrain generation, but with a twist: he has generated a map tileset and a top-down 2D tile map
Game Dev Stuffs
* epic.fail - evolutional is looking to bring some of his 5+ years of SQL Server knowledge to bear on the community. Interested in some content along those lines? Drop him a line and let him know!
* Adventures in Game Design - zer0wolf has a new interview up on tech-artists.org with Jen Bahan, Rigging and Technical Animation Supervisor at Rhythm & Hues - which I was supposed to add to the Resources and feature in my Weekly Sitrep. My bad! He's also announced his employment with Seamless Entertainment
* Merry Prankster Games - gdunbar shares a list of blogs he regularly reads for RPG design and programming.
* DruinkJournal - Evil Steve is still working on the text for tutorial #5 but he has the source pretty much finalized, and has it uploaded if you want an early peek
* Not dead... - phantom tells the story of his work project going through the end stages of the green light process, and shares some advice for fellow industry members.
* My personal space of thoughts... - Metron has made the latest release version of his SSCXML project open source, available for download from Sourceforge
* mittentacular - mittens shares his thoughts on Resident Evil 5, in another detailed breakdown of the game's mechanics, also in comparison to past RE titles such as Resident Evil 4
* On the path with a ramblin' man - jollyjeffers has been doing some more crazy diagrammin' on the Direct3D 11 pipeline. If you're interested in visually seeing how D3D 11 works, check out the crazy-detailed diagram of its execution flow. Feedback? Do let him know what you think.
Other Stuffs
* Blue stain - alfith has drawn an image that depicts a different take on the "Baby On Board" stickers/signs you see on people's cars. In this case, it's "Baby Driving"
* The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog - johnhattan discovers that an internet savings account website that he might have considered the real deal was actually an offshore ponzi scheme funneling cash to some crooks in California. While his own internet accounts are safe and legit, he warns anyone thinking of stashing money online and tells you how to keep from getting ripped off
* Tesseract's Game Development Journal - Tesseract made a cool little generative art toy that creates a new "flower" each time you click on it. Purty.
* The nearsighted one cometh - Myopic Rhino was present for the reveal of the Zeebo console, which was a project he was familiar with for some time while working at Qualcomm, where the Zeebo was developed. It is targeting middle class families in emerging markets, such as Brazil, India, and China
With just over 3 hours of work, this entry of Weekend Reading weighs quite a few pounds. It's not surprising, given that I had to skip last week and this edition therefore compiles 2 weeks worth of journal entries. It's all great stuff though and I wish I could pick out more than just one to highlight - well actually I got to pick two but I wish I could pick more. Make sure you give the listing a full read to see if anything catches your eye, and keep the good stuff coming journal authors!
Journal Land Picks of the Week
Andrew Russell - Andrew Russell has a new article up on his blog entitled: Easy Physics Based Animation - "The easiest, quickest and perhaps ugliest way to animate an object from place-to-place is with linear interpolation. As I discovered in Sketchable Game 1, this can actually look worse than no animation at all. With a little high-school maths and physics we can create something much more natural and convincing that can still get our objects precisely from A to B.
mittentacular - mittens engages in "a design discussion of emergent gameplay as it relates to player action and the traditionally held message model of meaning." Yes, it's that deep. So deep I couldn't even skim it and hope to comprehend its true meaning in order to write a synopsis in what little time I had - so I instant messaged him for one.
From the Staff
* Gaiiden's Scroll - in addition to the Weekly Sitrep for this week, GDC entries follow from last week
* DavidRM's GDC Coverage - DavidRM was with us at the show again this year and took tons of awesome photos, which he posted in his blog as well as the coverage gallery
* The Bag of Holding - ApochPiQ was also at GDC with us reporting on sessions. He has coverage in his journal as well as a postmortem of his experience at GDC this year.
* Readme.txt - Khawk largely spent his time on the Expo floor manning the booth but he has some GDC thoughts to share in his journal
* The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog - johnhattan didn't join us out at GDC this year (and we missed him!) but this entry has a little bit of everything for everyone - software update on his projects and a submission to a Flash gaming contest; becoming more self-sufficient by gardening and brewing beer; a Bargain Basement penny-pinching tip; and some Flash ActionScript code for setting the tint of a movie clip in one little function
* Frisson - grhodes_at_work, our Master Interviewer, was at GDC quizzing people all over the place, and has a spot of coverage in his journal
* FREE AOL FOR THE MILLIONTH READER! - The Senshi was another GDNet member in attendance at GDC, and has some thoughts on the Hideo Kojima keynote
* There is no escape from the Washu - Washu, our local Tentacled Overlord, was another GDC atendee and shares some thoughts/coverage in his journal
* Continuous Refinement - while superpig's video blog kind of sputtered out early in the show, it did provide two things: 1) us making fools of ourselves on camera and 2) allowing the embedding of YouTube videos in posts. Sshhh!! Don't tell anyone!!
Project Updates
* Radioactive-Software - dgreen02 has tried ODE, Tokamak, Newton, Ageia PhysX, and his own hand rolled physics system in his projects, and is finally settling on Havok. Personally, I'd like to also know more about each engine integration and why he ended up dumping it.
* epic.fail - evolutional has released version 1.0.0 of the gmMulticastFunction library binding for GameMonkey Script 1.25j - which provides a multicast function type and supporting functions to the GameMonkey Script environment.
* Metaphorical Journeys of Happenstance - Ravuya briefly updates on Afterglow and his project racer for class
* Happenings with VBStrider and Crew - the newsletter for the week of March 23rd includes overall progress reaching 59%, a report from the programmer and a look at recent community action, including an art competition
* Happenings with VBStrider and Crew - the newsletter for the week of March 30th includes overall progress reaching 63% and a report from the programmer
* Bennu - Demosthenes has a video of the easy level setting in Bennu, which uses a hippo to rescue the player from dying after falling into the water
* Bennu - Demosthenes shares the "box art" image for Bennu that is required for games submitted to the Xbox marketplace
* Ye Olde Ramblings - Telastyn ponders over whether he should use C# enums in Tangent, and why he's not sold on this idea that most people seem to recommend
* Ye Olde Ramblings - Telastyn posted some sample dice rolling code in Tangent and is looking for some feedback
* Chronicles of the Hieroglyph - Jason Z is working on getting physics actuators set up in his engine, including a motor, thruster, linear actuator and power joint
* Chronicles of the Hieroglyph - Jason Z has implemented scripted physics objects and also has paired up with a modeler for creating the objects he needs for his project
* Oddgames development journal - O-san shows off some nice isometric graphics for his game and then how they appear on the map itself in the Nimrod editor
* Journal of a ToastFlambe - ToastFlambe has decided to jump on the language bandwagon, starting the creation of an interpreter for a simple stack-based toy language called Sculpt. He has a release already that you can play with
* Journal of a ToastFlambe - ToastFlambe continues his work on Sculpt, adding logic operators, comparison operators, anonymous functions, conditionals and looping - along with a list of future items
* Journal of MrCpaw - MrCpaw is looking to ensure that his game will run on everyone's computer, and has a graphic demo you can install and try to run.
* Journal of Aardvajk - has implemented decals in the editor for Squishy (Squed) and also has made some imporvements and additions to the game itself
* Level-Grind Online - JWalsh announces that Level-Grind Online will be more of a framework and part of an XNA Starter Kit rather than a full game, he also mentions a second project and his book, Programming an MMORPG in C# with XNA
* Level-Grind Online - JWalsh has reorganized the forums and made it easier for people to see what assets he needs for the project, what they are, and also details how to submit quest ideas for the game
* Milkshake's Dev Diary - Milkshake is getting ready to take his cow where no cow has been before - outer space! Or, at least that's the assumption. Otherwise why call 'em spaceships?
* Saga City - sneakyrobot has an update on his game and editor tools, is looking to start prototyping gameplay and shares some concept sketches from his artist friend
* Big Trouble In Little Chairtown - Drilian updates on his project, Procyon - a top-down scrolling shooter, with images and video of the game in action.
* Big Trouble In Little Chairtown - more cool images and videos from Drilian's game project Procyon
* Gauntlets of Recursion (+7) - HopeDagger has ressurected yet another project, this one is dubbed Cyberspawn - a small scale 3D first-person shooter
* Journal of dbaumgart - in addition to his usual sharing of artwork (and an unusual but cool pic of his workspace), dbaumgart is letting everyone know that one of his projects, Dredmor is looking for game testers
* Under a ShadowyTree - Black Knight has a new release for Dark Age up for download
* Dot Dot Dot - JTippetts has been playing around some more with map terrain generation, but with a twist: he has generated a map tileset and a top-down 2D tile map
Game Dev Stuffs
* epic.fail - evolutional is looking to bring some of his 5+ years of SQL Server knowledge to bear on the community. Interested in some content along those lines? Drop him a line and let him know!
* Adventures in Game Design - zer0wolf has a new interview up on tech-artists.org with Jen Bahan, Rigging and Technical Animation Supervisor at Rhythm & Hues - which I was supposed to add to the Resources and feature in my Weekly Sitrep. My bad! He's also announced his employment with Seamless Entertainment
* Merry Prankster Games - gdunbar shares a list of blogs he regularly reads for RPG design and programming.
* DruinkJournal - Evil Steve is still working on the text for tutorial #5 but he has the source pretty much finalized, and has it uploaded if you want an early peek
* Not dead... - phantom tells the story of his work project going through the end stages of the green light process, and shares some advice for fellow industry members.
* My personal space of thoughts... - Metron has made the latest release version of his SSCXML project open source, available for download from Sourceforge
* mittentacular - mittens shares his thoughts on Resident Evil 5, in another detailed breakdown of the game's mechanics, also in comparison to past RE titles such as Resident Evil 4
* On the path with a ramblin' man - jollyjeffers has been doing some more crazy diagrammin' on the Direct3D 11 pipeline. If you're interested in visually seeing how D3D 11 works, check out the crazy-detailed diagram of its execution flow. Feedback? Do let him know what you think.
Other Stuffs
* Blue stain - alfith has drawn an image that depicts a different take on the "Baby On Board" stickers/signs you see on people's cars. In this case, it's "Baby Driving"
* The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog - johnhattan discovers that an internet savings account website that he might have considered the real deal was actually an offshore ponzi scheme funneling cash to some crooks in California. While his own internet accounts are safe and legit, he warns anyone thinking of stashing money online and tells you how to keep from getting ripped off
* Tesseract's Game Development Journal - Tesseract made a cool little generative art toy that creates a new "flower" each time you click on it. Purty.
* The nearsighted one cometh - Myopic Rhino was present for the reveal of the Zeebo console, which was a project he was familiar with for some time while working at Qualcomm, where the Zeebo was developed. It is targeting middle class families in emerging markets, such as Brazil, India, and China
About the author
Torque 3D Owner Novack
CyberianSoftware