Game Dev School Video game design & development articles

I needed to post something, but I've struggled with the exact topic... so I'm dropping this useless note to let you know I'm working on something. I'm not neglecting you, I swear!

I'm working on getting a bunch of irritating back-end website work done so I can get that junk out of the way. There are several game projects I finally had to set on the shelf as I finished up some less-fun stuff that really needed doing. With any luck, I'll be back into making games and working on this site's content real soon... next week, I hope.

I wanted to say "thanks" to all of you for coming by. Please come back soon and don't be afraid to register for an account. Soon, there will be places to post your questions and comments, as well as maybe a few games where high scores will be stored if you have an account... that's a secret, though. Don't get too excited on that one, since there's a lot of work to be done on that front. :)

Thanks again and come back soon!

I got this in the electro-mail slot about the upcoming Austin Game Conference (need to add that to the calendar!) I'm lazy, so here's a clip:

Austin Game Conference Early Registration Ends July 21st

Register Now and Save $200

The 4th Annual Austin Game Conference is fast approaching (September 6-8, 2006) and so is the Early Registration deadline! Early reg. price is only $295. If you haven't already registered, register online by July 21st to get a 40% discount off the onsite price of $495. Go to http://www.GameConference.com for details or http://www.GameConference.com/register/ to register and save.

The three-day conference brings together 2,500 attendees from more than 20 countries to participate in concentrated discourse with their peers, network with colleagues, learn from industry leaders, conduct business, and see the latest tools, technologies and techniques - all in a fun and relaxed atmosphere.

Keynotes Include:

* Rob Pardo - Blizzard's VP of Game Design and lead designer for World of Warcraft

* Michael Dell - Chairman of Dell, Inc. (who will participate in a special Q&A session)

* Vernor Vinge - Hugo Award Winning Science-Fiction Author

* Surprise Guest keynote - to be announced on www.GameConference.com shortly

The full roster includes 120 speakers participating in five detailed conference tracks: Games in Asia; Multiplayer Business/Production; Multiplayer Design; Multiplayer Tech/Art; Multiplayer Service and Support; Future of the Development Pipeline and Next Generation Game Development.

Sorry no updates recently... I'm really swamped with a sudden project dropped in my lap. I'll try to get something up this week, but more likely next week.

Thanks for stopping by, though! :P

The 4th year of the Mobile Game Conference will be taking place in Seattle, WA from July 13-14. The main themes covered in the conference will be "Design, Construction and Potential." A great batch of speakers are announced, but I'm not a mobile developer, so I'm not too sure how good this conference is going to be. It's put on by The Game Initiative, who put on the Austin Game Conference and others, which does say something of the professionalism behind it. They've gotten more refined with the Mobile conference over the years from what I've heard, but otherwise, I'm not the guy to ask about it.

If you want more info, run on over there and see what's up!

The release version of Garage Games' Torque Game Builder has been, well... released! Up 'til now, it's been in an "early adopter" state, but now you can be a full-fledged adopter if you get your butt over there and buy this bad-boy up!

If you're not clear on what TGB is, I'll give a quick overview here, but you really just need to go read through the feature list and then snag the 30-day demo to see what's up for yourself. TGB is a full 2D (and pseudo-3D, I suppose) game development engine, complete with great tutorials and even tools for creating deliverables at the end. Embedded tools include an interface editor, content/art manager, level editor, tile editor, particle editor, editing editor... editors everywhere. Bah... just go read the list!

It really is very impressive from what I've seen up until now. I just downloaded the final release so I'm not sure what's new for me, but I've read about quite a lot of changes and additions... all getting rave reviews. Of course, most of the reviews are from die-hard GG followers and admitted Torque freaks, but that's fine. Leave it to rabid followers to tear apart a new product and uncover the good/bad within days... they already did that before and GG took the feedback and rolled a bunch of fixes/changes into TGB just in the last few weeks! Nice work, Garage Games.

I'll leave you with this... Garage Games freakin' rocks. I know I'm supposed to try being unbiased, but those people are from the Damn Fine Folks clan. Those guys have worked tirelessly for many years with the sole purpose of building up independent games and the Indie community. Their support for all things Indie has been inspirational, at the least. I'll pimp their goods any day.

Rock on, GG!! :)

I'm not a Mac-head, so I'm currently not able to play with this puppy, but it looks very, very nice. Unity 3D is a "Cross-Platform 3D Authoring" tool, but that's cross-plat. delivery, not development. Just be sure you get that part, since there's often confusion up-front for some. It's a Mac tool, but you can deliver the apps for Windows, Mac or Web browser. Nice, eh?

This puppy really looks fantastic, especially at the new 1.5 level. I'd been considering it (at least playing with it) recently, but just haven't had the time or the project for it. To be quick about it, it's basically a 3D application creation tool. There are a great deal of Macromedia Director users eying Unity 3D as a viable alternative to Shockwave 3D... I'm one of them, honestly. Of course, I'm still hoping Garage Games will turn out a browser plugin for Torque engines.. but I don't know if that's in the pipeline or not (I know about some possibilities, but this isn't the time to post about that.)

The Unity 3D graphic rendering engine looks freakin' fantastic, I'll just say, and is one of the biggest features pointed out by those potential Director defectors I mentioned. They also use [a subset of] the Ageia PhysX physics API to handle the fun rigid-body physics stuff people wanna play with.

I'll add myself to the list of folks looking seriously at buying a Mac just to develop games with Unity... I'll borrow my friend's 'puter first to try it out, but if I like it and can come up with projects to use it for, I'm steering that way, for sure... especially if word doesn't come from Adobe real soon about major upgrades to Director & Shockwave 3D! Honestly, there are plenty of people looking this way instead of VirTools, even... I'll do an overview of these engines as soon as I can and I'll talk more lengthily (?) about that then.

I put it in my Research Journal for future reference, but otherwise, I'm not going to talk any more about it right now. If you want to check it out, go give the Unity 3D feature list a whirl! Really, really nice product they have there.

Mal Duffin from CanDo Interactive sent me info about this great article he wrote a while back. Creating a Shockwave 3D Game Level in 30 minutes shows you how to use the CanDo 3D Modeling Training Tool (free trial linked from article)and your favorite Shockwave 3D-compatible 3D modeling tool, to put together a simple 3D game level. I'm embarrassed about how long it's taken me to post this since he sent it back before a contest was being run in early April... I know, I suck. Sorry.

Unfortunately, the page where the winners were posted is currently down, so I'll have to pop back in here and update you with a working URL.

At any rate, if you have Director and you want to give this level-creation tutorial a try, give 'er a shot! Please feel free to post your reactions here (just sign up for a free account and log in to post comments.) Actually, you can snag a free demo of Director MX 2004 and work it out from there. You'll also need a 3D content tool that exports to Shockwave 3D format, of course.

One of the other reasons I had delayed in writing this post was that I wanted to go through the tutorial and see how it worked for me... I've just not been able to get around to it. I've been slacking in most of my chores around here, so I'll work on getting that done so I can talk more about it. That shouldn't stop you from giving it a whirl, though. Please report back on what you thought of it!

Well, they spammed me (not really, it was a newsletter I'm 'scribed to,) and I couldn't resist any longer... the Torque Game Builder (aka: "Torque 2D") is nearing its end of "early adopter" phase, so the price is still $100. After June 7, '06 the price goes up to permanent levels a bit higher than that. This isn't really an advert for them as much as a notice to others who might have been teetering on the edge of this purchase, like me. I pondered the buy for a long while, lacking a project to use with it. However, the price just seems like too good a deal not to give it a whirl. We'll see how it goes, but maybe I'll be making some 2D TGB powered games here soon!

If you're working with TGB, let us know how you like it! Just sign up for a free account and post a comment here for now. I might work out something more formal later for the discussion of various game engine development, but this will do for now... especially considering the very low traffic I have ATM. Wheee!

I'm working on adding a big listing of various game development books to the site. The intention is to set up a public rating/voting system so readers can chime in with their votes and/or comments about books they've read. I have the potential to do actual book reviews, but I'm not sure if that's something I'll get into or not... maybe I'll find others to do reviews for me as we go along? (Wink wink, nudge nudge...) When I get all the resources figured out, I'll likely be adding many of these books to the Game Dev Sourcebook so full threads can be created around the book/resource, which would then be searchable and cross-referenced a bit better... I think. It's all a mess right now, though, so let's get back on topic:

The preceeding post is an example of a simple book listing pulled straight from Amazon... yes, it's an affiliate link so I'll get loot if you buy through the links. Come on, a guy's gotta make a living, eh? ...Please, can I make a living??

So, two things: if you want to buy books at Amazon, come here first to find what you want. Second, if you've read any of the books listed here, please take the time to at least vote on the book or at best, post a comment regarding your views on it. (Each action requires a free, no-spam user account on this site.) Constructive posts only, please. "It sucks!" is nice and all, but ultimately useless if not accompanied by more information about why it sucks, eh? Common sense, I'd think.

Okay, so thanks again for visiting and please send me a note if you have a great book you've read and want to see it added to the list!

The Casual Games Association is putting on another of the "Casuality" conferences in Seattle, Washington in late June. "A conference for casual game developers, publishers and distributors," Casuality has been growing as one of the bigger events in the casual games space... the biggest? There's a mighty fine lineup of speakers set to present at the event. It's looking pretty good! If you're really into casual games, you ought to take a look at this, for sure! Sorry I'm late posting about it, though... it's coming up soon.