Latest News (Nov 11, 19:42 EST):
- DirectX 8.0 and SDK
- LithTech Article
- Unreal Tournament Patch
- Auran Jet Beta 1 released
- Elite Force tools released
- GtkRadiant Alpha Release
- Interviews
- KISS: PS and FAKK2 Tools
- Rich Carlson on gaming story lines
- The Collective's Unreal Engine Enhancements

September 18, 2000
Lennie Moore Interview
Remember last year's Outcast? This action/adventure game by Appeal, Belgium, didn't only have great graphics and fun gameplay, but also one of the best soundtracks for a computer or video game ever. We talked to Lennie Moore, composer of the Outcast score, about his work, and the particular challenges of creating a score for a computer game. Read more...

September 13, 2000
Tim Sweeney Q&A;
We sat down with Epic's Tim Sweeney for a quick Q&A; session about the Unreal Engine, independent game development, his own history in the industry and more. Well, we didn't really sit down with him, but that doesn't matter much, does it? Read more...

Game Design (4)
Game design theory.

Graphics (24)
Everything regarding computer graphics.

Other games development resource sites (9)
More information if you want to get into games development.

Programming (44)
If you're writing your game from scratch, these links may be of help.

Technologies (310)
Engines, SDKs and Game Creation Systems to use for your own game.

Game Programming???
in C/C++ | General C/C++ Programming, started Nov 30, 10:56 EST, by Unknown

Toolbar
in C/C++ | Visual C++, started Nov 30, 07:22 EST, by liyanbe

Direct X Programming??
in C/C++ | Borland C++ Builder, started Nov 29, 10:37 EST, by Unknown

Borland c++ 5.5
in C/C++ | Borland C++ Builder, started Nov 28, 07:28 EST, by Unknown

PARTY!
in Real Life (tm) | Aaargh!!, started Nov 26, 20:06 EST, by SCHiZNiT

News for Saturday, November 11, 2000

DirectX 8.0 and SDK
morn | Nov 11, 19:42 EST | Game Development, DirectX

Microsoft have released version 8.0 of their multimedia application (games :b) development platform DirectX. As usual, you can download the drivers-only end-user version or the full SDK, the latter of which allows you to develop your own games using Visual C++, Visual Basic, and a number of other languages supported through third party header files.

News for Tuesday, November 07, 2000

LithTech Article
morn | Nov 07, 22:25 EST | Source: VE | Game Development, LithTech 3D

There's a new article about LithTech on Machinima.com. Due to the nature of the site, the article focuses on making movies using LithTech, but it's an interesting read nonetheless if you're working with (or planning to work with) Monolith's engine.

Unreal Tournament Patch
morn | Nov 07, 22:22 EST | Source: VE | Game Development, Unreal Tournament

A new patch for Unreal Tournament, which brings the game up to version 436, is available on the Unreal Technology Site. This new patch fixes some problems in the editor as well as some stability issues in the game.

News for Saturday, September 30, 2000

Auran Jet Beta 1 released
morn | Sep 30, 21:04 EST | Source: Blue | Game Development

Auran have released beta 1 of their 3D game authoring system, Auran Jet. Beta 1 comes with a huge set of support files and examples, as well as a manual, and all that only for the price of a free registration. Grab Auran Jet beta 1 from the Auran Jet downloads page.

Elite Force tools released
morn | Sep 30, 20:55 EST | Source: Blue | Game Development

Raven have released the editing tools for their Star Trek shooter, Elite Force. Included are a modified version of QERadiant, a shader editor and some other support files required to make your own Elite Force levels. You can download the tools from EliteForceFiles.com.

News for Tuesday, September 19, 2000

GtkRadiant Alpha Release
Chromag | Sep 19, 16:43 EST | Source: Blue's | Game Development, Quake 3 Arena

QERadiant.com has the first testing release of GtkRadiant, the cross-platform, Gtk-library-based version of this level editor originally released as source code by id Software. There's quite a few known issues with this one - be sure to RTFM.

Interviews
Chromag | Sep 19, 12:05 EST | Source: Blue's | Game Development, Interviews

Several interesting interviews with developers around the industry:

• Pyro Studios' Gonzalo Su�rez talks to GameSpot UK about gameplay issues in Commandos 2, including how their addition of different character views affects the way the game is played.
• GA-RPG talks to Pro Sotos and Danny Belanger of Strategy First, developers of the RPG Disciples II, about design decisions, gameplay, the event system, and multiplayer possibilities.
• 3D Action Planet has a nifty interview with Third Law Interactive's Jonathan Wright and Will Loconto, covering their "fix-or-ship" decisions, the formation of Third Law out of ION Storm, and the company's future.
• Last but not least, Voodoo Extreme has a chat with John Carmack online, with questions submitted by all sorts of industry pros. Carmack talks about Doom III, engine work, and making content modifiable.

News for Monday, September 18, 2000

KISS: PS and FAKK2 Tools
Chromag | Sep 18, 09:58 EST | Source: Blue's | Game Development, Quake 3 Arena, LithTech 3D

Two things: First, the KISS: Psycho Circus website has the initial release of the development tools for this Third Law Interactive developed shooter based on Monolith's LithTech engine. You can download the tools here.

Second, the recently mentioned dev tools for Ritual's Heavy Metal FAKK2 have been updated and rereleased. The original release, according to Mark Dochtermann, was missing some stuff:

The first tools build did not support the FTX texture format as much as we thought and as a result, there were some unforseen side effects. This build has been tested for FTX files and should work a lot better.

Here's the README file, and here's the devtools themselves.

News for Sunday, September 17, 2000

Rich Carlson on gaming story lines
andy | Sep 17, 18:57 EST | Source: Blue's News | Game Development

Rich Carlson of Rogue Entertainment has written an article for GameSpy, talking about the quality of story telling in games. How bad does he think it is? "Even the best writing in computer action, adventure, and role-playing games can't compare to the quality of writing found in even the average film or TV show." Ouch. Let us know your views on this subject... in the forums!

News for Saturday, September 16, 2000

The Collective's Unreal Engine Enhancements
Chromag | Sep 16, 23:07 EST | Source: Planetunreal | Game Development, Unreal Tournament

Tony Barnes, lead designer for The Collective's coming Star Trek: DS9 game, detailed some of the enhancements the team has made to the Unreal engine during their development period:

Legend Programmer on Programming
Chromag | Sep 16, 22:42 EST | Game Development, Misc Tidbits

Legend Entertainment's Senior Programmer Aaron Leiby updated his .plan file with response to comments made by other Legend developers about the book Debugging the Development Process, which he highly recommends.

The update is an in-depth summary of Leiby's own goals and processes during development - quite an interesting read. Here's a quote:

I guess it's just common sense. Tasks-lists in and of themselves may be evil, but they're a necessary means to an ends. As long as they are used as a tool to meet your goals they're priceless, but as soon as they become your driving force, something's wrong - you need to step back and put your priorities back in order. I really agree with him that you need project oriented goals to drive your day to day work. And task-lists are the tools that allow us to break those goal into achievable chunks. But using task-lists for the sake of tasks-lists is wrong.

News for Friday, September 15, 2000

F.A.K.K.2 Tools Released
morn | Sep 15, 18:59 EST | Source: Blue | Game Development, Quake 3 Arena

Ritual Entertainment have released the editing tools and game source code for their single-player 3rd person action game, Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2, giving you all the chance to develop your own stuff using the F.A.K.K.2 engine, which is a direct descendant of id Software's Quake 3 Arena engine.

The included readme.txt file also mentions gith.net, a F.A.K.K.2 editing site that will help you get started (although it currently isn't reachable).

The Story Behind WoT
andy | Sep 15, 17:54 EST | Source: Blue's News | Game Development, Publishing

Glen Dahlgren has posted The Story Behind The Wheel Of Time over on the game's official site, explaining the game's progress from the original idea right through to the "microcosm" -- the demo section created to show the game to prospective publishers.

Will Wright Interview
Chromag | Sep 15, 16:39 EST | Source: Slashdot | Game Development, Interviews

Feed has an Interview with Will Wright, creator of Maxis' SimCity, The Sims, and the upcoming massively multiplayer Sims game. Wright covers how Maxis comes up with some of the strange stuff they do, how his development process is one of serendipitous repetition, and some detail on how Sims Online is going to work.

Developium chat tonight
morn | Sep 15, 13:48 EST | Game Development, Developium, Events

Just a quick reminder: tonight at midnight UTC/GMT (5pm Los Angeles, 8pm New York, 2am Berlin) there's going to be a little Developium chat on #Developium, our friendly free-for-all IRC channel which can be reached by either connecting to irc.developium.net or using our Java chat applet on www.developium.net.

A note regarding the time: midnight UTC/GMT may seem a little weird to you. We realize that Developium is a pretty international site, so we're going to do these monthly Developium community chats at varying times. This time, the chat is scheduled at a time that should be okay for all you people from the US of A (and similar time zones); next time, we'll make sure our Euro comrades don't have to stay up too long. Anyway, you can find out the time of the chat for your time zone by configuring the latter in your user preferences.