GDNet: Tales from Journal Land x2!

Weekend Reading makes its epic return! I didn't think I was going to make it. Getting the AGDC coverage complete while prepping for and attending the NY Games Conference today and yesterday was rough. I got it all done though and I haven't gone insane (a little mentally unstable, but no more so than usual) so here's your weekly dose of Journal goodness.... TIMES TWO!! OMGWTFAAAHHHH *BOOM* (that was your head)

We're going to start with last week's entries and then move on to this past week's entries. Thank you to all the people who didn't post in their journals, because the ones that did nearly ran off the page - I was quite worried I'd have to actually dig through the forums (you know, the Journals really are just forum threads if you've never looked) to pull up posts from two weeks ago. Luckily the last two journals listed were still older than two weeks. Yea, the last two of 50 journals. You guys are busy!!

Oh and let me just say it here that I'm going to be inserting links into posts to connect them together. So if you see a link to a previous journal entry magically appear in a post - that was me. Or it could be a mischieveous fork, but 99.9% of the time it'll be me.

Okay enough babbling. On to the goods!

Okay I lied. Just wanted to say I injected a bit more fun into the listing - shouldn't be too hard to spot here and there =)

Last Week (9/12 - 9/18)

From the Staff

* Continuous Refinement - Richard continues to lay bare aspects of the new site design, the fifth iteration of GDNet and (from an engineering standpoint) the second iteration of the site as a whole

* Gaiiden's Scroll - Catch what went down for me and GDNet at the Austin Game Developer's Conference

* The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog - if John's reports from Austin aren't as fulfilling, then compensate with learning how to get good, cheap WiFi at Starbucks


Project Updates

* Oddgames development journal - O-san's work on his isometric game editor Nimrod continues with the addition of placing sounds and Lua scripting

* Sir Sapo... The Man ... The Legend - Sir Sapo is back with some details on his new project and more behind-the-scenes stories from the air force academy. Stay alive, nugget!

* Mark the Artist Attacks! - don't stop there! If you liked what Sir Sapo was outlining, Prinz Eugn has even more juicy details, and juicy pics. No, not that juicy...

* Software Renderer in 28 days - Clapfoot implements frustum clipping in his SDL 3D software renderer, goes over the issues he had to overcome

* Tesseract's Game Development Journal - Tesseract changes up the background of his Gyruss clone and modifies the power ups. I can also no longer just shoot into the distance and destroy enemies before I even see them =( Ok ok, so that makes things a bit too easy... Don't forget you can click on the image to play!

* iLiNX - so fine, it's not a post with real substance but... the starry nebulae image is quite captivating

* Gauntlets of Recursion (+3) - HopeDagger project hops again but at least he's keeping things fresh. He divulges some details for his next 2D project, Assail

* MMX Project - sneakyrobot touches a bit on how he's implementing sprite animations and drafts up the story for his game for critique

* What doth life - Aiursrage hasn't been around since May but he's got a good excuse: being busy releasing his first game. Congrats!

* Ye Olde Ramblings - Tangent gets phrase declarations

* Journal of EasilyConfused - an update on EasilyConfused's swingin poke ball game, Pod. Just callin' em as I see em ;)


Game Dev Stuffs

* BrokenThorn Entertainment - tip #26 for getting in the Weekend Reading: post something I simply do not understand, but looks cool

* Compiling... - a_insomniac gives an example of what you can learn from studying game video clips

* MJP's Last Stand - MJP discusses (at length) using the LogLuv format to design an effective and performant HDR implementation for his game's engine under XNA

* Reinvention and Further Development of the Wheel - staaf thinks deep on the game design behind exploration and combat. Also, a tricky(?) math problem to solve, even if you missed out on the rating cookie that JasonZ ate


Other Stuffs

* Readme.txt - Kevin shares a great story on how the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. Yes, a horse's ass. Over 2,000 years ago. A horse's ass

* Any Colour You Like - tip #12 for getting in the Weekend Reading: do things no one else is even remotely close to doing

* The Realm of Trial - DecipherOne clues people in to a new gamer social site, gatheringofgamers.com

* On the path with a ramblin' man - jollyjeffers sadly admits defeat on getting a development environment set up with Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V

* A horse's ass


A warm Journal Land welcome to smr and phear-!


This Week (9/19 - 9/25)

From the Staff

* Gaiiden's Scroll - the Weekly sitrep also returns with an AGDC wrap up, new resources and new events

* Continuous Refinement - Richard continues to expose V5 by talking about how site errors will be handled in the new version


Project updates

* Journal of EasilyConfused - a short (short) story on why playtesting your game early is good

* Bennu - Bennu has been entrered into DreamBuildPlay - see the video submission

* iLiNX - continuing the quick and simple entries, urs informs us of his new website, link included of course.

* Ye Olde Ramblings - Telastyn creates a random maze generator with Tangent

* Chronicles of the Hieroglyph - Jason Z completes the 3D UI system for his engine - eyecandy included

* tip #7 on not getting into Weekend Reading: saying you'll "elaborate" or explain in "greater detail" next post... when that post happens to not be in time for this week's Reading

* How to finish a game in less than ten years - another DreamBuildPlay entrant shares video and screens

* MJP's Last Stand - MJP shows off the result of his HDR pipeline (mentioned in last week's Reading above)

* MMX Project - sneakyrobot goes in-depth as promised on his sprite rendering process

* Metaphorical Journeys of Happenstance - updates to Ravuya's project include UI relative positioning, HUD ammo indicator and weapon muzzle tracking. Obligatory ocular oogling included

* The Realm of Trial - DecipherOne is putting out the call for beta testers. Who will answer?

* The Carrier2 papers - Aph3x is also looking for help in the form of a 3D skinner/modeler

* Gauntlets of Recursion (+3) - HopeDagger settles back into game dev once more and continues working on Assail with a map editor

* Happenings with VBStrider and Crew - VBStrider collects info from each week into a "newsletter" update - this week sees a progress page for Loradon 3.0, update from the programmer and a report of the latest dev demo

* Mark the Artist Attacks! - more information and pixely (in a good way) pictures of space ships from Axis Shift. As Don LaFontaine would say (were he still alive) "this time - it's for real"

* tip #18 on not getting into Weekend Reading: having a video in which RPG-like projectiles are launched and nothing explodes

* The Bag of Holding - ApochPiQ answers all your questions about Epoch. What is it? Where can you use it? When can you use it? How will it take over the world? (oh, wait - he forgot that last one)

* Merry Prankster Games - gdunbar talks about fighting styles in his RPG, like wielding a sword, a sword + shield, a sword with two hands, and two weapons weilded at once

* Journal of zedz - zedz needs help deciding which of the 10 projects he's worked on in the past year (which all look awesome, BTW) should deserve his undivided attention

* Tesseract's Game Development Journal - the Gyruss clone now attempts to hypnotize you while you play. Listen to Admrial Ackbar. It's a trap!

* Untitled - Tape_Worm returns to his 2D graphics library for .NET and Managed DirectX, Gorgon


Game Dev Stuffs

* mittentacular - mittens talks at length about developing with XNA Games Studio, using his latest project Cubegasm as an example. He also reveals a new column starting next week!

* On the path with a ramblin' man - jollyjeffers shares a link to Mark Russinovich's blog on diagnosing windows performance problems

* Readme.txt - Kevin shares a blog link as well: to Clinton Keith's entry on managing Shared Infrastructure teams in an agile project

* epic.fail - evolutional cross-posts from his new blog on why you should use version control software


Other Stuffs

* The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog - John discovers the Lifehacker Hive Five. It is indeed an awesome resource for top apps - I totally second the reccomendation. He also tries (with partial success) to create an analogy of the current financial crisis using McDonalds.

* Any Colour You Like - the electronics craziness continues! Current work is a 64KB RAM and a CHIP-8/SCHIP interpreter


How delighted I am to always be able to end these features with shouts out to new Journal Land citizens! Hello, hello and WTF took you so long to FeverGames, digitalerr0r and Drew_Benton =D

Donations are welcome in the form of comments