GDNet: Tales from Journal Land

So I missed announcing it last week but, Weekend Reading was conceived over 6 months ago now, back on March 24th. Wow, I had truly not realized how much time had gone by! Since the start, I've managed to miss posting two times (yes, mittens, you can rub it in how you haven't missed any Dailies in basically the same time span... yet) and the posts haven't really been all that regular. I'd like to change things up a little bit now that this has been going on for a while and everyone seems to enjoy it. Nothing too drastic, just the addition of a new Post of the Week that let's me highlight one particular Journal Land entry for reasons I shall expound upon - and of course it offers all Journal Land citizens the incentive to craft more substantial posts (Drilian where'd you go??). Then again, substance may not be all that is neccessary to earn a spot in this new high throne, as the first recipient demonstrates...

Journal Land Pick of the Week

Radioactive-Software by dgreen02 - not only is Danny almost done working on his major-scale title, which he largly created entirely on his own, now you too can experience the action, the drama, and the excitement of game development by tuning in to his live webcam, broadcasting straight from where all the magic happens (you know, his desk). Tune in and watch Danny coding from the comforts of his rocking leather armchair (with massage?), singing along to song lyrics, scratching his ear thoughtfully and... oh crap, he just looked at me. I feel wrong now.

From the Staff

* Gaiiden's Scroll - got any events that you don't see on the calendar? I'd sure like to know about em!


Project Updates

* Blue stain - alfith reboots development of his game project - I forget what it's all about. General tip: Link back to some background entry when re-introducing a project that hasn't been spoken up since March. Nice job on the pictures tho

* Journal of zedz - it appears that zedz has chosen the last of his listed game concepts (last week) for further development

* Stompy's Gamedev Journal - Fists of Justice now has blocking for the main character to turn aside enemy attacks and thrown objects.

* Rixter by Rixter by Rixter by Rixter - Rixter reassess the development of SnakeEngine and showcases the games he's been devloping with each iteration of the engine

* Metaphorical Journeys of Happenstance - Ravuya details some ammo-handling aspects of Afterglow. I always wished games like Uncharted had ammo seperated from the weapons you pick up

* Happenings with VBStrider and Crew - the second project newsletter, detailing bug fixings and demo playing

* P16 Games - Programmer16 lays out the groundwork for his 7 Sins Tech, a game library with it's main components named after the 7 Deadly Sins. Certainly is one way to come up with code names.

* Sir Sapo... The Man ... The Legend - Sir Sapo reports back in from the Air Force Academy with updates on the latest space strategy game poject, and shares another great set of stories from his time at the Academy. Hopefully one day he'll be able to fly an F-305 in the Pegasus Galaxy

* Bennu - Demosthenes has an extended trailer up for Bennu, his DreamBuildPlay contest entry

* The Carrier2 papers - Aph3x is attempting to entice model artists with project imagery. Will it work?


Game Dev Stuffs

* The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog - John talks about the trials and tribulations he has so far experienced working in packaging together a set of 48 games

* Journal of Promit - In his new blog Ventspace Promit talks at length on test driven development, focusing on unit testing

* Journal of EasilyConfused - EasilyConfused talks about the custom font format he uses and why, along with a solution to one of its quirks

* Readme.txt - Kevin highlights a blog entry by Matt Manela, who created a Snippet Designer to help encourage the use of snippets in VS 05/08

* DruinkJournal - EvilSteve pimps and interview Gamasutra ran with his team at Firebrand Games, working on a 3D DS racing title

* Adventures in Game Design - Similarly, zer0wolf pimps an interview he conducted with Jason Parks, Senior Technical Artist at Sony Online, over at Tech-Artists.org

* Journal of Drew_Benton - Drew_Benton discusses some thoughts on how to approach representing objects in classes, with conceptual code included

* mittentacular - mittens previews his new upcoming column on dissecting game mechanics and why they are (or are not) useful

* MJP's Last Stand - MJP has online the HDR rendering sample that has been circulating through this Reading the past two weeks (well, one I guess if you want to be technically correct)

* BrokenThorn Entertainment - Tutorial 17 released the in the OS Dev series covering development of a full physical memory manager


Other Stuffs

* Journal of dbaumgart - some paintings by dbaumgart to oogle over

* Fallen, oh dear : - diablo_tk gets a new setup. Too bad he has a 360 and I can't destroyplay him in Guitar Hero

Roll out the welcome mat this week for new Journal Land citizen matt_j!