Game Development Community

GDNet: Weekend Reading

by Drew -Gaiiden- Sikora · 04/11/2009 (4:36 am) · 0 comments

Journal Land Pick of the Week

Journal of Ysaneya - Ysaneya talks at length about deferred lighting and instant radiosity. His use of these deferred lighting stems from the fact that his game is procedurally generated, and therefore he cannot rely on lightmaps - especially when he has objects that are kilometers long. After realizing the imapact of deferred lighting was less than a 10% hit on framerate, he decided to go ahead with instant radiosity for additional indirect lighting. Behold the stunning visual results.

From the Staff

* The Bag of Holding - ApochPiQ still has more GDC writeups to post. However he might not last long enough to get them all done.

* Gaiiden's Scroll - Weekly sitrep: Twitter helps save GDNet from some downtime; GDC coverage still rambling on; Moderator shakeups coming; New resources; New Events

* The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog - johnhattan is running another Haiku contest to give away 2 more GDNet Collection book copies. However now that you're reading this, the contest is over - because he says he'll announce the winner after I post this roundup. But I wrote it so late, he may not still be awake. He's getting on in the years, you know. So quick! Rush over and write a Haiku for a chance to win!

Project Updates

* Big Trouble In Little Chairtown - Drilian has a new movie of the first level for Procyon, as well as MP3s for the music from the level

* Radioactive-Software - dgreen02 has been talking about his Havok physics integration to his latest project Warbots Online over a series of entries. This is part 3 but links back to parts 1 and 2. Part 4 should be coming in a few days

* Digital Playground - OrangyTang is back from holiday and working on Rescue Squad 2 once more. An updated screenshot and more info on the game's progress. I love the visual style.

* Blue stain - alfith has the game's boss up and running, a huge octopus whose arms you have to chop off

* Happenings with VBStrider and Crew - this week's newsletter: Loradon 3.0 progress reaches 60%; the programmer talks circle-AABB collision; community reports on the Stick Adventures Online art contest and game activity

* Chronicles of the Hieroglyph - Jason Z has an overview of how he implemented multiple render windows supporting MFC, Qt and wxWidgets in Hieroglyph

* Reinvention and Further Development of the Wheel - staaf has a prototype release for his 2D space shoot-em-up Citizen that he's looking for feedback on, as well as a video of it in action

* Gauntlets of Recursion (+7) - HopeDagger is still feeling out some new projects, this time looking more along Isometric lines. He also pimps the GDNet Collection book Advanced Game Programming, which he has an article in. I miss the bloody, violent Skirmish Online screens

Game Dev Stuffs

* Merry Prankster Games - gdunbar revisits the escape problem from a post that was featured in an earlier edition of Weekend Reading. The escape problem is the ability of a player to walk away from a battle with no negative consequences. In this second segment he comes up with some answers to the question: what can an RPG designer do about it?

* Merry Prankster Games - gdunbar discusses more design issues based off a blog post by Jay Barnson of Rampant Games about removing uneccessary gameplay. In this case, modeling whole towns in games just so the user can purchase items rather than a quick shopping menu.

* epic.fail - evolutional is still working on his latest GameMonkey scripting article, and has come across another annoyance in the language: the inability to iterate over any type other than the in-built table type. So he dabbled with the source once again and has the new code available for download.

Other Stuffs

* DruinkJournal - Evil Steve wanted to network Tiberian Sun on his old 98 box and his Vista box, but due to a clash of protocols that just wouldn't work. So he patched it. Code is included (and sushi, yums), and he's currently trying to do the same with C&C Red Alert

Everyone swing by and give a welcome to new Journal Land citizen AndyEsser