GDNet: Weekend Reading

Entries from 1/8 - 1/22

Not trying to make a habit out of this bi-weekly thing, just so ya know. Figures everyone goes and releases demos and such while I slack off :P

Journal Land Pick of the Weeks

Digital adventures through the third dimension - shadowisadog has some advice on "how to stay productive and sane when developing a project either commercially or as a hobby." Seeing as this applies then to just about everyone reading this, I suggest you do so. It's not groundbreaking stuff (I'm a big fan of item F) but it is stuff you'll want to keep in mind - so reinforcement is good

Just Glad to Be Here - rmadsen talks about breaking into the games industry, and how doing so presents its own unique problems given that we are a creative industry similar to film and music. If you don't have a sense of what makes game development different from regular software development, have a read-see

A warm greeting to new Journal Land citizens Ashaman73 and ThomasBelgium!

Welcome back jbadams and Metron!

Also, we hope to see you again soon, Telastyn.

Project Updates

* Mark the Artist Fights the Future - Prinz Eugn dug up an old copy of Angels 22 for anyone to try out if they want - it's a sidescrolling airplane fighter game with great pixel graphics. If you're unfamiliar with Angels 22, check out this great re-cap of Prinz Eugn and Sir Sapo's game history together

* You Gotta Squeeze Every Pixel - Staffan E has a working copy of his shoot-em up project Citizen for you to download and checkout

* Once a Bird - Demosthenes has a playable demo for his rampage-scrabble mash up Attack of the 50ft Verbose Dinosaur - if you're an XNA Creators Club member

* IfThen Software LLC - Newsletter #59 - New ITS Homepage launched, new iScribble sketch, community started to get excited for ever-closer launch of Loradon 3.0 Preview

* Big Trouble In Little Chairtown - Drilian has some videos of his level 2 boss in action in his game Procyon. You can also check out his Level 1 boss video as well.

* Under a ShadowyTree - Black Knight discusses his dialog (I think he means dialogue) editor for Dark Age, which lets him put together conversations with NPCs

* Journal of matt_j - matt_j is still working out issues with porting his game over to the iPhone, this time adjusting the HUD slightly to make things easier for players to see on the smaller screen

Game Dev Stuffs

* Promit's Ventspace - Promit puts his ventspace to good use, with two opinionated topics - the first is about college degrees and game jobs. Do you need one? Does it matter? Promit shares his view as a developer who got a job without one, and also just finished getting one. The second peice is a bit more hairy, since it deals with the age-old DirectX vs. OpenGL debate. If you're into that kind of fight, Promit's got his opinion right here. Duck and cover!

* Merry Prankster Games - gdunbar shares a few interesting links covering streaming worlds, standard RPG systems and their unsuitability for modern campaigns, and Skills and Classes in the roguelike game Crawl

* Old code never dies, it just fades away - code_zombie has a quick tutorial on how to load a texture for OpenGL ES on Android

* jpetrie's journal - jpetrie posts his opinion of the value of the IGDA and it's purpose in regards to the industry in light of the "Rockstar Spouses" incident. Conveniently he also links to my blog post on the subject, which he is partially responding to.

* Not dead... - phantom's latest project ("a highly threaded particle system") has gotten him to thinking on ideas to try and make optimal use of the CPU, which he brain dumps here

* Revenge of the MAGI - Gor435 warns people to be careful going through the book Beginning DirectX 10 Game Programming - he's had some issues with important details being left out, as he mentions here.

Other Stuffs

* Any Colour You Like - benryves turns his wizard hackery gaze to the IM-me, "a device designed to be used with a web-based IM service that communicated with the PC via a USB wireless adaptor." Some of its uses he sees potential for include "notify you of new emails, read RSS feeds, post updates to social networking sites, use it as a home automation console, remote control a media PC..."

Thanks for dropping by Evil Steve, Jason Z, blewisjr, Sshado, ApochPiQ, Programmer16, Saruman, EDI, O-san, puz, and zer0wolf.