Forum For Shoot 'Em Up Developers Launched
SHmUP DEV, a forum for discussing the development of, and showcasing, that staple of videogaming, the shmup (shoot ‘em up), has been launched; the founder of the forum intends to tailor the forum for the discussing the development of any game which falls into the genre of shmup, whether that game is modern, retro, a retro-remake, 2D, or 3D.
Chris Hecker wrote a series of articles as well as a number of reference web pages and made them available to anyone for free. The first three articles he has written take you through linear and angular physics with collisions in two dimensions. The fourth article teaches you how to integrate these equations into a three dimensional situation. He does admits that you cannot only use his articles to base your physics engine, so he lists various references and examples to guide you towards a rigid body physics system.
Chipmunk Basic 3.6.2b5 for Mac OS X Released
Chipmunk Basic for MacOS is an old-fashioned Basic interpreter which runs on almost all Macs. Chipmunk Basic uses a vintage traditional-style command-line console, but note that line numbers are not required to run Basic program written using an external text editor. Supported features on MacOS include color graphics, sprites, sound (including Quicktime MIDI sounds and morse code), speech synthesis, matrix ops, AppleScript, network sockets, pipes, serial I/O, and even some rudamentary OOP (object oriented programming) capabilities. Versions are available for System 6.0.7 thru Mac OS X 10.4, for systems from very old Mac 512Ke’s up thru the latest Apple iBooks and G5 PowerMacs.
A 3D tree generating utility written in Java. It creates output as dxf, obj or POV-Ray.
Looking for a Good Low-cost 3D Application?
Remember Infini-D, the 3D application created by Specular Inc.? Infini-D and its successor Carrara were sold off to Eovia following the implosion at MetaCreations (who had earlier purchased Specular Inc.) Although it doesn’t sit in the minds of Mac artists as Infini-D (and Raydream) once did, Cararra has been developing nicely and is now up to version 5. Version 5 of Carrara, as Infini-D once was, is a great value in its price range—I highly recommend game developers try the demo.
- Buy Carrara Studio 3 (Tell them iDevGames sent you!)
- Carrara Tutorials
- Free Carrara Models
2006 PGD Annual Game Development Competition
On the heels of our own OMG contest, Pascal Game Development, a website devoted to game creation and the Pascal programming language, announced that the 2006 PGD Annual Game Development Competition will begin on January 15th. From the announcement:
“We will be allowing teams or individuals much like we did last year. Releasing your source will be optional however you will be required to submit a packaged executable with all game files for the targeted platform(s) supported.
Prizes, judges, rules and all further needed information will be posted within a weeks time before the start date of competition. For now, I suggest gathering your teams, tools and ideas for Jan 15th. Contest will be running for a total of 16 weeks, ending on the May 7th where we will award the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners with their prizes.”
Pascal CentralJava4K Java Programming Contest
Original PGD news announcement and discussion board
OMG Cup 2005 Finalists Announced
iDevGames, in connection with Freeverse Software, launched the OMG (Original Mac Games) Cup 2005 contest on October 18, 2005. The OMG Cup’s challenge is to create fun Mac OS X games with a focus on gameplay. In a successful inaugural year, the contest drew thirty-six developers from around the globe—competing for cash prizes and games from Freeverse Software, pro-level file services from PureStatic, and fame. The public voting phase, which determined the six finalists of the OMG Cup 2005, concluded on December 15. Voters were asked to download (http://www.idevgames.com/contest/downloads) entries and score them between one (1) and ten (10) on the criteria of “gameplay.”
Independent Game Festival Finalists Announced
Judges for the Independent Game Festival have announced the finalists for six categories of the festival Sunday. Each finalist is able to win $2,500 for winning in each category with the Seumas McNally Grand Prize awarded at $20,000. All finalists will be demonstrating their games at 2006 Game Developers Conference. Most games have downloads available with some for Mac OS X and can be found by clicking the links below.
Seumas McNally Grand Prize: Darwinia, Dofus, Professor Fizzwizzle, Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa.
Best Web Browser Game: Dodge That Anvil, Moleculous, Dad ‘N Me.
Innovation In Game Design: Rumble Box, Strange Attractors, Braid, The Witch’s Yarn, Darwinia.
Technical Excellence: Saints & Sinners Bowling, Tribal Trouble, Tube Twist, Darwinia, Crazy Ball.
Innovation In Visual Art: Dofus, Darwinia, Putt Nutz, Glow Worm, Thomas And The Magical Words
Innovation In Audio: Professor Fizzwizzle, Saints & Sinners Bowling, Dodge That Anvil, Glow Worm, Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space.
Processing, an open-source and cross-platform language and development environment for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows, has been updated to version 0098; newly implemented functionality in this update is the ability to export Mac OS X .app application bundles from Processing – although the developers warn that this new functionality has not been heavily tested – functionality which complements Processing’s ability to export Java applets for embedding in web-pages.
Processing "export to application" FAQOnly Four More Days to Vote for Your Favorite OMG Contest Games!
ZENTSUJI CITY, JAPAN–DECEMBER 12th, 2005–iDevGames, the Mac game developer website, would like to remind Mac gamers that voting for the “OMG Cup,” sponsored by Freeverse Software (www.freeverse.com) and PureStatic (www.purestatic.com) ends on December 15, 2005. The OMG (Original Mac Games) Cup is a new game programming contest established by iDevGames (www.idevgames.com) to encourage unique Mac game development. “We’re very pleased with the entries in our first ever OMG Cup”, said Carlos Camacho, Editor-in-Chief of iDevGames. He adds, “The talent of independent Mac game developers in our community bodes extremely well for the future of Mac gaming as we move towards the Intel-based Mac era.”
3D Character Modeler MakeHuman
MakeHuman© is an open-source, open graphics library, stand-alone, multi-platform, software program, which is completely written in C language. Its purpose is to provide a versatile, professional and extremely specialized application for parametrical modeling of three-dimensional humanoid characters.
*Note:* Only the Windows version is available at the moment. Perhaps someone can assist with the OS X port?
Apple has now posted on their website a very helpful webpage assisting coders to move from the aging (and soon to be obsolete) Codewarrior to Apple’s very own Xcode. While die hard Codewarriors users may find this a smack in the face, and possibly offensive, the rest of the user base may find this eases their switch. Viva La Xcode.
Moving Your Project from CodeWarrior to Xcode
Audio Editor Audacity 1.2.4 Released
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
Demonstrating some advanced OpenGL techniques, Humus 3D also includes source code to their demos allowing viewers the chance to learn how to incorporate these features into their own games.
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