iDevGames

Provocative and Interactive

With uDeadGame, our uDevGames 2008 entry, we set out to create a provocative and interactive learning tool to initiate conversation about the spiritually sensitive controversy over appeasing the infinite hunger of the restless dead. To our surprise invididuals found it either entertaining, disappointing and/or disturbing. This unexpected result has lead the iGame3D team of experts to feel confident that people may like or perhaps even dislike a three dimensional first person zombie action adventure game. Such profound discoveries will certainly lead our research and development team to rich and meaningful technologies that will with out a doubt benefit all mankind.

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Cheetah3D 4.7 was released today. Version 4.7 is mainly a bug fix release which solves the problems Cheetah3D 4.6.4 had on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Cheetah3D 4.7 is free for all registered Cheetah3D 4.x users. A single user license costs 149 US$ and 69 US$ for an update of an older version (1.x, 2.x or 3.x). New features in Cheetah3D 4.7 include:

• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard compatibility
• Fixed texture import bug (on 10.6)
• Fixed render manager bug (on 10.6)
• Fixed crashing render bug (on 10.6)
• Fixed bug when rendering resolutions not dividable by 8 (on 10.6)
• Optimized frame buffer which uses less memory
• Faster calculation of material previews
• Minor bug fixes and enhancements

Related Link:

• Download Cheetah3D

Installing Mac Applications

Maybe its just my Mac bias, but I have never liked installers much. They always strike me as black boxes. Whenever I run one I always imagine it scattering hidden files all over my hard drive. I love it when you download software on the Mac and are presented with a simple disk image with an alias to the applications folder. Its nice, simple and very clear where things are being installed. I can see where installers have their uses for complicated programs requiring special system libraries and such, but I always feel a twinge of suspicion when I encounter software that has an installer when I don’t feel it needs one.

Unfortunately, most of the world runs Windows, and on Windows you need an installer to set up all of the proper start menu aliases etc. I wanted some Windows equivalent of the dmg with which to install the windows version of my game, but it apparently doesn’t exist. Windows users expect installers and most software portals apparently won’t even distribute Windows software that doesn’t have a proper installer. Because of this, BitRock InstallBuilder has become an important part of my publishing workflow for the Windows version of my game Constellation. I really like that it works on a mac. I program with Adobe Director, that can publish a windows .exe from a Mac its really helpful to have InstallBuilder lets me publish to Windows without ever touching Windows (other than for testing of course).

Getting Around un-Mac Interface

I was at first very confused by InstallBuilder. Its interface and directory structure is decidedly un-Mac like. Opening its main folder, I was confronted with a number of subfolders, and an uninstaller. I had trouble finding the application at first! It turns out it lives in the bin subfolder. It would be nice if they included an alias to the main folder. Likewise, when you save a project it goes to the projects subfolder, building goes to output etc. This wasn’t a problem once I got used to it, but I was expecting to be able to choose locations for all of those things.

InstallBuilder creates an XML project file that contains links to your files, and locations for where to install everything. It then uses this file to build your installers. Unfortunately, you can’t modify all of your installer’s properties with the InstallBuilder’s UI. Some things require you to modify the XML file directly. For example, I wanted my installer to default the name of the installation folder to my company name rather than my game’s name. This change required me to modify the XML. This wasn’t very well documented, but Bitrock’s support team was very quick to respond to my questions, and tell me how to make the change. They also listened and added some of my suggestions to their feature request database. I give them high marks for customer support.

Once your installer project is set up, its very easy to update. Just update the version number in your product details, make sure the installer is pointing to the latest build of your .exe and hit Build. I could easily build a similar Mac installer at the same time, but as I have mentioned before I prefer the disk image approach. It would be nice if InstallBuilder gave you the option to create that sort of installation on the mac. As it is I use Araelium Group’s DMG Canvas to create my Mac installer. Its an extra step in my publishing process, but feels better to me.

My biggest problem with InstallBuilder is the price. I would gladly pay as much as $40 for the ease and convenience of building Windows installers on my mac. Bitrock’s posted price of $1,995 makes me gasp. Having received the software for free as a uDev prize, I have found it very useful, but I couldn’t see myself ever paying that much for this software, especially when free Windows alternatives like Inno Setup exist. Bitrock does offer InstallBuilder for free to open source developers however. Their website also states that they offer discounts for businesses with less than 5 employees as well. I would be curious how much this discount is.

Conclusion

If you can get InstallBuilder discounted, or you work for a big company that makes a lot of multi-platform instlallers, I recommend this software. Once you get used to the interface, its easy to use and creates rock solid, nice looking installers. If you only need to make Windows installers, can’t get a discount, and don’t need any advanced functionality I might try a free alternative like inno setup first.

Pros

• Easily create nice professional looking installers for Windows and other operating systems without ever leaving your mac.
• Free to open source developers
• Good customer service.

Cons

• Expensive for non-open source (Though there is an unspecified discount for small businesses).
• Un Mac-like interface.
• Can’t create .dmg / applications folder alias Mac installer

Details

• Company: BitRock
• URL: http://bitrock.com
• Version: 6.0
• Category: Installer
• MRSP: $795 (Mac OS X), Pro $1,395, Pro Site $4,495, Enterprise $1,995, Enterprise Suite $6,995

Austin developer David Kalina worked for Midway Games while his partner, Randy Smith, was employed by EA. As big publisher’s continue to cut back development and cancel projects, more and more former employees are looking to the iPhone game market for opportunities. David and Randy launched their company Tiger Style and already have a hit iPhone game, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. The developers share their story on austinist.com and will also be speaking about their transition to Indie developers at the Austin Game Developer’s Conference on September 15.

Related Links:

• iPhone Game Developer Snares Success With Spider
• Austin Game Developer’s Conference

VolnaTech has released NimbleKit SDK 1.5.1, an update to its SDK for iPhone developers. NimbleKit allows quicker development using just HTML and JavaScript. The developer claims that you don’t need to know Objective-C or iPhone SD — all you need is to know how to write an HTML page with JavaScript code. NimbleKit installs in Xcode and provides you with a new “NimbleKit project template.” Version 1.5.1 boasts new functions and improvements, according to VolnaTech. Those include application badges; TabBar controller badges; Toolbar, TabBar and Navigation bar improvements; NKAudioPlayer and NKInternetPlayer are greatly improved; Native control to set global iPhone volume; Multibutton dialog sheets; Abilities to mix JavaScript and Objective-C code; Seeking in NKInternetPlayer, and more. Their press release also mentions that memory leaks and threading issues have been fixed, while the overall stability has been greatly improved.

Related Links:

• VolnaTech

Dev Hub is running a contest aimed at SDL programmers. The contest’s aim is to make a side-scrolling shooter. The contest is open to all game developers, and has requirements similar to uDevGames. The grand prize is $200 with a deadline of September 1, 2009. If this contest has perked your interest in learning more about SDL, head on over to Bright Hub for their series on SDL tutorials — and yes, they even teach you about parallax scrolling.

Related Link:

• Simple DirectMedia Layer

Perfect for Lone Wolf Developers

If you are a Unity3D user and have ever felt the urge to do a character animation demo, play with ragdoll physics, tweak particle emitters, or even just put a flag on the moon, the FroGames Protopack is for you. The name pretty much says it — it’s a package of art for rapid prototyping in Unity3D. If you are a programmer who can’t draw stick figures and doesn’t have a dedicated artist, but wants to learn Unity, the protopack is for you.
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Overview

After completing my previous game New Star GP I was considering replacing the racing cars with space ships and putting weapons in the game. It seemed like a fairly simple way to reuse the code that I’d spent the previous three months working on and quickly create an entirely new game. Meanwhile I had been playing PuppyGames’ Gravitron which I’d purchased through Steam and was mulling over the prospect of making a similar retro style game. It suddenly hit me that I could create the combat racing game with a neon vector look. Throw in some cool explosions and a techno sound-track and hey-presto, I’d have Geometry Wars meets Wipeout.
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Millenipede is a fast-paced arcade shoot ‘em up originally developed in less than seven days for the 94th “Wednesday Workshop” at SoCoder and is inspired by the Atari classics Centipede and Millipede. Your aim is to zap all of the millenipedes on each wave while dodging spiders, snails and of course the millenipedes themselves. They’ll make their way down the screen until eventually they hit the bottom, at which point they will roam around the player area until you shoot them. The sound for this game is pure 8-bit bliss and the eye candy will be sure to bring back memories — when games were simple and fun!

The great news for BlitzMax programmers is that the developer as released the source code under a Creative Commons license. You will need both the source code and the additional BlitzMax modules to successfully compile the game. Keep in mind that the source package does not include the game resources (i.e. the graphics, sounds, music and fonts), so you will have to take these from the game downloads.

Related Links:

• Download: Game & Source Code
• SoCoder
• BlitzBasic

The Baja Engine provides a top quality 2d and 3d renderer based on OpenGL. Rendering scales across multiple screen resolutions and aspect ratios without the need to change your code. (Renders are consistent and high quality across all hardware configurations. When necessary, the renderer degrades to work on older hardware.)

Baja also includes extensive 2d rendering support for game interfaces and 2d games. Baja features exciting next generation technologies such as realtime reflections, high-quality water using shaders, and displacement mapping. It also includes framebuffer effects like blur and glow. Baja’s scripting environment incorporates Lua.

Baja runs on both Windows and Mac OS X — your game will run on both platforms with absolutely no changes to level files or source code. Your game content (textures, scripts, models) can also be packed into compiled files to protect your intellectual property. All this can then be packed into a commercial-quality installer that looks as good as any game put out by a large studio.
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