Posted on June 24th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Develop Mag, a UK-based website for game developers has a series of articles that rank the best game engines for game development. The article kicks off with a look at the console market amid the current economic situation with Start your engines.
Each of the 10 engines featured in this month’s round-up (starting over the page) has, in its latest release, improved its toolset to enable rapid iteration (if it wasn’t using that as its USP anyway). Gone are the days of twiddling your thumbs waiting for the latest build to tick along and then almost inevitably fail; now designers, artists and programmers can instantly change object placement, parameters and even whole scripts without requiring a recompilation.
The top 10 thus far are:
- TBA
- TBA
- TBA
- Unity 3D – PC, Mac, iPhone, Wii
- Blitz Games Studios – PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, PC
- Infernal Engine – Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, PS2, PSP
- Vision Engine 7.5 – PC (DX9 & 10), Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii
- Bigworld Technology Suite – PC, Xbox 360, PS3, iPhone, PSP, DS, mobile devices
- Vicious Engine – PC, Xbox 360, PS3 (VE2); PSP, PS2, Wii (VE)
- Torque 3D – PC, Mac, Xbox 360, Wii, iPhone, PS3, PSP
With Unity 3D only making number four in their list, it will be interesting to see the top three engines.
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Posted on June 23rd, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Apple has released an update to its Xcode application development framework. Xcode 3.1.3 has specific support for iPhone 3.0 development and a small number of bug fixes over Xcode 3.1.2. Problem where Xcode would change your default Keychain has been fixed. Xcode 3.1.3 replaces Xcode 3.1.2 and earlier, or can be installed alongside other versions of Xcode Tools in it’s own Developer folder. You can install Xcode 3.1.3 from the standalone Xcode Tools installer or as part of the final IPhone OS 3.0 SDK installation package. Xcode is now a cross-development system. You can build within it applications for other platforms than the Mac. Currently only the iPhone SDK allows building for the iPhone platform in Xcode, but the SDK format is open and documented, so whoever wants, can supply a Platform SDK that will allow Xcode running on a Mac to build and debug applications for Windows machines, Linux, Embedded systems etc. To achieve this, the Xcode SDK infrastructure was leveraged by inclusion of low-level compilers and tools within the SDK in addition to platform frameworks.
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Posted on June 21st, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Panda3D is a 3D engine — a library of subroutines for 3D rendering and game development. Game development with Panda3D usually consists of writing a Python or C++ program that controls the Panda3D library. It runs on Lac, Linux and windows and includes tools to package games into redistributables. Features include:
- Special Maps: Normal Map, Gloss Map, Glow Map
- HDR Rendering: Tone Mapping, Bloom Filter
- Cel Shading: Threshold Lighting, Inkin
- Performance Monitoring
- Full Python Integration with debugging tools
- Convenient installer packages for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
- Powerful interface between shaders and engine
Panda3D is open-source, cross-platform and free for any purpose, even commercial development.
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Posted on June 17th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Liquid War is available for several platforms, and now Mac OS X. Back in 2003, we reported that the game was built on the C/C++ game programming library Allegro“. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Liquid War is a unique multiplayer wargame. Its rules are truly original and have been invented by Thomas Colcombet. You control an army of liquid and have to try and eat your opponents. A single player mode is available, but the game is definitely designed to be multiplayer, and has network support. While the eye candy is outdated, the game play is good.In addition, the latest release, Liquid War 6, has some features which are nowhere to be found in Liquid War 5, such as multiple layers.
Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Intel’s Level Up 2009 is a contest that invites professional, aspiring, and student game developers around the world to create demos with its products and compete for Best Threaded Game, Best Game-on-the-Go, and Best Game Optimized for Intel Graphics. Sadly, the rules seem to indicate DirectX as a requirement for all categories. Odd, as Intel supplies Apple with their CPUs and some graphic chips. Intel is giving away prizes, including computers, cash, and GDC passes, to the winners in three categories — Best Threaded Game, Best Game-on-the-Go, and Best Game Optimized for Intel Graphics. Contest registration ends soon with the deadline on July 1st, and participants must submit any detailed abstracts, screenshots, and movies of their game demos before that deadline. Judges will then pick the top ten scoring entries in each of the three categories by August 10th. The winners will be announced at the 2009 Austin Game Developers Conference, held this September in Texas.
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Posted on June 15th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Back in 1993, Relic Entertainment released the source code to Homeworld, their 1999 3d space RTS blockbuster hit. Developers at Homeworld SDL have been porting the original code over to SDL so that the game can be played on Mac and Linux.
The Macintosh version is currently incomplete, missing some major components such as sound and pre-rendered movie playback. However the game itself is otherwise quite playable.
The Mac OS X playable is at version 0.9alpha.
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Posted on June 9th, 2009 by Jake McArthur
If you are looking for an extensive index of articles on Cocoa programming, such a list has been graciously provided on the Hyperjeff Network. The articles are organized by category for convenience. Topics covered include Core Audio, OpenGL (ES), Core Animation, Networking and much more.
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Posted on June 5th, 2009 by Jake McArthur
libQGLViewer is a C++ library based on Qt that eases the creation of OpenGL 3D viewers.
It provides some of the typical 3D viewer functionalities, such as the possibility to move the camera using the mouse, which lacks in most of the other APIs. Other features include mouse manipulated frames, interpolated keyFrames, object selection, stereo display, screenshot saving and much more. It can be used by OpenGL beginners as well as to create complex applications, being fully customizable and easy to extend. Based on the Qt toolkit, it compiles on any architecture (Unix-Linux, Mac, Windows). Full reference documentation and many examples are provided. libQGLViewer does not display 3D scenes in various formats, but it can be the base for the coding of such a viewer.
libQGLViewer uses dual licensing: it is freely available under the terms of the GNU-GPL license for open source software development, while commercial applications can apply for a commercial license.
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Posted on June 4th, 2009 by Adam Fothergill
A Look Back at Macintosh 3D Software
Back in the days of Mac OS 8.5/9, my 3D application of choice was Strata Studio, the 3D program that gave us Myst. Looking for extra features and stability, I evaluated the state of 3D software for game asset creation. The games industry was heavily into the early versions of Max at that time, and programs such as Cinema 4D and NewTek’s LightWave appealed to me because of their Amiga roots. Maya was yet to appear in the industry as a mainstream application for developing 3D game art, yet when it did appear, it was a pretty massive impact with a lot of studios switching over. I settled on Maxon’s Cinema 4D and have been using the program for several years now. Most recently, for Strange Flavour’s iPhone games Flick Fishing and SlotZ Racer.
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Posted on June 4th, 2009 by Ivan Milles
BlitzGames has put together a nice website for anyone wanting to get into the business of developing games. Blitz Academy discusses job roles in game development and articles on every aspect of creating games, it serves as a perfect starting ground — touching upon many areas of many subjects, giving you a feel for what game development is like.
Since 1998, iDevGames has been educating, supporting and enhancing the community of game developers that develop video games for Mac OS X & iPhone. Subscribe to our