Posted on July 30th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
[Submitted by GameHaxe]
Haxe is an open-source langauge very similar to Adobe’s ActionScript. It has many features that make it a desirable language — see haxe.org for more details. From the same code base, you can generate “neko” bytecode that will run on Mac, Linux and Windows, JavaScript code that will run in a browser, PHP code to run on a webserver or Flash code for browser based games.
And now C++ code that will run on Mac, iPhone, Linux, & Windows. Due to the similarities between Haxe and Actionscript, it is possible to write code using the Flash API, and then compile it to run on the iPhone. See http://gamehaxe.com/2009/07/28/haxe-iphone-cpp-at-last/ for more details. “Under the Hood”, the code runs SDL with OpenGL ES support and has built-in garbage collection to make coding easy.
If you are familiar with the Flash graphics API, you will be able to write games for the iPhone and also have them run in a browser — doubling your output.
Posted on July 21st, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
I’d like to point our some sites that have some great free game assets that can help make your next game much more polished. CG Textures and Mayang have some great textures. Categories include bones, metal, skies, concrete, doors, wood and more. The Pixlpusher is dealing in some great goodies for owners of Photoshop. I especially like his free Cosmic Photoshop brushes — can you say space shooter? If you have retro on your mind, one of the best legal sprite pack available is Ari Feldman’s SpriteLib which was graciously released under GPL and features sprites for a 1940’s shooter, Arkaniod clone and tank battle game. Game Beep offers many free downloads (and commercial products as well) of sprites, textures and models (3d GameStudio format needs conversion). Be sure to check out Lost Garden — a beautiful RPG tile set by www.lostgarden.com
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Posted on July 19th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
In Advanced Game Design Course 9-13 year-olds will learn to create their own complex games, learning key programming concepts along the way. This class moves beyond the basics, teaching you the essentials of game balancing, important game design principles, and how to build a complex game from the ground up with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash. In addition, the class will also teach how to design your own characters and environments with Photoshop and build custom animation for your games with Flash. Classes are held over a 5-day period and held at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania.
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Posted on July 18th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
REAL Software is now shipping REALbasic and REAL Studio 2009 Release 3. This release boasts more than 100 improvements and 31 new features, including the addition of OpenGL support for 3D images and animation. REAL Software claimes that REALbasic should now be able to develop 3D applications 50% to 70% faster over those using traditional C-programming methods. The new OpenGLSurface control does require a knowledge of the OpenGL language. However, there are some open source projects that are implementing an RB3D-compatible API on top of the OpenGL for developers who currently use RB3D.
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Posted on July 16th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Cross-platform game creation tools seem to be on our agenda this week. Today, we highlight Atmosphir, a free Nintendo-like 3D adventure game and creation tool. In a nutshell, this is a 3D platform game with a very slick level editor. The level editor allows you to create new maps (worlds) and populate them with custom characters, challenges, platforms all without programming. This is done by dragging and dropping bridges, platforms, doors, objects hazard props in a 3D isometric view — very intuitive and LEGO-like. Atmosphir runs on the Mac and PC and plans for consoles are also in the works. Although it is strictly single-player game, the developers are working towards adding multi-player options in future versions.
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Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Verge3 is a 2D game engine focused on making it easier to create 2D RPGs, similar to games from the Super Nintendo and Genesis 16-bit era of gaming (or earlier). Recent versions of this free project has added the ability to use Lua to script Verge games. VergeC, or just VC, is the C-like scripting language that is used to create the various aspects of Verge games, such as map events, menus, inventory, battle system, etc. verge3 is comprised of two applications, MapEd3 and ChrMak5. MapEd3 is the Verge3 Map Editor. It is a development tool that you can use to create and edit custom maps for Verge3 to use. You can edit and place tiles, set up obstructions and events, and do other map-related stuff. ChrMak5 is a character maker that creates Verge3 .chr files. This is an image file with a set of character animations on it. Unfortunately, these two vital tools are not currently available for the Mac, but have been under development for some time. There is however a SDL-based playable of a tech demo called “The Sully Chronicles” that runs on the Mac. fmod sound library is utilized to play all music and sound effects. The SVN does contain an Xcode project for adventurous C++ programmer who wants to help accelerate the Mac OS X release of Verge3. Please note that the tech demo will cause some chaos to your desktop icons.
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Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Platinum Arts Sandbox is standalone 3D Game Maker and 3D Game Design program currently based on the cube 2 engine. This open source application allows kids and adults to create their own video games, worlds, levels, adventures and quests. The developers claim that it is easy enough for kids to use but powerful enough for full game projects. Side-scrolling and RPG games can be made and it even features a powerful scripting language as well as the ability to import md2, md3, md5 and obj model formats. Version 2.3 adds:
- New 3D sidescroller Mario like mode
- Hotkeys that make it easier to save games, add materials
- Maps now generate cfgs on save! Also many various map tweaks
- Tons of under the hood bug fixes and features
Sandbox runs on Mac, Linux and Windows and contains code project files for VS, Codeblocks, Linux makefile and Xcode.
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Posted on July 8th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Creating applications for the iPhone requires a machine capable of running the iPhone SDK app development environment. Despite Apple providing a free, full-featured copy of its developer tools to make every single user of Mac OS X a potential developer and Macs being competitive with most PCs in terms or price, there are still many developers looking to enter the world of iPhone app creation without learning Objective-C or using Xcode. One such group is generating a great deal of interest from the open source community, as well as JAVA programmers. Circumventing the problem of development of a virtual machine for the iPhone, the project XMLVM allows developers to cross-compile a Java application to Objective-C and execute it on an iPhone. Of course in order to get applications to run on a real device, you still require a Mac and Xcode in order to properly sign the applications using Apple’s code-signing tools. Without the code-signing step, applications will not run on normally provisioned (i.e. non jail-break) devices.
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Posted on July 6th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Cafu, formally known as Ca3D-Engine, is coming to Mac OS X. Cafu is a 3D engine that boasts multi-player network support and cross-platform portability. Written in C++, it currently runs on Windows and Linux (GCC 3.x and 4.x). Features include:
- First engine ever to combine light-maps with dynamic lighting effects!
- Radiosity-based, physically correct lighting.
- Dynamic, shader-driven, per-pixel lighting for both worlds and models.
- Support for ATI and NVidia programmable GPUs and shaders.
- Employs fmod for all sound, audio and music effects.
- A powerful Graphical User Interface (GUI) System (or short: GuiSys) is integrated with the engine.
- Can directly import models in ase, mdl (Half-Life 1) and md5 (Doom 3) model file formats. (Importers for 3ds, lwo, obj, mdl2 (Half-Life 2) file formats are in preparation.)
- Provides continuous-level-of-detail, permitting very large out-door scenes.
- Supports Scripting based on the Lua programming language!
- Full support for curved surfaces (Bezier Patches) as seen in Doom 3, from the CaWE editor through preprocessing to dynamic lighting and shadows.
While not open source, Cafu licensing is within the reach of most indie developers. Be sure to drop the developer a note if you wish to encourage or help him speed up his Mac port.
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Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by Alex Sikora
Clear Examples and Well-Choosen Images
Beginning iPhone Development advertises itself as “A complete course in iPhone and iPod touch programming” and I think it fulfills its promise. Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche have plenty of experience and it shows in this book. There aren’t very many iPhone books out yet, as Apple continues to release updates to its SDK, but this is the best one of the group. The book is easy to understand and covers all the topics a beginning iPhone developer would need to know. From clear examples to well-chosen example images, this book covers iPhone development well.
The book’s teaching method is very well made for beginners. While those new to programming in general may have minor issues, it’s not designed to teach the beginner programmer, but anyone who is trying to learn iPhone development will have an easy time with this book. It covers user interface design, accelerometer programming, Quartz and OpenGL drawing – the chapters follow each other in a logical order.
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