This year’s DreamBuildPlay challenge kicks off today.The competition now runs over 4 months instead of last year’s three, and offers an inflated $40 000 for the best Xbox 360 game submitted on or before 6 August. Regular readers will be aware that we’re strong proponents of this competition, with two […]
Yearly Archives: 2009
How does one treat a new game developer? I’m not strictly talking about the greenest of the green: the term “new” is very subjective, and may even incorporate those who have been attempting the craft for years. But whatever your understanding of the term may be, the question still stands: […]
Somebody slap me in the face
That’s right, the big secret is out. Dev.Mag’s home has undergone a rather drastic remodelling, and you’re looking right at it! Gone is the horrid old design, and in with a new, easy to navigate site. Tucked away into the archives go the old PDF magazines, the pages of which […]
New Dev.Mag website
It goes without saying that almost every game developer probably started out wanting to make games in 3D. After all, practically all of the AAA games that we played growing up were in 3D, so it comes as no surprise that we want to create our own 3D wonderworks. What […]
3D graphics in Game Maker Part 1
This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 29, released in February 2009.
2009 IGF Finalist Roundup
Oh dear, what’s happened here? New site? No PDF-format magazines? Hyperlinks? Comments? The horror. Or is that progress? I’d like to lean towards the latter, but the few weeks of nearly dedicated effort that it took to achieve this result tends to force my opinion; I might be biased in this […]
The next step
Have you ever wondered how anyone was able to create that magical cursor in the World of Goo? Wonder no more, noble Dev.Mag reader, for this article will explain how you can put that gooey cursor into your game, in just 15 minutes. We will be using Game Maker Pro […]
World of Goo cursor in 15 minutes
Think game design is about hard code and gameplay? Well, it can’t be denied that those things play some of the most important parts in making up a game – but to make a game that’s truly something special, you’re going to have to exercise that creative muscle and let […]
Narrative: Part 2
It’s rare that a fresh concept is exceptionally implemented in its first incarnation, but that is exactly what Miktar Dracon has accomplished with Blastion. Taking the idea of racking up points with limited lives and flipping it on its head, Blastion’s gameplay is quite unlike anything else in recent memory. […]
Blastion Review
Earlier this year, three noble South Africans participated remotely in the annual Global Game Jam in a quest for truth, glory and really rapid game development. Teams all over the world were given 48 hours to make a game using a handful of keywords and whatever tools they could get their […]
Jamming in 48 hours
Being part of an active game development forum, I often stumble across works in progress from fellow enthusiastic devs. This in itself is pretty great. The problem – and I’ll confess to this openly – is that I often skip over projects which are only in the concept stage: you […]
Being a show-off?
This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 28, released in January 2009. Many of you have experienced it. You go online, log into your instant messenger or e-mail account and receive a link from some excited friend saying, “ARARRRAARARR PLAY THIS GAME ASBFLARGAFAG www.insertrandomlinkhere.com!!!!!” Chances are it’s either an Internet […]
Flash for Free
We’ve accosted indie developer Derek Yu, creator of Aquaria – which we covered extensively in the past – for a chat on his new creation, Spelunky, a unique blend of the replayability of roguelikes and the immediacy of platformers. All this goes well together with our review on the game […]