The recent economic recession, having mostly had little effect on the well-being of the video game industry, appears to be taking its toll. According to this developmag.com article, the past few months have been turbulent waters for smaller companies that rely on private funding to survive. Private investors appear to […]
If there’s one thing that I take pride in when I offer humble slices of gaming pie to oh-so-hungry colleagues, it’s my ability to carefully consider the difficulty level. Whether I’m making a run-and-jump platformer or a purely cerebral puzzle game, I always live by the same basic mantra: give […]
The difficulty of difficulty
Game.Dev Competition 21, one of the regular community competitions that have, on numerous occasions, led to the conception of far larger projects, finally has its outcome. Amidst the veritable oceans of second-rate and cookie-cutter games, this competition challenged community developers to “fix mobile gaming” by creating something truly tailored to […]
Mobile gaming “fixed”!
This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 27, released in November 2008. Ultimate Quest is one of two Game.Dev DreamBuildPlay 2008 entries. It is an expansion of a ASCII-styled text adventure that was originally entered into a Game.Dev competition, polished and completed for Microsoft’s annual competition. The following is a […]
Ultimate Quest
86 (Originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 20, released in February 2008.) Perlin noise is the foundation of many procedural texture and modelling algorithms. It can be used to create marble, wood, clouds, fire, and height maps for terrain. It is also very useful for tiling grids to simulate organic regions, and […]
How to Use Perlin Noise in Your Games
Hello there, dear reader. Welcome to the super-duper guide to art games. You’ve made a good choice in bringing your eyes to these pages, we promise. Settle down, pull up your favourite comfy chair and make sure that your eyes are at a respectable distance from the computer screen. Ready? […]
Art Games: The Super-Duper Guide
Gee, it seems like only a few days since we closed the lid on Ludum Dare 14. Oh wait, it was. In any case, Microsoft held a Game Camp this week and it came to a close yesterday. The competition was 48 hours long and had participants crafting some really […]
XNA Game Camp results
Amongst the Dev.Mag crew hide one or two fans of an awesome retro gaming Website that’s aptly known as Retro Remakes. Every now and again, this blog spurts out a little bit of 8-bit awesomeness that any gamer with a penchant for the classics can enjoy. Go ahead, have a […]
Website pick: Retro Remakes
For anyone who hasn’t been following, we’re currently looking at narrative structures and how it applies to gaming; but more importantly, we’re looking at every aspect of story telling, fleshing it out, and helping you along your way to compiling the best tale to push through the game you’ve worked […]
Narrative: Part 3
Oh Gamasutra, what would we do without you? We’ve always found this place to be a pretty good source of postmortems (though its sister publication, Game Career Guide, tends to have a better focus on small-scale endeavours), and now it’s providing us with a reprint of a Game Developer article […]
Gamasutra offers mega postmortem!
Ace Team Software’s Zeno Clash – an eagerly-anticipated indie title rumoured to have first-person brawling that doesn’t totally suck – has just been released for digital download. Excited players everywhere are cracking their knuckles as we speak. We first mentioned Zeno Clash when rounding up the 2009 IGF finalists, where […]
Aaaaaaand Zeno Clash is here!
In Part 1, we learned how to set up a basic camera, and draw the 3D primitives that Game Maker provides functions for. If you took my advice and messed around on your own a bit, you’ll have noticed a few limitations to included scripts. For instance, how do you […]
3D graphics with Game Maker Part 2
This past weekend, 121 brave souls entered the fourteenth Ludum Dare 48 hour game development competition , in which participants had to design and build a fully-functional game in the space of only two days. The theme was “Advancing Wall of Doom”, a name which we gladly adorn with the […]
Ludum Dare 14 is over!
A look at GamerBytes has revealed to us that the Xbox Community Games platform may not be as deep in doo-doo as originally thought. A stats piece reveals some slightly more promising figures for recent game sales and a few success stories for people trying to use the Community Games […]