TIGSource has a habit of setting up some pretty interesting game development competitions which tend to yield equally interesting results. This time around, the theme was “cockpits” (yeah, we sniggered a little) and voting has just commenced to see which offering comes out on top. Of course, you don’t have […]
10 This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 29, released in February 2009. Last month we covered some of the very basic ways of testing whether object A hits object B. But, while the techniques we covered could quite likely take you very far, you’ll inevitably encounter a time when they […]
Basic Collision Detection in 2D – Part 2
Game.Dev community member edg3 recently had the inspiring little notion to get something up known as the “Sharing Week”: a forum thread where everybody can post progress on whatever it is that they’re getting up to in the game development world. In Sharing Week, loads of ideas and cool little […]
Game.Dev Sharing Week
A recent post on the official XNA Creator’s Club blog revealed a host of interesting and useful XNA oriented tutorials. Most are from developer’s personal websites, and show tricks learned by people who’ve actively used XNA; this, of course, makes them a handy reference, particularly for people new to XNA […]
XNA Blog links to Game.Dev tutorials
The great discoverer of new indie games, TIGSource, brought this little graphical gem to our attention earlier. Scary Girl is a rather stunning looking platformer with some interesting takes on dialogue and NPC interaction. Despite the rather loose controls, it makes for a pretty good distraction if you have a […]
Eye-patched stubby armed tentacle girl
In a rather fascinating interview, Titan Studios’ Chris Millar talks about some aspects of gameplay that have been overlooked in all the controversy over Fat Princess. Apparently, the game is really about blowing up cartoonish enemies in really hilarious ways, while trying to avoid (as unlikely as that appears to […]
PSN’s Fat Princess isn’t just about the cake
Let it be known that nobody can accuse us of talking about things without having done it first ourselves. Gazza_N, writer of – among other things – our series on creating 3D graphics in Game Maker, has recently released an updated prototype of his own Overseer Assault, now featuring multiplayer […]
Three dee!
22 This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 28, released in January 2009. Almost every video game needs to respond to objects touching each other in some sense, a practice commonly known as collision detection. Whether it’s simply to prevent the player character from walking through the walls of your maze […]
Basic Collision Detection in 2D – Part 1
If you’re in for a bit of Flash goodness (and some delightful B-grade hilarity) check out Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar. It’s fun, short and possibly the most kickass thing you’ll come across all day. Ironically enough, it also stands as a fine example of how a […]
ROOOOOOOOAR!
If you’ve not yet played Jonathan Blow‘s excellent time-travelling/twisting/bending/breaking puzzler, as of today your excuses have run out. The Xbox Live Arcade hit Braid is now available on a variety of PC gaming portals: Greenhouse was the first to snag it up, with Stardock’s Impulse service and Valve’s Steam following […]
Time-twisting goodness now on PC
This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 13, released in April 2007. Overseer Assault is a freak of nature. Now that statement may seem harsh, especially coming from the game’s creator, but it’s true – Overseer Assault is a game that shouldn’t work, but through some dark and twisted means […]
Overseer Assault Postmortem
A little birdie over on the Game.Dev forums has sniffed out a GDC slideshow entitled “Towards Perfect Pathfinding” by Dawn of War developers Relic. On top of that, he’s found a bunch of free source code that deals with A* pathfinding, also from Relic. Thanks a bunch, Relic! We’ll be […]
Warhammer dev code up for grabs
We stumbled across this cute little bugger yesterday. It’s a great example of what you can do to an otherwise simple game given the power of animation and personality. If you want an educated view about the significance of this Flash skit, have a gander at the Gamasutra blog post […]
Emotion. Animation. Stuff.
One of the recent projects on the Game.Dev forums is Squid’s attempt to meld the core concepts of Tower Defence and something-that’s-not-Tower-Defence to create a humble little offering known as Tower Defence Arcade. The controls could do with some adjustment (you’ll have to hit F1 for instructions, by the way), […]
New Game.Dev prototype spins tower defence
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 […]