Intel Acquires Offset Software, Project Offset Engine
Monday, February 25th, 2008 Posted in Development Tools, Video Game News, Video Game Dev, Video Game Industry | No Comments »In a surprising move, technology giant Intel has acquired engine team Project Offset, according to a brief statement on the official webpage of the often buzzed-about graphical game engine. The announcement, from Project Offset's Sam McGrath, simply explains: "Today we ...
The Beat Goes on: Dynamic Music in Spore
Sunday, February 24th, 2008 Posted in Video Game Audio, Video Game Dev | 1 Comment »By now you may be familiar with Spore's unique method of generating content: Procedural content creation allows for players to dream up nearly any type of creature, and the game will figure out how to animate it and wrap ...
GDC 08: The Technology of Final Fantasy XIII
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 Posted in Development Tools, Video Game Dev, Video Game Industry | No Comments »Like most Japanese developers, Square Enix has traditionally built the technology for each new game from scratch. While middleware solutions like the Unreal Engine have long been a favored solution for Western developers, the Square approach has been to tackle ...
Home is “best-looking multiplayer world so far”
Friday, February 22nd, 2008 Posted in Video Game Dev, Video Game Industry | No Comments »The creative director of Sony's Home project has told GamesIndustry.biz in an exclusive interview to be published in full next week that he believes the PlayStation 3 virtual world platform is the "best-looking" and most "user-friendly" multiplayer experience he's seen ...
GDC08: Insomniac opens up to dev community with Nocturnal
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 Posted in Development Tools, Video Game News, Video Game Dev, Video Game Industry | No Comments »At a GDC press conference, Insomniac Games (responsible for Ratchet & Clank and Resistance: Fall of Man on PS3) has announced a ground breaking initiative to open up their technologies for the development community at large. Through the "Nocturnal ...
GDC 08: Havok Cloth Demonstration
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 Posted in Development Tools, Video Game News, Video Game Dev, Video Game Industry | No Comments »Havok announced yesterday at GDC 08 a new added feature to their physics based development tools for video game design. Havok Cloth makes it a load easier for developers to simulate realistic cloth and clothing in their gaming environments. ...
GDC08: PhyreEngine, Sony’s new (free!) cross-platform engine
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 Posted in Development Tools, Video Game News, Video Game Dev | No Comments »Quietly unveiled at yesterday's PSN session was PhyreEngine, a new "free to use graphics engine" from Sony Computer Entertainment. According to the presentation, the package includes full documentation, "70+ samples" and "full source code and artwork" of sample game ...
Microsoft Unveils Full XNA Game Studio Plans
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 Posted in Development Tools, Video Game News, Video Game Dev, Video Game Industry | No Comments »Just as we suspected, the cunning group at Microsoft has revealed big plans for its XNA program, aimed at giving homebrew software developers a chance to showcase their talent. John Schappert, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Live, Software and Services for ...
GDC: Ken Levine’s Secrets of Game Story
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 Posted in Developer Profiles, Video Game Dev, Video Game Industry | No Comments »In his speech he offered fascinating insights into the development of Bioshock, and how the game’s underlying story had evolved as well as how it came to represent a high-point of in-game storytelling. “The truth is that nobody cares about your ...
Bioshock Creator Levine Agrees, Ending Failed
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 Posted in Video Game Dev | No Comments »While interviewing Ken Levine earlier this month for my story on the use of objectivism in BioShock we talked quite a bit about the plot. Near the end of the interview I found myself compelled to tell Levine what I ...