Blade Edge

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From the Executive Producer’s Desk

September 17th, 2007 · GameDev.net

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

AGDC coverage postponed

First off, if you were looking for AGDC coverage today (as per the schedule) then I’m afraid I have some bad news. It’s been postponed for the moment. I have no idea when it will be ready to publish so I removed it from the calendar entirely. We’re still having trouble getting images uploaded, and I seem to have somehow lost touch with our 5 volunteer reporters at the conference. Though we have some coverage from The Hattenator, and one reporter did post one (rather detailed) session write-up, it’s far from what I was hoping to present. If I can’t determine the fate of our volunteer group, I’ll compile what we have into an article like GCDC and Siggraph for posting rather than using our GDC coverage interface. Stay tuned, and please accept my apologies.

Don’t keep ideas to yourselves

So I was talking to a rather prominent game designer today via email. I won’t name names but he’s been around here before offering invaluable advice. He wanted some ideas for writing an article to publish here on GDNet. I didn’t have any offhand so I cruised over to the Article Proposals and Requests forum to see what I could dig up. Well, not much in the way of design there. Lotsa programming stuff, but even that’s was rather sparse and out-dated.

If you have an article that you would like to see published here on GDnet, then please post it in this forum. It may be a while before you see it here, but it’s only a few minutes of your time that could come in handy to someone in the future. And if it’s too late to help you it can always help other people. The more specific you are in describing your article however, the more likely it is that someone will come along and write about it. I’ll be referencing many people looking to write articles here in the future, so get to it!

New article links

Several new articles added to the Resources section:

Basic Collision Detection and Response
Grid-Based Collision Detection and Raycasting
Rules for Parallel Programming for Multicore

Thanks to Kazgoroth (now known as jbadams) for the first two and jollyjeffers for the third. If you have any links you want added to the Resources database, email or PM me.

A full event calendar

Thanks to Gamasutra and some digging of my own, our event calendar is bursting at the seams with new event listings, so check it out. If you have an event coming up, even if it’s just a small local get-together, or know of one coming up that isn’t listed, either use the email link provided at the bottom of the event page or email/PM me.

Okay I guess that’s it for now. I mainly wanted to stop by to inform everyone on the status of the AGDC coverage. Again, we hope to have something up ASAP. I’ll most likely be posting again later this week.

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From the Executive Producer’s Desk

September 12th, 2007 · GameDev.net

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Howdy folks. Busy week so far, unlike last week where I was pretty much worthless while adjusting to my new work/sleep schedule. Still not on it 100% but at least it’s manageable now. Oh man, where to begin?

IGC – Oct 10-11

Well first, I booked my flight out to Eugene, OR tonight so I could attend and cover the IndieGamesCon being hosted by GarageGames. I’ve been wanting to get out to this convention since its inception a few years ago – I was all set to go last year only to learn they wouldn’t have one – d’oh! If anyone else is going to be in attendance from around here let me know, I’d be happy to include anything you want to write up about in my coverage, which will be similar to Kelly Murdock’s Siggraph coverage and Emmanuel Deloget’s upcoming GCDC coverage.

GCDC Coverage

Speaking of the GCDC coverage, it was supposed to be up today. Actually it was supposed to be up Monday. But, with Richard finally being able to work on the server, things have kind of fallen behind schedule. I need Richard’s help in getting this coverage online because of the audio streaming involved. Now that the server has been taken care of (for the moment) hopefully we can get this coverage posted by the end of the week. 10 pages (really more like 20 if you stick em in a Word doc) of session coverage goodness. I was impressed. You should be too. Stay tuned.

New Article Links

In case you didn’t notice, I added some new links to the Resources section:

How To Pitch Your Game
Hello World in Genetic Algorithms
Peculiarities of the Development of 64-bit Applications
Application port to 64-bit platforms
Driver Development for Windows 64-bit
Problems of testing 64-bit applications
MMO Design Guidelines

If I post any external links, or host any new articles (only exclusive or newly-released articles are shown on the main page) you’ll see ’em listed in the Latest Articles box on the right of the Resources page. Plus I’ll always feature them here as well.

GDNet on Wikipedia

So I never thought to look on Wikipedia to see if we had our own entry – turns out that we do. I guess I should have thought to look for it sooner, but I’m not much of a Wikipedia guy to begin with – I usually only end up there when Google takes me there. Don’t expect any serious editing on it anytime soon, though it has reminded us that we really (really really) need to update our About Us page.

A little email trick

Picked this tip up on Lifehacker today. I implemented it no problem in Outlook 2003 – the only thing I noticed is that if you actually look in the outbox folder, it doesn’t seem to auto-send any mail that’s in there – even after you go to view a different folder. A little annoying but still useful in the long run. I’ve had a small handful of occasions where this would have been handy to have.

Transformers fans anyone??

My pal Rich Grillotti from PixelJam is putting his huge Transformers collection up for sale on eBay to help fund his game development needs. How’s that for sacrifice? If you’re a fan with some dough or know someone who is, pass the link along – and hurry! Auction ends in 3 days.

‘Till next time…
Ninja vanish!!

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Time for something new

September 6th, 2007 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

This week was the start of fall classes at the gymnastics school where I coach. I’m also in the process of adjusting my schedule to wake up every weekday morning at 11am (instead of like, 1 or 2pm :P). Because of this, I’ve been rather off kilter since Tuesday and haven’t done anything substantial this week. I’ll be settled in with my new work schedule by Monday though, so expect some cool updates next week for both GDNet and GI.

In the meantime, check out the latest addition to my firearms family

It’s the black pistol at the bottom, a Walther P99QA 9mm. Up left is my Crosman pellet gun, and to the right is a Walther P22 .22 pistol. It took 5 months for the gun range I ordered the P99 from to get one from their distributor. Luckily, it took my police station 3 months to get my handgun purchase permit signed and into my hands. Which is rather ironic. I was stressing out about the police not signing my damn permit (which usually takes like 2-3 weeks) where if they had gotten it back to me on time, it would have expired before my gun came in and I would have had to renew it. Funny how things work out eh?

It’s pretty much like a big brother to my P22. When I first fired the P22 I thought it had some serious kick and would tell people I would shoot it and it would go POW! POW! POW!. After shooting 50 rounds through my P99 tho (I had shot 9mm before but not as much) and then firing the P22 right after, I’ve downgraded it to POP! POP! POP! whereas the P99 goes BANG! BANG! BANG!.

Of course my friend’s Desert Eagle .50 goes BABOOM! BABOOM! BABOOM!

And just to fill in the gap I would classify a .45 as BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Here you can see the gun with the dry fire round inserted so I don’t damage the firing pin when I play around with it. Okay, “play around” isn’t the best way to put it, you never “play” when handling a firearm – but when I take it out and wear it in my shoulder harness as I work on the computer or watch a movie with lotsa guns in it (I don’t have problems, I swear) it’s always nice to be able to fire it at the screen and kill the bad guys. Or the bad code.

Whichever.

In other non-related news, I took my phone in the pool with me Monday by accident. It was submerged for a good 10-15 minutes before I realized it was still in my swimsuit pocket. I took off the back cover, removed the battery and SIM card and left it propped open (it’s a RAZR) on my windowsill for two days. I just got a new one today for $100 with a $50 mail-in rebate so that’s as much as a new battery would have cost me, which is what I was going to get because when I plugged it into the wall it turned on and worked! So I was able to copy all my numbers to my SIM card and transfer them to my new phone. Even better, I was able to get all my pictures off as well since I have a Bluetooth hub for my Logitech mouse and keyboard.

So if you ever have a phone that takes a drink, don’t despair!! I’m going to keep this one around to use as back-up now instead of my dinosaur Motorola clamshell. Sweet.

Well, that’s all for now folks. Everyone have a great weekend!

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The Weekly Report

August 29th, 2007 · GameDev.net, Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

*phew* Finally done reformatting my desktop and getting caught up on all my tasks and emails. I haven’t reformatted since I first put this computer together last November, which isn’t too bad. I usually reformat every 6 months or so, but I managed to keep things purring along nicely until about a month ago when I started to get annoyed at some stuff and getting the feeling of the comp being all crudded up on the inside. Now it’s nice and spiffy clean. Sure, I suppose I could make things easier and create a hard drive image of a new install – but that’s pointless since after 6 months I’d be re-installing a ton of apps anyways. Plus I like to change some things around every time I reformat, maybe try some new app in place of an old and trusted one.

So hey, we have an updated Org chart! Check it out:

And in other news, I’ve been getting more and more article submissions – so keep them coming! Seriously, it’s never been a better time to get an article published here on the website. Check out the publishing schedule up top for some new additions in October. I have like, 4 more I have yet to add, and that’s not even taking into account any more reviews John has up his sleeve. I may in fact be able to condense the schedule and give you guys lots more content, but I don’t wanna bomb out and leave the pipeline dry again, so we’ll see.

I’m also looking to get the columns back in action, so if you think you’d be interested in writing a monthly column, do let me know! And spread the word of course. Here’s what we had running in the past – I’m not sure yet what I want to keep, what I want to add – so toss me some suggestions hm?

Further action – knocking heads with Washu, Seyi and Superpig to start coming up with some sort of guidelines people can use to create workshops. We have an awesome community and workshops are such a logical extension for you all to interact and learn that we definetly want to promote them – I’m sure you may have noticed the Workshops link the Community menu above. No need to wait for us tho – if you have a workshop idea, contact Washu!

hrm, that’s about all that I have to reveal this week. Much more I’d love to talk about of course, but I gotta have some secrets right?

In personal news, I was approached this week to produce a video game targeted for consoles. Still don’t know what I’m going to do with this offer seeing that I barely have enough free time as it is, but it’s interesting. The only problem of course is that I’ve never developed for a console before. Oh sure, I know how to develop for a console – license, dev kit, all that nonsense – but I still don’t have any experience with it. Still I suppose knowledge is pretty decent to start with. I’ve been so slammed this week though I haven’t put any serious thought into it. We’ll see what happens. I’ve been approached like this many times before and it’s all amounted to nothing so I’m not getting my hopes up.

Guess I better wrap up my Demo Night VI coverage article before bed. See ya next week.

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Big Hard Drive? Why Compensate?

August 23rd, 2007 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I’ve been thinking about adding a new hard drive to my system. Mainly due to the fact that lately I’ve been recording a lot of TV shows using Sage TV’s recording software. At Good encoding, we’re talking roughly 1.7gb per hour – so on a 250gb drive that equates to roughly 135 hours of TV. Not too shabby, especially since I’ll be deleting many shows once they come to DVD.

So why 250gb? Why not 500 or 750? At ~$200, a 750gb drive isn’t seriously breaking the bank. Well the simple matter of fact is that hard drives fail. Whether it’s a manufacturer defect, bad maintenance (dust, hot case), or just plain old age (although some can last a looong time, they should really be replaced every 2-3 years), at some point your hard drive will fail.

So what do you want to do? Replace 250gb or 750gb? And don’t even get me started on the new terabyte drives. It’s also easier to back up a smaller hard drive. Heck, I might even just get another 150gb or few – I have two internal drive bays left and an external SATA port. Losing 150gb vs. a terabyte of data thanks to a drive failure sounds way better to me.

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Going Where the Money Is

August 22nd, 2007 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

I was in New York City attending the sixth bi-annual Demo Night. For those that missed out, I’ll have my coverage up next week (check the schedule) – if you wanna check out previous Demo Nights, I have the last one covered here. The coverage appearing next week will be in much the same format thanks to Heavy Melody’s video support.

Being able to see a bunch of cool games being developed only added further fuel to my fire in wanting to work on some games again. However at this point, GI, GDNet and coaching are just taking up too much of my time. It’s a hard fact in life but sometimes you just have to go where the money is. I wasn’t able to start turning a profit off my games before GI, GDNet and coaching started coming into their own and offering me some income. Staring in Sept I’ll be coaching roughly 23.5 hrs/wk, GDNet takes up at least 10 hr/wk, GI is rather fluctuating but usually takes up at least 5-6 hr/wk – that puts me around the normal 40 hr/wk. So fitting in game development is pretty tough, especially when I’d like to kick back and spend time with friends, family and games – among other stuff.

It’s not an excuse, but it’s certainly the way things are at the present. Sux, because I really want to finish Blitx Blox and galaxy Conquest so I can start working on my third concept, Drop Zone. At this point, I’m thinking about just releasing BB and GC for free and asking for donations, because I’m really scared about the customer support issues that would arise with putting my games out there for purchase. The problem is that these two titles aren’t entirely my games. I have the artist, musician and designer to consider in this decision as well. But hey, if they’re willing to help me handle support issues I guess I’d be up for it. We’ll see.

Anyways in other news, I’m looking to attend IGC out in Eugene, OR this coming October, as well as the VideoGamesExpo being held nearby me in Philly, PA. Both events are listed on the calendar so check them out. I’ve gotten some pretty good responses to my AGDC call for help so if this works out okay I’ll definetly be looking for some support out in Eugene – possibly Philly.

Oh and stay tuned for some article additions to the Resources library. Speaking of money, if you need to make a loan, check out this link : https://www.unsecuredloans4u.co.uk/guaranteed-loans/

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Siggraph 07 Coverage Complete

August 16th, 2007 · GameDev.net

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Sup peeps. Kelly got me the last of his reports on SIGGRAPH 2007 last nite and I just got done uploading them all. That’s 8 pages (in Featured Article form) worth of reporting – good solo Kelly! If you have any questions about anything, comment the thread and I’ll be sure that Kelly sees it. Have a good weekend everyone.

P.S. – thx to Superpig too for the quick save in getting the images uploaded. Tho at the same time it was a broke upload interface that was to blame so I guess it kinda balances out 😛

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Status Report

August 15th, 2007 · GameDev.net

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Okay, so we canned Adobe Week, which I talked about in my Aug 7th entry. John goes into more detail in his blog. So since there’s no longer a week straight of reviews, we updated the publishing schedule and almost have September completely booked, which is nice. I would love to be able to maintain this one-month lead time. if there was ever a time to submit an article, it’s now people. So get to writing and send the drafts to writers@gamedev.net!!

Speaking of articles, the SIGGRAPH 2007 article was finally updated today when Kelly sent me some more stuff. There’s more to come, so keep your eyes on it, I’ll be announcing updates here too.

I’ve gotten some response to my Call for help at the AGDC, if you’re still considering it, let me know! I’m not cutting this off until the end of next week.

K that’s all for now!

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Annnnd I’m back

August 8th, 2007 · GameDev.net

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So much for staying away for a week or two right?

Anyways I’ll make this quick. First off, I was doing my weekly check for cool new Yahoo! widgets and guess who’s got one of his widgets spotlighted? None other than TANSTAAFL himself!

Very cool. Second, be sure to stay on top of Kelly Murdock’s SIGGRAPH 2007 coverage if you’re a graphics fan. He sent me his first report earlier today, but through out the week I’ll be receiving more stuff from him and updating that article with it. I’ll keep a time stamp on there so can tell if it’s been updates since you last saw it. We have a crazy review week coming up so if it gets pushed out of the top 4 I’ll just delete it and re-add it so it pops back to the front again.

Finally, we at long last have a publicly available organizational chart thanks to sites like cogmap (and OrgChartWiki, tho I decided against using it). Click the image below to go to the full chart. You may be wondering what exactly a Community Manager is huh? Well Sean (Washu) and I are still working that out – and it should be noted that Washu is just the “acting” Community Manager at this time. I’ll post more on this role as soon as I can. Also please note that this chart is still under construction! We have listed here the major players at this time, we’ll be getting into more detail soon.

Well, like I said – short and sweet. More goodies as they come!

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Just to let you know I’m still around…

August 7th, 2007 · GameDev.net

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Hey everyone. I haven’t updated the blog much recently, because it gets kind of tedious after a while to post about little itty bitty stuff that really has no meaning when spoken about all on its own. Better to wait till I have lotsa stuff to say and then get it done all at once. At least that’s how I feel. If anyone out there was getting nervous at my long silence then I apologize. Hopefully there aren’t any more of you out there who think the site is dying

So what’s new? Well I guess first of all, I added a new book from Charles River Media to the library today:

Awesome Game Creation: No Programming Required, Third Edition

Obviously I could spend alllll day adding books to the library, but I don’t want to just add any books, I would like to add books that you guys are reading and using. So if you have a favorite (or lots of favorites) game dev book, try searching through the library and if you can’t find it, let me know its title or ISBN and I’ll add it!

Next thing of note is that John and I just reworked the publishing schedule from now through the first half of September. The “Special Event Week” is actually an unofficial Adobe Week, where we’ll be posting reviews of Adobe products each day of the week. We tried to get Adobe onboard for an official run, but they didn’t seem to get our emails. Or something. Hopefully they’ll pick up on it as it progresses and we’ll be able to arrange something another time. John still has some reviews to post up for Sept, we’ll get that updated soon.

Speaking of publishing – Tom Buscaglia, The Game Attorney, sent me a bunch of articles that he updated for us, and I’ve formatted and posted them all online. One of them was a Featured Article last week:

A Case for Flexible Milestone Deliverables
Audit Rights – Use Em or Lose Em!
Contract Mumbo Jumbo
Everybody Conga! Well maybe not everybody…
Hey, that’s not the deal we talked about!
To Sue or Not to Sue…That is the Question!

Let’s see… what else? Oh yes, Emmanuel Deloget and his news team have been working hard to try and improve our news feed for you all. News has never been a strong suit for us, we’ve mainly relied on people submitting stories rather than searching for them ourselves. But with Emmanuel and his team hopefully we can start creating some original news stories to feature on the site. Lend your thoughts by commenting his blog and participating in this week’s poll.

I think I had one more thing… oh yea! I won’t be able to make it out to Austin for the Austin GDC, so I’m going to be looking for capable people who would be interested in covering the conference for us. Our review guru John Hattan will be in attendance as well, and will be managing anyone who attends for us. You will receive a press badge and have free reign of the conference, in return you must write a report on all the sessions that you plan on attending. Pictures are nice too, but not required. If you’re interested, contact me via email or PM. I’ll be posting an announcement on the forums soon, but my dedicated readers have first dibs

Well that was fun, I believe we’re all up to date for a while. See you in a week or two when I have more cool stuff to report on. Maybe sooner. Who knows?

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