GameDevKicks.com

Unreal Development Kit

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:26:48 GMT

Epic Games, Inc. announces the launch of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides community access to the award-winning toolset like never before. This software release is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers. Anyone can start working with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 3 toolset by downloading UDK at www.udk.com, where detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms, support resources and more are also available.

Pulsing Icons to Spruce Up your XNA Menus

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:23:34 GMT

Tutorial to add a cool pulsating image effect to your XNA menus.

Making a game developer website.

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:23:34 GMT

An overview of what went into created the official website for Incubator Games.

Free Photorealistic Bark Textures Pack for Real Time 3D

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:47:40 GMT

Free textures pack for game development and real time 3D demos.

XNA - Skinned Model Extensions Tutorial

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:57:36 GMT

A new Skinned Model Extensions Tutorial has been added to the XNA Creators Club that shows you how to extend the original Skinned Model example.

15 Steps to Implement a Neural Net

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:55:46 GMT

This is a step-by-step implementation guide for a basic neural net, meant to complement the theoretical descriptions that are commonly available. The tutorial comes with example code, as well as an example problem, which makes it easy to verify your own implementation.

Direct3D Programming Tip #9: Use The Managed Resource Pool

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:50:25 GMT

Resource management can be a challenge for Direct3D applications. Before DirectX, display adapters had limited amounts of fast device memory and programmers had to manage that memory manually in order to achieve the best performance. The Direct3D API provides different memory pools to allow the application to specify the lifetime management policy of a resource.

Soft Particles

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:37:32 GMT

The aim with soft particles is to remove the ugly artifact that appears when the particle quad intersects the scene. There are a lot of different approaches to solve this, some more complicate than others.

Mega Particles

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:24:42 GMT

Instead of rendering textured billboards, this technique called "Mega Particles" render spheres to an off-screen texture. This texture is then blurred and randomly displaced using a fractal cube.

Basic Culling Techniques

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:58:56 GMT

The best optimization when rendering is to not render anything unnecessary. And that is what culling is about, to find out what can be skipped when rendering because it cannot be visible anyway. This article describes different ways to perform culling.

9000 BC, castle defense games and touch controls.

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:58:56 GMT

A few quick tips for iPhone interface design.

Normal Mapped Billboards

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:22:55 GMT

This technique doesn't actually invent something new. It's just a combination of normal mapping and billboards to realistically lit particle systems. It has been used successfully in many games to fake volumetric smoke.

Fluid Simulation and Rendering

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:12:01 GMT

For effects like smoke or water, a fluid simulation and rendering approach is needed. There are currently two popular methods for this...

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:24:21 GMT

SSAO is the new technique that most new games just must include because of the hype around it since the computer game Crysis. It's a technique for creating a rude approximation of ambient occlusion by using the a depth of the rendered scene. This works by comparing the current fragments depth with some random sample depths around it to see if the current depth is occluded or not. The current fragment is occluded if the sample is closer to the eye than the current fragment. Although it sounds very bad to do so, in practice it does work beyond all expectations.

SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion)

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:15:13 GMT

This is my SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion) implementation and it's both fast and gives good result. It's inspired by the Crysis SSAO algorithm but also the Starcraft II implementation and a little from Nvidia's implementation.

Getting Traffic That Converts

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:15:04 GMT

An in-depth look at over a dozen different methods of generating website traffic. Looks at how much they cost and the quality of the visitors they bring. Quality is based on several factors, including how long a visitor stays and if they download a demo or not.

Projected Grid Water

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:15:04 GMT

A method in which a grid is projected in post-perspective camera space. This gives an even-spaced grid so the detail level of the water is the same over the whole screen.

Deep-Water Animation and Rendering

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:56:41 GMT

This method to do water is very mathematical but gives therefore a very realistic look. Specially the foam on the waves are great.

Night Vision Post Processing GLSL Shader

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:56:41 GMT

Here is a night vision post processing shader in GLSL (OpenGL shading language). The complete source code of shader is provided and a demo showing the shader in action is available.

PyOpenGL_LAB: A Small Lab for Quick OpenGL Coding

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:57:02 GMT

PyOpenGL_LAB is a small lab that allows direct OpenGL programming in Python without compilation. PyOpenGL_LAB is based on GeeXLab and PyOpenGL.

Analysis: Gaming Secrets And Lies

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:49:53 GMT

Secrets and hidden treats are part of games' appeal and their lore, and can add depth and authenticity to the experience -- columnist Andrew Vanden Bossche explores ideal implementations, and those less so.

GeeXLab: Laboratory for Real Time 3D Learning and Experiments

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:14:54 GMT

GeeXLab (or GXL) is a new tool for fast real time 3D prototyping and coding (demos, tests, casual games, benchmarks). It's based on widely used standards such as XML, Lua, Python or OpenGL. GeeXLab has been designed for developers and technical 3D artists.

Narrative through commentaries.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:40:51 GMT

A short look at how commentaries have been used in videogames to help tell stories.

Do Less Better

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:06:45 GMT

What truly makes a game memorable? Is it a game that does many things well, or a few things great? I would argue the latter. I'm going to talk a bit about the concept myself and how it relates to my most recent game and my upcoming games.

Gaming the System: How to Really Get Ahead in the Game Industry

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:44:00 GMT

In this article, originally published in Game Developer magazine, pseudonymous developers of all levels share their honest, sometimes cutting thoughts on what it takes to truly succeed in each game industry discipline.