Yea I know, you're probably tired of hearing it by now :P Hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. It's back to the daily grind! Hi ho, Hi ho...
GDNet Book Series Update
I've got two yummy tidbits of information for you all this week regarding the GDNet book series. If you missed my last post before the holidays, check it out because I posted full-cover image of the first book to be released.
First up, here are the release dates for the entire series:
Business and Production: January 13
Design and Content Creation: February 10
Beginning Programming: February 10
Advanced Programming: February 24
We didn't plan on a staggered release initially, that's just the way things turned out.
Second treat is the Table of Contents for Business and Production:
Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals (Steve Pavlina)
How to Pitch Your Game (Joshua Dallman)
Open Source and the Gaming Industry (Richard D Shank)
4Ps of Marketing (Joe Lieberman)
Game Advertising (Joe Lieberman)
Submitting Your Game to Retailers (Rick Carey)
Shipping a Commercial Game without Quitting Your Day-job (Raymond Jacobs)
Legal Issues in Game Development (Mona Ibrahim)
Basic Team Building and Management (Drew Sikora)
Lone Wolf Killers (Mason McCuskey)
How to Build a Game in a Week from Scratch with No Budget (Jay Barnson)
Critical Path Analysis and Scheduling for Game Development (Jack Hoxley)
Incremental Development (Drew Sikora)
How to do Stuff Cheap and Quick (John Hattan)
What a Portal Wants (Joe Lieberman)
Blind Man's Bluff (Dean Margerison)
Game Unified Process (Kevin Flood)
Managing Digital Assets in Game Development (Otamere Omoruyi)
Introduction to 'Modding': Lessons Learned & Best Practices (Dylan Tredrea)
MMOG Considerations (Richard Fine)
I'll be releasing more ToC listings as the other books draw near to their release dates.
Celebrating 2009 with 1,500+ Fans
I was stoked that we reached 1,500+ fans before the end of the year over on our Facebook page. We hit it with just two days to spare! Keep spreading the word and getting your FB friends to become fans if they come by and visit the site often.
IGF Interviews
The finalists have been announced at last, which means I'll be working hard over the next few weeks with the people over at 47 Communications, who run press for GDC, to interview each and every one of them. If you have any ideas for questions that you'd like me to ask the developers, please share them in the comments!
Check out all the previous IGF interviews I've done if you want some questions inspiration. It's what I do :P
New Resources
- Case Study: Resistance 2 Graphics Tools and Pipeline - A look at Insomniac Games (makers of the Resistance franchise) and how they used Autodesk tools to create the stunning visuals in their games
- Mudbox 2009 - We review Autodesk's recently-acquired 3D sculpting and texture-painting tool.
- Better Programmer Art - Better artwork makes a huge difference in the impact of a game, prototype or technical demo, especially among a non-technical audience. Sometimes you don't have the time or resources to find a dedicated game artist. This article presents ten tips for us programmer types to improve the quality of our game artwork and 'fake it' as a game artist.
- Integrating ToLua++ and Your Game Engine - This snippet is a brief overview of using the ToLua++ system to integrate your code with Lua. It allows you to shift structures and information between Lua and C++ fairly simply
- T.W.T.P.B. Post Mortem - Learn what went wrong and what went right during the 1.5 year development of indie shoot em up T.W.T.P.B. developed by Spell of Play Studios.
- Killzone 2 Recording Sessions at Abbey Road Studios Part 1 - Interview with composer Joris de Man, Nimrod Productions executive producer Marc Carnham, and conductor Jonathan Williams
- Killzone 2 Recording Sessions at Abbey Road Studios Part 2 - Interview with Guerrilla Games Sound Director Mario Lavin and Sound Designer Lucas van Tol
