Delivering her IDF 2008 keynote, Intel's Software and Solutions Group VP and GM Renee James announced Visual Adrenaline, a new developer program targeted specifically at visual computing.

According to Intel's Visual Adrenaline portal and technology website bit-tech, who attended the event, the new program will offer developers, animators and other gaming and digital content profesionals resources to take advantage of Intel's' technologies and hardware, particularly multi-core CPUs and Larrabee.

Visual Adrenaline will also offer an online developer community and a new digital magazine (free subscriptions) titled Visual Adrenaline. The magazine will feature profiles of games, software, artists, and industry figures.

James promised that the developer program will include "focused content, online activities, training, as well as SDKs and tools specifically designed at using Intel platforms and future platforms ... for visual computing and gaming."

Posted by Eric Caoili at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this technical article, originally published in Game Developer magazine, Neversoft co-founder Mick West explores making your own mini-languages for games by making Whimsy, a domain-specific language that creates art based on the abstract paintings of Parappa creator Rodney Alan Greenblat.

Unlike general-purpose languages, a domain-specific language must support a large amount of functionality, such as variables, data structures, conditional expressions, looping constructs, and functions. To create domain-specific language Whimsy, West defined his domain as the works of Rodney Alan Greenblat, using pieces from the artist's Elemental tour, a collection of semi-abstract paintings in a distinctive brightly colored and geometric style:

"The idea was this: If such a style of artwork were to be used in a video game, then it might be very useful to have a DSL that encapsulated that style and allowed for easy creation of similar pieces for use in-game.

"The first step in creating a DSL is to get a rough idea of the elements that the domain comprises. Looking at the Elemental works, we can see a number of common aspects. There are concentric oval shapes, with petals adjoined to various sections.

"Many of the works have segmented circles with colored circles inside them. There are little propellers and various other shapes that repeat both within individual works and within Greenblat's overall collection.

"I decided the best way to approach creating this DSL would be to pick one piece and attempt to replicate parts of it. I chose the painting 'Lunar Module' (see image). Many common elements hold the piece in its style: solid circles, concentric ovals with color gradients, petals, and stars."

You can read the full technical feature on Whimsy, Mick West's domain-specific language, which includes code and examples of potential uses of DSLs in games.

Posted by Chris Remo at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

For this week's video. SCEA software engineer Greg Corson, who has worked on interchange file format COLLADA since 2005, talks about taking advantage of the format with game development tools such as COLLADA Refinery and Coherency Test.

Corson believes that COLLADA is helping developers move away from using custom-created solutions and formats: "This was the same issue in the movie industry -- they all had their own custom software, or they bought all their software that they used from one company. Everyone realized that they can't really do that anymore. No one company has everything that you need to build a game or to do a movie.

He continues: "It's getting more and more important that you have a lot of tools that work together. Other tools tend to get discarded now, instead of just worked around. That's a big change for the industry, finally seeing everyone say 'We can buy tools from anyone we want and have it work.'"

Posted by Eric Caoili at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)