Product Review: Massively Multiplayer Online Game Middleware
by Michael Ballbach, Mitch Ferguson
[01.15.03]
Creating a massively multiplayer online game is game development’s equivalent of a moon shot. It’s expensive, technically difficult, and can take many years to complete. The rewards for success are so attractive, however, that is seems everyone is willing to give it a try. Several companies are currently developing software libraries and products explicitly created to ease these hurdles. Though this type of middleware is often expensive and complex in its own right, the timesavings and risk reduction it promises to provide could be well worth it.Two products that provide nearly complete MMOG solutions are Butterfly.net and Zona’s Terazona.
Programming, Product Reviews, Game Developer Magazine
Creating an Event-Driven Cinematic Camera, Part Two
by Brian Hawkins
[01.10.03]
In Part One of this two-part series, Brian Hawkins looked at how to describe a cinematic camera shot in general terms so that it could be automatically converted to camera position and orientation within the game. This installment brings it all together by presenting a system that can choose the best shots and connect them together. Once finished, these concepts can be joined to form a complete basis for a cinematic experience that improves the interactive storytelling of games by giving players access to the action within a game in ways that make sense to them instinctively.
Programming, Game Developer Magazine
Product Review: 3Dlabs' Wildcat VP
by ron fosner
[12.15.02]
The Wildcat VP is built around 3Dlabs' new P10 chip, a real-time multithreaded processor that allows you to run single or multiple accelerated graphics applications with increased performance. The Wildcat VP cards can address up to 16GB of virtual memory, with the cards having 64MB or 128MB of on-board memory. Therefore, these cards are not designed to improve performance on older machines, they are designed for machines with Pentium 4 or Xenon processors with lots and lots of RAM running Windows 2000 or XP.
Art, Product Reviews, Game Developer Magazine
Product Review: Sonic Foundry's Acid Pro 4.0
by Gene Porfido
[11.15.02]
This is not your momma's Acid Pro. The last time I took a good look at Acid was version 2.x, and while the looping creativity was inspiring, I felt it lacked some of the strong points that full MIDI/audio sequencers have. Version 4.0, however, is so packed with features that it's hard to ignore. The incredible loop flexibility that has made Acid famous is back with a vengeance, and there are a host of new features that make Version 4.0 exciting and intense as an audio tool, regardless of what project you're working on.
Audio, Product Reviews, Game Developer Magazine
Giving Life to Ratchet & Clank: Enabling Complex Character Animations by Streamlining Processes
Postmortem: Gas Powered Games' Dungeon Siege
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Postmortem: Bioware's Neverwinter Nights
