Still remember Myst? Those room escape games which you keep seeing on the web, done in Flash, with photographs? Adventure Maker make it easy to create such games. They even have a promotional video to show off how easy it is, and best of all, there’s a freeware edition. The commerical edition allows you to export to the PSP, iPhone and do third-person games - but it’s not real 3D, just fake, so I think if you are just into old school Myst games or room escape games, the free edition will do

Here’s a promotional video from their site.

That’s right; the IGDA.SSC hosts student-portfolio website (until you are securely employed, that is ) The list of hosted sites actually include Wrdysym and now we have a new addition - AngelFether. As the IGDA.SSC site don’t use much bandwidth or hard disk space, we can still afford to host one or two more student sites. Remember that when your graduation is coming, or if you have cool stuff to show.

Tom Vasel, from the Dice Tower, is a famed board game reviewer, and surprisingly, he gave Saint Petersburg a 5.5 out of 10. Why? Due to the fact that the game doesn’t stand up long-term play. After a while, playing Saint Petersburg is almost mechanical; and sometimes, right from the third round you can guess who is winning.

After thinking through the issues, it seems to be that because the game has no player interaction between each other (unlike Citadels or the recent Kingsburg). There’s going to be an expansion soon (later the year?) for a fifth player, but will it fix the player’s interaction problem?

Anyway, here is my variant on Saint Petersburg on the scoring aspect. Putting in player’s interaction could be a larger change in mechanic (like my own Dynasty, which so far is still in alpha and still deemed unplayable).

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For some weird reasons, style sheets take some time to refresh after uploading, so the site may look slightly strange for a while till the style sheets update themselves. We apologise!

All right, things have been technical around here lately, so today I am going to introduce Texture Portal, where you can get high quality texture at a price (USD 50+ - ouch). But here’s something to get you thinking - if you can create good seamless textures for games, and there are guys on the net selling it for USD 50+, why don’t you try submitting a few to them for a few bucks or start your own too?

Hi all,

All the slots are already taken up for the XNA coaching class.  This is primarily a self-learning plus once a week face to face coaching session, with online interaction through forums throughout the month of June. As explained, candidates are expected to know the basics of programming and data structures (at least 2D arrays!) and any MIA or radio silence will not be tolerated.

If this pioneer plan goes well, I may consider doing another round in the month of July, but keep your fingers crossed.

Expectations: This won’t turn you into a seasoned and pro game developer, but give you a leg up in learning an API from references, example codes, experimentation and rapid development, so that you can easily move on to advanced topics like 3D, vertex shaders and etc. Of course, if progress goes better than expected we may cover more ground.

The Spring Project is a full working open source RTS engine which is a spin-off from the first 3D RTS ever - Total Annihilation. Indeed, if you owe the game itself, you can legally use units from the original game and engage in the game. Even better, if you have done Total Annihilation modding before, then you can plunge straight right into creating custom units.

But this engine is not just a clone of Total Annihilation - think of it as a generic RTS engine for which you can produce mods for. There are more than dozens of mods, and a large variety, from Gundams to World War II. There are comprehensive information (but disorganised) on creating new models, maps and missions.

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There are now 2 slots left for the XNA One on One Coaching workshop. Do hurry; respond to the post or email to me if you are interested in learning XNA. Basically, you can learn yourself, but the workshop has the advantages of me breathing down your neck (to make sure you do some work) and that if we get stuck, we can solve problems together instead of relying on forums.

So hurry, book your slot!

Yo guys, the holidays have arrived (at least for me, last paper today, yohoo) and I’ve decided to dedicate sometime to exploring the excellent Opensource Engines around us. For those who are hell-bent on massive RTS, there is Spring, an open-source RTS engine. I am going to download it tomorrow and give it a two-hour spin, and will be back to report my progress

As to excite me, and everyone else, here is a video of what Spring is capable of:

Unable to find the current track for your game? Fear not, for Sakari Infinity has free game music just for you. I took a look and I think there are over 100+ tracks for you to go through. So, go add some music to your world!