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Indrema Developer's Network Site Comes Up
Sam "Criswell" Hart writes "Just checked out the Indrema Developer's Network website and saw they have a lot of new content. You can now get the IESDK here (which is of course a bunch of things already available like OpenAL and Mesa3D, and includes the Linux kernel 2.4-pre10). You can check out what's "Under The Hood" of the L600 (which is really just information that's been available for a little while now). While it does look very kewl, and I am stoked to try my hand at coding for the thing, I am wondering why the IESDK doesn't include any 2D graphic libraries (such as SDL)... since not all games are 3D ;)"
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Ah, yes. Nintendo. Never released a video game in it's life before the NES. Donkey Kong, starring Mario... nah... never heard of it. Poor young company with no deep pockets. It's not like they had been around since before the World Wars, making everything from large ships to televisions.
And then there is Sony. Another tiny little company without any money or experience in marketing consumer electronics. They never invented the modern color television or personal electronics or anything... back in the 80s, they didn't invent the only real mainstream wearable electronic that ever made it (WalkMan/later Discman).
Yeah. Indrema is comparable to those two.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
As a game developer I can give my opinion. (Hopefully the other game developers around here will chip in, like John Carmack, or Corrinne Yu
The best way to break into the biz is to make a demo, a small project, or even a small game. With that last option, I'm not intentionally being recursive. I'll give a list of things one could do in the process of making a game, (you'll have to find the one you like doing) and the steps you could do to get your foot in the door.
Since you specifically said you wanted to be a game programmer, I'll list the programming options first. =P
i.e.
A.I. Put together a Quake Bot (since the rest of the game is already written & works. :-)
Gameplay. Write a mod, ala Counter-Strike, or TeamFortress. Balance it for 4, 8, 12, or even N players. Take a mod for Diablo and modify it.
Graphics. Write Pacman, an early Ultima clone, or even a 3D Engine.
Math. Write a 2D physics engine. Now make it 3D.
Art. Make a good looking low-poly char. Create some textures. Create a UT level.
Music. Write some tunes, and drop them into a game so people can see how you set the atmosphere.
The trick is to find something you enjoy doing, and put together a portfolio of your talents. (For me, it was optimizating texture mapping code, which landed me my first "real" job at EA, years ago.)
So where do Consoles fit into this?
The answer is: "Can you get all the development tools" ? Obviously you won't be able to get a PS2 SDK, so look at your options: As a student, I know it's hard to afford the full blown MS Visuall C++. Look for a "academic version." If you're running Linux, you have gcc, SDL, and other tools & libs available.
Hope this was a helpfull start.
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"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson
In terms of software applications Indrema offers two separate certification programs: For Profit Certifications and Free-ware Certification
Both Certification Processes carry a one-time charge for review of each software submission. For Profit Games that will be distributed for profit will also be charged a royalty for each title sold.
I hope they are reasonable about the amount charged to GNU games built for the L600. If the charge is anything more than a token $50 or dollars who is going to develop free (gratis) games for a system that has a $ cost for certification? I hope someone from Indrema can clarify this point quickly.
I may spend some time developing apps for the IES when its available, and release them GNU/Free-Ware cert - but if Indrema asks for much in the way of a "one time charge" they are going to SERIOUSLY hinder OS developer support.
ON TUESDAY PLEASE USE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO DISRUPT THE SYSTEM OF CORPORATE IMPERIALISM, AMERICA DO THE WORLD A FAVOUR:
There are many reasons to do this, but the basic idea is that modern 3D hardware generally has features such as hardware assisted alpha blending, rotation, scaling, etc. You can snap a modern 3D API into an orthographic projection and then use textured quads for 2D tiles and sprites. Then you get all of those fancy features hardware accelerated. Often these features, even if available on the card, are not hardware accelerated through the 2D APIs (DirectDraw, DGA, whatever) and you fall back to slow software emulation modes. Perhaps this is why they didn't include a 2D specific API...
As a matter of fact, DirectX 8 won't even have an updated DirectDraw. Only Direct3D. People writing for DirectX will have to use DX7's DirectDraw through COM interfaces or use Direct3D 8 for their 2D operations (Microsoft provides a library, D3DX, that makes it quite easy to use Direct3D as a 2D rendering system).
Of course, this doesn't always make sense...If you want your 2D title to run on low end video cards, you don't really want them doing it through Direct3D or OpenGL...But on a standardized platform with fast 3D, which describes Indrema, its not really as much of an issue.
Ok, i'm sure this has been said before but open sourcing a game system is great. Beta died because everything had to be verified before it could be put out on Betamax. But VHS had no restrictions. Of course that lead to porn. But whenever there's a new technology, porn is the first to take advantage of it: movies, VHS, internet.
Anyway: "Indrema CEO John Gildred discussed the advantages of IDN and the open source nature of the Indrema Entertainment System today at 11:30 PST"
I wonder if he talks about porn being a big deal? I doubt it, but i bet you'll be finding more than 1 reason to have vibrating controllers in the future.
I feel dirty after writing that, but it's true.
Go to SourceForge and find an open source game in development (or even beta) that sounds cool to you - and contribute copious code... it will be free so everyone can enjoy it, and you can put it on your resume.
BlackNova Traders