KTH Game Awards Grande Finale

CoderByBirth writes "The winners of the KTH Game Awards, a game programming competition for students held in Sweden were announced yesterday at KTH (The Royal Institute Of Technology) in Stockholm. 25 teams participated in the competition, which was divided into two parts, where the first part was to create a Technical Design Document (TDD) and a Game Design Document (GDD) and the second was to complete a working game demo or prototype. The student submissions were reviewed by a jury consisting of employees from DICE (creators of Battlefield 1942, Pinball Dreams) and Starbreeze Studios (Outforce, Enclave) as well as a representative from KTH. You can download the top three submissions here."

Comments

What about Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess there should be a similar competition for Linux games. There are enough Windows games already. We need more for open-source platforms.

Re:What about Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then start one.

Re:What about Linux?

[Stary]

The competition was not only for Windows games. Our game (Velox) runs on Windows, Solaris and Linux, for instance. The competition page states a deadline for handin of a "PC or UNIX executable", and you might also note that one team has made a game for the Gameboy Advance.

Re:What about Linux?

[Blaine Hilton]

I all for Linux as much as the next person, but developers have to live too and they are going to develop for the market that has more potential buyers. Its the catch 22, more people need to use Linux before there are more good programs, and developers will not put as much effort into Linux programming until there are more people using it.

Need a calculator?

Re:What about Linux?

[porttikivi]

Yeah, but it escapes me, why the people who design the kernels, drivers, desktops, "system applications" and all that other open source stuff do not need to "make a living". Why the game designers are the only exception?

Re:What about Linux?

[Realistic_Dragon]

As long as the games are well written, they should be easily portable: They should be written in a cross platform language, like C++ (no, I don't mean Java - not until we all have P7 9000 machines!) which can be easily compiled on Windows or UNIX. They should be writen to use open standards as far as possible. Games that exploit OpenGL are easy to port, games that use the protritary, limited, locked down bodge of an API (biased? me?) known as DirectX are not. This way (as happened for UT2k3) games can be available on _both_ Windows and Linux for very little extra cost. It's a shame MS is trying to put a spoke in the wheel of this kind of thing, not only with Direct X and dropping where possible support of OpenGL (no OpenGL support in the XBox I see...) but also by offering developers great wodges of cash to develop nativly in DirectX and make the game available on the XBox first, ensuring that OpenGL games and Linux support are far less attractive than would otherwise be the case.

Re:What about Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any "expertise" you may have was offset by your glaringly ignorant comment about Java. Also DirectX does hamper cross-platform development, but that is not Microsoft's main goal. Their main goal with DX is to make development on Windows easier! That's it! DirectX started back when there were a dizzying array of devices which game makers had to attempt to support. By putting a layer in the middle, developers can code for DirectX, and device makers can also code for DirectX. They meet in the middle, and everything works smoothly. (Think its FUD? Ever have to worry about the Joystick not working? Or your sound card support? Or how about interfacing with the network.. is it a NIC or Modem? USB or PCI? etc etc.. all of these variables are REMOVED)

Re:What about Linux?

[Realistic_Dragon]

"Any "expertise" you may have was offset by your glaringly ignorant comment about Java."

I write in Java, and have been paid to do so in the past. I like it, but it has its place, and at the moment for 3D eye candy games, it's not really suitable. (Unless fully compiled, which kind of beats the point of it.)

"Also DirectX does hamper cross-platform development, but that is not Microsoft's main goal."

I admited to being biased, but I truley believe that Microsoft do set out to hamper cross platform support _before_ making life easier for Windows developers. They _could_ choose to open up DirectX and about 30 minutes later their games would play on Linux - and if it was MS (games) that were independant that may have happened. As it is they are using ties between their businesses to unfairly supress competition in all their business areas.

Re:What about Linux?

[Joe Tie.]

I'm always a little surprised when I see opensource 2D games written in DirectX, especially when they mention plans to port it to another platform. I'm not about to tell anyone how to code when they do it for their own amusement, and I can see why someone might want to stick with an API they're familiar with, but when the issue of porting comes in using DirectX just boggles my mind.

I think a lot of people simply aren't even familiar with SDL, WxWindows, or other multiplatform solutions yet. I make it a point to actively plug SDL and WxWindows in the documentation of anything I actually put out that uses them, and explain why I chose them over anything else.

Re:What about Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

_before_ making life easier for Windows developers. They _could_ choose

Why do you people use underscores like that?

Re:What about Linux?

[Stary]

As a game developer, I'd like to mention that I prefer Direct3D before the mess that is OpenGL in some ways. Yes, the interface is awful, and yes, OpenGL has a nice interface - but only until you start making state-of-the-art game graphics, when you're forced to use 20 different extensions on different hardware to accomplish the same thing on OpenGL, while DirectX just works. Even something as simple as multi-texturing requires you to juggle around function pointers which may not exist etc. OpenGL 2 would seem to somewhat fix the situation but they never seem to actually release it so it's no good for me.

Also, the DirectX interface is well documented - you don't need the implementation to port it, only the interface, so feel free to go ahead. AFAIK several game companies have done their own wrappers for DirectX in order to port games (mainly to Mac). While I agree that MS is probably not going out of their way to help platform-independence, I doubt they're actively trying to hinder it either. Last I heard was that there was a project to implement D3D on X11, so you might look at that.

Re:What about Linux?

[dangerweasel]

"As long as the games are well written, they should be easily portable" I read somewhere prior to Q3A coming out that John Carmack only had to write about 15k more code for the Mac port. But then we does not let himself get stuck in proprietary bullshit.

Re:What about Linux?

[nmg]

The way things are now, Microsoft makes a great profit, game developers get games done faster and better (so they get a huge profit), and end users get a game that runs smoother. Everybody wins, except for socialists who don't believe in private property anyway, and who gives a shit about them?

Re:What about Linux?

[justin_speers]

I'm completely confused by what you mean here...

The people who design the kernels, drivers, etc, etc. DO need to make a living. Or they'd be dead.

There are open source games out there as well, there are free as in beer games too. Those developers obviously find some other way to make money.

And lots of people who contribute to open source linux apps get paid for it.

Nobody ever said they shouldn't, it's their choice to continue developing for free if they aren't making money off of it.

Re:What about Linux?

[GlassHeart]

it escapes me, why the people who design the kernels, drivers, desktops, "system applications" and all that other open source stuff do not need to "make a living". Why the game designers are the only exception?

Because a competitive (which does not even necessarily equal "good") game must be timely. A FPS game with bitmapped monsters and no ability to look around freely, such as the original Doom, has no way to survive in the marketplace today even if it was free. Since commercial games are written full-time (more than full-time, in fact), part-time developers cannot keep pace.

Today's games also require the services of musicians and artists, who are quite accustomed to receiving payment for their talents.

A kernel is much more of a static target than a game. It is also a task that is far more parallelizable, because device drivers are essentially independent pieces of code. Even then, support for newer peripherals (such as USB, btw) tend to lag commercial OSes by a great deal.

This is not to say there can't be a free game that is imaginative enough to counteract the part-time limitation. However, gems like Tetris (easy to code, sells very well) simply don't show up every year.

Re:What about Linux?

[Realistic_Dragon]

Can't use on usenet. (Unless you subscribe to the heretical top-posting-html-rich view of the world that is.)

Re:What about Linux?

[Realistic_Dragon]

You might, in 5 years when games only run on the XBox 3, cost £75 (plus inflation) each and are of poor quality because MS stopped developing DirectX when they managed to wipe out the competition.

Monopolies are bad for consumers, and regulation is never good enough to compensate.

Re:What about Linux?

[andr0meda]

Let me take you out of your dream here. About 95% of commerical console games never are / will never be well-written. At best, they have a decent design and architecture, but they will never be perfectly portable. The reason is that virtually all parts constantly evolve during the game's development stages, and compromises are constantly made to adhere code to the constraints of the console regarding memory and performance. You allways end up with shit somewhere..

One other thing: OpenGL nowadays is simply inferior to D3D. Most Matrox OpenGL drivers go through D3D. Most gamers run boxes with windows. I'd say these arguments make the choice rather easy.

However.. there is something which is called middleware, even in game dev land. NetImmerse, Renderware, Blender,.. these are all 'platform independant' (platform limitted is probably better) engines that allow faster development and cross porting. At least.. that is the intended goal anyway ;)

Re:What about Linux?

[nmg]

When/if that happens, I and most people will stop buying games, and Microsoft will lose money and realize they must change their practices. No regulation required.

Demo Winners

[Anonymous Coward]

Any of these game demos worth downloading? There aren't any descriptions on the site.

Re:Demo Winners

[Anonymous Coward]

really? WTF do you think all the links on the right side are for?

Re:Demo Winners

[Anonymous Coward]

The links on the right are under a heading labeled "Team spotlight." Most visitors would think that those links go to descriptions of the teams that built the games rather than descriptions of the games themselves.

So, what's your problem Cinderella? If they do in fact contain descriptions of the games neither the heading or the link titles themselves suggest it (e.g. "Xaxxon (team)")

Re:Demo Winners

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded TankWars and Xazzon and neither is playable. And they're really big at 56MB and 51MB each. If they (the developpers) put more time into the game instead of the very excellent intro movies then they might be on to something.

Having said that it's better than anything I could do.

Re:Demo Winners

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're looking for some playable games made by students for competition check out this link:

http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs248-video ga me-competition/cs248-02/

They have one every year, and it seems like the games just keep getting better and better. Not bad for 1 month of work. Check out the first one, true real time stenciled shadow volumes before Doom 3! Granted the models aren't so nice.

How I feel about programming competitions

[A Proud American]

I don't like when programming competitions allow coders to select their own technologies.

If the goal of these competitions is to foster new programming talent, I think it's best to give them an exact specification document detailing exactly what technologies (languages, platforms, hardware) need to be used.

The real world of professional programming generally tends to involve projects with unchangable parameters. My boss never tells me to make a warhead however I want to -- there's always a specification of what technologies I must use.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Timesprout]

and exactly how many competitions to code games in VB will you enter ?

A lot of game development involves pushing the boundaries. Its a lot easier and emminently more practical to do that when you are already familiar/expert with the technology.

In your job you are constrained to use what you are told but you were probably hired because you were at least familiar if not proficient in the organisations technology standards already, not becase they felt like converting a few perl codes to c++ gurus.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Tet]

My boss never tells me to make a warhead however I want to -- there's always a specification of what technologies I must use.

Your boss tells you to make a warhead? Wow! Even when I worked for the Ministry of Defence, that never happened to me...

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[grazzy]

how about working for the ministry of offence.. errr..
what would the deparment of DEFENCE do with a warhead..

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Launch it at you Yanks for butchering English spelling, I expect.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[kingkade]

A lot of game development involves pushing the boundaries

Don't forget they require you to 'think outside the box', by 'reaching a new level of immersion', 'extending gameplay dynamics', and ...ack i just had a gag reflex kick in for no reason. i'll get back some more vapid catchphrases later...;)

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Lumpy]

My boss never tells me to make a warhead however I want to -- there's always a specification of what technologies I must use.

Your boss tells you to make a warhead? Wow! Even when I worked for the Ministry of Defence, that never happened to me...

well you know, things are very different in those terrorist organizations....

Abdul! Make the warhead purple! and we will call it the purple headed warrier to kill the american pigs with.

Allah will be pleased!

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[kingkade]

By "butchering" do you mean something along the lines of sentence fragments? How embarrassing for you, I expect.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[realdpk]

A compromise would be to hand the developers the game specification documentation and let them choose the language/hardware. Whoever meets the most bullet points in the game spec wins, or whatever metric you want to use..

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[morgajel]

well, think of it this way....
suppose the promoters said "ok, now all of your programs need to be in COBOL, no exceptions!"

do you think they might be limiting their audience a little.
the point is creativity isn't limited to one language. they're looking for a new game, something that hand't been tried before. Don't cut their feet off by forcing them into one language.

you sound like one of those grumpy old men that bitch at "the kids with their damned rock music"

As for real world experience, limiting the language is just rediculous. Yes, in the real world, you get a job and you might only be allowed to use one language. however EVERY real world job doesn't use just one language. Don't shaft the people who know c++ just because you think it should be done in java, or vice versa.

Hell, although it's not comparable, I made a blackjack game in ruby just for shits and giggles.

the language that they choose shouldn't matter. it comes down to using the right tool for the job.
for some it's c++, or other's it's haskell, java or perl.

oh, and another point- you say to limit it to platform. Well, reading through the posts, one of the teams says they wrote it for solaris, linux and windows. So you're saying that they should have limited it to one platform? which one?
you say windows and you'll probably piss of a lot of slashdotters.
you say linux and it'll never make it mainstream.

Let them do what they want to do. if they make a great game, fine, if they don't, oh well. Let it be their choice.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Anonymous Coward]

what would the deparment of DEFENCE do with a warhead..
Well, I imagine that the American Dept. of Defence would use it in a pre-emptive war...

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Karem Lore]

Hey, I read the first 3 words and figured your whole post out!!!

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, then we'll get the same crap games out of programming competitions that we already get out of the industry. Great idea.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about when 5 teams all meet the spec 100%. What then is your metric? # of bugs that you can find in an hour? What about teams which meet and go beyond the spec? Etc.

Specs are for the real world. Let these programmers write their own requirements.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[realdpk]

If they're all perfect, 100% matches on the spec, then whoever did it "best" wins - fastest, smoothest, best interface, etc.

Basically, turn it in to an actual *programming* competition rather than a design and programming competition.

Unless, of course, they'd rather have it be the latter, but then they can't call it a pure programming competition. :)

To me, things like "Perl golf" count as a programming competition.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Well.... usually (at least where I work) we engineers can choose whatever language we want to do things in, as long as we all agree. However most of the time we end up with C and/or Perl (some Java). The thing that do matters are interfaces, not the language.. But then our engineering department is 9 people, and I work in sweden where organizations usually are very flat.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should try for an internship at the Ministry of Spelling

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to Biowares site recently to find the status of the Linux and Mac Neverwinter Nights, one of the biggest failures of multiplatform development I've ever seen. I literally broke out laughing when I saw this in their FAQ.

3. Looking back, if you had the chance at doing NWN from scratch, would you do anything differently?
From Trent Oster, Producer, NWN - I would focus the core concept further and deliver a tighter implementation of the game.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Stary]

Basically, turn it in to an actual *programming* competition rather than a design and programming competition.

Unless, of course, they'd rather have it be the latter, but then they can't call it a pure programming competition. :)

Who said it was a "pure programming competition"? It was a game creation competition (Game Awards, as opposed to Game Programming Awards). And what's the point in having a simple programming challenge in game development? That's like having a "tape-the-wall" movie competition. Game development is about so much more than just mere programming.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[justin_speers]

This isn't a programming competition!!! It's a game development competition. There is a HUGE difference there.

Their job was to come up with the best game, not the best technology. The technology is and should be irrelevent. There are tons of games out there for the game boy advance that are way more fun to play than Quake III, despite the different (inferior) technology used.

Bottom line: There's a difference between a game development competition and a programming competition.

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[andr0meda]

essence is in the essence. bravo!

Re:How I feel about programming competitions

[Alsee]

Your boss tells you to make a warhead? Wow! Even when I worked for the Ministry of Defence, that never happened to me...

Silly rabbit, the warheads are made in the Ministry of PEACE.

-

The Winner

[CoderByBirth]

You can also download the winning game here:
Xazzon

Re:The Winner

[Beatbyte]

Bit Torrent anyone??

Please post a link for all three if you have it!

Re:The Winner

[kryptkpr]

Xazzon BT link .. it's on my cable ISP's webspace, so it should hold up. The tracker is another story..

I didn't get the other files in time, so I cannot torrent them.

Cool competition - Hard to Read

[hether]

This is a very neat competition. I enjoyed reading through the team's descriptions and goals for making their games. Everything from making a game that's easy to start but hard to stop, to making a 3D only game, etc.

Just wanted to mention too that this bright purple/blue color still makes reading game stories very hard on the eyes. I thought after the huge number of posts lamenting this fact that perhaps the editors would actually change it. Don't know what I was thinking.

Re:Cool competition - Hard to Read

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, since when do they EVER listen to their readers. ASSHOLES.

Re:Cool competition - Hard to Read

[Anonymous Coward]

My theory about why Slashdot is not changing the Games color scheme:

Slashdot, being the popular website that it is, has obviously done TONS of research and surveys about the Games color scheme. After going through this rigorous testing process, they found this perfect Games color scheme of purple/blue and grey.

Now, they are reading a lot of negative comments about the new color scheme, but the editors know better and think, "This is just the 3% of people surveyed that didn't like the professionally done color scheme. It's probably the same 3% that think we, as professionals, would actually post a dupe."

A what?

[Prince_Ali]

Design... document...? I know what the individual words mean, but taken together it sounds like nonsense!

Re:A what?

[stratjakt]

It is nonsense! Wonderful upper management nonsense!

If you've ever seen one, it reads like something from Lewis Carrol or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or maybe more like a Dr. Suess poem.

Re:A what?

[oliverthered]

Even I make more sense than most of the design documents I've seen.

kth sucks

[bumby]

Everyone knows that the bright minds study at Chalmers!

Meh...

[Azureflare]

Dang, the server's already slashdotted..damn browser crashed when I tried to go to amazon while downloading. Hmm... Maybe amazon doesn't want me to play games o_O

Any prizes?

[fatwreckfan]

Were there any prizes for this competition? Do the winners get money to continue development or anything? The page is down now, but when I got to scan over it earlier I didn't see anything.

Re:Micro$oft only?

[Stary]

No, see a previous thread on the same subject. And yes, MS was a sponsor, which really made no difference since they weren't judging the entries. Note the team making a game for the Gameboy Advance, for instance.

Re:play some real games

[stratjakt]

My favorite line:

Windows and Linux can coexist on the same computer. For additional information, refer to your Linux documentation.

Hahahaha.. I bet they sell a ton of licenses of XP to people who've pulled out all their hair looking for their "Linux documentation"

Re:Micro$oft only?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sponsored? .... nay, impossible!

KTH is just sucking up his ass in any way they can, even by giving him a honorary doctorate after Linus got it from Stockhom university, KTH's rival (Slashdot covered Linus).

It's all in the money.

Wow, that's mighty professional

[A Proud American]

Nothing spells "professional" like a giant freakin' flaming 750 pixel logo.

Re:Wow, that's mighty professional

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing spells "professional" like a giant freakin' flaming 750 pixel logo.

Nothing spells "professional" like a lamer with a giant freakin' mouth that whines and complains, but doesn't show off his own skills.

Re:Wow, that's mighty professional

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to trolling on K5. Maybe the "intellectuals" over there can't deal with you but you're just an amateur here.

ARRGHH!

[Anonymous Coward]

You dumb-fucking-asshole, RTFA. Damn it! ARRGRGRAGHHGG!!@#R$$!R$@!!

Those poor, poor students!

[HoldmyCauls]

...a game programming competition for students held in Sweden...

If the poor bastards are being held in Sweden, it's the least that can be done to raise their esteem!

Let's get Tina Yothers et al together to try and free them!

Re:Those poor, poor students!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well at least they aren't being held in Cuba... or by some self-proclaimed "democracy".

Sweden is actually quite a nice place to be in, even when being "held".

Re:Those poor, poor students!

[Karem Lore]

Have you been to sweden? Blimey then, you should think about it...What do you do when there is nothing else to do? That's right, abuse other peoples bodies...Trust me, well worth the visit, especially if you like yours blond and rather exessive in bed...

Re:Those poor, poor students!

[Mindjiver]

Why not send Tommy Franks? =)

Re:Those poor, poor students!

[faaaz]

What's wrong with sweden? Have you been here? I sure as hell haven't seen you 'cause none of the tourists or exchange students I've talked to think we're poor bastards.

That said I go to Chalmers, Göteborg (Gothenburg) and I can't speak for those Stockholm folks.

Re:Those poor, poor students!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ar din sarkasmdetektor sonder?

Re:Those poor, poor students!

[faaaz]

Är din?

Re:Those poor, poor students!

[Anonymous Coward]

Swedish Meatballs!

Re:Those poor, poor students!

[Anonymous Coward]

men idiot, fattar du inte att han skämtar (syftningsfel i artikeln)?

Pinball dreams,

[noogle]

now there was a game. The original and best pinball game ever. I still play regularly using winfellow. Lets all here it for PD.

Re:Why influence them with copy locking?

[noogle]

when i first read that subject i thought it said cock licking.

why mod down?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ofcourse right, and it's a pity moderators don't get that.

NTH Game awards

[Andreas(R)]

NTH (Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology) also held a similar game award for student projects.

NTH is better than KTN :)

Mirrors?

[rf0]

Its been /.'ed. Any mirrors?

Rus

This reminds me of Cowboy Bebop

[Anonymous Coward]

The coloring of games.slashdot remind of the first episode of Cowboy Bebop, which featured a drug called "Bloody Eyes"

Xazzon review

[John Harrison]

So I managed to download and play Xazzon. It is what you would expect, a 3D version of Zaxxon. Pretty good for a student project, but it doesn't seem very efficient.

As with most student projects, it seems to assume that you have a pretty fast machine. I have a machine that can run Q3A reasonably and this little Zaxxon game gets 12fps on it. They didn't spend much time optimizing or testing on slow machines. Even at 320x240 (windowed) it runs like a dog. Also, the ship goes out of control after a while, with the point of view switching jerkily from one side to the other.

Some of you will say that I need a new machine, which is true, but for what this game is it could run a lot faster.

When I was in school we had an assignment to make an asteroids game. Most of the projects were barely playable they were so slow. There were only a few each quarter that were worth playing. Yet using the same computers my group made a 3d space fighter game in which you pilot a ship through an asteroid field instead of the usual top-down 2d asteroids. Not only was it more ambitious than the normal games, it ran faster too, because we cared about efficiency from the start and made sure it was playable. You can download the Windows port here. It isn't nearly as polished as the Zaxxon game, but it was a 2 week project, and was playable on a 60 MHz Mac Performa with no 3d acceleration.

Re:Xazzon review

[Anonymous Coward]

Neato! I for one, have an issue with the winners being some people who couldn't even attempt an original game.

Re:Xazzon review

[CoderByBirth]

For the record:

The game was reviewed during a 20 minute presentation.

Considering this, we selected to spend more time adding content and polish the game rather than optimize it.

Target platform for the game is at least a 1.0 GHz PC with Geforce 2 MX400.

Optimization in and of itself would be a waste of time considering these premises.

Some teams failed horribly by trying to create "The Ultimate" game engine.

You can download the game at :

xazzon.com
//Viktor Lundström, Xazzon Lead Programmer

Re:Xazzon review

[John Harrison]

Hey, it seems that what you did worked for you. Congrats on winning the contest. Like I said, it seems to have a lot of polish.

Optimization would not have been a complete waste of time given that if it is able to be run on a lesser machine it will run even better on a fast one. I don't see what it is doing that couldn't be done on a much slower machine.

Did the judges play it during the presentation or did you "present" it?

Anyhow, the game looks pretty fun, I just wish I was able to play it.

Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno if needed :) -But anyway:

http://multimedia.campus.luth.se/kth_games/

Yeah...

[Pingular]

I think /. broke the interweb again :(

Starbreeze = same guys who coded Fasttracker

[hedon_elite]

Just a FYI, for those of you unfamiliar with the demosceme. (fastracker = .xm format mod music).

Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, neither holds a candle to LiTH

Re:Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Lysator is where the gurus of the new age are raised.

Re:Bah!

[nossid]

I second that!

Info on starbreeze

[andr0meda]

Yup, Starbreeze was formed out of the former demo group Triton, the creators of, among others, the legendary Crystal Dreams and Crystal Dreams II demos.

Back then, Triton captured the essence of module tracking with their FastTracker & FastTrackerII, a very advanced implementation of the old amiga protracker concept. Their Fasttracker was, for many years, the biggest rival of Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker, and a lot of musicians preferred it's simple but efficient interface above all other trackers.

When Triton became Starbreeze, they had a lot of problems finding publishers for their first game 'Into The Shadows'. Parts of that never-published game were used in 'Sorcery', a 1st person RPG to be published by Gremlin Interactive, but also these plans did not go forward, as Gremlin was bought by Infogrames and they traditionally fucked up one more development studio. Finally, Swing Entertainment (Conspiracy Games) had the courage and the guts to publish the now 3rd person RPG 'Enclave' on 3 platforms, and the game gained reasonably good acclaim. Unfortunately, Swing went bankrupt 3 months later. Starbreeze is now said to be working on Enclave 2.

Yet Another School Game Contest

[Anonymous Coward]

http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs248-videoga me-competition/

Xazzon best? I'd hate to see the worst!

[c0d3h4x0r]

What ever happened to game developers understanding that making a game perform well was the highest priority?

Aspiring developers back in the demoscene truly understood the art of coding. It was all about finding are more optimized, elegant solution than the previous guy, and making the computer pull things off that made the user's jaw drop. Coders used integer math and lookup tables in interesting ways to avoid performance-expensive floating point or trigonometric computations. They hand-optimized code and knew that a high-level library or language to produce the most elegant solution. They knew how to identify performance bottlenecks and improve them.

Developers now think it's okay to trust in powerful hardware, high-level languages, and abstraction layers like COM or OpenGL. Anything to make the job less mentally taxing. As a result, games continue to gradually decline in quality.

The gaming market has become more commercialized and less artistic, resulting in an abundance of crappy games that are designed and implemented by businessmen instead of artists and coders. The entire industry is headed down the tubes, just like ATARI in the 1980's.

There's one exception: Nintendo. They are still consistently producing artistic, quality games in-house. They may not survive as a hardware company, but they will certainly be one of the few successful game development companies to weather the market when the bubble bursts.

OH I WANT IT

[Anonymous Coward]

harder

Re:OH I WANT IT

[Anonymous Coward]

FASTER

Re:Xazzon best? I'd hate to see the worst!

[c0d3h4x0r]

Yeah, that's it. Moderate my post as "Troll" just because you disagree with the content, regardless of the fact that it's not a troll and is merely an honest statement of my genuine opinion.

Dickheads.