WE ARE ALMOST THERE!

Yeap! December is comming ... sales, presents, christmas, XBOX360, PS3, Wii, XNA, TorqueX, Visual3D.Net ... phewww! Everything accelerates as we approach the year-end.

For us, "indies", it is a very important month as we are waiting for the final release of XNA GSE and with it, the parallel releases of TorqueX and Visual3D.Net.

Developers post questions over and over in every forum asking for CTPs, betas, demos, screenshots and such, as if they were children traveling in a car with their parents and continuously asking them: "Are we there yet?".

Patience. Even if they need some extra time to finish the products it will benefit us in the end: more stability, less bugs, more fun.

In the meantime, check "HeroEngine", it seems quite interesting. Unfortunately, neither demos nor prices are available in the site so I cannot comment about it (I don't know about the engine itself but the tools seem to be .NET-based). If someone has more information about this framework please drop me some lines.

Cheers!

A COUPLE OF INTERESTING ARTICLES

Checking my RSS subscriptions I have found two interesting articles:

1. Securing High-Score Games: an article of the latest "Casual Games Quarterly" publication (by the IGDA) which talks about the different ways to set up online secure high-score tables, and
2. Indies Will Lead The Way In Next-Gen Development: an article published by GamesIndustry.biz where it is pointed out that small teams will spread innovation.

Ah, yeah: don't forget to pay a visit to AniBoom's site and try to find my "crappy" 3d-animation. Remember that I said I had created it with v2.5 of a very well-known 3D-animation package. What are you waiting for? Just go and start searching for it ... it will amaze you ... ;)

Well, that's all for today.

ANIBOOM AWARDS 2006

I have received an email from the creative director of "Aniboom", a new website dedicated to host and share animations, inviting me to pay a visit and check the site out.

Although the site is currently in a beta phase -it works better with IE than Firefox, let me tell you that I have really found some high-quality videos, cut-scenes, 2d/3d animations and demo reels.

But the interesting thing is that these guys are carrying out a competition for a total of $50k in prizes: five categories, $5k for the winner of each category, and $25k for the "grand prize" winner.

Check the rules, choose a category and upload your creation. There's still time for new entries, so hurry up!!!

Who knows? Maybe I decide to submit a 5-minute sci-fi animation I created back in my old days as a student of 3D animation by using 3DS Max 2.5 ... and yeah, you've just read it right, I said v2.5, so imagine how astonishing it could be ... you have no opportunity against my demo reel ... whooooooahahahahaha ... ;)

I'll leave you with this very funny entry:

[BTW, thanks Einat for your kind words about my blog!]