game development pro
Remember Me is an action-adventure title recently released by Capcom (developed by Dontnod). It is set in a futuristic Paris, and follows a “memory hunter” named Nilin. Basically, in the future people can erase (or alter) their memories, and there is a big evil corporation profiting off the situation. Nilin is part of the resistance, called Errorists, that fight the corporation. Nilin starts
Frank Luna’s DirectX series has been the go to book for DirectX development for many years. Although there are other great resources, Luna’s writing is both informative and approachable. The book also covers a broad range of topics from the basic lighting, texturing, and blending, to terrain rendering, normal and displacement mapping, geometry and compute shaders and more. He even tackles some tough topics
There is now another omni-directional treadmill project on Kickstarter, this one called the Wizdish. It’s a passive design, similar to the Omni, however it does not allow the user to lift their feet. It works by wearing special shoes with low-friction tiles on the bottom. This allows you to slide your feet back-and-forth easily without the need to pick up your feet. I
In preparation for my 3D game engine, I have been trying to read all I can on 3D engine design and architecture. Although there are some good books out there, it’s very difficult to find a text that will walk you through everything you need to know. That said, 3D Game Engine Architecture: Engineering Real-Time Applications with Wild Magic by David H. Eberly gives it
Looks like there’s yet another virtual reality project on Kickstarter. Well, I guess this is not strictly a VR thing, but it certainly could be used as such. Basically the ARAIG is a vest that you wear while gaming, and it provides force-feedback when you are getting hit in the game. While it does include vibration (like current controllers), it also has direct
The above video is demonstrating a 4.5″ flex sensor made by Spectra Symbol that I got from Sparkfun. Hooked it up to an Arduino and had it print the values to the serial monitor. Since I don’t have a tripod, it was going to be difficult to demo with only one hand, so I ended up taping the sensor to my finger.
The Virtuix Omni Kickstarter campaign was fully funded within hours of the doors opening this morning. If you haven’t heard of this device before, it’s basically a passive treadmill. It allows you to walk in any direction inside a virtual world, without actually moving in the real world. At the time of writing, they are sitting on over $454,000 with 47 days left
For quite some time I have been waiting for a good data-glove to hit the market for use with virtual reality applications. So far the only consumer product that has come remotely close was the P5 glove, which was probably one of the biggest disappointments in my life. Although better data-gloves have existed since the 90’s, they have been so expensive to
Finally, I’ve got around to reading (and finishing) Game Coding Complete, and it’s up there on the list of great game development resources. I’d been meaning to read this book for quite some time, but got distracted with DirectX and Windows hooking for use with my 3D driver. Now that I’m back on the 3D engine kick, it seems like a good time
The Oculus Rift is great and all, but it still feels pretty constricting using VR sitting in a chair. The Virtuix Omni plans to change that. Commonly referred to as omni-directional treadmills, the Omni allows you to feel like you are walking, or even running, around a virtual space while in real-life you stay safely in the same spot. This project in particular
