Unity 3

By: Derek Yu

On: September 28th, 2010

A long-awaited new version of the 3d game creation tool Unity was just released. Unity 3 has a lot of new features, including Android support, a unified editor for all platforms, source-level debugging, and many other improvements to its editor, graphics engine, and assets. Check out the full list of changes here.

The regular version of Unity is free, with the Pro version going for $1500.

Sculptris v1.0

By: Derek Yu

On: May 22nd, 2010

DrPetter has released version 1.0 of Sculptris, his free 3d modelling tool! This release lets you to paint color, textures, and bump maps right onto the model. Time to play!

ToME 4 and T-Engine4 (Beta)

By: Derek Yu

On: May 15th, 2010

Tales of Middle-Earth, a roguelike more commonly known as ToME, has come out of its hobbit’s hole after a multiple-year hiatus. What’s really exciting about ToME 4’s release is that it comes with T-Engine4, an open-source, Lua-based roguelike engine. In fact, ToME 4 is simply included as a module for the engine. According to DarkGod, the game’s creator:

Among its features, T-Engine4 has a single, unified user interface using OpenGL on all platforms, keyboard and mouse support, generic save and load using serialization, and support for both a graphical (tile-based) mode and traditional ASCII (potentially at the same time). Developers interested in creating their own roguelike should check this engine out. See DarkGod’s original announcement for more information.

TIGdb: Entry for Tales of Middle-Earth

(Source: Slash, via Temple of the Roguelike)

Ogmo Editor

By: Derek Yu

On: April 12th, 2010

Matt Thorson (Jumper, RunMan: Race Around the World) has released a general-purpose 2D tile editor called Ogmo Editor. It’s an Adobe® AIRâ„¢ application that works in Windows, OSX, and Unix, and exports tilemaps as an XML file or as a PNG. There’s a tutorial available to help you get started. Ogmo Editor is donationware.

Last year, Matt also released Grandma, a free platform engine for Game Maker that’s based on his Jumper 3 code. I’ll definitely be checking that one out at some point. Thanks, man!

FlashPunk

By: Derek Yu

On: January 10th, 2010

ChevyRay has created a new 2d Flash game library called FlashPunk (v0.73).

The library is released as an alternative to Adam Saltsman’s Flixel framework, which is also geared towards 2d, sprite-based Flash games. You can read a list of differences between the two libraries here, in ChevyRay’s announcement thread.

The video above depicts a game that ChevyRay is creating using his engine, called Fight! Mechanical Shooting Device. The graphics are by Pietepiet. Jumper creator and RunMan: Race Around the World co-creator Matt Thorson has also announced that Jumper 4 will be developed in FlashPunk.

Sculptris Alpha

By: Derek Yu

On: December 20th, 2009

DrPetter, the talented developer behind Deflectorpool and Sfxr, just released an alpha for a new tool, called Sculptris. Sculptris lets you make 3d models quickly and intuitively as shown in the above video. You can export your creations as OBJ files or import OBJ files to use as a base for editing.

It’s really fun to play with. I made this ugly head after messing around for a bit.

This is an alpha, so the good Doctor recommends saving frequently, and reporting any bugs (or general inquiries) to him at the Sculptris forums. According to the readme, the final version is due in early 2010.

Natural Selection 2 – Spark Editor

By: Derek Yu

On: December 2nd, 2009

Though the original intended release date (Fall 2009) has come and gone, Unknown Worlds is still hard at work on the sequel to their ground-breaking FPS Natural Selection. Last week they released a pre-alpha which contains a work-in-progress version of the Spark level editor as well as a good deal of the game’s environmental art. UW is comparing Spark Editor to Google’s SketchUp, and indeed, it looks quite intuitive, if the video tutorials are any indication.

Players who pre-order NS2 will get access to the pre-alpha as well as any other pre-release goodies. You’ll also be supporting a small team of five people in their quest to make a great game, so that’s nice!

Also: pictured above is one of the first in-game screenshots from NS2, depicting a skulk’s eye (skulk’s mouth?) view of a vent and another skulk. For those of you not familiar with Natural Selection, the game pits two very different teams, human and alien, against each other, and combines the first-person shooter and real-time strategy genres. For another screenshot and some more information about the game’s ongoing development, check out this post.

Overgrowth Tools Video

By: Derek Yu

On: November 14th, 2009

Be forewarned, listening to John Graham’s voice has been known to cause wombs to spontaneously fill up with babies. Wolfire’s Overgrowth is a physics-based ninja rabbit fighting game that’s currently in development.

Unity Indie: Now Free

By: Paul Eres

On: October 28th, 2009

Unity is a middle-range game engine (cheaper than the million-dollar ones but more expensive than things like Game Maker) which has been used for indie games like Dock’s Tumbledrop, Derek Yu’s Diabolika for iPhone, Tale of Tales’ Fatale, and many more.

Unity Indie, previously around $200, has been renamed to just “Unity” and is now free. You can read more information on the whys on Gamasutra. Apparently Xbox 360 support is also in the works. To quote David Helgason from the Gamasutra interview:

“The thinking was that Unity Indie isn’t generating a significant portion of our revenue, and we’ve always had this vision of democratizing our tools. We have over 13,000 customers using our product, so we figured, let’s take Indie and just give it to everyone. Whether that becomes a cash flow positive or a cash flow negative – and some people will upgrade – is not really important. What’s important is to get this in the hands of as many people as possible.”

flixel

By: Derek Yu

On: June 5th, 2009

Adam “Atomic” Saltsman’s Flash game API flixel is out. It’s a vastly-improved version of the engine he used to create his popular web games Gravity Hook and FATHOM.

Features:

– High performance 2d Flash rendering
– Lots of retro game physics and effects built-in
– Easy to learn, uses no Flash libraries or Flash classes
– Object-oriented Actionscript 3
– Includes the source code for a complete game
– Forums to help collect tutorials and whatnot

And the online documentation is generated dynamically by Ivan “toastie” Safrin’s Nanodoc system.

Ladies and gentlemen, the world just became a better place to make games exist in.