I’ve been conducting a middleware library survey for any game developers who are currently using middleware in their projects. As with the previous game engine surveys, this one is also largely focused on the core games audience, so the middleware discussed in the survey tends to focus on middleware for those types of titles. (Please visit this site for a great list of middleware libraries available!)
The survey has been kept deliberately short (5-10 minutes) in order to maintain sanity levels – hopefully it will provide useful information without driving survey takers crazy.
If you’re interested in taking the survey, we’d love to hear from you. Please take the survey here. Thanks for your interest!
N4G (News4Gamers) has a piece up linking to a youtube video comparing CryEngine3 for X360 and PS3 to CryEngine2 for PC. I’ll embed the video here as well.
It’s a nice video but I’m trying to figure out why someone would bother doing a comparison like this when CryEngine3 is still a fair distance from being released…? Apparently there have been a lot of arguments about the visual fidelity comparison on various websites. Well, you can check it out for yourself. I personally don’t think anyone should be particularly surprised if a non-final version of a piece of software designed for multiple hardware platforms doesn’t look quite as good as an optimized release for a single platform.
A few months ago I did a survey on game engine middleware, posting the results up to gamasutra, Game Developer magazine, and this blog. Now I’m digging a bit more into component middleware libraries. In trolling around the net, I came across this fantastic site, gamemiddleware.org. It’s just a great list of the engines, libraries, tools, etc that the site organizers are aware of, which is exceedingly handy! The only question now is: dang, which of these as a game developer do I really need to look at seriously?
A great site for discussion of tools and middleware is “The Toolsmiths“, the IGDA Tools Blog. The posts on the site are frequently thought-provoking and focus around issues in tools development. Dan Goodman, founder of Robotic Arm Software, recently conducted a tools-related survey and is currently collating the results. I’m really looking forward to his results!
I’m currently in the process of conducting a middleware library survey that is similar to the engine survey. I hope it will shed some light on what we’re all looking for in middleware libraries, giving useful information to both the technology creators and the technology users. Results will be published in Game Developer magazine.
Seems like a lot of surveys! But surveys are sure a useful way to gather a lot of great information in one shot.
I’ve been keeping a close eye on O3D, a project at Google that seems well-targeted for game development (and quite a few other things). Unfortunately, I blew registering for the Google I/O conference in time, so missed the handful of 3D- and game-related talks they had there. However, I found a few interesting O3D-related videos in the GoogleDevelopers channel on YouTube.
Gregg Tavares talking about the talk he will give (gave) at the conference, “Adding Interactive 3D Content to your Site”:
Some game art done by Crazy Pixel for a Tower Defense-style game, running in O3D:
I’ve been slowly updating the site, replacing the original MovableType installation from 2004 and updating it with the latest version of WordPress. I apologize for the mess!
