Month: August 2008

From Monday until Saturday I participated in the “GCDC” and the “Games Convention“.

The developer congress was very interesting and partially educational. For me the most entertainment lecture was the keynode by David Perry, who had integrated a lot of photos and useful statistics (Sony has lost more money on the Playstation 3 than they had earned with the Playstation 2 while its five year peak before), and the most valuable speech was “Driving DirectX in a parallel World” by Leigh Davies.

At Wednesday evening I went to see “Video Games Live“, which was the official opening concert for the “Games Convention” trade show this year. It was very entertaining but I had seen nearly all available recordings of former concerts on YouTube before, so that I already knew most of the show components. Unfortunately that led to a reduced amount of goosebumps.

From Thursday on I have been on the trade show and had a look on a lot of coming games: “LittleBigPlanet“, “Fallout 3“, “Mirror’s Edge“, “Far Cry 2“, “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed“, “Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3“, “Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood” and so on. And I had many meetings with different technology vendors to inform me about new ways for our development future.

Maybe it will be the last time the “Games Convention” will take place, definitively it will be the last time in its current shape… for now.

The German association of entertainment software industry leaders called “BIU” has decided to support the Cologne Trade Fair from next year on. The show is named “GAMESCom“, because Leipziger Messe GmbH is holding the rights for the name “Games Convention” and has keenly announced to continue to bring them into line. But without the industry leaders it will not be the same. And so it will depend on the success of the successor, if the BIU will come back to Leipzig. I doubt a clear failure, so this year will be the last for the established trade show.

In 2008 I am going to attend the “GCDC“, which is the developer conference right before the trade show. Keynode speakers are Michael Capps (Epic Games), Cevat Yerli (Crytek), David Perry (Acclaim Games) and Chris Taylor (Gas Powered Games).
Mainly I will visit programming and developing lectures like “Driving DirectX in a parallel World”, “COLLADA – An intermediate format for game developers” or “Practical use of Screen Space Ambient Occlusion”.
Unfortunately the conference is taking place from Monday, 18th until Wednesday, 20th, which is also the trade visitor day for the show. At that day you have the best chance to play all the future games because of the missing public visitors. So I have to try it between our business meetings from Thursday on: “Fallout 3“, “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed“, “Mirror’s Edge” and many more… I am coming.

After nearly one year without any new post this blog is being revived. The last months has been very stressful for me both job-related and personal.

We (Media Seasons) developed a new version of the TigerHeart engine including core, 3d graphics, GUI, scripting and runtime functionality. Beside the scripting part everything else has been built from scratch. And also a new TV analysis tool for soccer, which based on the recent TigerHeart engine, was evolving. Major improvements compared to the old one are support for animated scenes, HD output and drawing elements.

There is also an unannounced soccer project, which will soon result in the first product.

The third project is a consumer driving simulator, which should be published this Christmas season. And last but not least there is also a real game under way. It is a casual one, programmed using XNA, and based on a popular board game.

More information will come later…