Category: Common

I recently created a page on Facebook, where all new blog posts will be published too. And I am planning to do something interesting in spring.

This private weblog migrated to the sub-domain Lightrocker.Lightrock.biz, so our game development label “Lightrock Entertainment” gets the top addresses www.Lightrock.biz and www.Lightrock.de .

For the upcoming release of Media Seasons “Driving Simulator” the title Lightrock Entertainment is being reactivated as a consumer label for entertainment software.

This also means that this weblog is being moved to a sub-path of www.lightrock.biz. Stay tuned…

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…

The time has nearly come… again. In one week our city becomes the center of computer gaming.

It starts with a get-together of famous and common game developers at the “GCDC” from Monday, 20th to Wednesday, 22nd. Well-known speakers are Bob Bates, Julian Eggebrecht (Factor 5), Peter Molyneux (Lionhead Studios), Mark Rein (Epic Games) and Bruce Shelley (Ensemble Studios/Microsoft Game Studios) this year.
At Wednesday the exhibition “Games Convention” opens with a Trade Visitor and Media Day for professional attendees. From Thursday, 23rd to Sunday, 26th also consumers are coming to visit edutainment, video and PC games, which will be published in the next months and year. The trade fair expects over 200,000 private visitors this year.

“Media Seasons” is represented as part of the new “GamesNetwork.LE” at the “Games SupportNet Mitteldeutschland” booth in the Business Center. A short trailer from us will be running within the “Games SupportNet” showreel.
Personally we will have meetings with publishers and service providers, catch up on new games and enjoy the entertainment.

I use the label “Lightrock Entertainment” to publish the products, for which I am solely responsible. Up to now it was only one commercial game: “Space In Motion: FutureTrade” (2000 – Germany, Austria and Switzerland).

Someday I had to register for a forum – maybe it was on gamedev.net – and I could the idea to to create a personal name from my label to be connected with it. That way the title “Lightrocker” was born and is being used for a lot of accounts. And I had never the problem that the name was already assigned.

The language of this weblog has not been an easy decision for me. I thought about English, German or a bilingual version.
The last option I discarded soon because it would take to much of my spare time. So I could make a German blog because I am living and working in Germany and a lot of information, which will be communicated here, is related to that fact. But I am developing software for the international market and for this reason there will be many topics, which are attractive to Non-German speaking people, too.
I do not think that a lot of visitors here will come from USA or Great Britain but I could image that there are people from Eastern Europe, who have got concerns in Germany for example. Most of them would not be able to read my weblog, if it would be presented in German. So I chose the international standard language.

You can tell me if it was the right decision. And when you do I would be pleased to also know the country and city you are watching from. Thanks!