| The hub for the promotion and advancement of african game development in South Africa and Africa. | |  |
| | Minor changes to SAGD Forums login | Submit News! | | Posted by: Korax at 12:08:20 PM | Friday, January 22, 2010 |
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There have been a few minor changes implemented regarding the way users login on our new forums.
If you have previously (a week or back) logged-in to the forums and saved a cookie (remember me) you might notice as if the forums are constantly kicking your userid off.
To correct this, delete the board cookies and local cookies regarding SAGD. Once done everything will function normally.
The change involved changing the forum login cookie to be domain-wide rather than only visible for the forums. This is one of the features we are working on to enable the complete system to share logins across the entire system, be it the forums or frontend. With the changeover to the new forums, there has been some disruption of the user accounts.
To log into your user account:
Firstly, go here and fill in your username, not your email address as you have done in the past, along with your password.
A new password will be sent to your email address.
You can now login with your username and password on both the forums and the SAGD front-page (a single/global login is in the works) with this temporary password.
To change your temporary password:
Log into the forums and click the User Control Panel link on the top menu bar, then click the Profile tab, then the Edit Account Settings option on the left bar.
Fill out your old and new passwords and click Submit.
If you have further troubles, dont hesitate to send the SAGD admin an email through the Contact Us page.
| | Welcome to the all new SAGD forums! | Submit News! | | Posted by: Korax at 02:10:02 PM | Thursday, January 07, 2010 |
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This upgrade has been long overdue.
Now that the all new SAGD forums is online, we can start expanding our game development goals.
The next phase in development at the moment will take care of all services that isn't available currently, and its planned to be implemented in the coming few months. If anyone come across any bugs in the system, don't hesitate to let us know since, like we all know, new systems almost always have teething problems.
The migration to the new phpBB3 (v3.0.6) forum software is a paradigm shift for the SAGD administration as its the first time in SAGD's history that a 3rd party forum technology is fully implemented that is not based upon any Microsoft technology. The data migration itself was also marked by a data-cleanup and merger sub-project. As you'll probably notice this new forum contains all the forum posts including participating users pre-AND-post the old SAGDF custom forums. With this change it also brings SAGD's forum technology to a point of ACTUALLY having a completely functional forum with all the features a typical forum should have!
We hope you enjoy the new forum system and the new possibilities and opportunities it will present in time to come.
See you in the forums!  | | Luma Arcade Releases iPhone Game Called Flipt! | | Posted by: Oliver at 09:07:33 PM | Thursday, December 03, 2009 |
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Hey peeps, long time no post!
Why am I breaking my involuntary, inadvertent code of silence? To let everybody know that Luma Arcade’s new iPhone game, Flipt, releases today on the iTunes App Store of course!
Read all about it over here. | | Excentrax Games Launches! | | Posted by: Korax at 11:24:44 AM | Tuesday, November 10, 2009 |
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After a few false starts for our game development company over the years we are finally ready to officially launch! It has been a long and hard battle to get the dream this far.
In the past we tried getting into game development in various ways from creating virtual teams working for the fun of it to attempting to secure Venture Capital. None of our attempts were successful... a state of depression took control and for a number of years completely cutting myself off from the gamedev scene. During mid-2006 I returned and took over "South African Game Development", better known as "SAGameDev" or "SAGD". The idea was to use it as a publication platform for our coming gamedev company, as well as use it to promote game development in Africa.
So what changed?
We started an Information Technology company which took an aweful lot of time to get profitable, especially in times like these. We are now in a position to privately fund our game development company! This is slightly more than a decade old dream finally (and slowly) turning into reality. November 2009 is the month we are officially launching, and setting out to build our online presence and technologies.
As a nostalgic token we decided to use the launch month to let our very first Excentrax website, which is slightly more than a decade old, fly on the official domain until we launch our new website. As you can see, its a very old and self-made initial logo of the at-the-time make-believe game development company. Click on the logo and browse around this ancient bastion of the dream that IS and became Excentrax Games.
We are currently evaluating a few game engines that will be used during product development. Five engines we are currently busy evaluating is TrueVision3D, Visual3D.NET, Torque3D, Unreal Engine and Unity. It may end up being a battle between Unreal Engine and Torque3D. Reaching a final decision regarding which engine to use will likely happen very early December 2009 with product development kicking into gear early January 2010. In the meanwhile we will be working hard establishing proper online presence with a basic company website which is currently in the works. Positions within Excentrax Games will be announced on the Excentrax Games website as from January 2010.
Jacques Krige
Technical Director - Excentrax Games | | Epic releases free version of Unreal Engine | | Posted by: FyreWolfe at 03:47:47 PM | Thursday, November 05, 2009 |
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Just a week after Unity announced its engine was now available for free to indie users Epic Games has revealed a free version of its popular Unreal Engine technology.
Called the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), it is a free edition of UE3 that allows community, modder and indie users more access to the engine's features and is available for all.
Epic said game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations plus digital filmmakers can all take advantage of the UDK for non-commercial use.
The UDK can be downloaded at http://www.udk.com, which also offers detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms and support resources | | Dedicated Server Woes, Excellent Interviews, Games And More! | | Posted by: Oliver at 06:01:28 PM | Wednesday, October 28, 2009 |
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The war of words continues surrounding Infinity Ward's decision not to use dedicated servers for their upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, resulting in other developers, such as DICE and Splash Damage, putting their hands up, and committing to the use of dedicated servers for their games.
Splash Damage continues to make news after studio head Paul Wedgwood claims that developing triple-A games for the PC alone is no longer possible, as developers need to create multiplatform games to support the creation of such experiences.
If you're in the mood, you can read two excellent developer interviews, one of which involves Jeremiah Slaczka, lead designer on the ambitious DS title Scribblenauts, to discuss the game, as well as an interview with a developer at French studio Golgoth, the team who is currently hard at work giving the classic ape-based platform adventure title, Toki, an Xbox LIVE Arcade-style makeover.
Otherwise:
- You can read a short-ish interview with Blizzard's Dustin Browder who discusses the design behind StarCraft II
- Growth in the UK game development industry is under threat due to government's lack of support
- Premiere Unity game developers, Flashbang Studios, are calling for game submissions from other Unity developers to add to their Blurst online game site
- You can read another great interview with Runic Games' Max Schaefer concerning their upcoming Diablo-esque title, Tochlight
- Browse through some indie game trends and sales slides to absorb some valuable information
- And take a load off while playing a whole bunch of great Unity games, all of which are entries to a Unity game creation competition at Muse Games
- This just in: Unity Technologies is dropping the $200 price point for their Unity Indie development license, and will now be offering this license for free to indie and hobbyist game developers. | | World of Goo Sales Experiment | | Posted by: Oliver at 05:46:41 PM | Wednesday, October 21, 2009 |
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Indie developer 2D Boy recently tried a sales experiment with their wonderful game, World of Goo, running concurrently with the game's birthday celebrations.
For one week only, 2D Boy offered World of Goo as a 'pay-what-you-want' download, allowing would-be players the chance to get the game for anything from $0.01 and above. This has had some nice side effects, such as an increase in sales on Steam, and 2D Boy has decided to extend the offer until this Sunday, October 25th! Go get it if you haven't already!
Elsewhere:
- You can read a neat interview with the developers of indie title The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
- NPD data reveals Aion as the best selling PC game in the US during September
- An interesting overview of Tale of Tales' latest title, Fatale, has been posted up on IndieGames.com
- Australian developer Transmission Games shuts down
- Indie developer MDickie is giving away some of his older freeware games (some rough gems in there)
- Watch a gameplay trailer for Lylian, which promises to be an extremely interesting adventure platform game
- And if you have time, Mike Fahey of Kotaku has put up an excellent editorial dealing with "The Costs of [His] Gaming Addiction,' including a follow-up response to the readers. | | Games, Games, Games! | | Posted by: Oliver at 08:08:07 PM | Monday, October 19, 2009 |
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Have you been keeping up-to-date with the new indie releases? No? Well, let's get you started!
First up, you need to head on over to Llamasoft, and check out a re-imagined version of Jeff Minter's awesome Gridrunner++, called Gridrunner Revolution. Download the demo and buy as the mood takes you.
Then, you also need to have a look at Machinarium, an awesome, stunning adventure game by Amanita Design. Play the demo online, and then buy as the mood takes you.
Third, if you're a Thief fan, or a Doom III fan... or a Thief *and* Doom III fan, you should have a look at (and perhaps even download) a newly released total conversion by the name of The Dark Mod. While you're at it (because it's kind of related), read how Gearbox's Randy Pitchford thinks id Software is 'dumb.'
If you're still reading, you should follow up all of the above with a look at Tim W.'s (from IndieGames.com) round-up of the best indie games to release last week. There be some nuggets.
Then, you need to read some information that you may or may not deem as important:
- Layoffs hit John Romero's MMOG startup company, Slipgate Ironworks
- Infinity Ward's IWNet may (Read: Will) have serious repercussions on the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Adobe plans to allow Flash applications to make the jump to the iPhone through CS5
- Read an interesting article on how to make better games through iteration
- Absorb a concise article about the latest version of Torque3D, and what new features the team at GarageGames massaged into the engine
- And watch how Quake 2 was used to study the brains of mice
Oh, PS: You should definitely have a look at an amazingly fun platformer, RunMan, which you can choose to support with a donation to the developers... as the mood takes you... | | Developing Games on the Android Platform | | Posted by: Nitrogen at 02:29:02 PM | Wednesday, October 14, 2009 |
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Gamasutra is running an article about the state of game development on Android. The author explains some of the strengths and weaknesses of the platform, and makes comparisons to development on the iPhone. Quoting:
"While iPhone apps are written in Objective C, the Android SDK uses relatively more programmer-friendly Java. The iPhone store charges developers $99 a year to distribute their apps, while Android has a one-time $25 fee for developers. And the review process for iPhone apps grows increasingly lengthy — sometimes weeks or more — and it's somewhat arcane. Android apps go live as soon as the developer hits the publish button. Google handles the review process post-hoc, and is much more lax in terms of content. ... For now, if a developer decides to implement a game exclusively for a particular smartphone platform, and the choice is between the iPhone and Android, the tradeoff is between trying to get noticed in an incredibly crowded and competitive market where the potential payoff is huge for those at the top, or entering a market with low barriers, little competition, currently low returns, but the possibility of potential growth." |
