Today I spent most of my time working with Blender. The first order of the day was to learn all about lighting. Blender has a dizzying amount of options for this, but I'm not even sure I'll need any of it so I didn't spend a lot of time here. UNITY has its own lighting system, and I'm not sure to what extent I'll be able to use lights I make in Blender anyway, but I figured the knowledge would be transferable in a general sense. In any case, it is fascinating (and addictive) to just experiment with all the lighting options and see how they affect shading and such. You can really get some nice shading effects with different kinds of lighting. Here's just an example:
Cube with Lights
The next chapter was on Character Animation, and the author pointed out two different people-making tools you can use. Both were free in terms of cost: Make Human and Daz Studio. While you can try to make humans from scratch, these tools essentially give you an interface similar to those seen in games like Skyrim where you can adjust and tweak your face, nose, etc. The exciting part is that you can export your creations into Blender. I may know next to nothing about modeling and animation, but even I can use these interfaces and my combat mode looks a helluva lot more feasible.

Spent most of today working my way through the Blender book and hitting some of my Unity books. I'm really starting to enjoy working with Blender; the book has been fantastic, and although I still feel like I'm muddling my way through, I already feel less like a drunk driver and more like an eager 16-year working on his learner's permit. I'm constantly seeing things in the book and realizing I've been doing so much stuff the HARD way, but if you put the book down for a minute you've already forgotten the shortcuts and have to dig through it again. Still, once you realize there's an easy way to do something, at least you know it's there for the digging up.

One thing I didn't work with before was the modifiers you can apply to objects. Much like filters with Photoshop or GIMP, you can do a lot of nice art just by applying these tools (no actual artistic talent required).
Three Cubes: Applying some simple modifiers makes each one look different.
There's also techniques to quickly create four table legs and such. It's not quite as easy as just copying and pasting, but a helluva lot easier than trying to create four different ones and move them into place by hand. That's a nightmare.

As far as Unity goes, I spent most of my time there reading about the scripting system. There's three options: Javascript, C#, and Boo. From what I hear, nobody uses Boo, noobs use Javascript, and anybody worth his salt uses C#. However, I keep encountering conflicting advice. Javascript seems to be able to handle almost any scripting need you might have, some say, so C# isn't needed. I can't seem to get a definite answer on whether, for all intents and purposes, Javascript is fine, or if you really do get a huge performance increase of some sort by working with C#. One strong thing in favor of Javascript is that it's the language of all the books and tutorials I've seen so far, and I've heard it's the norm for anyone who isn't a programmer by trade.

Part II of a multiple part series of videos in which I take a look at the open source Pandora handheld that has been in the making for quite some time. In this second part I take a look at N64 gameplay and MSX-gameplay. Please be sure to watch the HD version of this video! Watching it low-res/SD will take away much of the shine this system has.

Running on Linux sporting a specialized 3D GPU and a powerful ARM CPU this is the ultimate handheld gaming device in my opinion especially if you like retrogaming or open source handheld gaming without the need to hack/patch or crack into a commercially available system voiding support and warranty.

Part I of a multiple part series of videos in which I take a look at the open source Pandora handheld that has been in the making for quite some time. Please be sure to watch the HD version of this video! Watching it low-res/SD will take away much of the shine this system has.

Running on Linux sporting a specialized 3D GPU and a powerful ARM CPU this is the ultimate handheld gaming device in my opinion especially if you like retrogaming or open source handheld gaming without the need to hack/patch or crack into a commercially available system voiding support and warranty.

This system is very capable of emulation and emulating 32 and 64 bit consoles is possible and playable on this system.

Click here to read more.

Gamasutra has an article up concerning the top 5 major industry trends they see as we round out 2010. You could probably list most of them yourself: Facebook gaming, 3D, cloud gaming, digital distribution, and motion controls. I thought I would give my own thoughts on each below; feel free to add your own.

There's a viral video going around featuring some clever 3D effects on classic paintings. It's pretty funny, and has me wondering about the potential of 3D a well as ideas for fun video effects.

John RomeroHere it is, folks, the audio from my 2-hour long interview with superstar developer John Romero. Although you can't hear my side, you won't have any problem following the conversation. The bulk of the conversation concerns Romero's personal history from childhood through Daikatana. You'll hear about the development of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. Romero also discusses World of Warcraft, Star Trek, women in gaming, and plenty of other topics. Enjoy!

Note: It's a 90 megabyte file, so you might want to right click above and save as. The videos are below for your convenience.

After watching Avatar in 3D, I've been thinking off and on about how this technology could apply to gaming. Would those 3D effects make a game more immersive, or just be another gimmick?

"Roll up, roll up, see the amazing Tyrannosaurus Rex, king of the dinosaurs, in his lair." Of all the things you might expect to find running on a ZX81 in 1981, a real time, first-person, 3D maze game would probably be somewhere near "impossible" on your list. Yet, that's exactly what Malcolm Evans was able to pull off--basically in his spare time, as little more than a diversion for himself. Nevertheless, Evans' tinkering became one of the most celebrated games for the ZX81 and a forerunner of the modern first-person game.