News Archive

Finally, a G-Force review of our game. 7.4 out of 10. YES! Craig Harris wrote: "...a favorite is the vacuum cleaner, which can be used to suck up Darwin and then used to catapult him over obstacles like a wall of lasers that prevent access to the next part of the game.". LOL! This teeny tiny element (sucking Darwin in and catapulting him through levels) really was a friggin' hassle!

Our game's not really out yet but gameplay videos of the first couple of levels are already available on YouTube (see video of Mission 2.4 below). More videos of the PSP version of the game can be found here. Unfortunately no one can be told how good the game is, you have to BUY and PLAY it for yourself!

Well, long time no updates. It was quite a busy year so far. I spent most of the past year working on enemy behavior and gameplay elements for Disney's video game G-Force for the platforms Playstation Portable and What-the-heck-happened-to-my-floating-point-numbers-Nintendo DS. The development team was terrific and I had an awesome time in our small room at keen games which always smelled of Pizza, Thai food or something in-between. Now all the hardcore coding and exhausting crunching is over and the game is about to hit the stores. Yaaay!

I've added a new page to the codemonsters' Developer Portal called OpenGL Resources where I accumulated a bunch of useful links to miscellaneous OpenGL sites which contain resources like tutorials, sample codes, demos and so on. If you feel like your own or favorite OpenGL page is missing, please drop me a short message. ;)

Caligari's feature-rich modeling, animation, and rendering package trueSpace 7.6 has been released and is now available free of charge for the public. Along with full manuals and video tutorials (and yummy chocolate cookies, I hope!).

R* + GT4 + .CN + W4R + NDS

"Enlighten is the only genuine real-time radiosity lighting product for games. It allows freedom to create dramatic and interactive worlds with fully dynamic lighting. Enlighten is a step change in visual and atmospheric quality for high-end titles. It transforms how artists interact with light when designing games, boosting creativity and providing substantial productivity gains and cost savings. Enlighten will drive a new generation of games that truly rival film for their control of mood and atmosphere."

"Donya Simplygon and XPRSS are two different technologies both intended for optimization of general 3D data. Simplygon is a technology for polygon mesh optimization and mesh reduction / decimation, where the optimization partly retains structure of the base mesh and base texture. Simplygon can be used in GUI mode by graphics artist or be integrated directly into SW applications for automatic real–time or off-line optimization. XPRSS is a technology for very lossy or extreme simplification of 3D data. The main purpose of XPRSS is automatic creation of stand–in objects / LODs from very large (out of core) and complex 3D models, where complete Re–meshing and Re–texturing is required."

Toribash is an innovative, turn-based fighting game where YOU design the moves. And it's absolutely FREE for MAC and PC! Great stuff and lots of fun!

Check this out: Phun, the 2D physics sandbox, which is a Master of Science Thesis by computing science student Emil Ernerfeldt. REALLY nice!

YES! It's finally here: GTA IV! Remains the question: What would Chuck Norris do? Seriously, he would immediately stop strangling his bad-ass opponent (who is doomed to death anyway) and BUY this one!

We've been to The Editors yesterday and it was just friggin' awesome! Their support, the Mobius Band, was great, too, and both bands just rocked the house. Only Darmstadt's non-dancing-non-jumping mutanoids sucked. Big times. But what the hell! Happy Easter to everyone! :)

Our flatmate Elly hurt her right hind leg a few days ago. Or her right hind knee to be exact. Cruciate knee ligament rupture. Ouch! So she got surgery today. According to her permanent growling noises and the look on her cute hairy face she's REALLY suffering. Poor Elly!

A few days ago I came across this book and ordered it instantly: Game Physics Engine Development by Ian Millington. It's a great introduction to game physics and it really whets my appetite to implement some ideas I'm thinking about for a few weeks now. So if you want to learn more about game physics, mathematics, and collision detection, then this book might be well suited for you.

 

Elly, our new flatmate, adapts well and discovers the comfortable things in life. Like the couch. When we are not watching she's taking over the pillowy place which seems like a fresh soft breeze after sleeping on Thai-concrete and beneath mouldy and snake-infested patios for years. Elly says: "BEST. NAP. EVAR! "

  

I've just returned from Bangkok where I picked up stray dog Elly from the Suvarnabhumi Airport. Elly is originally from Chaweng, Ko Samui, where she was our beach dog last summer, so we decided to bring her to Grassy Green Germany. Many special thanks go out to The Dog Rescue Center Samui who did a great job! The whole mission wouldn't have been possible without them!

[Elly, right out of the plane from Ko Samui, still slightly narcotized]

Hey there! Finally, here it is, the codemonsters' new face. Well, most of the content is old but the rest is all new and surprisingly shiny - thanks to PHP and a bunch of ordinary ASCII files which act as a database. Stay tuned and be nice to the duck!

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