A HUGE Congrats to all the winning teams!!!!!!!

Zoltar's Return was by c_lilian:
http://www.blackmyst.com/~lchamont/

It was announced at JavaOne, although I haven't seen anything posted. I have a friend there who confirmed Super Elvis (nice work, Cas!),  but nothing was said about other winners yet.

We're using multiarb for Ground FX and it works fine on an ATI card.

Sweet, thanks for the screen shots

I haven't even touched the game since submitting it.  I really needed to get away from it for a day or two.


p.s. swpalmer, you knew once you got to the end of the track, you were supposed to turn around and go the other way, right?

Shadows work fine on ATI 9600's and 9800 's (the development machine has a 9800 in it.  They don't work well on some older Geforce and ATI cards.

I temporily took the public version of the file down as there were a few things we wanted to get fixed on it.  I'll get a new version up asap.

Thanks!  The physics do need a lot of re-working and we want to add a lot to game play (especially multi-player).  Now that the contest is over, we need to step back and take a look at where we are vs where we want to go. Your comments are pretty much right on.

Right now, it is only using them for shadows.

heh, yeah.  Once I get some sleep I can clean stuff up a little bit.  Part of the reason I posted here was because this was an 11th hour compile and I was having problems getting it uploaded.  We should have a web page up later this week. Fortunately, I did hear for AThomas and he did get the project.

I do plan on getting you a new diary entry as soon as I get caught up.

http://www.tomsmallwood.net/groundfx/GroundFX0001.png
http://www.tomsmallwood.net/groundfx/GroundFX0002.png

This is untested on a Mac or Linux (we haven't even taken those into consideration yet), and I wouldn't recomend less then a GeForce 3.

well, here is my contest entry.

Feel free to leave any feedback other then the fact that it should use webstart (yes, that means you, Blahblahblah! )


Requirements/install instructions:

You need to install the CG Compiler/runtime from NVidia for the shaders:
www.nvidia.com/object/cg_toolkit.html
 Choose the appropriate CG Compiler for your operating system

Make sure you are running the latest drivers for you video card

Install java from www.java.com (click on get it now in the top right corner).

Extract the zip file and execute the GroundFX.bat file.

http://www.tomsmallwood.net/groundfx/groundfx.zip

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to get very far through your game yet. I blame my old, slow reflexes for that. While I never really cared for Smash TV, I did like Robotron at the arcade back in the early 80s, so maybe there is hope for it .  After we get GroundFX ready for the contest, I'll give a more detailed run-through. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it (I still haven't beaten the first room ).  So far, it looks pretty good.

-Bugbear (formerly known as Magi)

p.s. Let me know when you get the tactical game done!

Have you looked at http://grexengine.com/sections/externalgames/ ?
There is a pretty good introduciton to NIO with some code examples.

um, Gak!!!! I was able to modify one of your files...I put an extra exclamation mark at the end of it (sorry about that, didn't really think it would work...I did put it back the way it was).  This really needs to be fixed.

err, I can see everything in there....

poker and war-aoi, with files in them (a single text file for each game, which opens just fine).

Be sure to check out this link for some great video tutorials (I haven't seen them, but the guy that did them does great work):

http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/tutorial/video.asp

The link is in the top right corner of their web page, the big "Game Space Light" button.

It is supposed to be a full featured editor, although you can only do limited size pollys with it (around 600 per model if I recall corectlly). It also has limited export options, but does include .X (which I'm not familiar with).

doh! Under Articles, the name of the game is Ground FX Racing.

Things are going ok, although the deadline is coming up all too fast.

You can see my complete update at http://grexengine.com/sections/externalgames/  (with a couple of early screen shots).

Thanks for getting that posted so quick, Blah^3!

This game is impossible on a 3000+ AMD (way, way, way too fast).  My video card is a geForce 3.

When I start the level, it looks like an explosion of white lights surrounded by red and I was dead in about 1 second.

I stand corrected, even though I find it hard to believe they would think it was a good idea to add that to the drivers.

That's too funny. Did anyone think to look at the release date?  I'll save you the time:

April 1, 2004

hmmm

Things are going well on our racing game. We are right on schedule (which is easy as I made the schedule yesterday ) and progressing nicely.

The bulk of the remaining work is content (tracks, textures and vehicles), some physics tweaking and lots of odds and ends.

Here is an interesting read I found off of http://www.slashdot.org. The postmortem for an indie developer:

http://www.bookofhook.com/Article/GameDevelopment/APyrogonPostmortem.html

and here is a different take on the same thing by Tom Warfield:
http://www.asharewarelife.com/2004_04_18_archive.html#108276107361227120

I'd be happy to contribute some 3d models to this project, although my texturing skills aren't great.

Here are a few samples of my low poly models: http://www.tomsmallwood.net/maya/samples/

Milkshape supports A LOT of different file formats, especially focused on games: http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/

Another good one is http://www.blender3d.org/

Thanks for the insight. I really appreciate it.

I'm not very familiar with the GameSpy SDK prize for this contest. I found this link (http://www.gamespy.net/toolkits.asp), although it doesn't say a whole lot. I was wondering if anyone is familiar with it and had any thoughts as to its usefulness.

With a prize valued at $45,000, the taxes (around $13,500 here in the US) make it a little hard to justify trying to win, especially if the game is not internet enabled. While publicity from winning the contest would help generate sales, I'm not sure it would compensate for this amount. My team is currently working on its first game, although we have a lot of modding experience. We have no idea how much money might be generated by an indie game, and we are just starting to learn about financial side of things.

I guess what I'm getting at is, if (and that is a big IF) we were to actually win the contest, would it be worth it? Lets assume that A) the game did have internet support, making the SDK useful, and B) $13,500 for taxes would be challenging to raise.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.