Aequitas and I were interviewed by local youth show Frenzy just after rAge, when we were still waiting for the DreamBuildPlay results. Of course we name-dropped Game.Dev! Hopefully some of you reading this right now are here after a quick Google...
Just one caveat there: Making games isn't too hard, all you need to do is put in a bit of effort to get started and hopefully you'll find it as rewarding as we do. Your first step would be to register on our forums and start asking questions and talking about your game ideas. We can help you take those from raw idea to playable reality.
BTW: SpaceHack made it into the DBP top 20 games, so while we didn't end up bringing that $40K home, we're still happy with what we achieved. Expect the game to hit Community Games and bring more awareness to the SA game development scene sometime next year, provided all goes well with our quest for funding!
Dev.Mag Issue 27
Thursday, 20 November 2008
The lastest Dev.Mag issue focuses on the community's two DreamBuildPlay entries: SpaceHack and Ultimate Quest. Reviews of Multiwinia, World of Goo and Roach Toaster to go with the follow up to last month's Quadtree article and the usual extra content.
In the pre-rAge madness that included crunch time on our DreamBuildPlay entries (more info on that later) site updates slipped below the radar. Time to fix that, big list style:
Competition 20 Results The results thread gives mini-reviews of all the games entered - Limiting text in a game is definitely an interesting design constraint and one well worth experimenting with: The level of interest from non-developers around this concept has been very high, especially in South Africa with our localisation nightmare 11 official languages.
First place: =D - Nandrew
Sometimes what Nandrew is capable of doesn't feel even the slightest bit fair. Stick a new coat of graphics on this and start selling it. Pronto!
Second place: * - Kensei
With some more attention to puzzle design and some amusing effects thrown in, this is a keeper.
Third place: Silence - Thaumaturge
Very tough decision. If this had just a little bit more play time (and if you can open the locked PC-door then I need to replay it, hopefully with the right sound DLL) it would have been second. It came down to a battle of endings.
Competition 21: Fix Mobile Gaming!
We've all played games on our phones. Most of us have even bought a mobile game and invariably been disappointed. It usually feels like cellphone games are either cookie-cutter copy-paste licensed jobs or they're made by people who apparently don't play games at all... So, why not turn those "I could do better than this" thoughts into action?
Your challenge is to build a game (or games, seeing as we have more than a month this time) that you would enjoy on a phone. Use the phone's strengths: Quick play sessions, always connected and portability whilst being mindful of its shortcomings: Pushing multiple buttons at the same time is difficult, frame rates aren't super fast (set your room speed to 12 or 15 fps in GM) and remember that you only have a small screen to work with.
Gameplay mechanics are king, not graphics. What would you like to play on the move? A detailed management game? A dating simulation? Think you have a way to make an action game that works despite the controls? Want mobile strategy done right? Have a killer idea for a turn-based online game on your phone? Go for it!
Each year the Dev.Mag crew puts out a special issue to co-incide with rAge, South Africa's largest gaming event.
This year's issue covers: Features
- Introversion Interview
- Luma interview part 2 Reviews
- Lost Garden
- Glyph Hunter Development
- Quad Trees
- Blender Rigid Body Physics
And more!
Dev.MagIssue 25 is out, containing:
- A Multiwinia Preview
- The first part of an interview with local studio Luma on their game, Blur
- More Google App Engine goodness
- A Blender fluid dynamics tutorial
As well as a bevy of other content!
The lastest 
Each year the 