EntBlog
Code, 3D, Games, Linux and much more...

GameLab 2008

Oviedo will hold the fourth edition of the GameLab conferences on July 10th - 11th. Undoubtedly the place to be if you want to meet lot of interesting people related to the Videogames industry. This event is growing bigger and bigger each time and is becoming a point of reference here in Spain.

Like the last year I will be giving a course on Advanced real-time 3D techniques the first day.

Hope to see you there!

Teaching at Oviedo - Noesis Engine

This weekend just finished the course I have been giving at the Oviedo University. The course is about programming graphic engines for videogames. In 30 hours / 6 days I tried to explain how to architect a solid engine for realtime purposes.

This is the first time I talk about the task I have been involved in the last months: Noesis Engine (a provisional name). Till now, it has been developed by a very small team and contributed to two commercial products. A small videogame is under construction now. I expect to give more information about this in the future.

A link to the first session of the course: Noesis - Core. The document reveals not too much information if you are not attending the class, but may be you find something interesting there (or wrong, and we can discuss). The first part is a global introduction to the course, the second one is about the core technology being used for the rest of the course. The document is in Spanish, I have no time now to translate it (I would be really grateful to any volunteer helping in this). Sorry for that.

And following with Spanish documents, I contributed to several tutorials in codepixel, a daily mandatory read if you understand Spanish, about the same topic, Graphics in Realtime. The hard part was done by Javier Loureiro / derethor. Iq / RGBA helped to this documents too, The tutorials:

• Introduction
• The Graphic Driver
• The Scene Graph

And nothing more for today. As you can see I am still alive and working really hard.

UPDATE: Thanks to Ricardo Amores and Miguel Herrero for translating the powerpoint to English. It can be downloaded from: Noesis - Core - Eng

See you in Gamelab^Oviedo!

I am giving a presentation about Technology in VideoGames in the Gamelab 2007 Conference that is being held in Oviedo / Spain this year. My idea is to give a general overview of the current challenges real time developers have to face when developing a videogame. Is is not intended to be a deeply technical presentation.

I am proud that events like these are held in Spain. We need them to promote the industry. And undoubtly, this is going to be a high quality event (reading the name of the rest of the lecturers).

See you there gambiteros!

Update:as promised, here is the link to the power point presentation: Retos tecnológicos en Videojuegos. Be patient with the download speed

E3 2006

E3 2006 (the world’s premier computer and video game trade event) will open its doors in few hours.

Don’t miss the conferences given by the big ones in the preshow events: Sony (being retransmitted now by GameSpot), Nintendo (Tue. May 9, 9.30AM PDT) and Microsoft (Tue. May 9, 12.00PM PDT)

UPDATE: Live coverages of the events: Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft

UPDATE: Halo3 E3 Trailer 720p

Microsoft XNA Build Preview

I didn’t think to say anything about this when it was announced in the GDC2006. With Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (XNA is based on this) nearly exiting beta stage (final product was released last week) I didn’t think Microsoft would release anything interesting regarding to XNA (apart from some marketing stuff like this and this). And I was wrong… tonight I have been playing with the XBA Build Preview (I have installed it in a Virtual Machine to avoid any problems. Anyway the integration with previous installation of Visual Studio 2005 doesn’t work in this version).

XNA Build is the first tool released from the XNA Platform. I though that it was only a mere pack of tasks to msbuild. But I must say that it is a lot more. It really rocks! Basically XNA Build offers you a data compiler based on msbuild but with a great GUI based on boxes and visual dependencies so that you can visually design your data pipeline. Makefiles to build data are really going to die with tools like this.

if you have time, have a look at the presentations.

MadriSX & Retro

I assisted a few days ago to MadriSX & Retro retro party. I didn’t know that this sort of events were being celebrated in Madrid. Even more, I didn’t know this events were being cellebrated! It is incredible there is a 8bits scene alive when we are beginning the 64bits one.

Click the photos to get a closer look. You have more in the official site (it is in Spanish).

Linux in NintendoDS

I bought a SuperCard for my NintendoDS. I will be playing with the free SDK for the next weeks. Investigating the DS Scene I discovered DSLinux: a linux distribution for Nintento DS. You can’t do great things at the moment (I have been unable to mount the SD card nor connect to my router using then WiFi connection) but the project is friki enough to be commented.

Geometry Wars, new record

Remember Geometry Wars?
This is insane! I’m still unable to get to 500k and this guy got the 1st position in XboxLive with 16.6 millions!

PGR3 photos

Why to have a photo mode if you can’t view them outside the console? I can’t understand why you are not allowed to copy PGR3 photos to USB storage devices in Xbox360.

But if you followed my last post you will know that this is possible know! You only have to follow this tutorial.

PGR3 is really really beautiful. It is undoubtly the best looking videoracing game made so far. Click the thumbnails to see the full images.

PlayStation3 preview

Kikizo Games have published an article describing a first contact with a hardware that is close to what the PlayStation3 will be. Inside the article you can find interesting opinions of three anonymous PS3 developers:

“Even with [final hardware] in mind, reaching good frame rates at 1080p with next-gen graphics is almost impossible”

“Cell is weird and difficult to work with… coding has progressed with high speeds and paper specs in mind”

“Does PS3 really look like the Killzone trailer? No way”