http://www.gamedev.net/Maximum game development!en-ushttp://www.gamedev.net/pics/gdnet-88x31.gifhttp://www.gamedev.net/Maximum Game Development!http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506550Love them, hate them, but you have to admit that rumors are [four word letter beginning with D and finishing with AMN that I don't want to say because, hey, profanity] cool. You can spend wholes days trying to figure out if some random rumor is based on solid facts or not and even if you're lucky enough to get these, all you'll have in the end is still an unconfirmed rumor. This is why I dedicate this Daily to rumors - and to the press in general. A few days ago, Mark Rein of Epic announced that they were already working on their future next-next-gen engine that will power the next generation of console hardware. That sounds a bit too early - because you know that according to Sony, the PS3 is going to last 10 years (thanks, that's 60$ per year). Well, if I were you I'd buy a PS3 in the next 3 years because if you don't, you'll face the risk of being forced to buy a PS4: according to analysts and to other game industry insiders, the next generation of consoles will have a good chance of hitting the shelves in 2011-12. In fact, this shouldn't be a surprise at all: even if Sony decided to make their console life-cycle 10 years long, they can't do this in real life, because they have to adapt to the market. The XBox360 is (on the paper) weaker than its arch-rival, so Microsoft won't wait for Sony to release a new console before they'll put their own. 2011-12 seems a perfectly logical date for a new Xbox - so you can bet that Sony will align itself on Microsoft. In the end, it makes perfect sense. And 120$ per year. The last "I smell a big game" rumor to hit the intarweb is 3 words long: "Gearbox", "Halo", "Four". This is Serious Business. Apparently, Halo 4 is going to be committed on the next Microsoft hardware and game company Gearbox is currently suspected. While no formal accusation has been made the intarweb found many clues that link said protagonist to the crime. However, a recent email Kotaku received from programmer legend Corrinne Yu (currently Director of Technology at Gearbox) states "I was offered and recruited to the position of Principle (Lead) Engine Architect of Halo Franchise Team at Microsoft.". Police said "it offers new opportunities to explore." Last point is not a rumor at all as it deals with Introversion Software's Multiwinia - Survival of the Flattest, the successor of the indy hit Darwinia to be released on September 19. Vicky just told me to do that, and you'd knew Vicky you'd do it too. Multiwinia is Darwinia on 'roids. The story is Monty Pythonesque -- the Darwinians became more and more aggressive, divided in factions, and began to war against each other -- but what's probably going to win me is the multi-player component, which will allow me to play against my friends (providing that I find some friends before the game is released). Knowing the guys at Introversion, I'm pretty sure that the game will be a pleasure to play and that it will be well polished and fun. Not to mention that the graphics looks gorgeous. And the last rumor is just for you all and noone else: I heard that Mittens is going to write the next Daily GameDev.Net. Officials of GameDev.net have failed to reply, and I have no fact to base me on, so you have to trust me. Oh, by the way, I have to share this.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506426Looking around on the internet for some news to report, I found this on the mechanics of Portal's teleportation programming. Gamasutra present a mock-up of Portal's code and a downloadable demo. An article on the subject over at Slashdot summarizes it well by saying "Teleport mechanics in video games are nothing new. Puzzles from the original Gauntlet were memorable -- and more than likely, that wasn't the first game to use teleportation as a gameplay mechanic. "The difference between Portal and all those that came before it, is that Portal's teleportation acts as a frictionless tube between point A and point B. Physics are still hard at work inside the frictionless tube. Instead of simply repositioning an object from point A to point B, the player enters point A with full velocity and exits point B with the same speed, but moving in a new direction." it's pretty interesting how the teleportation mechanics worked and not something I had previously put that much thought into, prior to reading the article. If you're anything like me, then you'll probably be pretty excited about the upcoming release of Street Fighter IV for the consoles (Q1 2009). Quite frankly I loved the old Street Fighter II style and I think IV on the consoles is gonna rock! Yoshinori Ono, game producer on the project has said that they won't be adding any platform exclusive characters, like Namco's recent Yoda and Darth Vader addition to Soul Calibur IV, but did say that they plan on announcing more characters during this year's Tokyo game show. I love you Capcom, but seriously, it's about time! There is going to be a GCDC event hosted in North America according to the event's organizers, no official details have been released on where the event would take place but it is said to be part of the Leipziger Messe international expansion, part of which is the GC conference, which will be held in Singapore, over September 18 - 20. In comments relating to the news Wolfgang Marzin, CEO of Leipziger Messe said "The concept is flexible and the network of the global games industry permits us to be active at different locations", "After the Southeast Asian Games Convention, we are now focusing on the North American market." Emergent has announced a new Gamebryo Casual development platform, with production software and design tools aimed specifically at casual game developers. Gamebryo Casual will have the same production software and design tools available in Gamebryo 2.5. The company explained that Gamebryo's geometry pipeline reduces filesize for downloadable titles. Gamebryo Casual also optionally integrates with Allegorithmic's ProFX texturing middleware, which the company says can contribute reduced filesize when adding detailed textures. The company also mentions that the licensing model for Gamebryo Casual can also be scaled, based on the specific budgets and timelines of individual developers, but MMOs are excluded from that model. Also worth a mention today is the Jace Hall show. Do you ever watch it? If not then I recommend it for a good laugh, it reminds me a lot of the GDNet daily, only visual. Jace Hall provides a witty and fun peek into the world of game development each Thursday and gets to meet some really influential people on the way, who all turn out to be really cool and fun too as it happens. *Disclaimer* there are a few profanities thrown around on the Jace Hall show from time to time, so enjoy at your own risk!http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506352I have started working on the popular Developer's Image Library (DevIL) again, after being away from it for several years. As of version 1.7.1, DevIL now has support for high-resolution Vista .ico files, Mac OS X .icns and JPEG 2000 .jp2 files. Look for DevIL to be updated much more often now. DevIL can be found here.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506296NVIDIA GPUs are contributing over 1 petaflop of processing power to Stanford University's Folding@Home distributed computing application, putting NVIDIA in the top spot of the application's total processing power.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506290Today's Daily is my first which uses the sadly boring default title. It would be called "The Depressingly Default Titled GameDev.Net Daily", but it can't be because it's got the default title. Why? Well, apparently this darn thing generates a special RSS feed based on the title, so every time I do that I break it. I blame you all for using RSS instead of visiting GameDev.Net regularly. You should all be ashamed. As is typical, there's more news from the publishers. This time, it's EA and Take-Two, the former of whom has aggressively been trying to buy the latter for quite some time. The really-truly-no-for-real deadline that EA set for Take-Two to come to the table has passed, but apparently the two companies are now engaged in confidential talks. So really, the news is that there is news, but there is no actual news. Presumably the announcement for the next entry in the GTA series, Grand Theft Auto 2009, will be delayed. Since it is confidential, it's reasonable to assume that I won't be writing about this again for quite some time. Except if there's a rumor or leak or something, but come on, it's not like that's plausible. In the world of major conferences, the Penny Arcade Expo is coming up. Since E For All is a goddamn joke, PAX is the best we've got. Microsoft just released a partial schedule for their PAX show, which will include Gears of War 2, Halo Wars...and the New Xbox Experience. I wonder if that last one's an IMAX show. Personally, I'm shocked that Microsoft would be betting everything on Halo and Gears of War. It's almost as if they've got no other strong exclusive offerings and have to rely on milking the same titles over and over. Unfortunately, Viva Pinata 2 will not be making a botched marketing move at this show; perhaps they are leaving the game's schizoprenic choice of audience for another venue. In the world of PC games, which has not died and is thriving even though it is clearly dying and is obviously the biggest market out there, Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice has managed to top the charts. Yeah, it beat out Sims, WoW, and Spore. And Sims again...and Diablo...and then WoW, WoW, Sims, and Warcraft. You know, I don't like the NPD charts for PC. I hope to god that digital sales even this stuff out. But I digress. The real story is that they make Nancy Drew games that people actually buy. Lots of them. This particular one only scored a 70% on IGN, so we can assume that the sort of person that buys Nancy Drew games is not the sort of person who reads IGN. And we can only hope that the sort of person who buys Nancy Drew games is not the sort of person who enjoyed the god awful movie. There's one more bit of (actually rather old) news: Mythic Entertainment, who developed Warhammer Online, will not credit former developers on the title. The IGDA has expressed disapproval, as it doesn't coincide with their recommended, but optional credit standards. Normally I'd make fun of Mythic in my usual tongue in cheek manner, but as this hits a bit close to home, I'm going to be more direct. Credits don't cost money. It doesn't hurt you to add people to the credits page. All the producers and self important people tend to get themselves placed on the top of the list anyway. Excluding people simply because they left before the title was finished is unprofessional and shows a basic lack of integrity on the part of the people who made this decision. (Which includes at least the VP Mark Jacobs.) Anybody who's worked on a game knows that there's a lot of people who make a lot of positive contributions, even if they don't happen to be there the day the gold build is sent off. It's the kind of behavior that creates deep personal reservations for me about working at such a place, because I tend to believe that this is usually just a reflection of the type of culture that does not value employees very strongly. As for a video to end the post, uh...well, there's this official trailer for Helix, which is a WiiWare rhythm game. I understand that it's important to have people who look completely ridiculous in an ad for a Wii game, but I think this video meets every sterotype ever, without actually showing me what the hell the point of the game is. I do like the music though.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506279The organizers of the GC Asia Conference (GCAC), today announced that Crytek CEO & President, Cevat Yerli, will give a keynote address on the future of gaming graphics. Known as a visionary for creating lush, immersive, graphical games with Far Cry and Crysis, Yerli will speak about the opportunities for immersion as graphical realism reaches new levels and technology continues to deliver faster processors capable of greater rendering.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506216Keynote Speakers Include Club Penguin's Lane Merrifield, Lively by Google's Mel Guymon, Sony Europe's Jason Page, and Futurist & Novelist Bruce Sterlinghttp://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506214LMI Leipziger Messe International (LMI), the organizer of Games Convention Asia (GCA), today announced that it released a matchmaking tool on its website enabling attendees of GCA and exhibitors to pre-schedule appointments and meet one another. The tool automatically registers attendees when they sign-up in advance to attend the conference and business center, and offers an easy-to-use, simple and reliable solution for scheduling time during the show to network.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506196Music4Games.Net recently had the opportunity to speak with the Resident Evil 5 Music Team; Kota Suzuki Composer, Sound Design Section, Capcom, Tetsuya Shibata Senior Manager Sound Management Section, Capcom and Wataru Hokoyama Additional Orchestral Music writer, Orchestrator and Conductor.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506182Today's GDNet Daily is "in the house," as it were. Please mind all local statutes regarding the ingestion and disposal of your GDNet Daily, and keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times. First up is a game which I will cover endlessly solely because of its name, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. You can't go wrong with that. Is your game delayed? Join the legions of delayed games, and rub elbows with the likes of Prototype, Project Origin, and now my potential true love Left 4 Dead. Because of this mass of delays, I've requisitioned a special GameDev.net sandbag task force to "shore up" the production of promising games. You're all drafted. Report to the docks at 0900 hours to receive your kit bag and rations. If you sat through Death Race this weekend as well, I'm sorry. But at least some cameras died for their sins. Those of you who are still playing Team Fortress 2 have no doubt interacted with the Heavy Update, and you should be thankful that you own a PC. Due to Microsoft's Byzantine downloadable content plan, Valve has been forced to charge for the update on the Xbox 360, which is why they haven't released prior updates on Microsoft's PowerPC dreamboat until they collected enough to make the purchase worthwhile for joystick-waggling consolians. So they'd better like it. If you can afford a PC, then you can check out some news about the PC version of Mercenaries 2. The requirements are surprisingly low, so I expect everyone to pick it up. In indie news, those rebellious youngsters at TIGSource are having their beer-fuelled manhug extravaganza, TIGJam next month! If you can make it to Phoenix, Arizona, you too can stare endlessly into Derek Yu's deep, deep eyes. Phil Fish and his Kokoromi gang are handing out invites for the Gamma 3D development competition, so make sure to book off some time in November to demo your outstanding videogame idea (submissions due by October). If you do win, I'm told that spiking the computer into the floor and doing an end-zone dance is now entirely inappropriate. Never heard of Cactus? Well, Cactus has heard of you. That's why he's developing literally hundreds of amazing games simultaneously in an effort to win your heart. That's enough out of me this week. Unfortunately, we don't have a budget to get a special guest star for GDNet Daily tomorrow, so you're going to have to put up with Promit all by himself.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=506094"The GC Games Convention will be back in Leipzig again in 2009", as Wolfgang Marzin, CEO at the Leipziger Messe GmbH, has announced on the last day of Europe's biggest games fair. "The industry and visitors are giving us their clear support to continue with the fair in Leipzig." He named 19 to 23 August 2009 as the dates for the next GC Games Convention.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=505949A new release of the Visual3D.NET Game Engine (Beta 2.4) is now available for download.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=505897Hooray for Friday! I'm sure you all have great plans for this weekend (and yes, sitting around doing practically nothing is indeed a great plan (though that's not what I'm doing (though I'd like to))). Hopefully before then you'll have some time to pass through Journal Land and check out some of the project updates and development insights that have been posted this last week. Cheers! Oh hey just out of curiosity, who claims to have coined the term Journal Land? Duke it out in the comments.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=505882The 2009 Game Design Expo, hosted by Vancouver Film School, is accepting submissions from game industry professionals wishing to present at Game Design Expo on February 7-8, 2009 in Vancouver, BC.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=505879Game Tunnel has just published theAugust Independent Video Game round-up, the latest in their long-running Famitsu-styled panels that review all the latest Indie PC games. The 10 games reviewed this month include the quirky freeware adventure game Ben there Dan That!, the 'funky' dating sim Summer Session and Vega, a game that one reviewer called 'in all seriousness, the least fun game I've ever played.'