How to get into the game business

An excellent article by Bob Pendleton.

Some Cuck Norris humour

The Chuck Norris programmer facts. But I dare to say that Jack Bauer could beat Chuck tied and infected with some weird STD.

New Ogre terrain system

Sinbad has posted some screenshots of the new Ogre terrain renderer, and I have to say Im shocked! It has all the features you would find scattered though several differnet add-ons, like editable, paging s upport, texture splatting, etc., integrated in the Ogre core. Which means no more hassle trying to make PLSM working with your project, all effort focused in a single spot and everybody using the same code and finding bugs more quickly.
What I cant tell is in what branch it is going to be released, stable or experimental.

Commercial projects at Ogre gallery, wow!

I havent looked at Ogre projects screenshots gallery in a long time, but I did so today to see a couple of commercial projects. And I have to say that I was really amazed when I saw Steampunk Legends image quality. The interesting part is that Steampunk Legends is not the only one.

SDL game contest

Compy&paste from a mail from SDL mailing list:

SDLTutorials.com is hosting a SDL game development contest. Things to know about the contest :
- Goal : to make a side-scrolling shooter game
- Deadline : September 1, 2009
- must use SDL, C/C++ (OpenGL Optionnal)
- no more than 2 people per project submitted

More details :
http://www.sdltutorials.com/contest/

Small advice

After a long inactivity phase (DotA, lack of video card) I decided to go back to work, even when I still can't use my new HD4770. Seems that HIS didn't bothered to include the 4 to 6 pin adapter, besides other cables usually included.
But behold, the human nature pushes us to the sin, and curiosity is one of the temptations of advanced users. Some heretic Ubuntu 9.04 reviews convinced me that gcc 4.4 deserved to be tested and the reward would be faster programs. Also wanted to test Windows 7 RC.
And guess what. TDM installer for gcc 4.4 does not include STL. A couple of days wasted. Also I have found all kind of weird problems, that's why I'm planning to go back to Windows XP .
I have learned my lesson: never change the tools of your workbench in the middle of a work. I don't expect that you learn it now, but someday you will fall the same i did and you will remember this post.

Cyphesis 0.5.20

According to The Linux Game Tome, Cyphesis 0.5.20 was released May 28. i have been checking the official Worldforge site and the forums, but nothing there yet. New in this version is data fully persistent, besides bug fixes and prfomance improvements.
Cyphesis is a small to medium scale MMORPG server with embedded AI. I have been looking at it, but it lacks documentation to easily start creating your own games.