No Unigine evaluation kit for me

A couple of days ago I requested the Unigine evaluation kit. Today I got the answer: they dont give evaluation kits unless you are some studio working on medium to large scale projects. So, you have to build a portfolio first, create an studio, and they you will qualify, because learning purposes are not reason enough.
Too bad, because I was really interested in learnig about this engine and maybe join a team.

Calculating coordinates in front of a node

For today, I have a nice Ogre trick. Sometimes we need to put something in fron of an entity in our Ogre game. Well, it is quite easy if you use the SceneNode::getOrientation() method. In my case, the models are oriented towards the +Z  axis, so, I use this formula:

Vector3 position = Node->getOrientation() * Vector3(0, 0, distance) + Node->getPosition();

Thats all. We get the orientation, we multiply it for a distance vector and we add it to the node current position.

Unigine contest result

Three posts about Unigine in a row! Yesterday the results were announced, and they indeed didnt took any risks. No RPGs or MMOs: probably we will have casual arcade games and one FPS, no more. But hey, neither I would have took chances here, they need completed games, not dreams. But the good news is that we have 3 winners, not just one.

Unigine port for PS3 available for licensing

Well, this is not strictly news for game programming newbies. Actually, neither for non newbies. It is more exactly interesting news for teams with generous fundings. Unigine SDK for PS3 is available for licensing. Also, you can get a hughe discount for december: the full source SDK including all platforms, for just $40k. Just a change, dont you think?
Also take a look at Alexander Zaprjagaev comments, we can expect more platforms in the future, like Xbox 360 and Wii.

Submissions to the Unigine contest

Phoronix has details about the submissions to the Unigine Linux game contest. Dont forget to also check the forum thread, rich in flames and wish lists. I have to admit that I would prefer an RPG game, but Im not so optimistic about this. Consider that the winning team faces the difficult task of making a commercial game that reports them some money. Also, I dont think they plan to take more than a year for development (at least, Im pretty sure I wouldnt) or that they have a generous funding. So, dont expect anything innovative or complex (and I hope Im wrong).

LÖVE 0.7

LÖVE is, it's a 2D game engine that allows for quick and easy cross-platform game development using the Lua programming language. Version 0.7 brings an impressive new feature: threads (yeah, even people at Lua mailing list is surprised), among other things and bug fixes.