October 2000

OCTOBER 2000 GAME DEVELOPER MAGAZINE ON THE FRONT LINE OF GAME INNOVATION DEVELOPER GAME✎ PLAN 600 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR t: 415.905.2200 f: 415.947.6090 w: www.gdmag.com Publisher Jennifer Pahlka [email protected] EDITORIAL Editorial Director Alex Dunne [email protected] Editor-In-Chief Mark DeLoura [email protected] Senior Editor Exit, Stage Left Jennifer Olsen [email protected] Production Editor R.D.T. Byrd [email protected] riting has never the magazine. Art Director Audrey Welch [email protected] come easily to me. First, I’d like to thank Hal Barwood of Editor-At-Large In fact, I still react LucasArts. Every month, for years now, Chris Hecker [email protected] Contributing Editors to seeing my name Hal has sent me a long e-mail containing Daniel Huebner [email protected] in the magazine with thorough feedback about every article, Jeff Lander [email protected] Maarten Kraaijvanger [email protected] Wsome incredulity. I can still distinctly recall column, and review in the latest issue. The Advisory Board the joy I felt ten years ago as I was handed staggering amount of constructive criti- Hal Barwood LucasArts Noah Falstein The Inspiracy my college diploma, knowing that I would cism Hal provided has improved the mag- Brian Hook Verant Interactive never have to write another paper. God azine in many fundamental ways over the Susan Lee-Merrow Lucas Learning Mark Miller Group Process Consulting throws some wicked curveballs. years. One of my biggest challenges as edi- Paul Steed Independent Dan Teven Teven Consulting Being the editor of Game Developer for tor was to get him to write for the maga- Rob Wyatt The Groove Alliance most of its existence has been a wonderful zine, and one of my biggest regrets was ADVERTISING SALES experience, and yes, I’ve grown to love that I never succeeded. Hal, I hope you’re Director of Sales & Marketing writing. But you know what they say saving up all that wisdom for a book. Greg Kerwin e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6218 National Sales Manager about all good things, and it’s time for me The second person who’s been great to Jennifer Orvik e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6217 to move on. This is my last issue working me is Chris Hecker. It’s pretty amazing how Account Manager, Western Region, Silicon Valley & Asia on the magazine, but in reality, I’m not much time and energy Chris devotes to bet- Mike Colligan e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6223 Account Manager, Northern California going far at all — in fact, I’m not even tering this industry, and he’s been a con- Susan Kirby e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6226 moving my office. I’m moving into a full- stant source of information and inspiration. Account Manager, Eastern Region & Europe time producer position on Game Devel- Chris is a true asset to the entire industry. Afton Thatcher e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6224 Sales Representative/Recruitment oper’s sister site, Gamasutra. The siren Welcome Mark, Adios Alex. In my column Morgan Browning e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6225 song of the online world beckons! over the years I’ve introduced and bid ADVERTISING PRODUCTION I’ve had an incredible time working on farewell to quite a few magazine contrib- Senior Vice President/Production Andrew A. Mickus Game Developer. It doesn’t seem that utors, and it’s my final privilege to intro- Advertising Production Coordinator Kevin Chanel long ago that a bunch of us on the staff duce the new captain of this ship. Mark Reprints Stella Valdez t: 916.983.6971 of Software Development decided to DeLoura joins us from Nintendo, where CMP GAME MEDIA GROUP MARKETING secretly siphon off money from our maga- he was the software engineering lead in Senior MarCom Manager Susan McDonald Product Marketing Manager Darrielle Sadle zine to launch Game Developer. It was charge of third-party titles, and worked Field Marketing Manager Jennifer McLean daring stuff for us — we weren’t sure on one of my all-time favorite games, Marketing Coordinator Scott Lyon how our superiors would react to the fact LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME. You CIRCULATION that investment intended for one maga- also might recall the article he wrote for Group Circulation Director Kathy Henry zine was actually going into the unap- the magazine last November (“Putting Director of Audience Development Henry Fung proved launch of another. Thankfully the Curved Surfaces to Work on the Nintendo Circulation Manager Ron Escobar Game Developer Circulation Assistant Yumi Sato gamble paid off: the reader response to 64”), or maybe you’ve seen his brand-new magazine is BPA approved Newsstand Analyst Pam Santoro our initial issues was strong, and that book, Game Programming Gems. Mark SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES gave us enough courage to break the news brings a wealth of experience and expert- For information, order questions, and address changes about our guerrilla launch to executives ise to this magazine, and besides all of t: 800.250.2429 or 847.647.5928 f: 847.647.5972 e: [email protected] at our company. Instead of firing all of that, he’s one of the nicest people I’ve us, they kicked in official investment, and ever met in the industry. It’s good to INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION Robert J. Abramson and Associates Inc. since then we’ve tried to improve the know that the magazine’s best days lie t: 914.723.4700 f: 914.723.4722 quality of the magazine every month. ahead with Mark at the helm. Welcome e: [email protected] That improvement is due in large part to Mark, and to all you readers, thanks for CMP MEDIA MANAGEMENT President & CEO Gary Marshall the feedback and contributions of people the memories. Corporate President/COO John Russell in the industry like yourself. CFO John Day There are so many people who have Group President, Business Technology Group Adam Marder Group President, Specialized Technology Group Regina Ridley helped shape the magazine into what it is Group President, Channel Group Pam Watkins today, and I’d like to thank all of them by Group President, Electronics Group Steve Weitzner name. But I’d easily burn the rest of my Senior Vice President, Human Resources Leah Landro Senior Vice President, Global Sales & Marketing Bill Howard word count on this column trying to do Let us know what you think. Send Senior Vice President, Business Development Vittoria Borazio so. So I’ve narrowed it down to two e-mail to [email protected], or write General Counsel Sandra L. Grayson C Vice President, Creative Technologies Johanna Kleppe developers who have been extremely sup- to Game Developer, 600 Harrison St., portive from the beginning of my time on San Francisco, CA 94107 www.gdmag.com WWW.CMPGAME.COM FRONT LINE TOOLS ZWHAT’S NEW IN THE WORLD OF GAME DEVELOPMENT | daniel huebner NEW TEXTURING ARSENAL FOR DEEP PAINTERS ELSA DEBUTS GLORIA III ight Hemisphere is shipping LSA is releasing the newest member of R Texture Weapons, an add-on E its Gloria line of workstation graphics for its Deep Paint 3D texturing and cards, the ELSA Gloria III. Based on painting program. Texture Nvidia’s new Quadro 2 Pro, Gloria III Weapons is designed to extend offers nearly twice the processing power of Deep Paint 3D with enhanced the Quadro-based Gloria II. The new Gloria painting and mapping functionality, pushes up to 31 million triangles through its and to let users create textures with transform and lighting engine and fills tex- minimal distortion. Texture tures at a rate of one gigapixel per second. Weapons includes automatic and Its four pixel pipelines each handle seven manual UV editing tools as well as operations with two textures per pixel, per Projection Paint, a feature that pipeline, per clock. With 64MB of DDR allows users to paint from any posi- frame buffer memory and a 350MHz tion within a 3D space with brush and RAMDAC, the Gloria texture size unaffected by UV-coordinate variations. Texture Weapons is III will support up to available now, and is priced at $495 for Windows 98 and NT. 50-inch CRT monitors and 21-inch Texture Weapons | Right Hemisphere | www.righthemisphere.com DVI flat-screen monitors with reso- lutions as high as SONY UNVEILS PLAYSTATION 2–BASED 2048×1536 at RENDERING SYSTEM 85Hz in true color. ony Computer Entertainment has rolled its Gloria III | ELSA | www.elsa.com S Playstation 2 development research into a new rendering system. The new machine, called the GS 3D STUDIO gMAX Cube, boasts 16 parallel graphics units, each one composed of the PS2’s Emotion Engine CPU and an enhanced iscreet is extending its 3D Studio Graphics Synthesizer GPU bumped up to 32MB of VRAM D Max tools with an authoring tool from the PS2’s 4MB. Sony envisions a truly interactive cine- available to game players at no charge. 3D ma experience, but concedes they are unsure of exactly what Studio gMax, a professional and consumer might be created with the GS Cube. Sony hasn’t set a date content creation platform based on the for release or any pricing strategy, but could have GS Cubes ready for commercial use next 3D Studio Max release, is aimed at by the end of the year. developers who plan to release custom level-editing tools with game titles next GS Cube | Sony Computer Entertainment | www.sony.com year. Licensed game development teams NEW MAX PLUG-IN GOES FROM RAGS TO STITCHES igimation has a new plug-in for 3D also identify surrounding objects in a scene D Studio Max to act as collision will be able to use and extend gMax as a called Stitch, which objects, and can add game level-building tool for internal pro- aims to deliver a real- 3D Studio Max duction of a specific project, and then istic cloth simulation standard Wind and release those customizations as a Game complete with wind, Gravity space warps Pack that users can plug into a free, down- gravity, and colli- to the simulation for loadable gMax editor from Discreet.

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