There's XRhodes

Not a bad suggestion, but I'm really not very fond of C++. I prefer the automatic garbage collection of the .NET framework. The framework I'm making is in C#. I'm creating it with Monodevelop, so the IDE for cross-platform work will be consistent. My initial target is to get the various graphics and audio features working first, and interactive elements like hit detection and physics working later.

Ooooo...I really like this idea. Accountability and deadlines always help to keep me motivated. I'll pitch in for this.

GOAL
2D textured Sprite rendering with animations, scaling, rotations, adjustable offset points, and camera scrolling

Deadline
The end of this work-week. Friday, March 11th.

I'm trying to code a rudimentary game framework using C# and OpenTK. I've gotten the basics for the objects down. And I have a camera system that initially seems to be working. But I need to get textured sprites in there. I've done a lot of the coding for a previous version of this framework, so I know its possible, I just need to roll up my sleeves and get through it.

One very effective method is merchandising. The obvious downside of this method is the extra trouble you have to go to in creating and managing physical product. Physical products are far more reliable when it comes to sales, but they are also a much larger bother in managing and distributing them.

The biggest problem with merchandising is that it is reliant on existing branding. So its a much less effective method for small start-ups. It's great for funding sequels, and for expanding a brand beyond the game itself. But you kind of need some marketing in place already before you can jump on merchandising.

Personally, I'm developing on my own time with the most bare-bones budget imaginable. But I recognize that larger projects can't go the same route.

I'm taking the Flixel OpenTK port that I was working on last year and recreating it from the ground up as my own custom game engine. I've noticed that there are distinct lack of 2D-focused game engines that use OpenGL for rendering. DirectX has the SpriteManager provided through XNA, and everyone who goes cross-platform tends to use either SDL or SFML. But for hardware-accelerated rendering, you need some OpenGL for cross-platform development.

I've managed to abstract a rudimentary camera system, and I'm working on incorporating scrolling values. The main aspects of scene management are also in play. I've got drawable objects with basic scaling properties. For the moment, everything is progressing with surprisingly few hiccups.

[Corona]

- Corona : Mid-price range, and seems like an overall in-between the 2 above. But it seems to be a lot less well known, which makes me a bit skeptical. Wondering if any of you have experience with this especially.  http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/

Hmmmm...I hadn't seen that one before. Not a bad find. I'm not sure if I could bring myself to code with it though. I've become spoiled by the Object-Oriented coding methodology. I don't think Lua allows for that kind of coding.

Keep in mind that Nintendo is marketing the 3DS primarily to a casual audience. Casual gamers are more prone to "fall" for gimmicks.

Good point. I have no doubt that Nintendo will be able to sustain the 3DS. But I can also imagine it having a little less staying power than the original 3DS. The price point is also going to hurt its chances a bit near the beginning.

I'm stilling getting one, but I waited until now to upgrade my original grey-brick DS. After putting up with those uncomfortable ergonomics for so many years, I owe it to myself.

So what is the consensus? It seems that a lot of the original hype surrounding the 3DS has cooled considerably nearing its release. The thrill of the glasses-free 3D apparently wears off quickly, and I still haven't heard of any developers using it as anything other than a visual gimmick.

Is there any chance that Nintendo will be able to duplicate the success of the DS? Or is the NGP actually going to have a chance to snag some market-share from the king of handhelds? As near as I can tell, the 3D of the 3DS might not be as big a draw as Nintendo is hoping, and there isn't going to be much else going for it.

Personally, I think Nintendo needs to push the connectivity and multiplayer aspects of the 3DS as hard as they can to customers and developers. I think that has more potential for expanding the appeal of their new handheld than 3D screens.

I'm hardcore and coded my own blog from scratch >:O

High Five! Power to the web-coders!

I've been meaning to do this myself, but have been putting it off for various reasons. I learned how last year, and I've already got my personal website running off of a rudimentary database that I coded on my own. I just need to light a fire under my own ass and get it done.

Did you cook up your blog using an RSS file/feed, or is it database-driven?

Outlining is a matter of personal preference. The general theory is to create a pixel outline around your character. The point is to set your character off from the background elements. It can be very useful to have foreground level elements and characters that have outlines, and then a background that is illustrated without outlines. This "softens" the background in comparison to the foreground, and helps it to recede as desired.

Generally, you will use just a one-pixel outline. That is the standard. If you want thicker outlines you will have to consider making it a part of the overall art style, and introducing some variation in the stroke thickness. But with that kind of outlining you begin to get away from more "traditional" pixel art.

Usually, the outline will only be around the silhouette of the character, while the inside of the character will be drawn with more basic colors.

You can outline in straight black, but I would personally caution against that. In art, you always want to avoid using pure black or pure white. They are the strongest visual shades possible, and allow for the maximum amount of contrast. As such, you should always handle them carefully, it is very easy to abuse them.

I favor a softer form of outlining where each part of the outline is actually a darker shade of its adjacent color block. Pick out the most "average" color from the nearest portion of your character, and make a darker version of that color the color of the outline around that part of the character.

This is something I've given a lot of thought to myself. Unfortunately, there is no one portable solution for the time being. Unity is one of the closest, and as you pointed out, it can be expensive for the mobile devices and isn't geared toward purely 2D games.

From a coding standpoint, your best choice would just be C++. It's one of the only languages that can be compiled for almost every device. The only other close alternative I can think of is MonoTouch, and the Android version of that isn't even finished yet. In theory, you could develop a game using MonoTouch and then port it over to the Android later. But I don't believe there are any existing game-centric frameworks you could use for that.

If you are already familiar with 3D graphics, I would strongly recommend moving up to Unity. It's toolset is robust, its features are extensive, the price is definitely right, and the coding for it is fairly easy to learn. The only real drawback is its focus on 3D graphics as opposed to traditional sprite-based 2D games. If you are already familiar with creating 3D graphics, this isn't a problem. If you specifically want to go for 2D sprites, GameMaker would probably be a better choice. You could possibly still do a game like that in Unity, but you would have to jury-rig a lot of it. With GameMaker the focus is on 2D sprites.

If you are planning on using Flash, you can either roll your own solution using regular AS3, or try Flixel or FlashPunk. Both are good options for providing a solid starting point.

I just finished powering my way through the entire Codex Alera by Jim Butcher. (of Dresden Files fame) I found it to be a fairly solid fantasy read with some appealing characters and a very well-realized fantasy world.

IN OTHER NEWS: All the Aliens films are the same movie.

A bit of a simplification. But I do see your point.

Ripley realizes that something is wrong, no one listens to her, the established authority attempts to "acquire" the Alien, the Alien eats someone, and they spend the rest of the movie trying to get rid of the Alien.

They differ in the fine details but yeah...every Alien movie. I'm really hoping they manage to do something different with the new film they're working on. No one needs to see the same bloody story over and over again. The first two are timeless classics, and I have them on Blu-Ray. If I want to see the same Alien movie, I'll just watch them again.

Back on topic, its Mario. There will be platforming. If you like platforming, this is going to be some of the best, tightest platforming imaginable...in 3D. Hooray for tight platforming.

you don't actually need to find any of the secret caves to beat zelda1, though

the only secret that you absolutely need to find is level 8, which is hidden under a tree, but it's an obvious tree and there's a clue telling you where to find it

Actually, you also need to use the flute in front of one of the ponds in order to find Dungeon 7. And Dungeon 9 requires that you set a bomb at Spectacle Rock. I believe there are vague clues to both of these that can be found in the game, but it never just tells you. And there are no obvious visual indicators.

The Legend of Zelda was from a different era of gaming. A game like it would probably never succeed in the current retail market. The closest we've come is 3D Dot Game Heroes, and that didn't have fantastic sales, and was also a budget title. And even that game adheres much more closely to the formula established by Link to the Past.

Of course, it would still be entirely possible to make this work as a small-budget indie title. Hmmmmm...I smell opportunity.

I am very fond of the very original Legend of Zelda (NES). I've always considered it to be one of the earliest and most interesting studies in free-form exploration. It was arguably one of the first "open-world" non-linear games. You had a world with specific rules, you were thrown into it, and everything else was up to you. You didn't even get your primary weapon immediately, you had to actively acquire it.

The Adventures of Link deviated wildly from the original Legend of Zelda. I've always had a soft spot for Adventures. I am especially fond of the music in the game, which is very catchy. The combat mechanics in the game are much smoother and more responsive than Legend. Although there is still an element of exploration, the RPG stat building and side-scrolling combat take center stage.

Link to the Past was where the modern Zelda "formula" was forged. It re-adopted the top-down view of Legend. But it was much less free-form than Legend was, preferring to more effectively "gate-off" each successive dungeon. This necessitated a much larger inventory, with many items that often seem superfluous. Although it is less open-world than its predecessor, it is at the same time considerably more polished, and set the bar for future iterations of the series.

It's shame that GBA games won't work on it :/

Yet.

This is Nintendo. No one milks their back catalog as thoroughly or as effectively. They haven't announced GBA games yet, but I can all but guarantee that they will eventually. They've already got GB and GBC lined up, it's only a matter of time.

Not surprising at all, but it's bound to be a fun, polished, charming platformer. I'm a sucker for those.

Well...yeah. (shrug) It's Mario, the very seat of Nintendo's power. The bulwark that they founded their video game empire upon, an empire that persists to this day. The name "Mario" has become synonymous with solid, polished platforming.

I'm certain that it will be wonderfully charming and whimsical, all Mario games are. I just don't find its announcement surprising in the least. It's a new Nintendo platform, a fresh iteration of Mario was going to arrive sooner or later.

Looks more like a sneak'em up than a Metroidvania to me.

Whoa! Hold up there! Am I the only one seeing this?

A "Sneak-Em-Up" with Metroidvania side-scrolling play mechanics and non-linear exploration? Where most of the mechanics focused on distracting enemies and circumventing danger rather than confronting it? That sounds like a fantastic idea! You could have a mechanic where whenever you press "up" in front of a well, you hug the wall and adopt some of its visual properties, to hide yourself from enemies.

The downside is that when you do that, I believe you go through the vector renderer instead of just blitting pixels to the screen. But this also happens if you set the color, alpha, or blend properties, too.

That's the point. With hardware-supported 3D rendering, you won't see nearly as much of a performance hit from these operations that would have previously cost you precious frames per second. In theory, you should still be able to have hundreds, even thousands of sprites on screen at the same time, but you will also be able to apply rotations, color transformations, and alpha transitions to all of them with little to no hiccups in rendering. Where as previously all rendering went through the CPU, now you can offload most of the rendering to the GPU instead.

I still haven't gotten a chance to put the beta Flash Player 11 through its paces. Looks like there's some substantial preliminary setup.

I like that Nintendo is making some attempt to bring a more Japanese-style wireless experience to the US. I think a large appeal of a wireless device like the 3DS is lost when it can't be connected a large part of the time. With public transportation much less common in the US, it makes sense to focus on wireless hotspots, such as coffee shops, bookstores, etc... I hardly ever used my original DS for multi-player, perhaps the 3DS can remedy that somewhat.

The new 3DS virtual console is also shaping up decently. Having GameGear and TurboGraphix 16 games available is a nice touch. And having DSiWare titles available is also a plus. Hopefully, this means that I will be able to download both Shantae games on the 3DS. I would prefer that they eventually start offering more than just handheld titles on it, but we'll see.

A new Mario game is nice, but hardly a surprise.

My big question is who's gonna be the first to port a flixel-style library to get 2d-in-3d goodness, so we can throw unlimited scaled, rotated, alpha'd sprites about?

If no-one else will, I will!

Actually, I was planning on trying this myself. Last year, I did some work of my own on an C# port of Flixel using OpenGL. It shouldn't be too difficult to cook up a version of Flixel that uses textured polygons instead of pixel-blitted sprites. You just have to abstract the drawing so that it functions similarly, and then replace the rendering loops in the various objects.

The biggest advantage to this would be the rotations. Current sprite rotation in Flixel is done using baked sprites. This is less costly in terms of performance, but it makes for much rougher rotations. There would also be a slight advantage in mirrored sprites. Currently, Flixel handles sprite mirroring by reproducing a mirrored version of the provided graphics, and storing it in the pixel cache for that graphic. With 3D rendering, this isn't necessary, all you have to do is tweak the UV coordinate assignments.