Game Developer Reveals Front Line Front Runners
The dev magazine's list of nominees for best game development tools goes live.
Published: November 28, 2007
We've long since passed the days where a major blockbuster game release can be handled by a half-dozen or so people, trading garage development for massive 50 person teams and multi-million dollar budgets. With every successive generation, the budgets and staffs needed to make games grows, and increasingly it's falling to communication between development groups and 3rd party tools and middleware to help ease the learning curve with new hardware.
This is exactly where Game Developer Magazine comes in. In addition to their usual stories on the development process, the industry magazine has culled their staff to pick the top tools for making games, ranging from physical aids like books to full engines and middleware.
“In a year in which the industry has taken such large strides and each of the community’s innovations have been so impressive, it was particularly difficult to narrow the field down to the five leaders in each category,” muses Simon Carless, publisher and editorial director of Game Developer. “Game Developer heartily congratulates all of the deserving finalists for the Front Line Awards.”
Curious as to what those finalists are? Well good, because we're just itching to paste the list in!
[Engines]
CryEngine 2, Crytek
Gamebryo 2.3, Emergent
Hero Engine, Simutronics Corporation
Unreal Engine 3, Epic
Vision Game Engine, Trinigy GmbH
[Books]
Game Design: From Blue Sky to Green Light, Deborah Todd, AK Peters
Game Writing Handbook, Rafael Chandler, Charles River Media
GPU Gems 3, ed. Hubert Nguyen, Addison-Wesley Professional
Second Person, ed. Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, MIT Press
XNA Unleashed, Chad Carter, Sams
[Middleware]
Euphoria, Natural Motion
Gameface Studio, Anark
Havok Complete, Havok
Kynapse, Kynogon
PathEngine SDK, PathEngine
[Programming/Production]
Hansoft 5.0, Hansoft AB
NVIDIA PerfHUD 5, NVIDIA Corporation
Perforce 2007.2, Perforce Software
ReplayDIRECTOR, Replay Solutions
XNA Game Studio Express, Microsoft
[Art]
3ds Max 9, Autodesk
modo 301, Luxology
Mudbox 1.06, Autodesk/Skymatter
Softimage XSI 6.01, Softimage
Zbrush 3.1, Pixologic
[Audio]
Fmod, Firelight Technologies Pty, Ltd.
Miles Sound System, RAD Game Tools, Inc.
Vivox Precision Audio, Vivox, Inc.
Voice-O-Matic, Di-O-Matic, Inc.
Wwise 2007.2, Audiokinetic
And there you have it.
This is exactly where Game Developer Magazine comes in. In addition to their usual stories on the development process, the industry magazine has culled their staff to pick the top tools for making games, ranging from physical aids like books to full engines and middleware.
“In a year in which the industry has taken such large strides and each of the community’s innovations have been so impressive, it was particularly difficult to narrow the field down to the five leaders in each category,” muses Simon Carless, publisher and editorial director of Game Developer. “Game Developer heartily congratulates all of the deserving finalists for the Front Line Awards.”
Curious as to what those finalists are? Well good, because we're just itching to paste the list in!
[Engines]
CryEngine 2, Crytek
Gamebryo 2.3, Emergent
Hero Engine, Simutronics Corporation
Unreal Engine 3, Epic
Vision Game Engine, Trinigy GmbH
[Books]
Game Design: From Blue Sky to Green Light, Deborah Todd, AK Peters
Game Writing Handbook, Rafael Chandler, Charles River Media
GPU Gems 3, ed. Hubert Nguyen, Addison-Wesley Professional
Second Person, ed. Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, MIT Press
XNA Unleashed, Chad Carter, Sams
[Middleware]
Euphoria, Natural Motion
Gameface Studio, Anark
Havok Complete, Havok
Kynapse, Kynogon
PathEngine SDK, PathEngine
[Programming/Production]
Hansoft 5.0, Hansoft AB
NVIDIA PerfHUD 5, NVIDIA Corporation
Perforce 2007.2, Perforce Software
ReplayDIRECTOR, Replay Solutions
XNA Game Studio Express, Microsoft
[Art]
3ds Max 9, Autodesk
modo 301, Luxology
Mudbox 1.06, Autodesk/Skymatter
Softimage XSI 6.01, Softimage
Zbrush 3.1, Pixologic
[Audio]
Fmod, Firelight Technologies Pty, Ltd.
Miles Sound System, RAD Game Tools, Inc.
Vivox Precision Audio, Vivox, Inc.
Voice-O-Matic, Di-O-Matic, Inc.
Wwise 2007.2, Audiokinetic
And there you have it.