Well this is a handy article, if you’re an indie game developer then you know that just making a game isn’t enough. You have to sale your game and one of the best ways to do that is to show your game off with gameplay videos and trailers. Sadly most developers don’t know how to do this very well. So they make a great game but then make crappy videos of it. A good trailer can make or break your game. So learning how to produce good videos is very important. Let Pixel Prospector teach you something.

Here’s a video trailer of what you can learn.

TimelineFX Particle Editor is a complete solution for creating a full range of particle effects for your games and applications. Export the particle effects as static animations onto sprite sheets, animation strips or image sequences in PNG format, or if you develop for the iPhone or iPad, you can export using the PVRTC format (Mac only). If you program games using the powerful Blitzmax programming language, you can also use the effects directly using the TimelineFX Module.

Create an endless amount of different and varied particle effects including explosions, smoke, fire, water, steam, bubbles, and much more! Animations can be easily configured to loop seamlessly with just one click of the mouse, and with another click, you can even make animations tile seamlessly too for use as animated textures.

It is a C++ rendering, sound, video and file I/O engine that uses 3D hardware to render 2D with tinting and transforms such as rotation and scaling at high speed. Kanji abstracts the operating system and rendering API to let your game use the fastest and most compatible interface on each platform (such as DirectX, OpenGL and OpenGL ES) without changing your codebase.

This is a new implementation of the PTK 2D game engine interface, with much improved compatibility, performance and reliability, more features, supported platforms and additional libraries like GUI components, all validated by real-world use in production games.

The engine supports the Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad platforms using the same C++ interfaces.

Key features:

* Transparently uses DirectX 8 or 9 (Windows), OpenGL (Mac and Windows) and OpenGL ES (iPhone and iPad)
* Support for render targets
* Support for aspect correction (black bars), for instance on widescreen monitors
* Support for pixel shaders
* Support for zip pakfiles, including password encryption
* Support for multiple streams of music and cross-fading
* Support for Theora video to texture decompression, including synchronised audio, alpha channel and looping
* Optional powerful Graphical User Interface components used in production games
* Optional 3d model loading for special effects in your 2d games
* High performance and solid compatibility as validated in the marketplace
* Full sourcecode for all platforms
* No learning curve, starting from the example app, you can be working on your game in a matter of minutes
* Discuss with your co-licensees, including the developers of many top selling games
* Responsive customer support and high customer satisfaction as shown by many customer referrals
* Optionally use the free SexyKanji framework on top of Kanji and port your Popcap Framework games to Mac and iPad

Source: kanjiengine.com

After the Humble Indie Bundle topped the incredible heights of $1million total sales, the developers involved announced they’d be releasing the source for their games (after a quick code clean-up, of course!). Wolfire’s Lugaru went first, followed by Penumbra: Overture. Gish’s source was burst open a few days ago. Now Aquaria has followed suit, rounding it all off.

Source: indiegames.com

If you’re an indie developer looking for a good site to review your game. We can easily recommend Bytten.com They have giving our games fair reviews. Some other review sites don’t play your game all the way though to completion and then write a review for that game that they did not finish. Bytten does not seem like this kind of site. So if you have an indie game in need of reviewing send it to Bytten for a nice fair review. (But if your game sucks don’t blame them for being honest.)

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the worlds most popular benchmark for gaming PCs. 3DMark 11 uses a native DirectX 11 engine which makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

Deep Sea is a demonstration of DirectX 11 technologies created using an early development build of the 3DMark 11 engine. 3DMark 11 will be released in the third quarter of 2010. There will be a free edition that allows unlimited runs available at launch.

There has been a new wiki made just for indie games. If you’re a developer you can post your games.

Over at Indie Game Magazine they have just launched their new site and it doesn’t look to bad. Well just have a look for yourself.

For readers you have:
> Articles
> Reviews
> Preview
> and more.

For Developers:
> You can submit games for review
> Submit games for their Games Shop
> Post your free games
> Post your own articles and press releases
> Send Screenshots and Videos to their Flickr and Youtube

They provide online and print editions ranging from $19.95 to $39.95 a year for 6 issues. So if you’re just a reader or a developer it might worth checking out.

Well, surfing the the IndieGames.com Weblog I happened upon this article.

2Bee Games is now indiePub Games, and not only that, they are also running a indie game developer competition….the grand prize is $100,000!

Yea…100k. The “Community Favorite” (determined by community votes) will win $5,000, which is still a great prize. Not only that but the five Public Recognition winners will all get $1,000. Oh yea…and on the submit page it clearly states: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. All of you indie developers need to go check out the rules and submit your game before July 31st, and if you have any questions post them in the forums. Honestly…what do you have to lose?

Original source: IndieGames.com The Weblog
Contest post link: indiePub Games

If you are trying to become an indie developer or are still trying to be one, then you should read this, It could help you. Most of this are things that we “ItBGames/MangaPage” have learned on our own in the last three years, so to save yourself some time I recommend you give it a read. Here is a quote that I think rings true for all us indies.

“The fundamentals of how a market works haven’t changed – there’s no such thing as easy money, and starting your own company and ‘making it’ is just as hard as ever – but, for me, being an indie is as personal as it will ever get. It is a clear and direct representation of my abilities, judged on a world stage.”

Read the whole article at: edge-online.com