I have added two more templates to my design document template package. I have created a layer organiser and a new version of the source code tracker. In the first version (wich is still included, of course) there was a section for dependencies (files that are imported in the current source file). The new version doesn’t have this section so there’s more place for entering the classes that are in the file. You can get the new version on the Tools page.

Even though I make sprite based games, I still need a 3D modelling tool. A very common way to create great looking sprites is pre-rendering them. Instead of using a 3D model, you render a bitmap of it and use that as a sprite. A while ago I already reviewed POV-Ray and Moray. While these are great tools, they have their downsides. A very well known application in the open source community is Blender 3D. This tool is claimed to have the same capabilities as some that cost thousands of dollars!
So let’s take a look at Blender. The first thing you will notice when starting it is the complicated interface. While this has improved a lot, it still looks very confusing to new users. The good news is that you don’t need most of the tools right away. Also, as we will see, there’s a truly gigantic amount of documentation available. You’ll need to digg through a lot of it since the program relies very heavily on keyboard shortcuts and the interface can be quite non-intuitive at times.

Blender has the same basic capabilities as all other 3D modelling tools: creating, editing and deforming meshes, working with bezier curves and splines, texturing, creating materials, lighting, UV-mapping, animation, … It can import almost any type of 3D file, including 3DS, the file type used by 3D Studio. Since this is the most common file type you’ll encounter when searching online for 3D models, this is a great advantage. Importing 3D models works perfectly.
What’s truly amazing, though, is the scripting option. I haven’t used this yet (I’m only getting started with Blender), but it is even possible to create complete 3D games with it! I don’t know if there are a lot of people using this feature (I don’t really think so), but it’s impressive nonetheless. The scripting - wich is done in Python - also allows you to extend the functionality of Blender and add all sorts of new tools.
Of course, Blender can also do animation. You can use keyframes, motion curves and write your own animation scripts. A lot of Python scripts to help you create smooth animations are included. Perhaps one of the most useful is Walk-o-Matic, a script to create walk cycle animations, something that has a reputation of being quite difficult to do properly.
My overall opinion about this application is that even though it looks challenging at first, it is definitely worth trying out. The features and capabilities are simply incredible, especially for a free program. It can import almost every known 3D file format, and even if you encounter one that’s not supported there will probably be a script that does the job. And while the unconventional interface and heavy reliance on keyboard shortcuts seems intimidating, there’s lots and lots of documentation available to make it all easier.

Other reviews:

• Linux.com review
• ATPM review
• Bobulous.org review

Tutorials:

• Devmag tutorials (starting in issue #5)
• Blender 3D: noob to pro
• BlenderCourse (in English, Dutch and Czech)

Planning game projects, even small ones, can be more difficult than you would think. So far, I just wrote stuff down in a notebook, but for my next project I have made a few forms to help me getting my stuff organized. They are basically fill-in forms to plan and track different parts of the development process. The templates can be downloaded from the Tools page.
The package is a work in progress, so new templates will be added regularly. So far, I have made following forms:

• A resource and code object planner. You write down a list of 3D objects, sprites, sound effects and code classes you plan to put in the next step of your project. Next to each line is a checkbox that you can check when a part is finished.
• A bug tracker. This form can be used to list any bugs you discover, along with when you found it and when you solved it, and a checkbox to indicate it has been solved.
• A source file tracker. Can be used to keep track of wich classes are kept in wich source files, and wich files link to each other.

The layout of the templates is based on Douglas Johnston’s DIY Planner, a gigantic collection of planners and schedulers to organize your life.
My own templates are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license, like the DIY Planner OpenOffice Widget Kit.

Can’t believe I haven’t talked about this application yet, since it’s my main graphic tool. Most of the graphics in Gridblaster have been drawn using Inkscape. Inkscape is a so-called vector drawing program. What does this mean? Drawing programs basically come in two different kinds: pixel based and vector based. In a pixel-based program, when you draw a line the application figures out wich pixels need to be filled, and that’s it. When you are done no additional info about the line is stored. With a vector-based program, only the starting and ending point coördinates are stored, because that’s basically all the information the program needs to draw the line. The same goes for circles, rectangles, curves, etcetera. The advantage of this is that vector drawings can be scaled and transformed without getting blurred or distorted. This also means that vector drawing programs are only usable for actual drawing and not for photo editing.

Inkscape is a free, open source application. It uses the W3C’s SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) file format, an XML-based format that’s also supported by other drawing programs and can also be displayed directly (without additional plugins) by Firefox and Opera (not IE, of course). The current version is 0.45.1; it is by no means a finished product, but it’s under quite active development.
Let’s start with the features. This is a bit of a problem for me to review, since I haven’t used any other vector based drawing programs before and therefore I can’t compare. That’s why I have linked to additional reviews on the bottom of this article. Since this is only version 0.45.1, I suppose it doesn’t compare to programs such as Adobe Illustrator. I’m just gonna sum up some of the features I mainly use. Drawing tools include lines, rectangles, ellipses, spirals, freehand, polygon and bezier curves, wich allow you to draw curved lines very accurately. Shapes can be filled with solid colors, gradients and patterns. Layers and transparency are also supported. Although the SVG format supports animation, this feature isn’t available in Inkscape; it is on the roadmap for a future version though. Since I haven’t been using it for that long, there are probably lots of features though that I haven’t heard about.
Something that works surprisingly well is bitmap tracing. With this, you can turn a picture into a vector drawing that you can edit. This is how I created the icon for this website. I took a photo of a cookie, traced it, added a dark brown outline and voila! It took me a few tries and playing around with the settings a bit before I got the result I wanted, but it worked great.
Moving on to the interface. The menu and toolbars are quite intuitive and easy to navigate, with the exception perhaps of the color tools at the bottom of the window. This took me a bit of time to get used to. What I liked a lot was the fact that a very clear list of keyboard shortcuts was included. Literally every tool, command and menu option can be accessed with a keyboard shortcut. There are even some options that can only be accessed this way, so you really should take a look at the shortcut list.
One thing really bother me, though. Exporting drawings as a bitmap has a serious flaw. I draw everything quite big in Inkscape, so it’s easier to work with and add details, and then I shrink it. For example, the maze blocks in Gridblaster are 75×70 pixels in the game, but I drew them at 300×280 pixels. When exporting, you can select to shrink the drawing, but this also lowers the resulution! This means that when I reduce the size from 300×280 to 75×70, the resolution is also reduced four times, making the final result look horrible. I work around this by exporting the drawing at the original size and then shrinking it in The Gimp, wich yields a much better result.
Even though Inkscape probably can’t compare to programs like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw, it has excellent features, and if you take a look at some of the art created with it on the website, it is clearly capable of very impressive results. Also, it’s a free program, so you can’t possibly lose anything by just trying it. It’s also quite easy to learn, and there’s lots of documentation on the website.

• Newsforge review
• Softpedia review
• Linux.com review

A few days ago, Garage Games released version 1.5 of Torque Game Builder. If you already own the previous version of it, you can download the new version for free.
So, what are the new features in this version? Quite a lot of bug fixes. I haven’t been using the software for too long, but I have already stumbled on a few bugs. Nothing too serious, and it doesn’t interfere with the functionality and performance in any way, they were only minor annoyances.
One of the most prominent new features are behaviors. These are small pieces of functionality that can be assigned to objects without writing code. This is similar to the actions in Game Maker. In my opinion, this is not really that useful. I have used Game Maker for a while and I rarely used the drag-and-drop actions, preferring to code most of it in script. Might be useful for small, simple games such as Breakout clones.
What I’m the most excited about is that you can store your game files anywhere on your system. In the previous version, all projects were stored in the program directory itself, buried quite deep in Program Files, and there was no way to put them somewhere else. For me, this was quite annoying because I prefer to keep my documents on a separate drive (in case I have to reinstall my OS, wich happened a few days ago). Luckily I always kept a copy on my documents drive! Also, if you work in a team it’s useful to keep the project files on a shared network drive.
Another major update is the tick based physics system. In the previous version, if the game slowed down for some reason, so would all movement. Now all physics is framerate independent, so everything will always move at the same speed. Cross-platform support also improved. You can now use OS-specific dialog boxes, cursors and menus.
Porting games from the old version to the new one isn’t easy though, mainly because of the new physics system. Depending on the game, it can be either a piece of cake or a nightmare. I decided not to waste time on this and just finish Gridblaster with the old version. I’ll use the new one for my next game.