The editors of Think Services' Game Developer magazine, a sister publication to Gamasutra, have named the finalists for the 2008 Front Line Awards, the magazine’s tenth annual evaluation of the year’s best game-making tools in the categories of programming, art, audio, game engine, middleware, and books.

Game Developer’s mission for more than ten years has been to provide game developers with information, news, and articles that pertain directly to them. The Front Line Awards are an official way of recognizing one specific aspect of the industry: the tools that developers need to do their jobs.

Each year, Game Developer looks at the powerful lineup of new products and new releases of favorite tools, from game engines to books, and selects the top five in six different categories. Front Line Award finalists represent the most innovative, user-friendly, and useful products from behind the scenes of the world’s best video games.

The finalists for the 2008 Game Developer Front Line Awards by category are as follows:

Art Tools

Photoshop CS3, Adobe
Softimage|XSI 7, Softimage
Autodesk 3ds Max 2009, Autodesk
Modo 302, Luxology
Autodesk Maya 2008, Autodesk

Audio Tools

Vivox Precision Studio v.2, Vivox
Wwise 2008.3, Audiokinetic
Fmod Designer 4.17, Firelight Technologies
Miles Sound System 7.2c, Rad Game Tools
Voice-O-Matic 2.6, Di-O-Matic

Engines

Unity 2.1, Unity Technologies
CryEngine 2, Crytek
Gamebryo 2.5, Emergent Game Technologies
Torque Game Engine 1.5.2, GarageGames
Source Protocol 14, Build 3531, Valve

Middleware

Autodesk Kynapse 5, Autodesk
PathEngine 5.16, PathEngine
Havok Physics, Havok
Euphoria, NaturalMotion
GameSpy SDK, GameSpy

Programming/Production Tools

TestTrack Pro 2008.2, Seapine Software
Perforce 2008.1, Perforce Software
XNA Game Studio 2.0, Microsoft
Subversion 1.5, CollabNet
Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Microsoft

Books

Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games, Matt Barton; AK Peters
Game Production Handbook, 2nd Edition, Heather Maxwell Chandler; Infinity Science Press
Real-Time Rendering, Third Edition, Tomas Akenine-Moller, Eric Haines, Naty Hoffman; AK Peters
The Art of Game Design: A Book Of Lenses, Jesse Schell;
Morgan Kaufmann
Game Programming Gems 7, edited by Scott Jacobs; Charles River Media

For this year’s Front Line Awards, both Game Developer magazine subscribers and Gamasutra.com community members were surveyed to nominate the best game development-related products.

Following consultation with the magazine’s editors, finalists were selected based on criteria such as utility, innovation, value, and ease of use, and professional developers are now voting to decide this year’s ultimate winners.

“This was a year in which tools became even more key to the game industry, with both high-end console game complexity and small-team indie innovation needing high quality products to help get things done swiftly and efficiently,” said Brandon Sheffield, editor-in-chief of Game Developer. “The editors of Game Developer extend our congratulations to all of this year’s Front Line Awards finalists!”

The final winners for the prestigious awards, plus one inductee to the Front Line Awards Hall of Fame chosen for its outstanding contribution to the game development industry for five years or more, will be announced in the January 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, available to subscribers in early January. (The Front Line Awards Hall of Fame inductee is not eligible for consideration for regular awards in its winning year.)

Continue reading Hands-on with the new SLim release

Hands-on with the new SLim release originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gallery: 38 Studios' Copernicus MMO

Continue reading AGDC: Interview with Brett Close, CEO of Curt Schilling's 38 Studios

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Continue reading Vivox to provide voice services for 38 Studios' upcoming MMO

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In a lot of ways, we've got a bit of a traditional streak here at Massively. We like the good, solid, family values like "Kill a monster. Steal it's treasure". One tradition that we hold particularly dear is "Announce the software and then make it available". Yes, we know that makes us awfully old-fashioned in the modern, cool, vaporware world of the kids these days.

In the wake of our announcement and hands-on piece with the new Second Life SLim VoIP/IM client, Linden Lab has in turn announced it, stamped it "coming soon" and yanked the availability of the web-page and associated setup process. This all seems a bit backwards, to be honest.

Granted, the software doesn't actually work very well at all, and appears to be little more than a stripped down copy of Vivox Connector with most of the features removed (we think that it is exactly that, in fact), but still, it is supposed to be a Beta.

Perhaps it's the little details like the fact that Lindens can't hide their online status from it that have caused it to be pulled, rather than any other inherent kind of breakage. Since Linden Lab's PR people won't answer any queries about the product, all we can do is speculate.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

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Linden Lab's unannounced SLim lightweight Second Life client is available now. We grabbed it out of the starting gate and took it for a bit of a spin for an hour or so. It looks a great deal like Linden Lab needed some new feature or API in the SLS-1.24 server deployment to support this. As a result, preparation of the SLim software for release prior to an announcement at this year's Virtual Worlds -2008 conference in Los Angeles must have been awfully rushed.

We expected this to be the first purpose-designed client for Second Life to come out of Linden Lab since the original in 2002, but actually ... it isn't. The real story is rather more surprising.

SLim is a Vivox product and it connects to Vivox servers. Connection with Second Life and its grid and servers is only very peripheral. How much involvement Linden Lab actually had with any of this is debatable.

The short version: It does a lot less than you'd hope, and setup of the whole show is far clunkier than you'd like. On with the show...

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Hands on: The Second Life SLim client is here

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Sony Online Entertainment is spilling more details on Fan Faire 2008. For the second year running, SOE president John Smedley will kick off the event with the Community Address. There will be a simultaneous streaming video broadcast online as well as a live audio broadcast in EverQuest, EverQuest II and Star Wars Galaxies through Station Voice by Vivox.

WHEN
Friday, August 15th at 6:00pm PST.

WHERE
To view the live webcast, please go to:
http://www.videonewswire.com/event.asp?id=50659

To listen to audio broadcast in-game, please go to:
www.station.sony.com/stationvoice

According to the SOE press release, SOE will be featuring all its MMOs including a lineup including the hit titles EverQuest, EverQuest II, EverQuest Online Adventures, PlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes as well as upcoming titles Free Realms, The Agency and more. SOE’s Fan Faire runs from August 15-17th in Las Vegas. For further details on events check out the official Fan Faire 2008 website. Although online registration is officially closed, on-site registration is now open at the Hilton Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

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Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• SOE Fan Faire Attendees List Now Available
• SOE "Community Address": Smedley Unveils Brand-New Game
• Players to Choose SOE Fan Faire 2008 Site
• SOE Gives You 10 Reasons to Attend Fan Faire
• Married in This World and the Next: Simultaneous Live and Virtual Wedding

Now here’s a good idea: just put Will Wright in front of a camera and have him talk about whatever pops into his mind for a minute. Seriously, he’s obviously got a mind that’s full of random information. So that’s exactly what G4TV decided to do. In this video clip, Will Wright quickly discusses a project that Russia had going on in the 70’s that involved an armed space station. It was essentially a manned spy craft that would orbit the Earth taking photos with an anti-aircraft mounted to it. Amazingly, they actually ran some successful tests with the gun, but the cosmonauts were still afraid of being flung out of orbit by it. So now you know, and knowing is half the…um, physics test?

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Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• Creepiness Abounds in New Screens for Dead Space
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