Development

With the early leaks of Grand Theft Auto V beginning to trickle in, it's no wonder that people have been hacking it apart to look at its innards. Hidden inside the game's source code, one intrepid code explorer has found a reference to not only the long dreamed of PC …

It's been a long time since people like me got excited by Ageia's new PhysX cards, with its tech demo games like Cell Factor, but that doesn't mean that the PhysX technology isn't still important. Granted now all you need is an Nvidia GPU, but if you're part of the …

If you've thought that Microsoft's Windows phone platform was lacking a voice activated search feature like Apple's Siri, then don't worry, it won't be like that for much longer, as Cortana, the AI chick from the Halo series is going to be your new digital companion. Cortana will spread herself …

As you might expect, Crytek, the makers of all the Cry franchises (Far Cry and Crysis), has announced a new version of its CryEngine back-end development tool and game engine, though this time around it's not numbering it: simply calling it, CryEngine. We can call it CryEngine 4 all we …

We've heard a lot of game developers attack Microsoft's game update policies in the past few years, with indie developers lining up alongside the big developers to do so. They've trashed the long Q&A process and the fees involved and Wargaming.net is no different. However, it's also said that it's …

That's it folks, the 23 year history of THQ has finally come to an end, as it has received approval for liquidation by Judge Mart F Walrath at a Delaware court heading. Creditors will now be paid using whatever can be made of THQ's remaining assets. THQ filed for bankruptcy …

Remember Tessallation? I talked about it a few days ago as one of the stranger and more intriguing titles I'd played with in recent months. It features a girl with a Tetris block/Rubiks cube head, cryptic clues about a Poly War, childrens' drawings of people with calculators, NES controllers and …

Double Fine's Broken Age Kickstarter campaign was one of the most successful to date, generating nearly ten times its budget (of $400,000) with a total of around $3.3 million. Despite that, Tim Schafer, head of the company, has reached out to the community to explain that the game's development has …

There's always been a lot of speculation about what happened at Rare during its Microsoft buyout. There've been rumours that the atmosphere of the once great British developer changed, that the people there weren't keen on the new direction – but it's all been rumours. Now one ex-staff member has …

That title might sound like an odd part to highlight of the ten minute video of Star Citizen's live stream below, but it's my favourite detail of the whole thing. Why? Because it means when you're under attack, you'll need to physically get out of your co-pilot seat and move …

Microsoft has been criticised by big developers and indies alike, for always charging tens of thousands of dollars to update games on its Xbox 360, leading to long delays in some cases and in others, no updates at all  – as it just wasn't financially viable. Now though, the software …

While this is clearly a big advert for Battlfield 4 (and doesn't have anyway near enough Mirror's Edge 2 in it(read: none)), EA has released a new video explaining some of the benefits of its new Frostbite 3 engine and it's very impressive – even if the term “levolution” still …

Google Music could be the first real competitor for streaming music service Spotify, after the search giant signing several high profile deals with three major labels to distribute their songs through its platform. A dominant music service would give Google one more notch in its belt in the mobile computing …

Once upon a time the default web browser for everyone was Internet Explorer. Those days are long gone though, but so are the ones that saw everyone that considered themselves a bit of a tech head using Firefox. Now people seem to be split quite evenly with the latest IE …

Disney, the new owners of the Star Wars franchise, has already farmed out the license for video game development to a new company and guess who it is? Everyone's favourite always-on publisher, Electronic Arts! Hurray… right? This license is pretty all encompassing too, giving EA the right to develop games across …

One of the biggest features showcased by Sony during its PS4 unveiling earlier this year, was the share button. It's on the controllers themselves and lets you instantly share footage of your gameplay with the world. This could be pre-recorded action, live let's-plays, or just a simple linkup with friends …

Google has hired a veteran of the videogame industry, Noah Falstein, to head up its Game Design division, presumably to work on a new Android title/platform/series – maybe even something that will run on Google Glass headwear. Falstein has been in games design since the 80s, becoming one of the …

We've all heard about the cloud at this point, we're all using it – or should be if you don't want to lose all your data in freak, digital accidents – but it isn't the only remote service out there. BitTorrent Inc. is pioneering something a little different, torrent based …

If like me you're sat here feeling rather jealous that you can't afford or don't have the connections to get yourself a set of Google's Glass eyewear, you're about to get even more so – as there's potential there for multiplayer gaming via the little device. Ron Amadeo over at …

Hawken is a free to play first person shooter, featuring giant mechanical walker bots, that players pilot and shoot at one another with. In the latest trailer from Nvidia, the developers show off what new effects have been added to the game with the inclusion of more advanced PhysX features. …

The oft promised tax breaks for British game developers have been delayed once again, this time because the European Commission has announced its intention to perform a full scale investigation into the scheme, suggesting that too hefty a tax cut, could give UK devs. too much an advantage over European …

Returning from Games Developer Conference 2013, Wolfire's CEO and lead programmer, David Rosen learned a lot about animation. He's been breaking down some of the big studio's lessons over the past week and today's look-in is to do with the differences between first person and third person and animation – …

As time goes on, we're all becoming more familiar with the idea of the cloud as a real world thing. It isn't, really, it's a theory and a fancy buzzword for corporate big-wigs to use so they can look like they know what they're talking about – but it has real world …

Since we all saw Final Fantasy: Spirits Within and were treated to the flowing individual strands of hair found on the protagonist, it's been a long wait for the same thing in our video games (no? Just me?). Now though, AMD has helped us reach this pinnacle of follicle immersion. With the …

VLC is perhaps the world's most popular after-market media player in the world and it could soon be breaking new ground by becoming the first to support the streaming of torrent files. Think you could code such a feature? A few fans of the software are offering $10,000 to the …

Zynga has announced that three of the six planned game releases for the end of 2013 will no longer be continuing development. This follows on from staff layoffs, earnings and a heavy hitting lawsuit from EA that are collectively piling on the pressure for a company that looks like it has tough …

And no thanks to the developers of either the hardware or the games themselves. In fact it was all down to the “Meant to be Seen” community, that has pushed stereoscopic 3D gaming through its efforts and made it possible to play more and more titles through the Occulus Rift …

USB might be feeling a sting of jealousy due to Thunderbolt's transfer rates, but it isn't taking the development lying down. Sometime in the “middle of this year,” the USB 3.0 promoter group intends to make available a new standard of the platform, SuperSpeed USB, which will bring about a …

The last version of Crytek's Cryengine that was freely available  was 3.4.0, which was released back in April. Since then the company has made a lot of changes to its game creation tools, but none of them have been usable by those without a paid license. Now though, it's updated …

A Microsoft spokesperson has made it very clear, that while we might have seen backwards compatibility for DirectX 11 – allowing for Vista support – DirectX 11.1 would be exclusive to Windows 8 only. “DirectX 11.1 is part of Windows 8, just like DirectX 11 was part of Windows 7. …