DelphiGamer Magazine Issue 1

[technomage]

http://mag.delphigamer.com/images/dgadvert.jpg
More news from DelphiGamer.com. The very FIRST issue of the new Quarterly Delphi Gamer Magazine is now available.

Issue 1 contains

Airblast Postmortem
Programming for the Xbox 360 with Chrome
Making games with S2DL

Check it out on http://www.delphigamer.com
or direct on http://mag.delphigamer.com

A big thank you to all those involved in putting this first issue together :D

Heads down for Issue 2 :wink:

[cairnswm]

YAY!

[arthurprs]

10/10

:D

[NecroDOME]

Nice!

[pstudio]

So this is what some of you guys have been talking about. Better give it a read then :) Sounds good with a Delphi Gamer Magazine. It can only be good ;)

[wodzu]

Thanks guys for that Issue :)

[VilleK]

Yes this looks very good :)
You should make sure it gets mentioned in one of the DelphiFeeds blogs so it can reach many Delphi users.

[jdarling]

Not too bad, though I would suggest that you find yourself a good copywriter and use them. I noticed quite a few glaring English mistakes as I read through the issue.

On the side of content, one of the best magazines (IMHO) that the Delphi/Pascal world lost was Delphi Mag. With authors such as Julian Bucknall and many other giving articles on very specific topics such as sorting a doubly linked list and what options worked best when the magazine was the best read I could find while it was still in existance.

I think it would be interesting to find another mag that put forth information on specific general topics that can be used in any library. These should be from the very basics (something about object management and garbage collection) all the way up to high level topics (vertex normalization between rendering contexts and the use of display lists to minimize render times, threading and the new processors that are becoming common).

Just my two cents for what its worth.

[cairnswm]

Hey Jeremy - sounds liek you have volunteered for something.

I think the question is do we* want the magazine to be a generic Delphi/Pascal coding magazien or to be directly focussed on Game Development.



* We = us, the members of the community - the people who use and/or contribute to the magazine.

[Robert Kosek]

Cairnswm, I don't see the problem with Jeremy's suggestion. There is a whole lot more to games than just the end result, the library you used, or even promotion of pascal games. Going into an explanation of a singly linked list, double linked list, or a hashed list has implications even in games. Speed is important in a game.

[Eric]

Nice!

To further Jeremy's suggestions, it might be nice to have some kind of poll/demographics on the target public, to know if we're looking at mostly beginners, seasoned developers, etc. (this being the 1st issue, I don't expect you to have the statistics yet! so more about intended target)

For instance a fair share of the questions in GLScene newsgroup actually do not revolve around the library itself, but more about understanding of 3D maths (f.i. vectors, matrices, and their relation to "real world") or of simulation issues (time-dependency, integration, handling of collisions). If you don't understand what a cross-product does f.i., having "CrossProduct" in a function name or in a documentation will be of no help, same goes for affine vs homogeneous notions, vector vs point, etc.

These are deep subjects however, and food for series of articles, where if Delphi/Pascal can be the main support for sample implementation, it would be as much (if not more) about how/why it works, and showing it's not just mathemagics :)
Of course, beside finding volunteers, the issue will be to find a middle ground between theoretical lecture (boring) and cookbook recipe (fun, but ultimately misleading).

[Huehnerschaender]

How about a column about the frameworks that are available in Delphi?

Find a person who is fit in one framework each issue and he can write an article about the framework. How easy is it to use? What is it capable of? etc... each with a little sample program like a pong game.

We have many frameworks, but most people only know the ones they use.

Asphyre, DanJetX, GLScene, (Un)DelphiX, SDL etc etc...

[jdarling]

I'd be happy to work on an article about anything I can. Though I have to admit, that I'd more then likely focus on Lua, DAWG's, and/or searching algos. As those are the things I can speak intelligently about. As was said, I think that while these can be seen as generic topics, they are important in game development as well. My only problem is time and I don't see light at the end of the tunnel until late September.

Then again, between the articles I've started for here and the stuff I worked on for the Lua Gems book I'd have a pretty good start on the articles before then.

It would also be interesting to see Eric, Sascha, Dom, and others write about the libraries they have head up or developed and how to get started with them. Something I'm sure they already have done a few times in NG's and in private :).

[savage]

Dean,
I hope you don't mind that I announced the Mag on the delphi.graphics newsgroup. Hopefully someone at CodeGear will notice.

[WILL]

Why not just contact them directly? I'm sure that they would be thrilled to see that your online magazine exists and carries their brand name. :)

Heck, you might even be able to get one of them to do an interview for a future issue.

[technomage]

No worries Dom. :)