2009 Front Line Awards

We're happy to present our 12th annual tools awards, representing the best in game industry software, across engines, middleware, production tools, audio tools, and beyond, as voted by the Game Developer audience.

Postmortem - NCsoft's Aion

Aion is NCsoft's next big subscription MMORPG, originating from the company's home base in South Korea. In our first-ever Korean postmortem, the team discusses how Aion survived worker fatigue, stock drops, and real money traders, providing budget and demographics information along the way.

Rethinking User Interface

Thinking of making a game for multitouch-based platforms? This article offers a look at the UI considerations when moving to this sort of interface, including specific advice for touch offset, and more.

Center Of Mass

This technical artist-oriented article from an ex pro gymnast shows how you can use math and physics (specifically dealing with gravity) to improve your character animation. The author most recently worked on UFC Undisputed 2009, which has some of the best body interpolation and animation seen in games.