FEATURES

Postmortem: KingsIsle Entertainment's Wizard101

Wizard101 is an MMO with a unique business model. The game not only offers the free-to-play (with microtransactions) model, but also a subscription alongside it. Texas-based KingsIsle shares with us the very honest ups and downs of developing a new MMO, from the boons of free trials to botched UI.

Alternative Geometry

Polygons rule the game development roost, there's no question of that. But that doesn't mean voxels, NURBS, and other methods of achieving non-polygonal geometry have nothing to offer. This article investigates the state of the art and how you can try to implement non-polygonal 3D into your game, or at least your pipeline.

Demystifying Matrix Layouts

Matrices tend to live in shaders, physics systems, and other time-critical portions of games. These important structures are often difficult to optimize and design, so here the authors show best practices for getting the most out of your matrix operations on modern systems, both console and PC.

DEPARTMENTS/COLUMNS