GameDev
Encyclopedia
GameDev.net is a website
dedicated to game development
, founded by Kevin Hawkins, Dave Astle, and Michael Tanczos among others, in 1999. It serves as a central trade resource and media outlet for the computer and video game industry
, with particular regards to hobbyist and independent developers. The site features daily news, articles, forums, job listings, product reviews, book reviews, contests, and regular columns. The site contains many tutorials for hobbyists and professionals alike with a noticeable focus on computer programming. GameDev.net is visited by a variety of people, including both professionals and hobbyists, and has a highly active user base. Previous site wide polls indicate that the site's demographics are predominately male, with roughly 44.5% of its user base being under 21, and 44.1% of its user base in the 22-30 range. The site also has a popular forum
which boasts advanced topics ranging from artificial intelligence
and DirectX
programming to the off-topic lounge.
, web hosting, and the GDNet Showcase, a service for hosting downloadable games created by members.
tutorials originally written by Jeff "NeHe" Molofee, and NeXe, a wiki-based website on DirectX containing various tutorials and other information. Also hosted is the Game Development Wiki (formerly the Game Programming Wiki).
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
dedicated to game development
Game development
Game development is the software development process by which a video game is developed. Development is undertaken by a game developer, which may range from a single person to a large business. Mainstream games are normally funded by a publisher and take several years to develop. Indie games can...
, founded by Kevin Hawkins, Dave Astle, and Michael Tanczos among others, in 1999. It serves as a central trade resource and media outlet for the computer and video game industry
Computer and video game industry
The video game industry is the economic sector involved with the development, marketing and sales of video games...
, with particular regards to hobbyist and independent developers. The site features daily news, articles, forums, job listings, product reviews, book reviews, contests, and regular columns. The site contains many tutorials for hobbyists and professionals alike with a noticeable focus on computer programming. GameDev.net is visited by a variety of people, including both professionals and hobbyists, and has a highly active user base. Previous site wide polls indicate that the site's demographics are predominately male, with roughly 44.5% of its user base being under 21, and 44.1% of its user base in the 22-30 range. The site also has a popular forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
which boasts advanced topics ranging from artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
and DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
programming to the off-topic lounge.
4 Elements contest
GameDev.net hosts a well known annual competition known as the "4 Elements" contest, which typically starts September of each year and lasts 6 months. It is a sponsored game development competition that requires the contenders to create a game based on 4 elements (revealed before the start of the competition). The contest was originally created around the classical elements, although the focus of the contest has since shifted to random and seemingly unrelated elements to encourage innovations in game play rather than graphics.GDNet+
GameDev.net offers a number of services to paying members, under the brand name GDNet+. Among the offered services are developer journalsBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
, web hosting, and the GDNet Showcase, a service for hosting downloadable games created by members.
Hosted sites
Beyond itself, GameDev.net also hosts a number of other game development sites. The most popular of the hosted sites are NeHe, a comprehensive, but outdated suite of OpenGLOpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
tutorials originally written by Jeff "NeHe" Molofee, and NeXe, a wiki-based website on DirectX containing various tutorials and other information. Also hosted is the Game Development Wiki (formerly the Game Programming Wiki).