Waiting to test the Wii Opera SDK raycasting dungeon class beta? It's now open to the public. We've got the changelog and the link to take you where you can access it, so read up on the full post and start tinkering with it. Enjoy!

It's better to give than to receive - this was the point of the new initiative set up by Ratchet & Clank developers Insomniac Games as it introduced a new technology sharing program entitled "Nocturnal" for other video game developers in the industry. Its aim is basically to create a central information hub which different devs can share with one another. You can find out more about the Nocturnal initiative by reading our full article after the jump.

With today's global community, it's important to get connected and to stay connected. Exit Games allowed players of various platforms to do precisely that with the Neutron multiplayer gaming platform, the latest version of which was recently unveiled at the Game Developer's Conference 2008. Get connected in the full article after the jump.

Emotiv Systems has sent word that they will be introducing the beta build of their mind-controlled headset's SDK at the upcoming Game Developer Conference in San Francisco.

While the SDK won't be released until a month later, Emotiv's lecture should give visitors an idea of what the company's new tech will offer. Details are available in the full article.

We've received word that Hullbreach Online has just released the second version of their Wii Opera Software Developer's Kit. Also new is a 3D Mesh gallery that displays works submitted by up-an-coming developers for the Wii's internet browser. Details are available in the full article.

 

Scaleform Corporation has just sent out a press-wire announcing that they are now releasing Scaleform GFx as a third-party Software Developer's Kit (SDK) for Nintendo Company Ltd.'s Wii console. This news comes in shortly after the company announced that the same dev kit has been released for use on the Sony PlayStation 3 and PSP consoles. In line with this latest announcement, Scaleform president/CEO Brendan Iribe had this to say:

We made sure the Scaleform GFx architecture works well with existing game engines on Wii, as well as new ones. Moreover, Scaleform GFx delivers a range of cursor features designed to take advantage of the Wii Remote's enormous potential. With Scaleform GFx, developers can have the best of both worlds: artist-based data-driven content and hardware-accelerated scalable graphics.

As a further backgrounder, Scaleform GFx is built on the Scaleform VGx hardware accelerated vector graphics technology, which tessellates vector graphic shapes into triangles that modern 3D video cards can render. On the gaming side of this news, it's always good news to hear that another developer's kit is available for use on our favorite consoles. After all, it potentially means more - if not better - games in the near future.

   
 

For the resident coders wondering about the Wii console's potential for web-based development, we've got something for you. geekrecon of the Hullbreech team has just announced a new release of their Wii Opera Software Development Kit (SDK). For first-time readers, this kit uses HTML and Javascript for developing Wii games and features support for the Wiimote's motion-sensitivity (still in development).

The latest release of the Wii Opera SDK comes with increased graphical functionality, which geekrecon is demonstrating via an FPS demo engine. The demo is expected to work on both the Wii's Opera browser,  and other non-IE browsers, although the latter has no controller support (auto movement mode only, screensaver-style). This being an early build, the developer posted some important notes:

Unfortunately, the Wii likes to crash after viewing the demo. It's most likely an out-of-memory error. I am actively working on cleaning up that problem. The end product may be a ray-tracing engine (no complaints there) instead of a quad-texture engine. I don't know how the speed will be, but with high-polygon levels, it will definitely be faster.

The dev further notes that graphics-wise, the engine's polygon-based. There are plans for rewriting it as a ray-tracer. Guys interested in helping build up this dev kit are being invited by the Hullbreech team to join up via the main site. Feel free to visit it via the Source link below. As a last detail, here are the SDK's current capabilities (quoting DRNEUTER at the Nintendo Forums):

• Button detection from the primary Wii Remote
• Cursor positioning from all 4 Wii Remotes
• Z roll sensing from all 4 Wii Remotes
• Z positioning from all 4 Wii Remotes
• 3D polygonal rotation, scaling, and moving
• Z sorting of polygons
• Graphical primitives
• Image manipulation and placement

The whole videogame industry is currently in the middle of the transition to high-definition next gen visuals with the introduction of DirectX 10, and to make the transition an easier process, here comes Nvidia with the "definitive" game development platform, Nvidia SDK 10.

The core of Nvidia's new platform is the new NVIDIA Developer Toolkit. It promises to "save developers time and money in creating games that deliver almost lifelike graphics and physics realism." The platform consists of Nvidia GeForce(R) 8 Series graphics cards, Nvidia nForce(R) 680 motherboards, and DirectX 10.

The new NVIDIA Developer Toolkit also includes instructive code samples, advanced shaders, performance tuning, and more, all in a bid to make the creation of Microsoft DirectX 10-compatible games easier.

The Nvidia Developer Toolkit also includes the following:

• SDK 10: all-new DirectX 10, OpenGL, and CUDA code samples for the latest GPUs
• Texture Tools: Powerful libraries and plug-ins for working with textures - now with DirectX 10 support and approximately 10x faster due to GPU acceleration via CUDA
• PerfKit 5: powerful tools for debugging and profiling GPU applications for Windows Vista and DirectX 10 -- now with shader edit-and-continue, render state modification, customizable graphs and counters, and more
• ShaderPerf 2: detailed shader performance information with support for new drivers
• FX Composer 2: a world-class development environment for cross-platform shader authoring; DirectX and OpenGL support with HLSL, Cg, and COLLADA FX
• Shader Library: the world's largest collection of GPU shaders featuring more than 100 different shader effects and support for external submissions

Nvidia is currently demonstrating the entire development platform and distributing some of its components free of charge at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

Matt Casamassina is Editor-in-Chief of IGN's GameCube and Wii departments and one of gaming journalism's top 50 journalists. Mark Bozon is one of the newer Wii editors in IGN. Can you add Virtual Console developers to their resumes?

They announced in their October 20 Wii-k in Review podcast that they are currently "in the process of designing their own Virtual Console game." They could not release any further details at the moment, but they promise that their creation would be, and we quote: "wacky, insane, even retarded." They note that they have even gathered a "top-tier" development team to work with.

It must be every gaming journalist's dream: instead of covering the subject, why not be the subject? There will even be a regular IGN feature that will be covering the progress of the development of the game, and Matt and Mark are intent on retailing this game on the Wii VC for cheap. Cheap, meaning something like "300, 400, or 500 Wii points" or whatever the final name of the Wii currency will be.

GoNintendo kindly extracted three-and-a-half minutes of podcast audio from the October 20 Wii-k in Review which talks about the Casamassina/Bozon video game project. We're making the extract available for download, so you can hear all about this wacky idea that these IGN editors have. Or maybe not so wacky. They could even pull a sleeper hit off, for all we know.

Download: [Oct. 20 IGN Wii-k in Review excerpt]