I love watching pre-IGF deadline trailers – these clips usually showcase games that are already in an advanced stage of development (fully working, usually playable) and are ready to be shown to the public.

The Swapper was famously previewed by Brian Crecente as his favorite IGF entry in 2009, and I’m certain that he’d be stoked to see how much an extra development period of twelve months has made this new build so different from the previous IGF-submitted version.

You can find trailers for two more IGF-submitted games in the extended (Alientrap Software’s upcoming action platformer Capsized and a great-looking rhythm game called Shield the Beat).

I’ll not apologise for posting another Minecraft video. Because it’s a thing of joy. Interrupting yet another late night playing the game (tonight I’m laying some nice flooring upstairs in my house, and checking out some newly discovered caves for much needed iron) was an email pointing us toward something that at least equals this morning’s Enterprise model. It’s a functioning 16-bit computer. Oh yes.

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While not exactly about playing games (this is more for the making of games) the launch of Unity 3, the third iteration of the free-to-use game engine, has me excited. Of all the game-making tools out there, Unity is the one I’ve spent the most time with, and it was actually responsible for the RPS game, RockPaperShotgunity, which we cobbled together last year. Also, I totally made some big spheres move about making booming noises. I am The Creator. People who know stuff are more excited about the unified editor, the post-processing and shader improvements, the occlusion culling, deferred rendering, and other tech stuff. Full What’s New list here, although some of that is for the paid-for Pro version, which I think is limited to a month demo, something like that.

Never made a game before? Spong In A Posty! Although that’s probably a bit out of date for Unity 3. Maybe it’s time to do another one.

When Minecraft Players Are Also Trekkies, Insanity Goes To Warp Speed

A Minecraft player with great ambition and loads of spare time is building a 1:1 replica model of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s massive flagship vessel, the Enterprise D—and he needs some help getting it done.

Patient Minecraft fan “halnicholas” has finished preliminary work on the Enterprise’s frame. It’s lacking in warp nacelles, deck details, paneling, sonic showers, cups of Earl Gray… well, lots. But the grunt work has been done to get this “fucking enormous” Minecraft creation ready for space dock. Its creator has put the word out for volunteers, saying he “needs help building out the decks.”

If you know your Minecraft material crafting and your Enterprise D blueprints, please, help this brave man seek out new life and new civilizations on his PC. Boldly go where no Minecraft player has gone before!

*cue Jerry Goldsmith music*

Building Megaobjects in Minecraft [YouTube via Reddit]

Seeing as how you’re reading this website at this specific time of day, I have to imagine you have — at one point or another — imagined what it’d be like to create a game from scratch; we’ve all been there. Markus Persson, the gentleman best known for Minecraft, can help with that.

You see, he created a game for the down-and-dirty design competition Ludum Dare 18 — and he streamed the entire creation process live. Genius! I was there for part of the “show,” so I feel okay in saying that this time-lapse video of the dev cycle is vastly more enjoyable to watch.

The finished game, Metagun, can be played here.

Timelapse of a game programmer [Reddit via Gawker.TV]

Talking to People: Promotion for Indies
“Andreas Zecher holds a presentation on how indie game developers should try to work more on the promotion of their games.”

Extremely Exlusive Preview of a Super Secret Game
“Petri Purho (of Crayon Physics fame) presents a super secret game that he has been developing on-and-off the last year.”

I don’t care about your input: Making games that play themselves
“Martin Jonasson tells us about how he’s exploring games that takes none or little input from the player. Martin has created a lot of flash-based games that he puts online on his Prototyprally site.”

Oxeye Game Studio Preview: DaisyMoon
“Jens Bergensten, programmer at Oxeye Game Studio, describes how their prototyping engine DaisyMoon became their main engine, and what kind of games they’ve created with it.”

Niklas Åkerblad on The Art of Kometen
“Niklas Åkerblad has created an iPhone/iPad game called Kometen together with Erik Svedäng. Niklas held a presentation at No More Sweden explaining how he worked out the style for the game, as well as discussing the topic of game art in general.”

Ciro Continisio on UFHO2
“Ciro Continisio presents his new game UFHO2 and his current plans.”

Painting backwards: Anders Ekermo and Juha Kangas on Backworld
“Anders Ekermo and Juha Kangas presents their project Backworld, its conception and the technical solutions that puts it all together.”

Bernhard Schulenburg: Designing Where is my Heart?
“Bernhard Schulenburg describes how he designed his new game Where is My Heart? and the difficulties he encountered.”

Stuff I learned about making big games after making small games (direct video link)
“Michael Todd held a presentation about how he learned how to do big games after doing a lot of smaller games.”

Lewis, when marching into the purely-conceptual RPS office to deliver his beautiful Bargain Bucket also brings news that Introversion have made their source code for Darwinia and Multiwinia available. For thirty quid at the Introversion store you gain access to the full source code to nose at and mod to your heart’s delight, the ability to add your own branches to share, access to the dev-forum. Also, there’s going to be a meta-server for Multiwinia. I have no idea what that means. I hope it means there’s a superpowered server. That’d be amazing. Anyway – good news, I think. Those interested can buy here.

The fund, “established as a serious alternative to the traditional publisher funding model,” invests in games by small teams, in order to allow those teams to remain independent of publishers. “World of Goo cost $120K to develop,” the application page notes. “Braid cost $180K. That’s about the right size project for Indie Fund right now, and it necessitates doing things on the cheap.” So, if your game concept is a realistic first-person shooter with MMO elements, get right out of there.

The new lecture, highly rated by GDC attendees, is part of a free update published at the GDC Vault website, and features video technology that allows users to simultaneously view a presenter’s slides alongside video and audio of their presentation.

The well-received ‘Indie Gamemaker Rant’ is now available for free video streaming, and was described by its creators at the time as: “A series of exquisite [five-minute] rants by notable indie game creators. Experience different points of view on indieness, art, beauty, and the future presented by an all star cast of international friends.”

As a detailed Destructoid write-up on the hour-long set of microlectures described, presenters on a host of fascinating topics included Adam Saltsman (Canabalt, pictured), Jonatan Soderstrom (aka Cactus), Anna Anthropy (aka Auntie Pixelante), Jarrad Woods (Captain Forever), Offworld editor [and now IGF Chairman] Brandon Boyer, Randy Smith (Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor), Nathan Vella (Critter Crunch), Craig D. Adams (Superbrothers), Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy), Robin Hunicke (thatgamecompany), Ryan O’Donnell (Co-Op/Area 5 Media) and Babsi Lippe (Papermint).

Of additional significance to those interested in independent and alternative views on games is the already available free video of the ‘Artgame Sessions’ GDC 2010 lecture — including several smaller talks on Far Cry 2, Braid, Mark Essen’s games (Flywrench), and Terry Cavanagh and Stephen Lavelle’s Judith.

In addition to these lectures, GDC Vault’s free videos section includes GDC 2010 lectures from Zynga, Ernest Adams, and NCsoft, plus highly rated lectures featuring 2D Boy’s Ron Carmel and Bungie’s Brian Sharp, as well as a number of other top talks.

The free recordings available are a fraction of the content currently being flowed into the GDC Vault, which has added several new features with this latest content upgrade. It’s now easier to navigate through the Free section of the site, with video, audio and slides more obviously split up while browsing and searching. In addition, site searches will bring up both free content and Vault Subscriber-only content in the same results page.

Full GDC Vault access, including synchronized video recordings for over 200 of GDC 2010′s sessions and hundreds of historical video and audio recordings, is available to GDC 2010 All-Access Pass holders, as well as All-Access Pass holders for other GDC events during the year.

In addition, development studios and schools who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available by contacting Suzanne Cunningham or viewing an online demonstration. Individual Vault subscriptions not tied to All-Access passes are being considered for a 2011 launch.

Finally, I can show off what’s been keeping me so preoccupied for the past week (and all morning as well!), as we announce the opening of the 2011 Independent Games Festival and explain all the changes we’ve prepared for its 13th year.

Chief amongst those is the addition of a new category for iPhone/iPad, DS, PSP and all other mobile devices (ie. Android), as well as allowing those mobile games to compete in all categories, as handheld games have matured to the point where they can compete with their PC/console counterparts. Previously, those games were confined to the IGF Mobile competition, which is now entirely folded into the main IGF.

But we’ve also expanded the focus on art/games, with more finalists in the Nuovo category — a category specifically for more experimental games, like last year’s Nuovo winner Tuning (above), from the aforementioned Cactus.

Over here I’ve discussed the full list of changes to this year’s IGF (including some inside-baseball type changes to the judging system, of interest particularly to indie devs keen to enter). If you’re spurred on to enter yourself, all the submission info you need is over here.

Looking forward to a wicked festival this year, and hope to see your game included!

2011 Independent Games Festival Opens Submissions, Adds Mobile Category, Expands Experimental Focus [IGF.com]