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Game Developer Magazine Unveils 2009's Front Line Awards Finalists
Chris Faylor
6
With the annual award season now underway, Game Developer magazine has unveiled the finalists for the various categories of its annual Front Line Awards.

"The Front Line Awards are an official way of recognizing one specific aspect of the industry: the tools that developers need to do their jobs," writes the magazine. "Front Line Award finalists represent the most innovative, user-friendly, and useful products from behind the scenes of the world's best video games."

This year, the nominees were based on surveys of Game Developer magazine subscribers and Gamasutra community members, with the finalists then selected after "Consultation" with Game Developer's advisory board and editors.

To determine the winners, which will be announced come January 2010, "professional developer were polled via an invitational survey." Until then, place your bets on the following finalists in art, audio, middleware, engine, programming, and book:

Art Tool
Autodesk 3ds Max 2010, Autodesk
Corel Painter 11, Corel
Modo 401, Luxology
Autodesk Mudbox 2009, Autodesk
ZBrush 3.12b, Pixologic

Audio Tool
FMOD Designer 4.27, Firelight Technologies
Miles Sound System 7.2e, RAD Game Tools
ProTools v8.0.1, Digidesign
Vivox Precision Studio SDK v. 3.0.6, Vivox
Wwise 2009.2, Audiokinetic

Middleware
Havok Physics 6.6.0, Havok
morpheme 2.0, NaturalMotion
Scaleform GFx 3.0, Scaleform
Havok Behavior 6.6.0, Havok
SpeedTree 5.0, Interactive Data Visualization

Engine
CryEngine 3, Crytek
Gamebryo Lightspeed, Emergent Game Technologies
Source 1.6.1.6, Valve
Unity 2.5.1, Unity Technologies
Unreal Engine 3 Build 37xx, Epic Games

Programming/Production Tool
Adobe Flash CS4 Professional v10, Adobe Systems
Hansoft 5.3, Hansoft
Perforce 2009.1, Perforce Software
SlickEdit 2009 ver 14.0, SlickEdit
XNA Game Studio 3.1, Microsoft

Book
Game Coding Complete 3rd Edition by Mike McShaffry, Charles River Media
Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory, AK Peters
Mastering Unreal Technology: Vol. 1 by Jason Busby, Zak Parrish, and Jeff Wilson, Sams Publishing
Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, The MIT Press
Real Time Cameras: A Guide for game designers and developers by Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, Morgan Kaufmann

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
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  • cell9song legacy 10 years
    reply
    December 8, 2009 2:17 PM

    I'm surprised Simultronics "Hero Engine" didn't get nominated. Its supposed to be one of the best middleware solutions for MMO's at the moment.

    Then again, I'm a fucking house painter so what do I know.....lol.

    • darkpresence legacy 10 years
      reply
      December 8, 2009 5:29 PM

      im not suprised it didnt get nominated. The studio is most likely using it, though its good for fantasy genre of MMO's we are looking to most likely scrape a ton of code in the engine, and rebuild a good majority of it for a cyberpunk MMO we are working on. To work on more realistic lighting, and reflections from glass on buildings, including draw distance, and scalability. Otherwise in of itself its a very good middleware tool, lot of versatility, but requires a lot of tweaking for your studio's specific production use.

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