People, who are into game development and iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch could take a look at the Sparrow Framework. It is a lightweight, free and open source framework (BSD licence), that should making games easy, especially for people who worked lots with ActionScript. There are things like sprites and tweens.

“All developers that have come in touch with ActionScript, .Net or Java will get started quickly. Especially Flash/Flex developers will feel at home immediately, since it follows most of the ActionScript dogmas and brings them to pure Objective-C.”

Stepping into this framework should be easy, because the developers tried to keep the amount of classes and code to a bare minimum.

Minecraft-modding is the new sport. This is a more advances example of what you can get. This mod uses a GLSL-Texture, to achieve that surreal, drug-like aesthetic (skip to the middle of the video, there the things are getting much better).

Here is a thread in the Minecraftforum, showing how to work with GLSL-Shaders. And this is a pastebin of the actual code, that was use for this mod.

Here’s also a cool video for people who wants to get started at adding textures.

It looks like, there is a build of MilkyTracker for the Android freshly available. I found nothing about it yet on the official website of MilkyTracker, but I guess it will come. Meanwhile the news is making its way through the web. (via) (via) (via)

Still fresh but enormously promising is the Monocle GameEngine – an open source project, that makes creation and editing of 2d-games real fun. Most communication about the project takes place at the BitCollective Forum – most of the website is still at an early stage. The driving force behind the engine is Alec Holowka aka Infinite Ammo and Matt Thorson. Why make this engine, and not use tools like Unity? Alec says in the video, that Unity gets weired, if trying to make 2D-styled games. So making an engine for exactly this purpose is the main-motivation. And it looks really convenient and responsive!

The Next Level Conference Blog (a nice and fresh welcome on the Digital Tools Blogroll as well) posted a feature of interview, that people from the Cologne Game Lab made at the Game Developers Conference. Just go there, watch and listen.

Software meets things – this could be the subtitle of this freshly released book “A Touch of Code” from Die Gestalten Verlag. This 256 pages book is an exploration into “interactive installations and experiences”, that has code as one of their foundation. Art as a medium of pushing new boundaries of technology?

About the book:

“Thanks to the omnipresence of computers, cell phones, gaming systems, and the internet, a broad audience has traded its past reservations against technology for an almost insatiable curiosity for all things technical. Against this background, unprecedented new tools and possibilities are opening up for the world of design. In addition to sketchbooks and computers, young designers are increasingly using programming languages, soldering irons, sensors, and microprocessors as well as 3D milling or rapid prototyping machines in their work.”

Once again Digital Tools made it into UKs Wikio Gaming Blogranking. This time we lost two places, but still at place 16. There’s much room for improvement.. ;) Support Digital Tools by connecting via RSS, linking to us, like us on Facebook or just by telling your friends about the cool articles on this blog! Also using the Flattr- and Facebook buttons under each article is a help!

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