qube posts

It's been over a year since several developers of successful PC indie game titles announced plans for the Indie Fund, an organization dedicated to helping fund promising indie game titles. PC Gamer reports that during a panel at GDC 2011 today the Indie Fund finally revealed which games would receive its first phase of grants.

One of the games is one some of you may have heard of: Monaco, the winner of the grand prize in the 2010 Independent Games Festival. The top down stealth action game comes from the one man team (Andy Schatz) at Pocketwatch Games. The second title is Shadow Physics, a platformer set in a world of shadows cast by shadows. The final game title to receive funding is Q.U.B.E., a title from Toxic Games that's a first person puzzle title with some similarities to Portal. There's no word on how much money each development team received from the Indie Fund. Meanwhile the organization still has half of its money and is still taking submissions from other indie game developers.

The second annual Indie Game Challenge has announced its finalist for the 2011 edition of the independent game competition sponsored by The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, GameStop and The Guildhall. Like last year, six finalists each were picked for the non-professional and professional categories. You can check out the finalist after the jump.

All of the nominated teams will be flown to the DICE Summit in Las Vegas where the winning game and team in each category will be announced on February 11. The winning team in both categories will get $100,000. All of the team will also be able to have meeting with top publishers. In addition the Indie Game Challenge will also name the winner of the Kongregate Award for best browser-based game.

Rome, as the saying goes, wasn't built in a day. Nor was Near London, a virtual world constructed using Qube Software's Q middleware, but the construction of the versatility was inarguably faster. According to Qube CEO Servan Keondjian, Q middleware will give developers "access [to] the rendering features of any cutting-edge game. On top of this, Q opens up the possibility of users changing channel to other online games built with Q or even playing them within the VW environment itself."

Keondjian, best known as the creator of Direct3D, claims that Q functions in all real-time 3D graphics applications. Additionally, its plug-in architecture allows it to communicate with server backends, as well as support a variety of rendering styles in a single client.

The initial result: Near London, central London's most accurate model to date.

Alex Wrottesley, founder of Qube Software, said that Q's workings are crucial to Near's accuracy. "Near presents cities as virtual gateways - just as a real city street is a gateway to shops and restaurants and other experiences. So if a retailer wants a visitor to Near London to be able to click on their shop door and be transported effortlessly to their own virtual world or custom game environment, with Q that becomes simple."

Launched in February of this year, Q is currently being used in a number of game projects.