A bunch of my friends are working on Edge of Twilight at Fuzzyeyes (the first game studio I worked at). They have a new video out which is quite impressive. Check it out here. I’m hoping to have an interview with a couple of the developers in the coming months. Fuzzyeyes is one of the few game studios remaining in Brisbane so I hope things move along smoothly for them.
I’ve previously talk about creating a good game GUI design. Today I’d like to hear from you. I’m interested in what people are currently using to mock up their in-game GUI’s and what they would like to see from a product to help them. Please add a comment to this blog, or email me directly with your thoughts. Below are some specific questions: (more…)
Left 4 Dead 2 was announced at E3 this year. A group of disgruntled gamers have since started a boycott of the game. I don’t want to speak about the specifics of the boycott, but instead, touch on what this means for the games industry.
Have you ever played an underwhelming game? It might be a lack of choice, depth, emergence or fun. Today I’m going to discuss why many games lack that key ingredient to succeed, giving specific examples of how Dawn of War II (DOWII) and Battlefield Heroes (BH) both miss the mark. I’ll finish up by giving you an exercise to find out whether your game is underwhelming.
Have you ever written perfect code? If so, how often does this happen? If not, why not, and do you think it’s possible? Perfect code is something that many developers strive for but few, if any, achieve. In this entry, I will discuss the set of requirements that must be met for a developer to be in a position to write perfect code.
I’ve worked with a lot of awesome people in the games industry. I’ve learned a lot from these people and I thought a great way of sharing their knowledge and wisdom would be to start a game developer spotlight. This is my first attempt, I’m interested in people’s feedback. I worked with Greg on Battlestar Galactica and on an unreleased title before leaving Auran. (more…)
So a few months ago I posted about resigning and how I was planning to set up a software development company. It’s now a little over 6 months later and I thought I’d give everyone an update on how things are going. Walter and I formed Opticode late last year and have been busy making ASP.NET, .NET and Silverlight applications for quite a few clients around Brisbane. I’m still doing some game development contract work where I’m currently helping with the development of a multi-threaded renderer as well as some C# tools development.
Quite a few people recently have been blaming Java for part of the downfall in current computer science (CS) graduates. While I don’t particularly like java, I’d like to go to its defence to say that teaching Java is not the real reason that a lot of CS graduates are no good these days. I know this is a touchy subject for some people so I apologise in advance if I’ve offended anyone.
For some time now I’ve been asked by a few people to write up my thoughts on a coding standard. To me, coding standards are like source control, until you use them you don’t realise just how awesome they are. Coding standards are a requirement for large software teams, however even if you are working alone I’d recommend adopting at least a simple coding standard.Keeping code consistent and readable is helpful when reading other people’s code as well as when reading your own code weeks or months are it was written. In effect a coding standard is trading development time for maintainability time. I’ve found that the ratio of dev time to maintenance time grows from 1:1 on a small project to something approaching 1:∞ on larger projects.
Now that I’ve discussed why you should be using XNA, I’d like to look from the other side and talk about what Microsoft should do with XNA to benefit both developers and gamers. XNA is a great opportunity for Microsoft to get even further ahead of Sony in the current generation of consoles; they just need to make the right decisions to get there.
A good friend of mine Damian Trebilco has just made public his new rendering technique. It takes the best parts of forward and deferred rendering. A paper on the technique as well as a demo showing it off are available at his Google Code page.
Auran Developments went into liquidation late last year. Many of us saw it coming for at least a few months, if not years. Below are my personal thoughts on why Auran went bust. I’m writing this to try and help other struggling software or game development stduios from ending up in the same way.
I thought I’d give a little insight into the things I learned about making a game for the Xbox 360 controller. I’m a big fan of the controller’s feel and ease in developing for it. The added bonus is that the wired controller can plug straight into the PC meaning there’s even more coverage for it. I won’t go into details of Xinput but instead give more general advice. I’ll also share a little knowledge that an ex-Microsoft colleague taught me about its use.
I have a lot of dreams about what I’d like to see in the future. One of the strongest dreams involves game development education. To put it bluntly, I’ve been unimpressed by what I’ve seen so far. There are a number of courses around but none of them have stood out as being amazingly good. Quite a few are too young to determine how good they are, but suffice to say, looking through resume’s of people, there’s no golden bullet of educational institute that guarantee’s a certain quality of programmer. So what does my dream involve, and how is it going to change the way games are made?
I finally resigned from Auran a couple of weeks ago. I’ve wanted to try running my own software development company for a while now and I’ve been asked to write a book based on my programming personality test. I thought I was going to be contracting at Auran; however it seems they’ve run out of money, or projects or something and I’ll now be contracting 3 days per week at the company I used to work with, MVH. While I’m glad to be leaving Auran, I’m going to miss the team I was working with. We had a great new game coming up, great people and some awesome tech made by the engine programmer. It’s a shame that I’ll no longer be working with the team, but unfortunately there are some things I just can’t change.
So as most people will have heard by now, EA has brought Bioware (and Pandemic). I, as many people on the net, think this is one of the saddest days in gaming history. Check out the pic to the right of what Mass Effect’s new box will probably look like.
