I spent the first two days of GDC undertaking my Scrum Master Certification. As part of this course we had to add an extra item to the agile manifesto. I came up with the concept of “Fun over Features”. Focus on finding fun within your game rather than just adding features in the hopes “fun” [...]
Back in 2006 I wrote an article detailing one of the biggest problems I saw with indie game development. Since then, I’ve seen a rise in another problem that I’ll outline today. This problem stems from the lack of communication within the indie game industry and I look for possible solutions.
Below are a collection of Blogs relating to game development, primarily graphics programming. Use your favourite reader (eg Google Reader) to read them. Know of any blogs not on the list that you can recommend? Add a comment and I’ll add them to the list. Big thanks to Damian Trebilco for help with the list. [...]
Game designers often find themselves writing code in modern games. Often, they have little to no programming experience and therefore must be taught the basics of programming (sequence, conditionals and loops). I propose utilizing a technique that simplifies the code written by game designers in their games. This technique is known as “Fluent Interfaces”.
How many virgins have played your game? Do you make sure they’re virgins before they play? You need at least one virgin per week to keep you on track and you should be filming them!
Good software development books are hard to find. I’m always being asked which books I recommend so I thought I’d compile a list of my favourites. These are books every software developer should read. All of these books have made me a better programmer. The list covers everything from the basics [...]
Do you want to learn how to make your own computer games? Not sure where to start? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to create your own games for free using XNA. I’ve been asked by a number of people what the best route to take when learning to develop games. The following tutorial will [...]
Games take a lot of time and money to create. Many companies can’t afford this ever increasing drain on their resources, particularly independent game developers. Developers need to become more pragmatic in the way they developer their games. This article describes the steps we’ve been taking to focus on releasing a good game, in the [...]
Does the title of this article make you cringe? People have mixed feelings when it comes to C# and the .NET framework. Just like many hardcore game developers 10 years ago swore that games should only be made in straight C, many developers today say that C++ is the only way to go. This article [...]
Have you ever thought about becoming an indie game developer? Has your game company just gone under, sick of working for publishers or do you just want to break into the games industry? Whatever the reason, one thing that rings true for all Indie developers is the goal of making a good game. A lot [...]
I’ve used a lot of scripting languages over the years when developing games. For my latest engine, I decided I’d use C# as the scripting language. I’ve been amazed by how well C# works as a scripting language so I thought I’d share my experiences. The technique I’m about to discuss gives game designers access to [...]
The Model View Controller (MVC) pattern has been used with great success in business software development for years. Despite this, it has never fully been picked up by the games industry. Today I’m going to discuss why the MVC pattern is perfect for game development.
Test Driven Development (TDD) has steadily grown in popularity among non-game programmers. Despite this, it has not been widely adopted in game development. Today I’m going to discuss why TDD is suited to games development and how it frees developers and designers to experiment with “finding the fun” without breaking core gampelay.
Sid Meier once said “A game is a series of interesting choices” [1]. By focussing on the choices made by the player, we can create better games through Choice Driven Design. This focus on player choice should happen both at design and implementation time for best results. I will discuss why the focus on choices [...]
Valve’s Gabe Newell was on Good Game recently and brought up a topic close to my heart; community funded games. This is where the community (gamers) all chip in small amounts of money to fund a game, rather than a single large publisher. The question is, will it work?
Today I’ve got another game developer interview. This time with Simon Neech (The Sneech). The Sneech is a game designer at Fuzzyeyes and used to work with me at Auran. Please feel free to comment with any further questions as he visits regularly.
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
