Introduction Having ‘more’ of everything in a game does not necessarily make it a better game. I’ve spoken about this before with Paraworld and this topic has come up again, this time with Supreme Commander (SC). I was a big fan of Total Annihilation, SC’s spiritual predecessor; however this game seems to have added more Read More
Computer Gaming Weekly released their first 100 magazines for free download on the net a while back. I was reading through the first issue (November 1981) and I stumbled across an article containing a section entitled “Programmers: Are They Good Enough”. While this is a nostalgic and interesting read, it begs the question: 25 years Read More
Over the past two days the first Game Connect Asia Pacific Conference has been held in Brisbane, Australia. It replaced Australian Game Developers Conference (AGDC) which was closed down earlier this year. I went along to the conference and found it quite informative. I took my iRiver with me and recorded the speeches I went Read More
I see the biggest challenge facing Indie game development stemming from the two major types of people who develop the games. The first group have plenty of time to make games, but don’t have the skills to do so. The second group have the skills but have no time to make them. How can these Read More
Being in the ‘zone’ or ‘flow’ is a state of working where time seems to disappear and your productivity is many times greater than regular work. One minute you’ve finished lunch and start work on a new path finding algorithm, the next minute its 7pm and everyone else in the office has gone home for Read More
I’ve been requested by Shiva to write an article on the “Importance of finishing what you start”. Whether you’re an indie developer, looking for a job in the industry or running a large game development house, finishing what you start is important for you.
As some of you may have noticed, my blogs have been a little sporadic over the past few months and for the next two weeks they are going to cease completely. In two days time I will be a married man! To those that prescribe to the belief that I’m ‘getting more time than one Read More
After the excellent response to the programmer’s personality test I wrote I thought I’d look a little more into the beast that is a games programmer. Rather than giving a list of questions to be answered I thought I’d give a list of the qualities I’ve seen in good game programmers over the years. Some Read More
In software development there are many goals that we aim for in designing our software, some of which compete against each other. Two such goals are flexibility and speed. While they may not always be in competition, I’ve found in the past that they quite often are, and particularly so when it comes to game Read More
I’ve played a few demos over the past weeks and I’ve found a recurring theme in the good ones; that less is more. To aid in my explanation I’m going to compare two demos that have come out recently; Company of Heroes (CoH) by Relic (makers of Warhammer 40K) and Paraworld by SEK (makers of Read More
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