Doolwind

Pragmatic Thoughts On Game Development by Alistair Doulin

About Me

Alistair Doulin I build software. The best place to find me is on Twitter.
Posted on November 30, 2007 by Doolwind
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Making Games For The Xbox 360 Controller

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.

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Posted on November 13, 2007 by Doolwind
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Game Development Education: The Dream

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?

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Posted on November 5, 2007 by Doolwind
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And Now For A Taste Of Things To Come

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.

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Posted on June 21, 2007 by Doolwind
13 Comments

1 Day Game #1

Over the weekend I had a little spare time and decided to try out Haaf’s Game Engine (HGE). After spending the last year working on BSG and as long as I can remember on CIC I decided to make a small game that would take less than a day. The finished product came in at 13 hours and is a “Geometry Wars” style of game with a bit of a twist. I’ve aptly called the game “Game1“.

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Posted on June 18, 2007 by Doolwind
3 Comments

AI Game Programming Wisdom 4

So I’ve been extra busy as always and haven’t had a great deal of time to post.  This time I have an excuse!  Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on my first draft for the upcoming “AI Game Programming Wisdom 4” book.  I’m writing an article entitled “Scripting Your Way to Advanced AI” (check out more info here).  After working with Simon (our designer) on the singleplayer of Battlestar Galactica I decided to share my experiences.  I’m unsure how much I can talk about the article so I’ll leave it at that for now.  Suffice it to say at least one Dark Reign reference was snuck in there, imaginary sticker for anyone that finds it.

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Posted on April 6, 2007 by Doolwind
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Happy Easter

Hi guys,

This is just a quick post to say happy Easter and let you know how things are going at the moment. Things at work have been going crazy leading up to big milestones so I’ve been putting in 10+ hour days for a while now. This has left me little time to work on my latest blogs, but rest assured, I have a number in the works. I’m currently playing Silent Hunter 4 in all its bugginess and as usual still playing as much Company of Heroes as I can with my limited spare time.

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Posted on March 1, 2007 by Doolwind
14 Comments

Less Is More Part 2

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 complexity in all the wrong places. Quite a few people I’ve spoken to like SC so I thought I’d put down my thoughts to let them know why I am having trouble enjoying it.

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