Although I don’t write much code any more, I still think of myself as a programmer; I still have programmer tendencies in everyday life, like trying to “optimise” the world around me. When I was in hospital just last week, I was quietly infuriated when they did the scan before the blood test, forcing me [...]
Archive for the ‘Game development’ Category
Getting the best out of a programmer
Posted in Game development on July 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Choosing a business model for a game
Posted in Business, Realtime Worlds on June 25, 2009 | 5 Comments »
I just came across this post by Nicholas Lovell in response to Dave’s talk at the GameHorizon conference. I don’t want to get into debating all of it (obviously I disagree on the “epic fail” bit!!), but item #2 really got me thinking:
My view: different business models require different gameplay. A subscription business needs a [...]
A game in a week!
Posted in Game development, Realtime Worlds on January 13, 2009 | 6 Comments »
It may not quite be Google 20% time, but a number of us at RTW were given last week off “normal” work, assigned randomly to small teams of 5 or 6 and set the challenge of making a complete game of our design. Without a 3D artist, my team went for “Nanotube”, a tunnel shooter [...]
The Agile Disease
Posted in Game development, Management for Geeks, Rants, Software development on November 16, 2008 | 68 Comments »
The games industry is rushing headlong to Agile development methodologies just now; it’s a great source of excitement for some, with conference sessions and magazine articles left, right and centre, and “evangelists” spreading the word.
I’m sick of it. I can’t wait for the day when everyone realises how much of a fad-diet, religious-cult-inspired, money-making exercise [...]
How to get a job at Realtime Worlds (3)
Posted in Game development, Realtime Worlds on October 15, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I hadn’t really anticipated adding a part 3, but I gave a talk at Abertay last Friday on the topic, and need to make the slides available for anyone who missed out, or who wants to follow up on some links etc. So, here they are. It’s similar material to my previous two entries on [...]
Extensible tools
Posted in Develop 08, Software development, Tools on September 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Part 6 (final part) of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
The more you’ve invested in a tool, the more projects you want to use it on, to recover that investment. This means in turn that it’s harder to anticipate everything the tool must do: each project will be different. You want to try and [...]
Model View Controller is Extinct
Posted in Develop 08, Software development, Tools on August 30, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Part 5 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
Today’s post has been a particular pleasure: one of those special times when writing changed my mind. At my original talk at Develop, I said “use Model View Controller”, loud and clear. I even made it key message number 8:
In the talk, I was short of [...]
The case against C++
Posted in Develop 08, Software development, Tools on August 10, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Part 4 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
This post boils down to one simple headline: don’t use C++ for game tools development. But nothing is ever quite that simple – so if you have time, read on
Think
That headline is deliberately provocative, but all I really want you to do is think. [...]
Procedural content generation
Posted in Develop 08, Tools on August 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Part 3 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
Last time round I argued that it’s increasingly worth investing in content creation, and before that I pointed out that your first solution should always be to buy the best that money can buy (and secondly to extend an existing commercial product). Today, however, I want [...]
Optimising content creation
Posted in Develop 08, Tools on August 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Part 2 of “Building World-class Art Tools” from Develop 08
I’d like to take you back in time momentarily, to older games. The further back you go, the less significance content creation held – far enough, and the very term “content creation” presumably didn’t exist. Limited storage space on the hardware must have played a role, [...]
