For only the 5th time in my life as a programmer I took part in some pair programming this week. I had forgotten just how much benefit there is from pair programming and decided to share some of my experiences. Pair programming simply means two coders, sitting down at the computer together with one person 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
Sign up for the Hyperbol beta, download it, and play it. I found this a few weeks ago and thought it was so-so after playing for 30 mins or so, however after playing a few games on the LAN at work, I’ve seen the full depth of the game, and it is the best game Read More
As I mentioned a few weeks back Cavemen by Lightworks Games has just been released. To encourage everyone to buy it, and to help give feedback to one of the creators (Walter, who used to sit next to me back on MVH) I thought I’d write up a quick review.
Has anyone else found themselves wondering where all the good games have gone? Other than a few diamonds in the rough (Oblivion, Civ4, Galactic Civilizations 2) there seems to have been a distinct lack of excellent games of late. For the past few years I’ve been working on ways to enjoy games as I used Read More
Ever wondered what your programmer personality type is? I’ve designed a personality test based on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test which will tell you just that. By answering a simple 12 questions you’ll be given a 4 letter acronym describing your personality. Are you a doer or a thinker, solo or team player?
All games have user interfaces, from first person shooters to puzzle games and hardcore simulations. Their quality ranges from excellent down to looking like they’ve been hastily put together by programmers themselves at the end of a project. Sometimes they seem to only be there to let players have access to the internal workings of Read More
In my career as a game programmer I’ve found too many of us simply can’t communicate with the outside world. Below is a list of 13 points that will help you communicate with others in the office and perhaps even talk to girls.
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