I build software. The best place to find me is on Game Development
Game Connect Asia Pacific Audio Recordings
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
The Indie Problem
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
The Problem With Contractors In Software Projects
Every project I’ve worked on has had at least one contractor working on some part of it. I’ve worked both as a contractor and with many and I’d like to discuss a few of the problems I’ve seen. Some of these problems are quite subtle and I believe are often overlooked by managers of software Read More
How To Get In The Zone, And Stay There
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
The Importance Of Finishing What You Start
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.
Pair Programming – Try It Now
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
Qualities of a Good Game Programmer
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
Flexibility vs. Speed
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
Less Is 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