Exams, exams, code, exams, exams….

A2 exams suck. Not necessarily because they are hard, but just because the quantity of things to remember is fairly diverse. And that means, unless I want to fail, I need to actually make use of the time I have to revise. So far it has been going well – this week is pure English history (1640-1685 / 1660-1685) and I’m already near the end of the commonwealth and the protectorate – so Charles II’s reign should fill out the rest of the time quite nicely.

Having deadlines vs. Having bad deadlines

The Hive is now progressing fairly well -  changes are coming in a rather steady fashion, and I have a fairly concrete list of taks to perform to get the game done. The only part of the contingency missing is level creation: but that’s something I can get others to help with, due to the level editor in the game.

The Hive: Pre-Alpha 2

I said I wanted to live up to “Release early, release often”, so here it is: another pre-alpha to screw with. Most importantly, this build does away with the half-baked lighting system of the previous pre-alpha (it could have been used to dramatic effect, but did not look convincing enough in most scenarios, especially due to the 7 hardware light limit of GPUs – which applies unless I dabble with shaders or lightmap things. Neither of which I especially want to do)

Screw it: Here’s a pre-alpha

I decided to dump my ideas of getting a completely original idea, and I bit the bullet: I started reimplementing a game I made a while back, called “The Hive”. The orginal sucked, but I wanted to fix its flaws. I wrote a quick plan in 15 minutes, started coding the game on Saturday afternoon, and now I have a pre-alpha. I wanted to adhere to “Release early, release often”. So here it is:

Stumbling through the ideas fridge: “Bust or Bust”

Remember: These posts are discussing concepts and ideas. I’m not committing myself to completing these ideas by posting them here, they’re simply ideas I’m investigating.

As mentioned previously I’ve been playing with tons of ideas – and I wanted to investigate a Worms-like game

Still playing in the laboratory

One of the big things I have learnt about game design, is that it takes time. In the same way a great artist doesn’t just create a masterpiece out of thin air, games require prototypes,  tinkering, and most of all, time – in the same way artists create sketches, and potentially multiple ‘prototypes’ before the final piece.

It’s quiet, too quiet….

Yep, it’s 2009, and I haven’t posted in a while, so I decided I had better do so – you know, just to update everyone on what’s “going down” in “da hood” </gangster_speak>

New computer

Critical point

The “secret project” has reached a rather critical point, where low level engine work switches to working on objects which directly affect the game itself. I’m just mapping out the relationship structure between world and world entities in fact.

Menu of mystery

The debugger… friend turned foe

One thing I’ve learnt again and again whilst programming, is that the debugger is my friend. Whether trying to fix segfaults, corruption or leaks, the debugger is by your side, through it all.You can trust your good old friend, the debugger.