2012 Year of the dragon
23rd Jan 2012
When you've played a lot of games, it's not surprising when you start to see
parallels in the real world.
Read article.
On the importance of Feedback
27th Nov 2011
Feedback - giving information to the player about state changes - is essential for games.
But how explicit should it be?
Read article.
Website improvements
28th Oct 2011
I've updated the website - read about it here.
Includes information on how to get around the loss of Google's rotating colour palette
facility for adverts.
Read article.
The Keyhole challenge series - the development of a tiny game
An apology and demo
12th September 2011 : Part seven
After a long break, see how far I got.
Read article.
Collectables
26th December 2010 : Part six
The photography idea wasn't going to pull its weight in this game. What shall I do instead?
Read article.
Depth
28th November 2010 : Part five
Distant background - an interesting discovery prevents my game becoming a confusing mess.
Read article.
An organic world : Foreground
21st November 2010 : Part four
Another cosmetic development - foreground objects integrate the character into the world.
Read article.
Managing repetitiveness
14th November 2010 : Part three
How I'm creating an interesting world without obvious repeating textures.
Read article.
World design
7th November 2010 : Part two
Some thoughts on how the structure of a gameworld can be optimal for the intended gameplay.
Also, how I arrived at the player vs environment collision model, and a first demo.
Read article.
Small resolutions
30th October 2010
The first of a series of articles on developing a game - my general approach to game development, and the concepts behind this one. Also lays down the gauntlet to other
game developers with the Keyhole Challenge.
Read article.
Licencing
6th October 2010
Sorry for not putting up any new content for a while. Apart from a couple of articles I
thought better of, I've been mainly working on a new and exciting project.
Licencing stuff is a pain!
Preventing walkthroughs
18th July 2010
Many online puzzle games have a walkthrough created within hours of the
game's release. Here I discuss why this is a bad thing and how to prevent it.
Read article.
Minimising subjective download time (part 2)
19th June 2010
It's almost been a month already, so here is the concluding article about how to
make starting up your game feel quicker.
Read article.
Minimising subjective download time (part 1)
22nd May 2010
If optimising to reduce the size (and hence loading delay) of your game has reached
limiting returns, what else can you do?
The first of a pair of articles about how to make starting up your game feel quicker.
Read article.
A new comment system
8th May 2010
All blogs 'ought' to allow comments, but up to now mine has not.
I figured that these were my options:
- Don't allow comments at all;
- use standard accounts;
- keep comments entirely anonymous, or
- do something a bit clever.
Option (1) is boring, (2) needs a database for the accounts and (3) would negate any
chance of a community, so of course I went with the last option.
Read more >
The Dimensionality of Gaming
24th April 2010
Well ahead of schedule, an article.
I consider the variation in player choice - how linear a game is - at different levels.
Read article.
Welcome
10th April 2010
Welcome to my not-quite-a blog. It's not quite a blog because I'm building it manually, and reserve the right to edit things after posting. Mostly it'll be articles about gameplay, short description of my games, or perhaps
something about what I'm developing at the time. I might link in other games I like, or something else random -
you'll just have to see if you like it.
The plan is to try and post something at least once a month, or more often if possible. But don't hold me to that.
I've migrated some old stuff across to this format; they're not in chronological order but it makes sense to keep them.
Heath Robinson-style bridge building exercise
A walkthrough of FGW Bridge, a game by Wayne Marsh.
Well, I say walkthrough, but it isn't necessarily the quickest way of doing it.
Plasma effect generating tool
Another non-game thing. This is a tool for creating images of clouds, wood textures
and other plasma-based effects.
If you've been wondering about the backgrounds in many of my games have a play with
this.
Archive 1: Descriptions of my older games :
Silver Lining, Distortion Factor, Rocket Racers, Big Fish, Piu Piu, Mathsspin, Get Greg, Maxwell
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