Blog posts:
How to Apply For a Job With An Indie Developer
In Games Industry - posted on Mon 23rd July 2012 10. 36PM
Last week I binned around forty job applications whilst I was looking for an artist to help me with Maia. Why? They were so terrible that I felt I was wasting my time even reading them.
I've been freelancing since I was a teenager and would send hundreds of emails a day in dry spells, but I always ensured they were high quality.
I was shocked to find the standard of communication on offer in the applications I received was so poor. Many of the artists have been working for longer than I have. There is really no excuse.
Punctuation
If y...[Read Blog]
A list of companies that brought "booth babes" to E3
In Games Industry - posted on Thu 7th June 2012 4. 10PM
Here is an incomplete list of companies that were represented by "booth babes" at E3.
I wont enter the debate around this issue, but I wish that billion dollar corporations would stop acting like horny fourteen year old boys, and remember that they are making a lot of people uncomfortable whilst damaging their own image. They are alienating more than 50% of their audience right off the bat.
I would also hope that developers themselves will take issue with their art being sold with sex. Maybe have a chat with your publisher to convince them to stop reducing the value of your brand and IP...[Read Blog]
(19) comments : Daniel Cassidy bob James Everyone Shirley RobF Simon Roth Woron InsanityBringer Mike nic Karohemd Phil James a guy Tracy Mark Viki T.B.I.U.
Announcing Maia
In Work - posted on Fri 25th May 2012 3. 29PM
Maia is my new side project. Its been a long time coming.
Check it out!
...[Read Blog]
No Comments.
Bursting The "KickStarter Bubble" Bubble
In Games Industry - posted on Tue 8th May 2012 12. 39PM
Many news outlets keep referring to the current success and popularity of "Kickstarting" games development projects as a bubble. Specifically in the terms of a market bubble.
This is incorrect and shows a misunderstanding of what a market bubble is and how a market works.
A bubble begins when too many people begin investing in something. Its value then becomes inflated beyond a reasonable value. This can be due to emotional reasons, such as the excitement around a sudden growth in value, or rational but incorrect thought, such as assuming a new economy has emerged where the rules no lo...[Read Blog]
(3) comments : ChurchDena25 SD term papers
Can EA ever be indie?
In Work - posted on Wed 2nd May 2012 5. 27PM
EA are releasing a new "indie" bundle. So, to pre-emptively address the internet outrage before it brews: Can a publicly owned company ever be indie?
Nope
Glad we sorted that out. Everyone back to work!
...[Read Blog]
(1) comments : gffg
The next games industry hardware revolution: Cartridges!
In Games Industry - posted on Fri 9th March 2012 2. 58PM
Or... How Angry Birds saved the games industry.
We are going back to cartridges! I'd heard mutterings about this before, but due to a vague document I once signed, and the fact no one would believe me anyway, I've not discussed it. Today Microsoft went public with the announcement* so its time to talk about what it means for everyone and how we got here.
Many people are already probably shaking their heads. Everyone knows solid state disks are too expensive for AAA titles, right? Not-any-more.
Flash memory prices in the global spot market have more than halved since this time last yea...[Read Blog]
(2) comments : Jane McLaughlin Timothy
How Mass Effect III cost the UK tax payer thousands and mocked our democracy.
In Games Industry - posted on Mon 27th February 2012 8. 41PM
I'm somewhat upset about EA and MischiefPR's latest stunt at petition.masseffect.com. It encourages Mass Effect fans to sign a petition to the government demanding them to release information about UFOs. The petition (which may have been pre-existing) is placed on a site that allows UK residents to directly contact the government with their concerns, any petition with over 100,000 signatures will be considered for House of Commons debate.
It confounds me that MischiefPR and E...[Read Blog]
(2) comments : Emily King Bob
Stockholm syndrome in the games industry.
In Games Industry - posted on Sun 5th February 2012 8. 36PM
Two days ago, I made a list.
It was a list of games where no money from a sale goes to the souls who created them.
As I have learnt, expressing my opinions openly is ill advised, so this time I abstained and just presented the facts. I expressed no agenda, other than to encourage thought and discussion over some interesting data. Yet, despite my neutrality, I received yet another violent backlash from the AAA development community.
It confounds me that developers, creating million pound products, sometimes for below ...[Read Blog]
(56) comments : Nicholas Lovell Nicholas Lovell Stephen James Parker Ivan YvonneMorrow WorkmanEmily25 JosephineBailey NolanCarrie Wheeler26ROSEMARIE PARKSDeanne EliseGuzman29 EDDIEBridges Walsh18Christina CristinaWall Leon21Lauri ReidCathleen DANIELLE28Cohen ReedDeborah KRAMERIla32 MarksETHEL34 LoisKidd CecileWillis28 MercedesCurtis21 LillyGutierrez29 TODDBOBBIE GoldenChristine22 Anonymouss SharpeAlfreda23 home page Joy JOy petersf cheap essays online ricardo ricardo Evaluation Essay thesis service jaysons Cheap Beats by Dre Beats by Dre gibsally movies on line movies on line buy original essay writing essays Pay for Essay Writing custom essay paper online Finden Sie mehr heraus buy an essay writing service site custom writing help Nike Blazers df caplin
Games that no longer support their creators
In Games Industry - posted on Fri 3rd February 2012 6. 23PM
While the debate around piracy is often nuanced and riddled with moral complexities, many people will agree that the developers of a game should receive payment for their work. Below I present an incomplete list of PC games where the developers no longer receive payment for their creations. I wont offer an editorial, think of it what you will.
Ion Storm:
Anachronox
Daikatana
Deus Ex
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Dominion
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Looking Glass Studios:
Thief: The Dark Project
Thief II: The Metal Age
System Shock
System Shock 2
Flight Unlimited Series
...[Read Blog]
(68) comments : Manasés Gudiño John Evans Simon Roth ? Simon Roth Nick Wheeler Nick Wheeler wondering Johnny Cooper Nick Wheeler Andrew Haining Alcarendor Johnny Cooper V Random Passerby su Faiter119 Jo Marth su Faiter119 Andrew Barker Maffia Jacob Phoenix Anon22 qptain Nemo qptain Nemo qptain Nemo Chris Carver Mike Mike Chris Carver Chronium explosivose Tseug SkyboxWriter Kevin Kevin Simon Roth Louis Gascoigne Blah Revkaine Ralph Barry Kelly Josh Chess Chess Missingpoint Rodrigo Adam Vandenberg Bender reality Felewin durocelis Jon Abraxas Gun metal fan Driftwood Hoff mozoa imright Dave Prophet a third guy WTF Alrik Fassbauer Wondering Benj @ektoutie
Announcement
In Work - posted on Wed 23rd November 2011 8. 35PM
Now that VVVVVV is out the door and the patches in beta, I've decided its time to break my big news:
I am now working with Mode 7 Games, the developers of critically acclaimed Frozen Synapse . I will be continuing my doctorate with them to help them deliver some truly ground breaking graphics and the tools for their artists to create them.
Mode 7 were my first choice in joining an independent studio, as they create the P...[Read Blog]
(1) comments : pitman
Explay 2011 in Plymouth
In Work - posted on Tue 15th November 2011 10. 53PM
Last weekend I attended the Explay interactive festival, conference and game jam in Plymouth. It was exciting to finally have a games event down in the South West. I've often bemoaned the lack of formalised development community down here, despite the industry leading hubs of Bournemouth, Bristol and Plymouth.
The Venue, The National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, was a particularly excellent choice. With its massive open areas, great views and best of all jellyfishes, it sure beats the stuffy old hotels that other industry events often opt for. I do however question setting the keynotes in...[Read Blog]
No Comments.
Faces of the Games industry
In Fun - posted on Sun 9th October 2011 5. 45PM
Post removed as the images were eating all my bandwidth. Sorry....[Read Blog]
No Comments.
Building a Rig for games development, gaming and VFX, what parts to choose.
In Technical Guides - posted on Mon 13th June 2011 11. 41PM
I have an article on this blog that is rather out of date about how to choose components for a high end game development or VFX rig. I've decided to do a little update based on the experience of researching and building several new machines lately. This advice may also be useful for gamers, although few games will require such power.
Graphics card
Currently there are a lot of decent cards out on the market and even a middle to bottom range offering from Nvidia or AMD will give you all the performance you need for most applications or games. Indeed a venerable 8800gtx from 2008 will still...[Read Blog]
No Comments.
Website compliance
In Coding - posted on Sun 8th May 2011 3. 59PM
I've updated my website to be a bit easier on the eye and to fix some of the nasty Css I had thrown together.
Its scratch built and looking a lot better now. Its simpler, but I'll be adding graphics back in over time. Also simplifying my blog to actually make it readable.
One thing that is still annoying me is Internet Explorer standards compliance. Internet explorer 8 fails to render my site in anyway near correctly. So 15% of my website visitors get a broken experience.
I'm not going to fix it though. If you are running a browser that is out of date, you are irresponsible.
I w...[Read Blog]
(1) comments : Rob
My letter to Julian Huppert MP regarding network neutrality.
In 3d - posted on Wed 17th November 2010 8. 46PM
Dear Julian,
I'm am writing to you to express my concern at Ed Vaizey's proposed changes to the way the internet service provider industry is regulated. I am currently researching for my engineering doctorate at Frontier Developments in the Cambridge Science Park. I've worked over the internet for nearly a decade now and have been employed by many content producers(film/games/websites) and also several ISP's.
I was immediately alarmed by the way he mixed discussion of traffic shaping/management (as you know, a legitimate way of managing an overloaded network), and the very, very differen...[Read Blog]
No Comments.
Develop Part 1
In Fun - posted on Sat 17th July 2010 5. 49PM
Develop 2010
The beginning to the conference was marred for me, by the slight inconvenience of me not actually possessing a pass to it. Upon phoning the Develop organisers explaining that they had probably lost my pass, they told me to turn up on the day and pay a fee for a new one. I asked how much the fee was, and was entertained to find I would need to pay the cost of the entire ticket.
I trundled down to Brighton none the less and got set up in my somewhat less than luxury Travellodge suite. After unsuccessfully trying to tunnel into their paid-for Wi-Fi, I went for a jaunt around to...[Read Blog]
No Comments.
GLSL Compiler optimisations.
In Coding - posted on Thu 20th May 2010 8. 59PM
Since I made this post on gamedev: I still haven't had any luck on the topic. So to repeat with a few additions...
Since the other (proprietary)languages have different levels of compiler optimisation I looked into finding some for GLSL.
I found the following for Nvidias compiler (These are pretty much direct from the NVidias CG compiler's command line options.):
#pragma optionNV(fastmath on)
#pragma optionNV(fastprecision on)
// Replaces ifs with conditional assignments.
#pragma optionNV(ifcvt ...[Read Blog]
No Comments.
Turkish hackers are fun
In Fun - posted on Wed 21st October 2009 9. 29PM
So this blog has been inundated with random spam attacks. I never thought my blog would be very good target for hackers (I've disabled most things that would allow them to use my site for anything good), I never invested heavily on security.
Like any arms race, it started small, in this case a badly validated $_GET allowed them to post blogs by inserting into a database. (Infact it was a "==" instead of a "=", oh the shame!)
Having fixed that they started brute forcing me. So I added a captcha. Took them 3 days but they cracked that. I blocked their IP-range... they started some proxies....[Read Blog]
(1) comments : Jordan
'Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM' fix.
In Fun - posted on Wed 18th March 2009 1. 08AM
This is a pretty catastrophic error on a windows machine. Not really the thing you want to see first thing in the morning 1 week before the deadline on a critical piece of coursework on your degree.
What has happened is your registry is corrupted. As most windows users know the registry is a critical component of the windows OS that stores data on applications, settings and drivers.
Heres the steps I took to fix it.
When windows installs itself, it actually makes a folder called recovery in your windows folder. So what you should try to do is copy over these old registry folders to a...[Read Blog]
Black skies prototype engine.
In Coding - posted on Mon 24th November 2008 1. 24AM
This was a to do list way back on my BA. Removed as its just confusing to read now....[Read Blog]
(1) comments : Matt Carter
[login][Display errors?]