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Expect to see more game play less eyeball very soon

Deano

One of the worst bits of writing a blog and working on games, it that period when the games are under the radar. Anything you do write doesn’t make any sense, if you can’t talk about genre, platform or any features.

Since starting with Splash Damage last year, thats the position I’ve been in, so i’ve kept fairly quiet but luckily its almost over. As annouched on Bethseda blog and on the SD homepage, today the project gets its first outing.

Its good to be on the brink of being able to chat about what I’m working on again

Let the booth babes out, its time for another E3!

Deb Stephens whome I met at X48 has a blog detailing her final year game project at Newport Uni.

Heres it is Spiritus, check out the lovely art style, thankfully its not your usual bald head marine or metal bikini wearing babe

The painted artstyle has a nice aethetic and the game mechanics give it an accessibility to a potentially wide range of gamers.

So go check it out

If you have a Mac, its well worth checking out the annual MacHeist bundle as for $39 you get some great little apps, I’m finding Acorn, Littlesnapper and Times useful. And Hit List (which should be unlocked soon) seems to fit my need for a todo task manager app.

Its all over today, so get it will its hot

Tomorrow and over the weekend, Microsoft and Channel 4 are running X48 gamecamp, where they get loads of university students (in game related subjects) and have them write a bunch of games (to a theme) in a marathon 48 hour session which are then judged and prizes given.

I’m going as a mentor, to help out. I think it should be an exciting couple of days and I expect to see some really interesting game designs. Almost wish I was a bit younger and could join in

Pixel-labs are running it and will be tweeting and posting photo through-out the day.

Main website is here - http://www.x48gamecamp.com/

I’m looking forward to it, so if your going to be there I’ll see you tomorrow and if not please follow and give encourage via the wonders of the inter-web. Its going to be an intense couple of days for those taking part in the competition and should get some interesting results

One of the reason my blog gets neglected is that I often seem to be under constant information overload…
Its something I’m determined to solve, though ironically there seems to be an overload of even more information. I’ve come to recgonise that much of solving this issue, is down to mental process. Getting myself to follow rules, taking time every day to sort and processing some of the incoming data.

I work on a team of about 60 people, around 20 are directly in my team. Thats a huge amount of the incoming info just there, combine that with my own scatter gun brain, which is generating huge amounts of things that I waste by usually losing them, I need to capture that.

My conclusion so far, are that it has to be on my little macbook, its the smallest of my main machines and is always close at hand. So its ideal for quickly taking notes, the few times its not my Ipod touch can take them.

Not too bothered about being fully intergrated into email/outlook calender because the very act of sorting them into another source is good, though I probably need a recurring task to get me to remember that.

Scrivener is great as my main document composition tool, but I need something else as a research aid, to do system and organiser. So far I’m evaluating Devonthink Pro but wonder if there are better tools…

Any thoughts gratefully recieved, not just programs but books etc.

My last blog entry mentioned I was starting a new job, now several months on I’m nicely settled in and happy to be getting on with things.

My new job is Lead Programmer at Splash Damage, working on a, as yet, unannounced game. The only thing that has so far been released is that the publisher is Bethseda and that it will ship on the main platforms you would expect a kick arse game to ship on.

Its been a good few months getting into the feel of things, Splash is most known for the Enemy Territory titles (Wolf and Quake Wars) with Id but things are a bit different this time, with more work (particularly the console versions) being done in house, so the company has been recruiting a host of experienced staff to help with key roles. It has an excited time, as people who have worked on various games I respect and enjoy myself join the team. The list of titles that members have worked on, include Heavenly Sword (obviously ;), Mass Effect, Syphon Filter, Fable 2, Rainbow Six and many more. Were still looking for some good people by the way, particular for Environment artist, FX artists, UI artists, senior graphics and AI programmers, so get in contact if you think you’d like it here.

Apart from settling into the lead role, getting to grips with tasks and schedules, I’ve also been doing a fair bit of PS3 coding. A good tidy up of the graphics backend to a more libGCM paradigm has taking a fair bit of my time. Currently sorting out our SPU framework, one interesting decision I’ve made is to support a SPU-like framework on PC and 360, the idea being that code written for SPU local store, vector units and DMA will run quite well on a 360 core, with cache standing in for local store, VMX128 for the SPU vector unit and cache prefetch as ‘pretend’ DMA. Obviously there are lot of cases were writing a specific version will be better, but in theory anything that runs well on SPU should run better than normal C code on a 360 CPU.

Outside work, I’ve been getting more and more interesting in smaller scale development for some game designs I’ve got. My XNA engine has now got a fairly powerful flash runtime, the renderer is complete just got more actionscript runtime to do before its of a production quality. However i’ve temporarily interrupted my XNA stuff to play with iPhone/iPod Touch development, almost ported my flash runtime to it and from there will see what’s next.

On a even more odd thing, I’ve also started writing short stories, I kind of get annoyed at the assumption that because I can grok technical stuff, I can’t be creative, so I figure a bit a creative writing should help dispel that myth

I haven’t made many posts recently, as my personal life has been ‘chaotic’ to say the least. Writing blog entries has been the furthest from my thoughts, but now with some time off its time I did some updates.

First major change is that I decided to leave Frontier, I’m in the process of moving away from the area so need a new job to go with it.

Last friday was my final day at Frontier, always weird leaving, particular if you have close friends who work there. You have to get used to not seeing them 5 days a week.

I’ve also been quite ill recently, I’ll spare you the details but apart from losing some weight and learning about a whole new set of pills and their side effects, I think I’ll survive

I’m all set to start at my new role next Tuesday, luckily I’m moving to an area where thre are quite a few games companies, so I have been able to take the time to pick a firm and role that really seemed to fit. I’ll wait until I’ve actually started before I say, give me chance to settle in.

Game wise, I’ve been playing Doom 3 on my PC (it runs alot better now than when I first played it), Civ Revolution on my 360 and still have to finish Condemned 2. Haven’t really played too many games, but hopefully will start to get back into as things sort themself out.

Currently working my way through Mass Effect and loving it, as a game its big enough to make it feel like i’m control but has enough of a directed main plot to make me want to continue and save the galaxy.

The character development is particularly good, both your own back story and how that ties in throughout the game but also the other main character. The ability to talk to them about there homes and life, even flirt and have romances fills in it so its much much more than simple shoot, get XP, shoot game.

I’d love to build a world like that, not neccessarily the same genre but something with that level of immersion. Mass Effect is brillient but from a game design/development point of view, I can also see how much more we can do and that excites me greatly. I play Mass Effect and see how much more character development, romance, back stories, non linear plots I think we can do now.

However if I were to work on a game like ME, i’d have lots of creative input into it, just being a peon for something so big would frustrate me massively. The problem is that I expect the only way you get that level of creative control is to be a director of your own studio, which is my ultimate goal but obviously isn’t that easy.

The largest stumbling block is always the obvious one, how do you convince a publisher to literally buy in. From issues like IP (particular while employed some where else while you work out the details before going indie), to good ol’ fashioned money (how to you build up enough reserves to go indie for enough months while obtaining a deal), to things like should you do the “big project that you think is AAA” or “small first project to prove to publisher you can finish on time and on budget”.

While the download/indie scene is interesting at the moment, with PSN, Wiiware and XBLA, the fundemental problems remain the same just on a smaller scale. Even with over a decade of games development under my belt, I still don’t really know how to make the jump, I expect I need to dig into the money/biz side of things more and hopefully figure how others have done it.

Of course I’ve known and indeed worked for people who’ve done it, but still haven’t really figured out how they did it… For example how did Nina, Mike and Tameem (Directors of Just Add Monsters/Ninja Theory) start JAM and get MS to publish Kung Fu Chaos, or Alex and co get the Little Big People deal with Sony. It just seems like magic sometimes hehe or maybe I’m missing something.

I sometimes wonder if I should take a ‘money’ job for a few years to build up reserves but even then the kind of extra money you’d need to generate feels a bit out of reach. (well unless you Gabe at Valve (if the rumours are true) who worked for MS, earnt lots via stocks and then got given the Quake engine by Carmack!!! lucky bastard! Tho if there a company that deserves and used there early luck for good, its Valve. I recently played through Orange Box and HL2 and its episodes is pure genius!)

Any comments welcome of course, and anytime anybody wants to comment or talk directly, my email is deano@rattie.demon.co.uk Tho be warned i’m sometimes really crap at replying, its not that I don’t mean to but I leave it just one more day… repeatly. So sorry to anybody i’ve never replied to when I should, feel free to nudge me I never delete emails just sometimes they get delayed in replying (I think 3 months is the longest i’ve pushed one off for…)

So I haven’t posted much for the last few months because I’ve been a bit busy. Just over 2 months ago I decided to leave Ninja Theory and move onto something different.

I worked at Ninja Theory for close to 4 years and decided it was a time to do something different. Was quite sad but also the right thing to do and differently the right time. I had quite a few choices but ended up going for what my heart wanted to do and moving into a more design oriented role.

So for the last month or so, I’ve been a Senior Programmer/Designer at Frontier working on a game called Outsider.

Sure I’ll have lots to say in future, but for now that will do…