So once again a large gap between posts… One of the reasons is that the Powers At Be about Brink asked after E3 that we don’t talk about it unless its approved by PR. While I personally think its a incredible stupid idea and really misses the changing way blogospheres and the internet works, they are technically my bosses, so I have to respect there wishes.

That combined with when your crunching hard, there isn’t really much else but work… So for the last 6 months or so, haven’t had much to say.

However for my own sanity, I need to do a few things outside work and I can blog about them.

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

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.

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…

Updated my blog role to include Wolf’s and Tom F‘s (the eagle eyed among you may have noticed I added them a little while back but I’ve changed Toms to a dyndds version).

Just a quick test of Windows Live Writer, for composing blog entries. Its certainly nice to have a offline editor, with all the standard WYSIWYG features.

As I use a private host running WordPress, will be interesting to see if this all works okay. So far so good, its seems to have grabbed categories and stuff okay.

Web preview isn’t quite right, but that purely because it uses a dynamic close of the task bar on the page… The actual article renders fine Hmm actually the preview catagories doesn’t match what i’ve sent, is that a bug in the category system or the preview… only one way of finding out

Marco Salvi who did a large portion of Heavenly Sword’s graphics engine (and worked out the clever way we do AA amongst many other things), has just started a blog which he’s already onto crazy complicated graphics stuff (in particular shadows). On the blogs to the right but here have a link

Also Matt Hart who was the Producer on Heavenly Sword has gotten the blog bug from doing one for IGN, its also on the right but have a link anyway

So Heavenly Sword has shipped in NA and Europe, should hit Japan very soon. After the final crunch I took a nice long holiday and just chilled mainly just played games. The blog was on the list of things to leave along for a while as well, so few updates.

What I did do was grab a notepad (of the paper kind) and jot a few notes on game ideas and other game development thoughts. Sometimes its good to just use a notepad to well note things and then come back them when your head is fresh and ready to express yourself properly.

So the holiday is almost over, and so its time to use that freshness for interesting things. Work wise of course its onto a new project(s), lots of things have changed since last time I started a new project (some three and half years ago) so there might be an odd random thoughts post…

So erm just a little post expect more soon

PS Think i’m fed up with black, think I need a new blog theme hmmm