Sorry for not updating the front page for a few weeks (six as it turns out!): summer has been zooming along at a merry pace, even if the weather hasn’t been along for the ride.  As before things have been very busy in the background, and my most recent article on UI is the game, the game is UI on AltDevBlog has even been picked up by Gamasutra.

It’s an interesting process having that happen, mostly because it’s actually quite difficult to find out that it has.  Mike, who set AltDevBlog up, has done great things in helping it get noticed across the industry and as contributors we’re all aware of where our articles might end up.  And it’s nice to see them leaping forward into the wild.

None games related, recently a few of us went to the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool to see a performance of As The World Tipped.  These small pictures don’t really do it justice, but the seemingly simple act of turning a stage 90 degrees to make it vertical made for a breathtaking visual feast.  It’s certainly got me thinking about how we should be able to do similar things in games – changing a player’s perspective on something to create a new sensation.  If you ever get the chance to see a performance like this, definitely go along.

Just a short update to let you know what’s going on with the articles.  I am still working hard at them and have a few well into progress, and I’ve also signed up to be a contributor over at #AltDevBlogADay.  My first post has just gone live here, and it’s an updated version of ‘what designers do’.

As AltDevBlog is a place for lots of people to talk, I’ve disabled the comments on my site to try and keep any discussions on my articles in one place.  There’s still the facebook page as well if you want to get in touch.

I’ll be keeping all articles on this site up to date and it’s most likely they’ll be published here first (mostly so I have at least one in the bag for when it comes round to my allotted time to post!).

“Once a week” I said to myself.  Can’t be that hard…

Well, a little bit later than initially planned, I’ve now finished my latest article: making games is hard.

In my defence I’ve been writing it fairly solidly for nearly two weeks now, and a few people have noticed that it’s been linked but password protected: that was purely so I could get a bit of input from a few others before making it public.

Enjoy it, and please do leave comments.  Real people are so much nicer than all the bots that keep spamming me…

PS: It’s kind of related insomuch that it sums up very nicely one of the main design struggles we had on AvP3, but FreakyZoid has put an article up on his blog asking Why Are Good Alien Shooters the Exception? Well worth a read!

After thinking about it for a long time, and talking about it for possibly even longer, I’ve now started the process of bringing my articles back online.  As with my second attempt I’m rewriting them as I go, with the big difference this time being that I am purposefully writing them as individual articles rather than part of a larger plan.

Fingers crossed this’ll make it faster for me to create them, and hopefully they’ll remain interesting and enlightening as well.

I’ve enabled comments on the articles pages so please leave your thoughts on each one, if there’s enough interest I’ll no doubt update them as I go.

Head on over to the shiny new articles page!