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Thursday, May 20, 2021

While on a tiny, tiny break from publishing Maze Of Bears (coming soon), have spent a couple weeks making a procedurally generated shooter. Each level builds randomly, but has a coherent design somewhat like a real city block. The enemies a…

Saturday, January 2, 2021

How to stay motivated on loooong projects when nobody is paying you, nobody is nagging at you to hit deadlines, nobody cares if you give up?

It helps to have a wide surface area of problems to tackle at any one time. If you are cross-eyed …

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Good news maze-of-bears-fans. I'm rewriting it in Unity. This time it will have proper 3D graphics and everything. Currently 87% of the levels are playable.

The original took about a year of my free time to write in Flash 8 years ago. This…

Saturday, July 8, 2017

On hiatus from 'Four Floors of Doors' I've been learning the Angular 4 Javascript framework, and rather than make a 'To-Do' list, like all the tutorials advise, I've decided to remake Witcher 3, the multi-award winning, 80 Million dollar, s…

Saturday, July 8, 2017

After watching Javascript Developer MPJ talk about using composition over inheritence, I realised that would work better for Sword of Something.

I currently have around 400 items (weapons, loot, monsters, quest-givers, places) and I don't …

Friday, December 30, 2016

"Where do you come up with all your crazy ideas?"

If people did ask me lots of questions about my games, I'm sure this would be one of them. Rather than reply glibly about inspiration, or process, I'd want to focus on the first word in tha…

Monday, November 28, 2016

Just got cracking on the level three puzzle which is inspired by that bit in Good Will Hunting where the janitor solves the super-hard maths puzzle on the blackboard.

Although as this "Numberphile" video here shows, the problem isn't act…

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Showing "Four Floors of Doors" at GameCity 11 in Nottingham all this week. Come along...

Monday, March 28, 2016

Now level 1 and 2 are puzzle-complete and mostly bug-free, have recorded a play-through. [Contains puzzle solution spoilers]

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Added a lift shaft puzzle. Even though you navigate between levels using a different lift, and the name of the game implies there are only 4 floors in it anyway.

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Saturday, February 20, 2016

Finished end of level boss for level 1, she's called Xorg! Half way through building level 2.

Here's what the architecture looks like in the Unity Editor. Note the abundance of cubes, and the absence of any actual proper modelling:

…

Friday, February 19, 2016

Four Floors of Doors is going swimmingly. As such, here are some thoughts on how to puzzle good:

A room with a switch and a locked door is not a puzzle. If the only thing you can do in a room is the correct answer, this isn't a puzzle, …

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Done another one here:

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Made some ants here: Langton.

And then some more ants here: AntColony

This is what normal people do with their holidays. It may or may not be related to having just watched AntMan.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

GameCity 10 was great as usual, met lots of game developers, went to a few talks, spent 4 days exhibiting everything at people. Got most enthusiasm for Grand Thrust Astro, so have committed to tarting up / polishing / fixing / releasing / m…

Friday, October 16, 2015

Will hopefully be showing my new work at GameCity 10.

I say 'new'.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Well, hell, I've just rebuilt SnappyFingers.co.uk from scratch in Umbraco.

Currently looks the same as it ever did, but there's a whole lot of functionality under the hood that I can now play with, eg blogposts, comments, dynamic menus etc…

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Work is progressing on 'In a dark, dark space'. I say work... I say progressing... That's perhaps a little generous.

I'm in that difficult middle third of the project, where each new system I try to add, has to nestle comfortably with all …

Friday, May 2, 2014

Brutalist Architecture

Just watched a Johnathon Meades documentary on 'brutalist architecture' and thought: I could procedurally generate that!

So I started with an image in my mind of what it would feel like walking down a main street …

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Wow. That was fun. Just spent 4 days exhibiting Maze Of Bears at GameCity. I was only down for two days, but got a bit carried away. In fact, I missed pretty much every interesting talk and event at the festival because I was having too muc…

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Excited to announce Maze Of Bears is being launched (re-launched / more-launched) at the amazing GAME CITY Nottingham on 19th and 20th October. This may be your only chance to accomplish the following:

• Meet the developer! (me)
• Smile awk…

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Update Website - Added:

• Video Playthrough of 4 Puzzle levels. (Don't ask how many it takes it took to not die).
• Video Playthrough of the Randomly Generated levels. (In which I die quite early).
• Glossary of all Powers, Animals and Items…

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Version 0.0013 is now online! Now featuring:

• Cloner Power! I finally thought of a 16th power: the power to clone... Was a bit too powerful at first so I had to put limits on - eg no cloning on top of voids or fixed walls, or bears obviou…

Monday, July 15, 2013

Got my first sale today! Admittedly to a work colleague whom I'd been discussing the game with for the last 6 months, but it still counts. Just another 4999 to go and I can quit the day job!

Code count today: 10,000 lines. Taking approxima…

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Added Editor. Now it's super easy to build and save levels online.

[Recent Screenshot of Editor]

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Added Bears. Big improvement. Use the same AI for bears and cats, but obviously bears seek while cats flee. Originally it was just gold you had to collect, but it was more fun when the treasure ran away, so makes more sense if the collectab…

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Work began on new project, I have a spooky feeling it will be a big one. Haven't got a name for it yet. Working title: "Mazaaaaaargh!" (Because you are in a maze, and thinking: "Aaaaaaargh!")