Paulie’s Perfunctory Game Dev Website
Video Game Development Since 1981
Hi there.... Well, you've come this far, I suppose I'd best tell you
a little something about what I do. Sit back, relax, and prepare
for a five minute potted autobiography... Who knows, it may
just cure your insomnia!
In a nutshell (a thinly veiled potted CV)
Paul Hughes, or Paulie to anyone that knows me, popped up on
this fair planet some 49 years ago in sunny Wigan, Lancashire.
Little did anyone suspect that in less than 13 years time he would be bitten by the computer
programming bug that would drag him, kicking and screaming, into the games industry for the
next 36 years with no signs of ever growing up!
I wrote my first commercially released game in 1981 (yup, I was 13 at the time), and in the ensuing
thirty-six years I've developed well over 50 titles (some of which can be seen HERE).
Apart from pure "gameplay" programming I mainly focus a good deal of my time developing and
managing cross team, cross platform gaming technologies - the underlying tools and technologies
"under the hood" that make the development of the games across multiple platforms so much
easier. This enables the development teams to focus on gameplay rather than worrying about
the quirks and tricks required to render the pretty graphics on the various consoles.
During my Tt tenure, games that I have worked on
have sold in excess of 120,000,000 units, and I am
humbled and honoured to have worked on five
LEGO titles that have had BAFTA awards bestowed
upon them.
My "big things" are Data Compression, Games
System Architecture, Rendering Technologies, and
Code & Data Optimisations (algorithmic, cycle
counting SIMD and optimal data organisation). I've
now got four pending patents, two in the field of data compression, two in the field of computer
graphics.
Back in the late eighties I found myself at the
famous video game pioneer Ocean Software in
Manchester working on 8 and 16 bit software. It
was here that I serendipitously garnered my first
claim to fame; what has now come to be known as
the “Ocean Loader”. For my sins, the C64 turbo
loader with the flashy loading bars, beautiful loading screens and stunning loading music was all
my fault! You can read more about it on my FREELOAD page, where you can also get your hands
on all the 6502 source code.
For the last 12 years I was the Head of Technology at TT-Fusion, a wholly owned subsidiary of
Travellers Tales (which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Brothers) and home to LEGO
Star Wars, LEGO Indiana Jones, LEGO Batman, etc.
Initially for my own amusement, I developed a new high performance, low memory video codec,
specifically designed for use in games called "Chroma". It slowly evolved into a bit of a beast
having run on fifteen disparate gaming platforms (from Nintendo DS all the way up to High
Definition PS4 and Switch) and still looking rather groovy if I do say so myself - one video format
to rule them all! To date Chroma has been used on 267 SKUs.
I'm still bursting with the same enthusiasm that I had back in the 80's. Suffice to say I don't think
I will ever grow up! After three decades I’m currently enjoying a bit of a semi-retirement; working
on some pet technology projects, and putting some of my code, thoughts, and anecdotes “out
there” as a way of giving back to an Industry that has been my home for my entire working life.
Hopefully it’ll help inspire the next generation of game developers.
Prior to Travellers I was a co-founder and Chief
Technology Officer at Warthog Games, a large
independent game development studio that we
founded from the ashes of Electronic Arts North
West in 1997.
When I'm not sat in front of a PC you'll most likely
find me performing card tricks, designing big flashy
illusions to saw the missus up in, or pretending to
be Heston Blumenthal in the kitchen with dry ice!
Recently I turned my hand to "impossible" puzzles - sealed decks of playing cards inside unaltered
milk bottles and impossibly folded playing cards. Check out my Instagram Page for some of these
little oddities.
Warthog: Queens Award for Enterprise 2002
International Trade Category
Five BAFTAs for LEGO videogames
© British Academy of Film and Televison Arts