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 52 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 38 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-seven years I've developed well over 50 titles (some of which can be seen
HERE).
Apart from pure "gameplay" programming I 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, and a cornucopia of others.
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 of non-stop game development, I’m currently
dividing my time between semi-retirement, consulting on new technologies (very high-end
VR utilising bleeding edge rendering and simulation technology pioneered in the games
industry), 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