A Tale of Traveller's
12/12/06 16:17
Well, I said there was big news on the horizon. Turned
out to be a bit bigger than I first imagined. Elsewhere
on the site I was talking about the UK developers that
where top dog - top of that list was Traveller's Tales
(creators of Lego Star Wars, Narnia, Finding Nemo
amongst many others), well, I'm now pleased to say that
we have been acquired by Traveller's Tales and are
working as part of their group on some
seriously wicked IP.
Oh yeah, and we're also hiring! Any programmers and animators out there why not hit out web sites www.embryonicstudios.com and www.t-tales.com for details. Great company, great people, great projects and job security - c'mon what are you waiting for!
Have a great Christmas everyone!
Oh yeah, and we're also hiring! Any programmers and animators out there why not hit out web sites www.embryonicstudios.com and www.t-tales.com for details. Great company, great people, great projects and job security - c'mon what are you waiting for!
Have a great Christmas everyone!
More on the games...
08/10/06 13:41
Finally, I've had a couple of hours to add some more of
the intended content to the site. I've started adding
screenshots and more details on some of the games I've
worked on. As a starter for ten I've added a page on
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's
Stone. You can also get to the detail pages
from the My Games thumbnails.
There's tonnes more to come over the next couple of weeks - and more stuff (finally) on actually writing your own games!
I've also put up the Z80 source code to Mr Do! on the Gameboy, as Jofffa, the original author, has decided to put it up on his website. I merely finished the product off and debugged it prior to shipping - I found it lurking on a floppy disk the other month and so sent it to Joffa. As Joff is happy to put it up, I figured I'd do the same.
There's tonnes more to come over the next couple of weeks - and more stuff (finally) on actually writing your own games!
I've also put up the Z80 source code to Mr Do! on the Gameboy, as Jofffa, the original author, has decided to put it up on his website. I merely finished the product off and debugged it prior to shipping - I found it lurking on a floppy disk the other month and so sent it to Joffa. As Joff is happy to put it up, I figured I'd do the same.
You Little Cheat!
08/08/06 18:30
Just been fiddling around with some new Java plugins
and so to test the dynamic goodies out I've put up some
stuff about various CHEATS in some of the games I've
worked on. Its all a bit, well, perfunctory at the
moment, but I'm going to start adding more in
depth looks into the development of some of the
better games (!). As its the 10th Anniversary of
Privateer 2, and the chaps on the Wing Commander Combat Information
Centre are planning on doing something to mark
the occasion, I thought I'd dig a few bits and
bobs out and start with that. Stay Tuned.
Who's Head? Your Head!
16/07/06 18:13
I awoke this morning to find that the people at Your
Head software have come up with even more fabulous
plug-ins for the insanely great Rapid Weaver (the
finest web creation tool on the planet). So, my tips
for creating lovely web sites.
1) Buy a nice shiny iMac (with Intel Core Duo of course)
2) Buy Rapid Weaver
3) Buy every RapidWeaver Plugin that Your Head software makes.
The Your Head plug-ins take Rapid Weaver from Insanely Great, to "REALLY Insanely Great"
1) Buy a nice shiny iMac (with Intel Core Duo of course)
2) Buy Rapid Weaver
3) Buy every RapidWeaver Plugin that Your Head software makes.
The Your Head plug-ins take Rapid Weaver from Insanely Great, to "REALLY Insanely Great"
Music, Music, Music
27/06/06 18:45
Just added MP3 versions of some of the Ocean Loading
Music to my DOWNLOADS page for those of you
who'd rather just see what the fuss was about /
re-live some memories without getting a C64
emulator going.
S-L-O-W Updates
20/05/06 17:16
Blimey it's been a while. Since setting up Warthog some
ten years ago I'd kinda forgotten how fast time flies
when you're having fun! And I've been having a lot of
fun over at Castle Embryonic with the gang! We're just
putting the finishing touches to our all new singing
and dancing cross platform technology - more on that
soon! You know, it's amazing how starting something
from scratch really opens your eyes to all the
shortfalls of your previous technology. As one great
philosopher once said, "Experience is a wonderful
thing... It allows you to recognise a mistake when you
make it again". Going into something with your eyes
wide open this time around is very handy!
There's nothing quite like the ability to engineer a project on six very different platforms using essentially the identical code, art and audio assets - and it just works. I say "essentially" - the one caveat is that whilst everything does work straight out of the box, what you don't want is your product to look identical on every platform (basically aiming for the lowest common denominator). To counter this we have a "fork" in our shader implementation/preview pipeline (essentially its a parallel shader cascade) that allows the artists to set up different levels of shaders depending on the target platform - its up to our graphics guys and technical artists to ensure that "under the hood" the target platform implements the most optimal and graphically rich interpretation of the artist's desired shader.
Tune in again real soon....
There's nothing quite like the ability to engineer a project on six very different platforms using essentially the identical code, art and audio assets - and it just works. I say "essentially" - the one caveat is that whilst everything does work straight out of the box, what you don't want is your product to look identical on every platform (basically aiming for the lowest common denominator). To counter this we have a "fork" in our shader implementation/preview pipeline (essentially its a parallel shader cascade) that allows the artists to set up different levels of shaders depending on the target platform - its up to our graphics guys and technical artists to ensure that "under the hood" the target platform implements the most optimal and graphically rich interpretation of the artist's desired shader.
Tune in again real soon....
The Secret's Out!
03/05/06 10:25
Well, it was time for a change of scenery - so
I've setup a new indie games studio with my old
developer mates from EA Manchester and the Warthog days
called "Embryonic Studios". Keep an eye
out, as we should have some big announcements
coming out soon. This is going to be a real blast!
Music The Old Fashioned Way
12/04/06 17:03
The Olden Days...
07/04/06 15:39
Just thrown together a page about "Freeload" or "The Ocean Loader" that everyone
called it. Lots of people have asked about how it
worked, what it did, so after answering the same
questions for various magazine articles I thought
I'd write the definitive guide to Freeload on the
C64.
Warning - It's extremely nerdy
Warning - It's extremely nerdy
Bloomin' BT
03/04/06 23:13
Well I've had enough - after BT's FTP site was down for
the gazillionth time
, and my refusal to use the
BT/Geocities ad laden "freebie" web space, I
finally bit the bullet and got myself some proper
dedicated web hosting. This is more like it.
Guaranteed 99.9% uptime. Bliss. Added links to
Jonathan "Joffa" Smith's website that is finally
back up and running. Joff was one of THE best
Spectrum programmers in the land, and IMHO the
best programmer at Ocean.
Game Development
02/04/06 22:29
Started a stab at the first page of the GAME DEVELOPMENT section. Added
some more WARTHOG PICTURES (and got around to
annotating them too), along with some more
pictures from the OCEAN days,
Link Me Up
01/04/06 23:12
Just added a new bunch of Quick Links from the HOMEPAGE, along with a starting
swipe at the master LINKS page itself. I've added links
to key game development sites (including games
industry job searches), useful links for
programmers and links to some of the top flight
developers in the UK. There's more categories and
links to come. Enjoy!
Photos
26/03/06 16:40
Just started adding a host of ye-olde photographs from
the Ocean Days. Lots of bad haircuts and bad jumpers
(actually, that's just me!). More to come from the EA
and Warthog days.
Inane Ramblings
23/03/06 16:49
Time to write my life story. I'm sure no one except my
family would give two hoots, but I've always threatened
to write down the many stories of the events of two
decades in the industry we call game. Check out the
ABOUT ME section - it covers 1981
to 1997 thus far - but there's far more juice to
come!
Goddam Internet Explorer
21/03/06 16:28
How much do I loathe Internet Explorer? Damn their
hides in Redmond for having such a large chunk of the
browser market when their renderer can't deal with
alpha channels correctly. Time for a bucket load of
Javascript to work around it so that my thumbnail
reflections work properly.
Mumble, mumble, grumble, curse....
Mumble, mumble, grumble, curse....
