...is great. A real gem.
It's not a massively original game, it's very like a number of older RTS games - Conquest: Frontier Wars most closely resembles it, although Sins is definitely the better game. It incorporates a number of features that mark it out from the crowd - nothing revolutionary, it's simply a case of developers Ironclad being suitably shameless in incorporating worthwhile features from other games. It also looks pretty spectacular, and runs well on system that's a couple of years off the pace.
Monday 16 June 2008
Wednesday 2 January 2008
Back to Work Tomorrow
I've been off now for nearly two weeks, it's been great. But the really amazing thing is that I'm looking forward to going back. I really am fortunate to be able to honestly claim that I love my job. Although, perhaps fortunate isn't the right word, as I didn't exactly fall into game development, it took me a while and a few wrong turns before I got there. But I'm grateful to have made it.
You know you're in the right job when you get some time off and end up doing the same sort of stuff you'd be doing anyway. Coding things at home provides a good counterpoint to what I do at work. When you work on a big commercial game it's a little bit like working on a Boeing 747 - the project is so vast and contains so many complex parts it is literally impossible for one guy to learn it all, so you end up very focused on the one part of the project you are responsible for, with really very little idea on how the rest of it hangs together.
Working on my own stuff provides a nice balance. Perhaps it's why so many professional programmers enjoy coding in their spare time - it allows you to exercise the bits of your programming brain you don't often get to stretch at work. There is also a certain satisfaction on working on something small enough to be fully understood.
It's certainly a habit I've seen in other devs. Some make old 8-bit games or write emulators for old platforms. Some enjoy hacking their DS or PSP just to see what they can get working. People often associate programming or computer literacy in general with logical, linear thinking, but for many of the programmers I've known, it's simply a different kind of creativity.
I often have difficulty explaining to family or friends who ask how games are made, or ask what I do for a living. It is nearly impossible to explain to someone in anything like remotely meaningful terms how a modern video game is made if they have no prior knowledge of software development or anything to ground my explanation on. I usually go one of two ways - either I attempt to give them a full grounding in the last 50 years of computer science, starting with the Turing machine and working from there, or I oversimplify to the point of insulting them. I find a better approach is to ignore the nitty gritty and explain what the company I work for does - a developer's place in the grand scheme of things, via a very sketchy music industry analogy - developer is to musical artist as publisher is to record label, but that gives them the wrong ideas as to my own personal contribution, not to mention a vastly exaggerated estimation of my net worth :)
You know you're in the right job when you get some time off and end up doing the same sort of stuff you'd be doing anyway. Coding things at home provides a good counterpoint to what I do at work. When you work on a big commercial game it's a little bit like working on a Boeing 747 - the project is so vast and contains so many complex parts it is literally impossible for one guy to learn it all, so you end up very focused on the one part of the project you are responsible for, with really very little idea on how the rest of it hangs together.
Working on my own stuff provides a nice balance. Perhaps it's why so many professional programmers enjoy coding in their spare time - it allows you to exercise the bits of your programming brain you don't often get to stretch at work. There is also a certain satisfaction on working on something small enough to be fully understood.
It's certainly a habit I've seen in other devs. Some make old 8-bit games or write emulators for old platforms. Some enjoy hacking their DS or PSP just to see what they can get working. People often associate programming or computer literacy in general with logical, linear thinking, but for many of the programmers I've known, it's simply a different kind of creativity.
I often have difficulty explaining to family or friends who ask how games are made, or ask what I do for a living. It is nearly impossible to explain to someone in anything like remotely meaningful terms how a modern video game is made if they have no prior knowledge of software development or anything to ground my explanation on. I usually go one of two ways - either I attempt to give them a full grounding in the last 50 years of computer science, starting with the Turing machine and working from there, or I oversimplify to the point of insulting them. I find a better approach is to ignore the nitty gritty and explain what the company I work for does - a developer's place in the grand scheme of things, via a very sketchy music industry analogy - developer is to musical artist as publisher is to record label, but that gives them the wrong ideas as to my own personal contribution, not to mention a vastly exaggerated estimation of my net worth :)
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