A Hardy Developer's Journal

The last month was really busy for me and in consequence I didn’t read that much of the Internet, play that much of Internet, or even watch that much of Internet. So my latest choice of links is smaller than usual, but the linked texts/places/situations are all the best kind of April crop (ignore the accidental May ones). Some of the names involved are Jane Jensen, Darkstar, MAGS and Tetris. (more…)

Hey folks! The guys from HardyDev invited me to write a remembrance from series of adventure game development tutorials that I have organized over the last few years at the Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Austria. In these workshops I used Chris Jones’ AGS (Adventure Game Studio), which is a popular and powerful tool for creating your own adventure games.

Learning the ropes of AGS normally means working through heaps of online tutorials, endless browsing of special-interest forums or getting used to the good old trial-and-error principle. With this steep learning curve in mind it’s no wonder that hobby adventure developers are an exceedingly rare breed. So what if you could learn the basics of adventure game development together with peers in a hands-on workshop? (more…)

Making games. Sometimes a hard task. Sometimes it is made to look like it’s not. What about trying to make again what’s already been made? Yes, this is an article about remakes. And it’s based on my HHGTG experiences.

But what is HHGTG (aka H2G2)? These are acronyms for ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. A book (and radio play) written in the early 80′s that became and still is a cult phenomenon for Science Fiction fans, very much like its author Douglas Adams. Shortly after the book, Douglas alongside Steve Meretzky, a programmer from Infocom, created a text adventure based on the book’s universe. One of the most successful and clearly one of the most remarkable games ever. (more…)

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Awards are nice. (more…)

Welcome back! Last time I bitched about old-school adventure game interfaces and tried to convince people to throw them out the window. Today I’m going to give an example of how I futzed around with the interface of my game, Resonance, adding a layer of potential complexity to the puzzles while keeping the interface simple, fast, and intuitive.

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