A Hardy Developer's Journal

Sebastian “Mellotron Stew” Pfaller has worked not only with me on a number of games making music, but also provided music and testing for such popular adventure games such as The Vaccuum and Death Wore Endless Feathers Disk 1.

His quirky, colourful musical style is an ever changing kaleidoscope of ideas and experimentation and here we are offered a glimpse into the funk safari that is: Sebastian Pfaller‘s mind.

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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…)

Awards are nice. (more…)

Whilst Ben Chandler and the like are consistently getting game development just right, there is the rest of us, me included, getting it just about completely wrong – or are we? And are we that different from Mr Chandler?

This article, in short, will try to explain why trying to make your first project huge and exciting is indeed a bad idea, but why I’m sticking to it and why you should never give up.

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So, you’ve got a whole lot done on your game, graphics are looking how you want and you’ve got some puzzles you really like. But hang on a minute, how do you know when your game is done? There’s always going to be moments when you go “I could just add a bit more on here”, and sometimes this is very beneficial. But you have to stop working on the game somewhere, or it’ll never get done.

This could be something so much bigger: It’s a natural feeling to get near the end of your project and think “This could be so much bigger!”. Parts you could add, bits you could extend – in fact if you’re like most people you’ll probably have ‘realized’ that the story you wrote would work so much ‘better’ as the first part in a trilogy. (more…)

Oh yeah, here’s the hard part. Ask anyone who has ever built a game and I am sure they’ll agree that this is where it stops being exciting and starts requiring some real determination. The honeymoon is over, the initial glory of your incredible idea has worn off and you’re left looking at your ‘to do’ list which seems to have no end. Stuck for motivation? Aren’t we all…
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