Games from Within

I know, things have been pretty slow around here for a while. The good news is that the slience is over. Charles Nicholson and I decided to take the plunge and create our own game development company: Power of Two Games. So I finally get the chance to follow the dream I've had for a long time! From now on, I'll be writing mostly on the Power of Two Games web site. We'll talk about about everything from the details on getting a company off the ground to development processes that we're using. But this time we'll be writing much more frequently, so subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us along in this wild ride. [more]

A lot of people have a particular moment or experience that defined their future. It can be anything: reading a particular book, traveling through a different country, meeting somebody special, or going through a very painful (or happy) experience. For me, the future crystallized on a Fall afternoon in 1985, when I sat in front of an 8-bit computer at a friend's house. It was the beginning of a long personal journey. [more]

A couple of weeks ago Jim Tilander, a co-worker from High Moon and good friend, finally took the plunge and started putting some of his writings online. He already wrote two very interesting articles on Python (surprise, surprise knowing Jim) and how to pull in static data for unit tests. I'm sure there will be lots more interesting articles to come. [more]

E3 is just around the corner, so we can expect to finally get the official announcements of Microsoft's next-generation console, and maybe even Sony's. That will mark the official transition into the next generation. And this is not just another console generation transition. This time it's bigger. Much bigger. [more]

I often get email from people looking to get their first job in the game industry asking me for advice. What are companies looking for in candidates for entry-level programming positions? How come it's so difficult to land a job? I can't answer for the industry as a whole, but I can certainly tell you what I am looking for when trying to fill an entry-level programmer position. [more]

A successful game needs to provide top-notch content, and the best way to provide it is to optimize the content pipeline so that artists and designers can create, preview, add, and tweak new assets as easily and rapidly as possible. [more]

Over the years I've read hundreds of technical books. Some of them had some great new ideas, others were great introductions to specific topics, and others had a knack for explaining some complex topic in a very easy to understand way. But in the end, which books had the most impact on me? If I had to go back and pick only a handful of books, which ones would I pick? This is that list. [more]