About 5 months ago I spent a weekend creating a project management tool (named BrainWave) for my game development. I received positive feedback and a few developers were interested in trying it out so I launched a private beta. During the last 5 months I’ve had a steady trickle of invite requests. I’ve also continued [...]
Coffee and Code
August 1, 2010 – 9:58 am
I’m eschewing the pursuit of useful information this week to instead bring you this frivolous post on coffee… enjoy. Coffee, like cooking and baking, seems to be synonymous with being a game developer (Why do game developers like cooking and baking so much?). I’m sure some game devs out there don’t actually enjoy coffee (purely [...]
My iPhone game graveyard
July 25, 2010 – 10:44 am
We’ve all started work on games only to abandon them part the way through. There can be many reasons for this but for me it’s usually because they just aren’t fun to play or were too ambitious. My iPhone game graveyard is the place where all of my abandoned games are laid to rest (or [...]
10 don’ts of iphone game development
July 11, 2010 – 11:51 am
To date I’ve designed, developed, and published a couple of iPhone games and am currently knee deep in a third, and as of this weekend a fourth. Whilst I don’t yet feel that I have enough experience to advise you on what to do to ensure success, I can turn it on it’s head and [...]
Inspiration for your next iPhone game: Retro Games
July 4, 2010 – 12:39 pm
I’m going to make a sweeping, possibly inaccurate, generalisation. Modern games are highly derivative, boring, and predictable. They nearly always involve some form of shooting; be it people, robots, zombies, or indeed anything that moves. They are set in the same environments we have seen a million times before; WWII, SciFi, or Fantasy settings. Now, [...]
A beginners guide to iPhone game development
June 27, 2010 – 10:28 am
Last week a great blog post, followed by a seemingly innocuous tweet from @mysterycoconut, escalated into what is now known as iDevBlogADay. The concept is fairly straightforward; Every day a developer (or two) will post on their blog. We all have an allotted day so that there is at least one blog post published every [...]
The Sketchbook Project 2011
May 21, 2010 – 7:55 pm
There was a time when anyone who asked me “What will you be in life?” received the rather confident and totally serious answer “I’ll be an Artist”. I studied Art at college you see. In fact I recently stumbled across some photos of my old college artwork, including a rather disturbing 6 foot tall crucifix! [...]
BrainWave – Idea Management for Game Developers
March 28, 2010 – 7:49 pm
Project Management – It’s perhaps the least sexy part of independent game design and development. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have struggled endlessly with existing products trying to cram your “unique” workflow into their stubborn interfaces, only to not even bother opening it again after a handful of attempts. I’ve often resigned myself to [...]
Another week gone
February 26, 2010 – 9:54 pm
Another week over, so time for my weekly update. Unfortunately I’ve been ill for most of this week so I haven’t been able to spend any time working on my game. I think this highlights the difficulties of working as an independent games developer – it doesn’t take much to disrupt your work and it [...]
A new design for 2010
February 3, 2010 – 11:02 pm
Lets face it, the previous design for Bytesize Adventures was pretty ugly. More than that, whilst it served its purpose, it lacked direction and cohesion. As we entered 2010, and with a third iPhone game in development, I decided it was time to do something about the site. What you’re browsing now is my redesign [...]