Category: Uncategorized

Many people on the interwebs get very upset that george Lucas uses a lot of transition effects in his films. They may be tacky, heck, they may even be ‘gratuitous’ but I always identify them with star wars, and thus SPACE BATTLES. So how could I not put them in the game? (I’m actually quite pleased with how it looks).

On an unrelated note, those nice people at EliteBastards (yes really), have done a writeup of the game:

Elitebastards.com

I might have some interesting news soon, BTW.

Fellow indies dejobaan recently did a video reponse to questions about their game, and I thought this was a great idea and shamelessly copied it replying to all the stuff people ask me by email and on the forums, then spent far too much time today playing with sony vegas movie editor. I needed to get my moneysworth didn’t I? For some reason I started ranting about star trek:

I was going a bit square-eyed from all this coding so I took the morning off (I’m coding again now!). To get away from all the explosions and guns and weapons of GSB, I had a relaxing morning at THE IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM. Which is in London, and not *that* much of a trip. I’ve been reading churchills war diaries and playing company of heroes, so what the hell eh?
I conclude from my trip that the V2 rocket is HUGE, and that those PAK anti-tank guns from company of heroes are actually quite small. I also conclude that evil though they were (The holocaust museum makes that perfectly clear), the Nazis had some cool tank designs. Here is me stood nonchalantly next to the jagdpanther at the museum:

I’m working on AI behavior code. Fortunately I think I may have solved a big of a horrid fighter+escort+engage enemy bug whilst I was on the train, so I’m coding it now. If it all works, I might release a 1.05 patch tonight, mroe likely tomorrow, after some proper testing.

Have you read Outliers? It’s a book by Malcolm Gladwell. Not his best book,  but it’s quite good. It’s basically a theory that assumes that really successful talented people get where they are because they just put the hours in. He looks at The Beatles, Bill Gates, Sports stars, all different areas of work and investigates peoples backgrounds.

The guess is that you need to do something for 10,000 hours to get good at it, which is roughly 10 years full time. The Beatles had performed for that length of time before they became an overnight success :D

I’m a strong believer in the idea that almost anyone can do anything if they just put the hours in and concentrate. I occasionally muck around playing a digital piano. I’m not very good. My limits are the intro to Fur Elise and the intro to Wait For Sleep by Dream Theater. That’s about it. But I *know* that if I spent 10 years full time really going for it in terms of practice I’d get bloody good at it.

They say that school isn’t about teaching you stuff ‘per-se’, but teaching you how to learn. That’s a valuable thing to know. If the thought of sitting down with a book and learning some new skill depresses you, it’s really worth beating that. It opens up so many possibilities.

I have absolutely zero natural aptitude for programming. my DNA is pretty similar to everyone else’s.  I went to a relatively good school (state-run) and my mother taught me to read very young. Everything else was hard work.

You can tell I have no actual talent, because I’ve probably done my 10,00 hours and I’m still not rich or famous. I started programming at age 11 on the ZX81. I’m 40 this year.

I’m still trying though :D

I don’t normally blog about other indie games, I find most of them to be a bit too casual and cuddly for my liking, but I just added a new game to the ones I sell through positech.co.uk and I think it might appeal to any of you who are following gratuitousspacebattles.

This is it:

When I tried the demo, I ended up playing it for much longer than I assumed I would. Give it a go.

Linky here:

Light Of Altair