Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! As games are both hugely technical and creative things, they are subject to a lot of public opinion. From is it a good game to a bad game to why it's the best game ever to why it's the worst game ever and everything in between. Now, if you're a game dev or just a creative in general. No matter what you make, you've probably at one time or another been told "Don't read the comments". No matter what you make, once it's been posted online, people are going to say what they think about it without filter because, well, that's the internet for you. So, I'm going ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! Lately I've been thinking a lot about how people have been saying games need to push the envelope more when it comes to what we expect. That games need to continue to change expectations and push boundaries. This is something I agree with. I think we do need to explore interesting new ways to entertain and surprise players and create new an enriching experiences. However, that's not what I want to talk about. Instead I want to make the case for games that don't do this. To give you some context, I was recently looking for a horror game to play. Somethi ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog, I'm going to show you quickly how you can load a scene on a collision trigger in Unity. First off, you'll want to open a blank scene and delete the main camera from it. Now add a plane to act as your floor and add in a first person controller. Next we'ere going to add in a cube object. In the object inspector of the cube be sure to mark it's box collider as "Is Trigger". Next, we're going to create a new C# script. Open it in visual studio. Once open, remove the default functions that appear. We'll first create a private string variabl ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog, I'm trying to gather some information in relation to not only my blog personally but across the game dev scene as a whole. I want to try determine what areas game devs don't talk about enough. This can be from the technical (code, art, audio) to the personal (struggles, business, community). I'm going to pose the question below as a form. Let me know what you think game devs should talk more about and feel free to post suggestions too. What Should Game Devs Talk About More? * Indicates required field What would you like game devs to dis ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog, I wanted to highlight two Youtube channels that have been a great source of entertainment and inspiration to me as a game dev. I'm of course referring to Noclip and Gameumentary. Noclip Noclip has a special place in my heart as it's founder, Danny O'Dwyer is also an Irishman. NoClip are crowdfunded which only goes to show that their growth and success is a direct result of them making content that people not only enjoy but also want to support. Noclip is obviously very good at making game dev docs but their especially good at highl ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! Since I've been back in college, I've had my fair share of exams and still have quite a few big ones left to go. So, I thought now would be a good time to share some of the things I do in order to prepare for an exam 1: Don't Cram! While cramming the night before might work for some people, those people number a very rare amount. In practice, cramming the night before an exam does not end well. So, give yourself plenty of time to study. For the most part, your lecturers will give you plenty of notice of an exam. What I tend to do when I know there's an ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! It's been a while since I've done a general update of everything. So, now's as good a time as any to take stock of what I've been up to. College: I'm nearing the end of my second year as a mature student in my computer science course. Things are going well, but, the level of work has ramped up significantly going into this final semester which means I've had to prioritise college that bit more. I'm in the middle of a block of exams at the moment as well as projects, so, the majority of my time lately is focused on college work. Game Dev: As you might have ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog post, I'm going to be talking a little bit about remakes. More specifically, what I think makes a good remake. I'm mostly going to be talking about the Resident Evil 2 remake as I think it provides one of the best examples of what a good remake is. Remakes are nothing new. We've seen plenty of remakes over the years. Some good and some bad. For the most part, remakes tend to be the same game just with better textures and graphical effects. They tend to keep the exact same gameplay elements, even if they are buggy and the overall game it ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog, we're going to look at a simple way you can read binary and easily convert it to English text. So, if you don't know much about binary then you probably just know it as a series of 0s and 1s and you'd be right. Binary is simply made up of 0s and 1s but the number of digits and their order is very important. You may see a long series of binary numbers with hundreds of 0s and 1s but we can actually break these down into simple chunks to work them out. Binary is simply a series of bits. Each bit being represented by a 1 or a 0. However, ev ..read more

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers! In this week's blog, we're going to take a look at some of the books I've been reading as of late! 1. Gwendy's Button Box Gwendy's Button Box is a novella written by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar. The book takes inspiration from one of Kings most iconic locations, Castle Rock. The book provides a great mix of suspense, fear and a look at how easily we change over time, even if we don't want to admit it. 2. Elevation Elevation by Stephen King was quite an interesting read. While it's not exactly a scary read,it is a very strange tale. It's one ..read more