Before I even start this post, I should point out that currently the project I am coding is for fun. I actually really ENJOY complex programming design challenges, unlike many people, so the comment ‘this is done for you in X’ or ‘there is middleware that solves this without you doing anything in Y’ is irrelevant to me, and actually depressing. Whatever happened to the joy of working on hard problems? Take an imaginary game that has a lot of entities in it. Say 500. Each entity is a sprite. That sprite has an effect drawn on top of it (say its a glowy light) and a different effect below it (sa ..read more

Amazingly this is the first update of the year, and its May. This is absolutely ridiculous beyond words, but I might start getting really ranty and angry if I get drawn into it, but suffice to say that for absolutely zero justifiable reason, nothing dramatic has really happened on the site for months. Its all due to paperwork. basically the energy company (the people connecting the farm to the grid, at vast expense, all billed 100% to me) decided that they needed a sub-lease from me to put their substation on the freeholder (farmer’s) land. This is fine. I have a lease agreed over a year ago n ..read more

Hello party members! It is with great pleasure that we announce that Democracy 4 will be coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles on 5th June 2024. With the help of our partners at Auroch Digital, Democracy 4: Console Edition has been built the from the ground-up with controller play in-mind to bring that feeling of Democracy 4 that we all know and love to home consoles. Democracy 4: Console Edition is available to pre-order and wishlist via the following links: Nintendo Switch – Coming Soon PlayStation – https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP5595-CUSA44561_00-0098238 ..read more

For eight years I worked in a boatyard. Thats not the start of a novel, or a poem, I really did, which might seem weird if you know me as a software developer or game designer. But its true! It was mostly part-time, but multiple days a week, and it was crushingly hard work in ways I wont even begin to list here. This is a post about motivation, creativity and getting stuff done. Like a lot of my blog posts it will seem on a tangent until I attempt to bring it all together at the end. So stay tuned :D. Almost all of the boats we worked on were clinker-built Edwardian Thames Skiffs. Basically 20 ..read more

So… I am sort of working on a game as a hobby. It may never be released. But anyway, lets pretend its a Napoleonic war game.(its not). That allows me to at least talk in non vague terms. I am stuck slightly in the way I am designing a core part of the game. Imagine a game where you have to place down a large number of units, on a map, and give them orders. The game then plays out the resulting battle against a pre-placed AI enemy. These days the kids call that an autobattler, but AFAIK I made the very first one (Gratuitous Space Battles), so I didn’t have a name of it back then. Anyway… The go ..read more

I had a chat today with a very knowledgeable fellow indie game dev. He asserts that it is way harder for a game dev to sell a game on steam in 2023 than it was in the past. My gut feeling was that he was wrong, but who needs guts when you have data and analysis? lets find out. I dug around to find out what I could. There are various sites listing the number of games on steam, but the most interesting data I found was listing the games released on steam, but also breaking down the more recent years into games that have certain community features enabled, and games that did not. Steam requires a ..read more

Bit of a low-profile sudden launch, because its only a little fun hobby game. But I do think its rather good, and it is also super, super cheap, especially with a launch discount. So go grab a copy :D Its fab. Try to beat it on WTF difficulty level ..read more

A million years ago, my ambition was to be as good a guitarist as Richie Kotzen, in his pre-poison, shred days. I thought he was super cool. I then started guitar lessons with the teacher who, at the time, was considered the best heavy metal guitar teacher in the country. His name was shaun baxter. It was a 3 hours trip each way with a guitar, walking, getting a bus, then 2 trains, then walking, then the reverse. The lessons were expensive. I was very determined. I learned lots of things, and one of them is broadly applicable to everything you might ever want to learn, improve at, or get done ..read more

Its been a long time since my last visit to the site, and work stalled for ages due to arguments and analysis regarding earthing. Finally at LONG LAST, that was agreed upon, and we could recommence work. I went up there with a friend yesterday in pretty bad wet weather to see what progress there had been. Hopefully this is the start of the final leg of getting the farm finished and connected. When I was last there, most (85%?) of the panels and frames were installed, and most of the inverters, but that was it. This time there was some more stuff done. The most obvious progress on that day was ..read more

And you probably thought I wasn’t still making games right? After the long and intense development of Democracy 4, which is a HUGE sprawling game with a LOT of code, and a ton of content, and is now in about 10 languages and has 3 expansion packs… it was nice to be able to make something small, and simple, and not at all commercial or serious. With that in mind I started messing around making a space-invaders style vertical shooter, using the art assets I have from an older game of mine: Gratuitous Space Battles. GSB is pretty old now, but TBH the spaceship graphics for it still look incredibl ..read more