New Team Formed

Yes, I know...

It's been ages since I've posted anything... miserable, unforgivable ages. If it's any consolation, since my last post:

* New (1st) baby
* Quit smoking
* New job
* New (1st) house

That was pretty well within two months, so yes -- I'm insane.

In other news, though, my brother-in-law -- another developer -- is restless, and so I think I'm shelving the Roguelike for now and we're switching gears. We have at our disposal a pretty incredible artist, and we're going to take a stab and committing ourselves to a top-down, cyberpunk action RPG. It would be nice to incorporate a good number of the features I was hoping to include in the Roguelike, but -- time will tell.

Details to follow.

Minor Progress!

Hellgate: London will be a seriously fun game, once Flagship finishes nailing a couple of really serious bugs that shouldn't have made it through the beta.

The new version of Dwarf Fortress has been out for a few weeks and, well, it's a great thing that keeps getting better. There have been plenty of in-depth and useful reviews already. This isn't one of them.

Got some more time in with Shadows today after staring at, contemplating, staring at, and contemplating my code and various documentation for the past few nights.

I'm Not Quite Dead Yet...

I haven't forgotten or abandoned this project; I've just been damn busy for the past month or so! My time should be freeing up again soon, just in time for a long winter filled with cabin fever and dev progress.

Be back soon! I'll try to make some progress around the holidays, but I really can't promise anything right now!

In the meantime, please go check out the new version of Dwarf Fortress! (Should be posted later today...)

A Few Great Games You've Probably Never Played

I'll make an attempt to give each of these games more thorough reviews in the near future, but in my opinion, you can't go wrong with any one of them:

Dwarf Fortress: Possibly the greatest RTS / builder / god game of all time. Gather your dwarves and carve them a home in the mountainside. Incredibly deep, but the learning curve is worth it.

Ancient Domains of Mystery: An extremely deep and challenging Roguelike. Many secrets await.

Venture the Void: If you like the StarLancer / Freelancer genre, give this one a try. The developer offers a four-hour trial, the one-time-for-life subscription fee is more than reasonable, the downloadable galaxies are huge, and the gameplay is robust. Not truly MMO, but player effects can be felt throughout the game worlds. Good stuff!

Dungeon Runners: A great Diablo-style MMO that can be played for free or for a lower-than usual monthly fee. Very tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, with tons of references to Monty Python, other games, and pop culture in general.

I. Love. Games.

That really sums it up. My first "computer" was an Atari 400, and I used to have a lot of fun typing in BASIC routines from game magazines, playing the resulting games, and storing them off to an audio cassette for later.

Flash forward "a few" years, and I'm a corporate programmer by day, gamer and aspiring game developer by night. When playing, I prefer gameplay over graphics. When developing, I aim for the same goal -- substance over style (although style doesn't hurt!)

My latest project is a Roguelike with a futuristic, urban theme, currently entitled "ShadowsRL," or "Shadows: The Roguelike." It's rather ambitious, but along the way I should be able to write some pretty interesting algorithms. And isn't that the fun of being a developer?

You can read about it HERE.

This site will serve as a place for me to write about algorithmic theories during the course of the game's development, give mini-reviews of games I play and enjoy, and well -- blog about anything else I feel like.

No politics or religion, I promise.