R. I. P

The Game Gods series has come to a tragic end after the second of two mysterious .3mm propelling pencil deaths in the space of a month.




Perhaps its time to try some more robust - or less expensive - drawing tools...

Errors in Scale

It is easy to confound the fruit with the tree - then a fruit bowl becomes a tree bowl.

It is easy to mistake a mole cricket for a giant, killer bug-beast from mars then your wildlife documentary becomes a schlocky b-movie.

It is easy to pretend your bath-water is the ocean, then you might be swept away to who knows where?

Perhaps size isn't everything, but it should be regarded as a vital consideration never the less.

The Mythical Work From Home

I miss my old office. True, the roof was a bit leaky, but the furniture was comfy and the air conditioning was simply sublime.

Spirals

It is amazing how little use is made of spirals in computer games, they are really useful shapes - they can iteratively cover a 2d surface from a starting point in all directions quite evenly while still only having one growing tip, and they have an intrinsic beauty that is all their own.

Outlook

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Pots & Pachyderms

What is it that games designers have against pots? Why must they be destroyed? Such violence has already pushed the pygmy pot hippopotamus over the edge of extinction, and the teeny tinpot elephant (illustrated) is only holding on in the backdrops of a few of the older, pre-rendered point-and-clickers with their detailed but totally un-interactive scenery.



Perhaps the games designers are in cahoots with the archaeologists; who, as a profession, are well known for never deigning to deal with a pot that has not first been reduced to tiny, cryptic fragments.

Or perhaps all it takes is one very influential games designer (who should know better) to set a bad example, and all the others follow along, like unthinking little sheeple...

No matter! Pots, and the rich biota they support, deserve better treatment from modern game developers.

Wallow

Some of the time, wallowing around doing nothing in particular, can be the most productive thing you can do. Learn from it; grow. Become all that you can be - through inaction - as opposed to striving to become all you want to be - through action.

And don't worry, the world will still be here when you return from this hiatus.

Nasal Naval Combat Games Designer

A clear exposition of how a games designer - when inverted - can be employed in almost any fictional naval engagement as a battering ram - holing your adversaries beneath the water line and rapidly spreading terror through the ranks of any opposing fleet.

Although most games designers will do, this tactic will be most effective when the pointy-nosed variety are employed.

Screwed

This happens to all of us at some time or other. The important thing is not to be bitter about it.

Inscrutable Squares

When your games design mojo is at it's lowest ebb, and you can't think of anything particular to do on the development, even while despairing at how far from complete the game still is, I find it useful to draw small, square-shaped diagrams - whether of non-linear level progression pathways, super efficient rendering strategies or simply of how I plan to eat at lunchtime.

The point is to make them as intriguing and cryptic as possible. By creating such a square and filling it with inscrutable squiggles, you will soon emerge with a fresh sense of purpose and direction, ready to forge ahead with a production that will undoubtedly exceed the very boundaries of gaming avant garde.

Newtonian Voracity

There are many things worse than being smacked on the noggin by falling fruit while dozing under an apple tree - no matter how apocryphally. An infestation of small, round, overly voracious bipedal mouth-creatures is just one of them.


By analogy, this diagram shows everything that is wrong with the burgeoning casual games market sector - scribbly, unclear, demanding of nothing but mediocrity and threatening to swallow up all that we hold dear.

Clear out of my orchard, you lousy varmints!

Argh! Trigonometry, Alison & Accident Book

Whenever you find yourself doing anything involved with trigonometry during the development of a 3d game, a little alarm bell should sound at the back of your mind - could you accomplish your aims more elegantly and efficiently by the application of a few vector cross and dot products? usually the answer is yes, and you should dump all those mouldy old atan2()s like a hot air balloon dropping sand bags.


Make sure your inappropriate over-reliance on trigonometry is properly recorded in the office accident book, and then move on. Don't look back - a nasty little trig fairy is lurking back there, just waiting for an opportunity to trepan your canoodle with a rusty old funnel-cap.

Slings and Arrows of Financial misfortune

Today we will be looking at safeguarding your company's future in these uncertain times:



This diagram clearly shews a small dev studio admirably prepared to cope with the worst the Credit Crunch can throw at it. Provided you are able to rope the staff together tightly, you should be able to construct an overarching defensive shell - large and tough enough to shield the whole organisation from even the worst slings and arrows of outrageous financial fortune, whilst remaining sufficiently agile to cope with the most tortuous of your clients' caprices.

Brown Paper Packages

It has been too many years since last I was presented with a brown paper package tied up with string. Games publishers have been very slow to recognise the substantial marketing opportunity afforded to them by the massive popularity of such packages - I have it on good authority that they are amongst most people's favourite things.


Instead of quibbling over retail shelf space, or gnashing their teeth over the vagaries of download sales infrastructure, publishers should really be investing in training up retailers to ensure that each game sold can reach the consumer with all the elegance and intrigue that such a package affords.

As a developer of download games, I will be mailing a sheet of brown paper, a length of string and concise instructions to all the customers who do me the honour of supplying me with their postal addresses so that they too can share in the excitement of unwrapping something properly packaged, and in that way, make their games purchasing experience complete.

Mystical Staff

Welcome to Wildeep's secrets of the game gods. Here I will lay bare many of the deepest, darkest secrets of the games development process. Heed my words and one day you too could be numbered amongst that most divine pantheon - the Games Developers of Legend.

Oh yes.


Let us begin with the importance of Mystical Staff:

If you are planning to make a game incorporating any kind of fantasy or sci-fi element, be sure to make full use of your mystical staff - if you cannot hire any directly, then get one of your (un-mystical) designers to sketch up a mystical staff and pay particular attention to whom they depict as wielding it.

This will set you on the right path towards the mystical.