Owner: Mattis Gustavsson URL:http://www.mattiasgustavsson.com/ Join Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:32:48 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Games industry veteran Mattias Gustavsson blogs about games (with a special focus on retro games), game development and the games industry, and shares development tricks and useful source code, such as his public domain game engine Pixie. Site statistics:Click here
Fighting Games Before They Went Wrong 2008-08-09 07:58:45 Sometimes, it's good fun to play fighting games. Not by yourself, but against friends. I've enjoyed it since my first computer, the... [ read more ] Read more:Fighting
, Games
, Wrong
Racing Games - The FUN Ones 2008-08-08 06:35:24 Right now, I'm playing through one of my old favorite games - Diddy Kong Racing
, on the Nintendo 64. It got me thinking a bit about racing games. Now, I'm not a big fan of the "normal" racing games, things like... [ read more ] Read more:Games
Ice Climber Is Fun Fun Fun 2008-08-06 13:17:48 A while back, I got a Wii, and it's great fun. And one thing that is really nice with it, is the Virtual Console, where you can buy old games and play them on your Wii. I got myself the old classic Ice Climber
a while back, and it's.. [ read more ]
First Entry 2008-07-22 07:04:56 Welcome to the first entry of my blog.
I feel that I should probably say a few words about myself and the purpose of the blog, and what you can expect from it.
I have been into computer games and programming for a very long time (25 years or so). I’ve worked in the games industry for the... [ read more ] Read more:First
, Entry
Simon the Sorcerer - More frustrating than fun 2008-08-25 06:21:02 I've been playing an old adventure game lately - Simon
the Sorcerer, and it is nowhere near as good as I remembered it. The experience is still sort of enjoyable, but there's a huge element of frustration, which sort of spoils it... [ read more ]
3D Engine Abstraction Layer 2008-08-24 08:26:35 So, as I mentioned the other day, I'll be making a 3D engine specifically suited to technically simpler 3D games, such as indie developers might want to make. I've started working on this now, and there's two major lessons I've learned over the years... [ read more ] Read more:Engine
, Abstraction
, Layer
3D Engine for Indie Games? 2008-08-20 07:06:38 I've been working on games for a while. Worked with a few commercial 3D engines, made a couple myself... I've been around the indie-scene for quite some time too. Most indie games that make money are 2D games (though some make use of 3D graphics cards to render their sprites faster), and that makes sense: the customer don't care, and it's a more cost-effective way to produce games... [ read Read more:Engine
, Indie
, Games
Talisman - Excellent Board Game 2008-08-14 06:12:16 I've liked boardgames for as long as I can remember, and one of my all time favourites, and one I've played since back in the 80s (and still play to this day) is Talisman
, from.. [ read more ] Read more:Board
Making a Text Adventure 2008-08-11 08:11:23 Last christmas, a forum I hang out on arranged a mini-competiton: to make a winter or xmas themed text adventure game... [ read more ] Read more:Adventure
Painting Miniatures 2008-08-11 07:48:07 One thing I'm enjoying from time to time is painting miniatures. There's something quite... [ read more ] Read more:Painting
, Miniatures
Magic - Awesome Card Game 2008-09-16 14:05:18 A few years ago, some guys at work started playing "Magic
the Gathering", a card game from Wizards of the Coast, and naturally, I joined in. I hadn't played a collectible card game before, but I'm surprised how quickly I got hooked on it... [ read more ]
STOS - Basic Language for Making Games 2008-09-13 07:13:26 When I got my Atari ST, it didn't come with a good basic language, so I invested some (most) of my piggy-bank in a product called STOS - The Game Creator. It was a basic language specifically created for making games. It is my main source of inspiration for my RetroBox project, so I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane, to reexamine this great little language... [ read more ] Read more:Basic
, Games
RetroBox - Internals & Memory Map 2008-09-10 13:44:21 Time for another piece on my RetroBox. I've got it mostly working now, and will be releasing a first beta pretty soon, so I thought I'd talk a bit about how it works internally... [ read more ] Read more:Internals
, Memory
X-Com: One of my All-time Favorite Games 2008-09-10 03:53:03 Do you remember "X-Com: Terror from the Deep"? It was one of the best games of the time, and it still holds up to this day. Basically, it's a strategy game where you defend the earth from an alien invasion, one that originates from the depths of the... [ read more ] Read more:Games
, Favorite
The Pixie Game Engine 2008-09-09 12:34:16 Over the last couple of days, I've spent a bit a bit of time cleaning up and fixing things for my game engine, so I thought I'd do an update on it. If you've tried the engine or the games before, and it didn't work, it's worth trying it again now: I've fixed lots of issues in the engine, and put up new versions of all the games and all the source codes, so everything... [ read more ] Read more:Pixie
, Engine
3D Engine - Material & Lighting 2008-09-05 06:09:22 In some previous posts, I've talked about the indie 3D engine I'm making, and today, I'll be talking a bit about how I will handle materials and lighting. As with every part of this engine, I will keep it simple, and focus on techniques that have a big visual impact with little added complexity... [ read more ] Read more:Engine
, Lighting
Blur and Bleed: Running Games on a TV 2008-09-03 17:02:33 Growing up in the 80's, I was a proud owner of a Commodore 64 and later an Atari ST. They were "home computers" and you hooked them up to your TV, to play games or write code. Nowadays, we all run or computers on large, crisp monitors, at very high resolutions, but those just didn't exist back in the days.
Time passed, technology got more advanced, and before you knew it, you could run all your C6 Read more:Games
, Bleed
Making of Baby Viking and the Alien Invasion 2008-09-03 04:05:01 There's a annual event in Sweden, called Swedish Game Awards, where students compete in making the best game. Last year, SGA held a "warmup" competition, also open to non-students, where you had to make a 2D game in a week. The theme was "Vikings and the future". After all the fun I had making Kassandra I just couldn't resist joining this as well. I did most of this game in a weekend as well, thou Read more:Alien
, Invasion
Characters for my Dungeon Crawl Game 2008-09-01 08:07:09 On and off, I'm working on a dungeon crawl game, where you just run around in dungeons, kill monsters and find treasure. I'm not really ready to reveal much about the game itself yet, but I thought I'd show you the characters and monsters I've made for it so far... [ read more ] Read more:Characters
, Dungeon
A First Person Shooter Worth Playing 2008-08-30 12:24:01 Remember when FPS games was a new thing? Wolfenstein had been out for a while, DOOM had just made a huge impact, and Duke Nukem was the latest thing... I never really got into DOOM, but I really liked playing multiplayer Duke Nukem 3D.... [ read more ] Read more:First
, Shooter
, Worth
RetroBox - The Processor 2008-08-30 08:35:26 Time for the next piece on the RetroBox. If you don't know what that is, start here, then go read this. This entry will be quite technical, so if you're not the programmer type, you might want to skip it... [ read more ]
More Miniatures - Superheroes 2008-08-30 05:04:47 As I've mentioned before, I like painting miniatures. This time, I'm showing some super hero miniatures from the HeroClix collectibles strategy game. I'll talk more about the game (which is amazingly good) in a later entry, but for now, have a look at this... [ read more ] Read more:Miniatures
, Superheroes
North & South - Strategy AND Action 2008-08-30 03:52:24 A while back, I talked about Defender of the Crown, and about games which incorporated different types of gameplay. This time, I'll talk about another one of my old favorites which share that characteristic: North
& South
... [ read more ] Read more:Strategy
, Action
3D Engine - Basic Concepts 2008-08-29 13:31:00 As you probably know by now, I'm making an indie 3D engine, and last time I talked about the abstraction layer for accessing the 3D hardware. This time, I'm going to talk a bit about the basic concepts of the higher level engine, touching on things like meshes, materials and the scene... [ read more ] Read more:Basic
, Engine
, Concepts
RetroBox - The Specification 2008-08-28 05:20:55 Ok, so like I was saying last time, I'm working on something I call the RetroBox, which is kind of like a virtual oldschool computer. [ read more ] Read more:Specification
RetroBox - My New Retro Project 2008-08-27 13:49:20 Ok, so I've been moving recently (going back to university, so I'm now a student again for the first time in a looong while), and while carrying boxes and furniture, my mind wandered, and I got an idea that can probably be described as just plain weird. Or really nice. I'll let you judge, bear with me... [ read more ] Read more:Project
Making a Simple Platform Game 2008-09-27 06:40:27 I realized that though I made this a while ago, when I first started working on my Pixie Game Engine, I never released it, so I thought I might as well do it now :-)
[ read more ] Read more:Simple
, Platform
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