Monthly archives: January 2008

New everything

It’s been an interesting and exciting first month, settling into life in Brighton and working at Zoë Mode. I’m working on a cross-platform title for Wii and PS2 which has a small team and a short development cycle. In some ways this is nice, and close to what I’ve been used to during my time at Virtual Playground, but there are some very definite differences! The most dramatic of these is probably the experience of working for console rather than PC. I’d never appreciated just how limited these machines are, especially with regard to memory. That and the lack of an operating system make for quite a different coding experience.

It’s nice though; fun. You get the feeling you’re much more “close to the metal”, and you have to be much more aware of the machine’s resources.

Of course, the other major thing that’s happened is Christmas and New Year. This year – or I should say last year, on December 31st – I went to Oxford Services for the annual Oxford Services New Years Eve celebrations! Continue reading

Pentago

Pentago

This Christmas I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Pentago from my most excellent friends, Alex and Danni. It’s a lovely little game which only takes about ten minutes to play – a refreshing change from games like Carcassonne and Go, which usually require a time commitment of at least an hour. Similarly to Gomoku, the goal in Pentago is to connect five stones in a straight or diagonal line, however there is a twist!* After each stone you place, you must rotate one quadrant of the board by 90° in either direction. This simple addition means that the state of the board is constantly changing, and makes for a fascinating and exhilarating game.

*Pun not intended.