We’re hoping to put a similar event on next year, hopefully bigger and more packed-out, so Teesside students watch this space. In the meanwhile, I’ve put my slides up on my portfolio page here.

The idea behind the event is that alumni from the University of Teesside return to give talks on topics they’ve learned about since leaving the University and entering the world of professional games development. Unlike the typical, “This is my experience of the games industry after my first few months there” talk (one of which I gave back in in May), this offers the chance for alumni to talk about a topic that matters to them – whether it’s the particular aspect of games development they’ve been involved with, or a technology they’ve explored or developed, or a particular approach to design. And, of course, it gives students an insight into aspects of games development they wouldn’t usually encounter as part of their course. The planned talks this time round are:

• Me, talking about multi-platform asset and build management using make and other UNIX tools.
• Peter J. B. Lewis, talking about working as a programmer in middleware, based on his experience at Geomerics in Cambridge.
• Luke Nockles, covering a variety of aspects of design, including game design, level design, and HUD and UI design.
• Steve Lee, talking about the role of design, getting a job in the industry, the meaning and value of elegance, and games as education / art.

There’ll also be a panel at the end which will likely focus on our early experiences in the industry but will be pretty open, so we’ll just go in whichever direction questions take us.

I’m really excited about this event and I hope that, if it’s a success, it can become an annual affair. Naturally I’ll be putting my slides up on this website once I’ve given the talk, so anyone who makes it should be able to find them on the portfolio page.

If artsy is what you want, you can’t do much better than SCEJ’s echocrome. With its soft, classical background music, its abstract line-drawing art style, and its quirky puzzle mechanic, this is unlikely to appeal to FPS zealots. It was partly down to preview videos of this game that I chose to buy a PS3 in the first place — I wanted a console that could satisfy both my needs: exciting action and cerebral, innovative gameplay.

I bought the game when it came out here in the UK, but have recently got back into playing it after having left it aside for a while. It’s a fun game, if a little slow-paced. I find that I don’t get so addicted to it as I do some puzzle games; it doesn’t have that “just one more go” hook. Rather, like the other PSN title fl0w, I find it quite a relaxing experience — though no less enjoyable for it.

A few weeks ago, I was hit by the overwhelming urge to play the latest Tomb Raider. I looked it up, and found out that the new entry into the series, Underworld, was due out that Friday. Quite a coincidence, considering I hadn’t played Tomb Raider since Tomb Raider II on the original PlayStation.

Unfortunately, when I purchased and started playing Tomb Raider: Underworld, I got the impression that it was the continuation of a storyline begun in a previous game. I bought Legend on Steam, and set out to play that through first.

I can’t imagine why it’s taken me this long to get back into the Tomb Raider series. These are exactly the kinds of games I like: nice story, interesting puzzles, exciting action, and lush environments. I’m hoping to blitz my way through this one over Christmas, so I can get back into Underworld in the new year.

Disney Sing It is a karaoke game across all the major platforms (PS2, PS3, Wii, XBox 360 and PC) which allows you to sing along to Disney hits from the likes of High School Musical, Camp Rock, Hannah Montana, and Aly & AJ. It’s been a great experience working on it, particularly dealing with the peculiarities of multi-platform development and the issues involved with vast quantities (think many terabytes) of asset data. I’m afraid I must also confess to near-fluency in the Disney repertoire now!

I have added the game to my portfolio page.

I’d been looking forward to a new high-definition Wipeout since I first bought my PlayStation 3 — it just seemed the obvious thing! I’ve always enjoyed the Wipeout series, though I’ve never been a hardcore player. To me, Wipeout HD is on form. It’s fun, challenging, and very, very pretty.

Super Mario Galaxy is another on that list of games it’s taken me far too long to get around to. Now that I finally have, I can say that it was worth the wait.

I was skeptical about the whole “planets” thing, which of course is Galaxy’s main hook, but it really works well, and doesn’t feel unnatural at all. In fact, I think the most impressive thing is how “Mario” the whole thing feels. Nintendo have managed to use really quite a radical new mechanic without sacrificing the core Mario “feel”.

As noted in my blog, I have been without the internet for some time now. Q Games‘ PixelJunk Eden intrigued me enough, however, that I took my PS3 round to my friend Sherif’s house and made use of his internet to download it.

I’m glad I did. At first glance, Eden is a quirky puzzle game with a weird control system and quite pretty stylized graphics. It’s the third in the PixelJunk series, the first two of which (Racers and Monsters) abstracted other well-known game genres (Racing and RTS respectively) into simplified puzzle-game forms. Eden doesn’t seem to be an abstraction of anything else in particular, but it has that same minimalist purity — even more so than the previous two releases. The control system, though it may seem peculiar at first, is actually very good, and makes for a very interesting style of play.

PixelJunk Eden is, I believe, the best in the PixelJunk series, and a highly addictive and enjoyable game.

I finally got my hands on a copy of Mario Kart Wii! My Wii has been out of action for the past few months as I foolishly bought a screen that only supported HDMI and VGA connections — no SCART or Component. Now I have a Component-HDMI adapter, I can start playing some of the Wii games I’ve been missing out on.

I’m very impressed by Mario Kart Wii. I wasn’t massively enamoured of the Gamecube effort, Double Dash, so it was nice to see Nintendo back on form. The new tracks are very exciting, and multiplayer is typically frantic.

The only criticism I would make of Mario Kart Wii is that it’s possibly a little too much battle and not enough race. Some of the new pickups — notably the rocket, which combines autopilot with being very large and destructive — upset the balance a bit. It’s possible to fall from first to last place within a matter of seconds purely due to unlucky pickups. Or vice versa. While this lends to the unpredictability of the game, It does mean that skill often goes unrewarded, and is by no means a guarantee of success.

That aside, Mario Kart Wii is an excellent continuation of the series and marvellous good fun. Problems with balance only really matter if you’re taking it quite seriously, and at its best, Mario Kart is a party game. And as a party game, it is one of the best.

…But wait a minute! No internet? Moved house in April? That’s right, I have not had the internet since April 14th. This being the end of June, that means I have gone for two and a half months without the internet, which is the longest I’ve managed without the net since 1995. Wow. Just, wow.

As you can imagine, a fair amount has happened in that time. I gave a talk at the University of Teesside in May, about my experiences thus far in the games industry. It went quite well, though due to unfortunate timing (one week before final ICA handins!) attendance was rather poor. I was invited up again next year, though, and at a better time of year. I and Peter Lewis have some interesting plans in store for that — but more on them in a few months’ time.

Work has remained interesting. Through a feat of temporal engineering, we are approaching completion deadlines at roughly twice the rate at which time passes. I am itching to talk a little more about it a little more, but as is so common, must await the project’s announcement first. I suspect this will happen in the next few months.

My new apartment is located in Hove, right near the sea, and is amazing. Firstly, it’s the first place I’ve ever had to myself — no flatshare here, no sirree. The novelty of that freedom still hasn’t worn off. A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on my sofa, with a glass of red wine, Tord Gustavsen Trio’s “Being There” playing in the background, and Flake’s “The Computational Beauty of Nature” in my hands, and I thought to myself, “this is good”.

Even the lack in internet has been an enjoyable novelty. I have no internet, no phone line, and even my mobile phone reception is virtually nonexistent within the flat itself. When I go home, I am quite cut off from the world. And although this has its disadvantages, particularly in terms of productivity at home, it has its advantages too. I haven’t been doing a lot of programming at home, but I have been doing quite a lot of reading about programming, and consolidating knowledge I already have — and I feel that it does give me a chance to think without being distracted by MSN Messenger or Wikipedia. I suspect I will soon set up an internet connection, but in the meantime I am quite enjoying going without.

Not having the internet, and by extension not being permanently tied to my computer, has also allowed me to devote more time to some of my other interests, too — particularly reading, and music. I’ve set up my keyboard for the first time in three years and started once again trying to teach myself to play. I feel I am making more progress than I have on previous occasions. I have also been taking advantage of my new life by the sea by going sailing quite regularly. Sailing is a brilliant sport, thoroughly enjoyable, and also very interesting when one stops to think of the mathematics and the mechanics behind it. I may stop to make some diagrams describing some of the interesting maths behind it sometime, but for now suffice to say just that it’s cool.

Anyway, that is just a little update, and quite possibly my last for a while, depending on how soon I arrange for the internet in my flat.