A pause

I went to the Develop conference in Brighton

The book hasn't been progressing as rapidly as usual, I suffered from some computer issues and my time is being taken up by contract work :(

To solve my computer problems I've bought a new laptop and I'm now ready to get back to writing the "How To Make An RPG" book. Time issues are going to persist but it's the weekend now, so I'm ready to get things moving!


Develop

Bigyama, the company I cofounded, took a trip down to Brighton to attend the Develop conference (there's only two of us, so the logistics are pretty easy!). This is a game developer conference where there's a lot of drinking and some talks. We attended the "Indie days" because they are significantly cheaper to attend.

If you're an Indie dev, or thinking about becoming one and you've never attended Develop, it's worth going down. If nothing else, you'll probably leave inspired and hungry to start on your next game.

My favourite talk was from Mike Bithell (creator of Thomas was Alone), which basically argued,

1. All mid-sized game developers are moving away from PC and chasing mobile as it's the new hot.
2. The PC market is massive and underserved
3. With the rise of the internet the PC market is so massive and global there's almost certainly a group that will respond well to the game your truly want to make
4. Go and do it

We also met Tom Francis (creator of Gunpoint) later at the Four Door Lemon party and had a drink which was cool. It's nice to meet the developers behind Indie games, if only to confirm they are actually humans and that therefore there's some outside chance that you can, at least in theory, successfully release your own game.

What I'll be working on next

Today I'll be finishing off all the example programs for the first part of the book about Exploration. Exploration deals with loading maps, exploring and interacting with them. It also deals with cutscenes at the moment but that may change in the editing phase!

Here's a sneak peek at the sewer ... I'm pretty sure RPG's are legally obligated to feature a sewer.