Learning From The Masters: Level Design In The Legend Of Zelda »
Great analysis of dungeon design from The Legend of Zelda on the NES.
Fixing my iPad 1 after updating to iOS5
After upgrading my iPad Gen1 to iOS5, I found it be extremely sluggish when typing and apps (especially Safari) were crashing constantly. I originally thought it was it was like when the iPhone 3G got the iOS4 upgrade which basically made it almost unusable and frustrating sluggish.
However, after a quick search, I found a thread in the Apple forums where a couple of people have replied with a ‘fix’ for this:
Hope it works out for everyone else.
Great 10 minute summary in how SCRUM works. Worth watching if you need an introduction, overview or refresher in SCRUM practises.
Awesome Amendment in Early Day Motion for Modern Warfare 3 »
Tom Watson sounds awesome!
Automated Testing: Building A Flexible Game Solver »
Interesting article on using an AI script to ‘solve’ complete a game and be used for automated testing. I have been looking into this type of thing myself and researching if it would be possible to write one for the games I am working on at Playfish using something like Sikuli as the player.
However, for it to be useful as an automated tester, it would need to be able to pick up on crashes and where the player would be stuck and report to a server/email the developers on where and how it happened.
EA proposes Harry Potter dev closure »
This is a really big shame. There are a lot of good people and is where I learned my craft when I started out in the industry. Hope everyone comes out of this okay.
Earlier in the week, I was reading a newspaper article on how the writer managed to end up in around £20k of debt from consumer spending over a period of 20 years. This alone bugs the hell out of me as I can’t believe that she doesn’t understand the basics of managing money, ‘Don’t spend what you don’t have’.
If this was a cause of getting into debt due to basic necessities like food and rent, then I can understand and sympathise but this was from purchases such as a $400 spending spree in Ralph Lauren and going out in bars.
The image above is her monthly budget to start paying back this debt where she is earning £2800 after tax (equivalent of about £46k a year so she is pretty well off) and ending up with only £73 wiggle room.
She is already using £530 to pay off loans which is good but I don’t see why she still has £300 budget for ‘Going out’ and ‘Sundries’. Surely there is plenty of scope to trim that down further considering how much debt she is in. Also ‘Phone, Internet and cable TV’ does not cost £80. I had the full Virgin Media Package for half that amount so I have no idea what she is spending that extra £40 on. She can even go one step further and remove cable TV altogether to get it down to about £25.
Unbelievable.
Results from a survey on how potential employers use social networks to screen the applicants. Not surprising in that fact that they do use them but I was very curious in what they do as a result of the information they find there.
(Source: geeksaresexy.net)
Getting back into the Game
As some of you know, I recently changed jobs from WMS Gaming to Playfish UK and as I wrote about my reasons for leaving the games industry, I thought it be interesting to write about why and how I came back.
User Interface Design For Programmers »
It’s an old article but a pretty good one with analysis on GUIs from applications that we are all familiar with. Well worth a read if you ever had to implement a GUI menu or are intending to.
