On Ludum Dare, Kickstarter and everything in between

So I wrote up some of the design work / process / thinking that I did in the 8 months between Ludum Dare #23 and launching the Mineral Cities Kickstarter last month.

The full post is here: 14 things I did to get from Ludum Dare prototype to fundable Kickstarter game

It includes such highlights as building alphas for one, iterating on design, essential UI and listening to and ignoring feedback.

I also posted it over at the Ludum Dare site -- you can find it there/here. Thoroughly excited about #LD26 this weekend.

As for Mineral Cities itself, well the campaign ends in a couple of days -- go back it now if you haven't already ;)

Mineral Cities: a city-builder/RTS hybrid

More to follow, but just a quick note to let you know that our latest project, Mineral Cities, just launched on Kickstarter.

GDC 2013: iOS Games in a Day

This has been on the GDC site for a while now, better get around to posting it -- myself and Ray Wenderlich are running an iOS game dev bootcamp on the Tuesday of GDC 2013. We've got some greate speakers lined up including Mike Daley (Co-founder 71squared), Mike Schramm (Editor TUAW/Joystiq), Keith Shepherd (Co-founder ImangiStudios), Rod Strougo (iOS Developer & Instructor, Big Nerd Ranch & Prop Group) and David Whatley (CEO, Critical Thought Games, LLC), as well as myself and Ray.

From the GDC Schedule page:

A one-day crash course in making iOS games. This daylong bootcamp will include enough specific technical and platform knowledge for attendees to either go away and start making their own iOS games, or to further understand the tools they are using. The day will be made up of a mix of discussion, deep dives, examples, and plenty of opportunities for audience Q&A. Session content will include an introduction to the iOS platform, crash courses in Cocos2d and Unity3d, popular/essential iOS APIs for games, and a deep-dive on game architecture selection and best practices.

Look forward to seeing you there ;)

G.

Performance design patterns and post mortems for component architectures

Latest version of our component architecture research (from September 2012) is now up and available at the 360idev videos site.

From the presentation abstract:

This talk is a follow up to my 2011 360idev talk on component architectures for iOS games. It includes specific in-the-field post mortems and performance analysis from the implementation of a variety of component systems, implemented by myself and others (including other 360idev regulars).

The performance measurement elements are applicable to all architectures and the post mortem information is full of technical goodies about iOS implementation detail and nuance.

Component stuff; new blog; The Satanic Games

I started blogging over at garethjenkins.com as well as here.

Recent stuff includes:

• A write-up of the Component Architectures talk I did at iOSDevUK 2012
• A game prototype write-up of The Satanic Games
• Some fiddling I did with display modes on the retina MacBook Pro

This blog/site will likely be more focussed around 36peas stuff and garethjenkins.com about whatever I feel like writing about. Probably a good bit of crossover on game dev stuff, so I'll continue to cross-link where appropriate.

G.