Be Prepared

Yesterday I had a great idea for a post, it popped into my head fully formed, and with a little editing, it would have been a valuable addition to this blog. Annoyingly I wasn’t in a position to actually write a post until now, and I’ve totally forgotten what I was planning to write about.

Instead, I’m going to remind everyone that they should carry around a notebook for situations like this, when you have an idea, but can’t immediately put it into practice. I usually carry one, but didn’t have it to hand at the critical moment. I’ll be sure to be more conscientious in future.

My preference tends towards the cheaper end of the market, I often use small WHSmiths ring bound notebooks, it’s easy to tear out pages when you are done with them, cheap to have a few around the house, and not a catastrophe if you lose one. I’d love to upgrade to Moleskines, but they are expensive, certainly worth considering if you can afford them.

If you can record your ideas easily, you will always be able to take advantage of flashes of inspiration that can strike at any time, rather than getting stuck flailing around in the dark straining to recall a brilliant insight.

Developments and Designs

Work has begun in earnest on my new game. It’s different to any others that I’ve worked on, as it’s an online game. It’s a lot more involved than my Countdown implementation, or anything else I’ve done before, it’s a real chance to exercise my rather rusty php muscles.

I’ve been working mostly on the essential framework for the game, I’ve only got a few game-like elements in there at the moment, but things like user logins and account management are starting to come together. I’m hopeful I’ll get this necessary admin stuff over with soon, and be able to get onto the meat of the game itself.

Until I’ve got further news, you should consider visiting Kongregate (a great website for flash games), and look at the understanding games series, which present a lot of important concepts in game design, in a very accessible format.

New Game

I’ve started work on a big new game, which is why it’s been quite quiet around here recently. I’m really excited about it, but it’s all a bit nebulous to share at the moment, but expect to hear more in the coming months (I told you it was big).

Until then, we’ve got the release of Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 to look forwards to, I’m planning to pick up a copy of the three main books when they are released in June, you can get the set on Amazon for less than £45, and once I’ve got those, expect some new content for the new game (and updates to the existing stuff, let me know in the comments what you’d like to see first).

I’m also looking to post more of my thoughts on the nature of games, especially what I enjoy and why, hopefully these will be linked to the new game I’m working on, so I’ll be mixing up practical and concrete examples with my theories.