A real-time strategy game is, by definition, a game where players are forced to make strategic and tactical decisions in real time. As the game industry grows, the real-time strategy genre has narrowed its focus to a very specific type of game that does little to force players to consider an over-a…

I assumed that it would be in poor form to have every single object in need of collision detection on a frame-by-frame basis to have collision tests performed against every object in the scene aside from itself I figured that now would be the time to add some form of spatial partitioning to my XNA …

There are, as of my last counting, approximately a gazillion journalistic locales which offer game reviews on the internet or in print. There are not, to my knowledge, any columns which analyze a game mechanic within the context in which it appears along with detailing what is actually fun about th…

Let's talk about games and, more to the point, the making of games. I'm going to start a weekly column (here!) sometime next week entitled "Mechanics" where I'll do my gamer/designer thing by choosing a game that I've been playing recently and analyzing a certain mechanic or set of mechanics that, …

After ending my very first Spore gaming session a few hours after I startedmany hours after I started I sat back and thought about what I just played. Spore isn't an easy game to classify so much as it is five different games to classify all wrapped in an incredibly polished, coherent content creat…

What I'm about to say should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, has talked to me, or reads my articles: my attention-span is lacking and I like being stimulated or challenged as often as possible. Take my obscene love for the Geometry Wars games; Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 (since that'…

Cubegasm seems to be my personal Duke Nukem Forever in terms of the number of development platforms it has made a cute little nest in. The project, which I was originally calling Bipolar (since it was about a gigantic manic-depressive, self-abusing, blob that was a weapon of mass destruction if its…

This isn't a long entry, I just wanted to update this and indicate that I'm now back to work on Cubegasm. I mentally redesigned the game into an RTS and, since that occurred, I have a completely renewed interest in working on the game. Here are the three types of XML files I have created thus far:

M…

Even if the GameDev.net dailies didn't give me enough writing to do on a daily basis and I didn't feel an unstoppable urge to play a bit of Battlefield: Bad Company with some fellow developers and Shackers on a nightly basis I still probably wouldn't have a whole lot to write in the way of a Cubega…