Journalism

My first book, UnrealScript Game Programming Cookbook has been published by Pakt Publishing today. It covers a variety of topics, from creating your own modular camera system, crafting AI, creating intelligent pathfinding for bots, and manipulating weapons. A free sample chapter is available as well, which covers creating a modular camera system, from beginning to end. It’s available in a number of formats, including a physical copy, as well as Kindle and .pdf formats. You can find the book here, or also at Amazon.com here.

UPDATE: Thanks @BigBossBenGilbert for the photo! Headed to GDC Europe? Why not come take a gander at the panel I’ve been invited to attend by Deejay of Indie City. Taken straight from his page: I’ll be hosting the Indies’ Got PR Talent panel at GDC Europe on Monday 15th August, 12:40pm. I’ll be joined by games press veterans Mike Rose, Christian Nutt and Keith Stuarterr, someone else who’s yet to be officially confirmed (That’s me!). We’ll be going through various indie press releases, screenshots and videos, highlighting the best and worse examples. All in the format of the [INSERT COUNTRY HERE]’s Got Talent gameshow, which should add extra mirth into the mix. After dissecting each, the panel will be giving their expert opinion on how indie developers can make a better impact with their PR activities.

Last week I head the pleasure of being interviewed by Andrew Webster of Ars Technica for his piece “We Band of Brothers: Developer-led Xbox Live Indies promotion returns.” In it he describes how the uprising came to be, our future plans, and lessons learned from the previous uprising.

I’ll be attending my second GDC conference this year. I’ve recently received my press pass as a member of the Armless Octopus. I plan on staying the full week this time, most specifically for the UDK game track. I’m also scheduling an XNA meet up for XNA and Xbox indie developers, so if you’d like to join us, feel free to contact me.

I just finished putting together a feature geared towards indie developers on how to market their titles. I frequently find that many of the smaller, or even 1 man studios tend to have a difficult time promoting and marketing their work, so I felt it was time for me to share some of the best practices I’ve come across so far. I should have part 2 up some time later in the week. It originally appeared on Armless Octopus on April 16th, and you can access it through this link.

I’ve always enjoyed writing, and since an early age I’ve pursued it. Recently I found a story I wrote 18 years ago with my friend Kevin when we were in the first grade. One title which has had a profound effect on my view of gaming was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and it stays with me today. As we were both fans of the title, and shared astounding artistic and creative writing talents, we believed it was the best time for share our efforts and create this masterpiece. If I ever needed to qualify my geek credibility, this should do it. I also have a Crash Bandicoot book I wrote in 1996, composed of images from an old Game Informer mag – I’ll look for that one soon too. ...

I’ll be attending Pax East 2011 with the rest of the Armless Ocotopus staff (minus the Canadian). We’ll be there interviewing XBLIG and XBLA developers, previewing the latest and greatest titles, and are considering another live podcast like we did last year. A video review may be in in order well. If you’re headed over as well, feel free to contact me so that we can meet up!

Thus far, the enthusiasm behind the uprising has been great. We have over 45 submissions at this point, with additional ones coming in. The press has been kind to us as well and really helped with spreading the word. I didn’t sent out a press release to any of the outlets, as the one listed below was really just geared toward the developers, but looking back I probably should have. I’ll have an updated one in the next week or so as more news gets solidified. The website should be up within the week, so be sure to check back here for a link for that. Andrew Currie of Evil Robot Logic has been doing an outstanding job of handling that for us. ...