[ Articles and other writings ]

I've contributed articles to the following books:

Game Programming Gems
Edited by Mark DeLoura
ISBN: 1-58450-049-2

I wrote two articles for the original Game Programming Gems - "An Introduction to Fuzzy Logic" and "Using 3D Hardware for 2D Sprites."

Game Programming Tricks of the Trade
Edited by Lorenzo Phillips
ISBN: 1-93184-169-1

A compendium of several useful snippets covering all aspects of game programming. I wrote two articles for this book, "Serialization using XML Property Bags" and "High Speed Loading using Multiple Threads."

Secrets of the Game Business
Edited by François Dominic Laramée
ISBN: 1-58450-282-7

A compendium of several articles about the business side of game development. I wrote two articles for this book, "Top Ten Misconceptions New Game Developers Have about Publishers" and "Techniques to Increase Upsell for Online Games."

Back in the late 90s, I wrote a few articles for gamedev.net. If you fancy hardcopy of these, they appear in the gamedev.net collections Design and Content Creation for Games and Business and Production for Games.

  • Developing a GUI using C++ and DirectX - A four part series explaining how to implement a graphical user interface (GUI) for your game. This was also the topic of a talk I gave at the XGDC (remember that?).

  • Lone Wolf Killers - a look at some of the project management pitfalls for lone wolf developers. If you're interested in going from the start of the project (easy) all the way to the end (much more difficult), you should read this two part series.

  • Why Pluggable Factories Rock My Multiplayer World - Implementing a network game can be easy, if you know a few tricks. A quick look at how the Pluggable Factories pattern can be applied to network games, using DirectPlay.

  • Creating Good Game Art When You're Not An Artist - So you've realized that you're not that great an artist. Don't let that prevent you from making cool game art! In this article we discuss a few ways to hide the fact that you can't draw your way out of a paper bag.