It still amazes me even after all the years I have been doing it how I can get paid to sit and do the thing I was told off for doing at school, day dreaming. That is basically what I do when I am asked to think about a project. I sit down with a hot mug of coffee and stare into the middle distance, planning, constructing the code and what it is meant to do. Breaking it up into its constituent parts, what is needed for this, what is needed for that. Then I tell the client what my ideas are.

I have a rare gift, I was told this by a college lecturer, he was always amazed that I could sit and think for a while and as if by magic the code would flow from my finger tips and would work. No planning required I’d write the code. There is a plan in reality, but its in my head. Its hard to describe I see the code, how its meant to be written, it runs in my head, its like a mystical thing.

Of course I do plan on paper, I do put it all down, otherwise no one else would see it, but I do have that ability when something breaks and a quick solution is required to work blindly to fix it so that a product in the field being used here and now can be useful again while we do a proper fix.

I’m also a very quick learner, a lot of the micro controller projects I work on require learning new tricks new techniques, or even new programming algorithms, as most manufacturers like to stamp their own identity onto their processors, new CRC algorithms etc. All things you have to learn to get on with the project.

That is the reason I do what I do, I like the challenge of learning something new, the tech moves on so quickly you have no time at all to be bored. It all starts to blur into one eventually though as all new programming methods have some sort of link to an old method just with a slightly different ISP entry scheme or something.

So if your a day dreamer and keep being told to pay more attention, remember some jobs in life require you to stare into the middle distance and have a good day dream, and its what you will be paid for.

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Ok, I know I’ve been neglecting the blog here for a bit. Will try harder I promise, ish. Hope to put some links and articles up as I go further into the development of the new game projects I am working on.

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Over the week I’ve been looking around at my games, the ones released, the ones offline etc and I’ve noticed something I find fascinating. There are a lot of mini games as part of my games. It would not take all that much to make separate little mini games say in flash and add them to a site for people to play as stand alone games. So I’ve begun another of those lists I always make, and will be adding idea’s for those mini games onto it.

While doing that I plan to learn more about flash and maybe even see if I can add a bit of flash to my existing games, its not as if in this world today as it stands no one has ever used flash, if it blends into the sites no one would know, or even notice if they have little experience of this stuff, and it would allow for a lot more to be added to the gaming experience.

Now I understand that some brands of mobile phone would probably find this sort of thing difficult to run due to not supporting flash, but i have thought about that a little and think that they have to give in sometime. There is far too much flash stuff around for them to not follow along. Even the ‘A’ company must realise that at some point, not mentioning names as they have a tendency to sue.

So that’s the plan I have for ZeroShadow for now, will post more about it as things unfold.

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As the days go on I have tons and tons of ideas, I have an ideas book, I write them down, look back later when I want to work on something new and pick up the good ones. This for me is the best way to do this stuff, no matter how stupid the idea may be, related to what I’m working on, something I have worked on, or have no intention ever of working on, I write it down, because one day it may be something useful.

I don’t ever look around to see if anyone else has already thought of it. It never occurred to me to do so, it just seems to me to be my idea. The world seems to think that they own ideas. You hear stories everywhere about someone taking someone else to court for stealing their idea. I don’t know if I agree that any of my idea’s are anything different to what anyone else could come up with.

I’ve had ideas in my book for 4 years or more, then someone will mail me telling me their idea for something and I see I came up with it years ago. So if I then go out and develop that idea, make it real, does that make it theirs or mine. Ideas are things everyone has, I don’t see how anyone can think that they own it exclusively ever.

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Another open source 3d engine. This one looks like its quite popular amongst developers. The recently released game called Torchlight used it apparently, which is even more interesting, as I really liked that game.

I forgot to mention yesterday, whenever I post one of these links to a site, please remember that to get to them you simply click on the image of the site and it will take you there.

Popularity: 16% [?]