September 2015
Combat systems: a horror story
M. J. Magee - Friday, the 25th of September, 2015
I knew, when I first began plotting out Cuthbert, that I wanted to have a strong combat system. It made sense for the story: in a game where you can royally peeve people off to the point where they won’t help you, it makes sense that they might try and hurt you.…
Continue readingThrowback Thursday: the princess, the dog, and the crowd-pleasing comic relief
M. J. Magee - Thursday, the 17th of September, 2015
Back in primary school (think elementary school but with painfully blue uniforms and unintelligible accents), I decided I was going to write A Play.
Nicole, who would have been my BFF had sassy acronyms been invented in the nineties, but was instead relegated to the role of mere ‘best friend’, had been reading Diana Wynne Jones and instead of running through our usual playground favourites – She-Ra and Swift Wind battling across Etheria, Crysta and Zach saving Fern Gully, Peach and Mario doing something so unrelated to Super Mario Bros that I’m still uncertain why I dedicated so much of my free time to imagining myself as a paunchy, hairy faced plumber – she wanted to play out an adventure in a medieval fantasy world.…
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When I’m working on something like the front-end design of the game – something that doesn’t require I sit hunched over my laptop with my head clutched in my hands, muttering, ‘Why? Why?’, or gently weeping – I like to put on some TV as background noise.…
Continue readingWhat’s MVP in a multi-choice game?
M. J. Magee - Saturday, the 5th of September, 2015
I think one of my biggest problems in building this game is not having a project manager behind me, tapping her foot, asking why I’ve been writing daft jokes about mani pedis when there’s planning and coding and unmanicured work to be done.…
Continue readingL. Whyte: Drawer-of-Things, Destroyer-of-Netflix
M. J. Magee - Tuesday, the 1st of September, 2015
Cuthbert is, by its very definition, a massive project to take on.
kuh-th-burt
Noun. A massive project to take on.
See?
It’s big and over-complicated and… that’s sort of the point. I wouldn’t want to water it down. But it can be daunting and, after I’ve spent all day coding at work, it can be tough to summon the energy to do so much more coding.…
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