2014 - State of the art

Back in July 1985 whilst working as an apprentice carpenter I sat in the Nelson (Lancashire) public library reading Zzap64 Magazine, that particular issue featured an article called “Diary of a game - The birth of a Paradroid" by Andrew Braybrook which charted the trials and tribulations of developing an arcade game for the Commodore 64. Ever since that day I have been intrigued by the notion of writing my own game and this year I am going to put all our resources into making it happen. Seven years at university studying computer science, fifteen years doing visual effects for movies, three years and 3 published apps in the App Store and I am now ready to pursue that original dream

The Sprite Kit Framework from Apple  is still in its early stages, after all it was only released at WWDC 2013. However my early tests have all been positive and I am sure at this early stage we can craft our game around any issues that might prove to be show stoppers for game developers with a more rigid game design. The working title for our first game is Shard, we already have a lot of the basic design done although we will refine this as we develop new technologies and better understand the nuances of working with this new framework. Shard will act as a prototype platform to cut our teeth, we want to get a full but simple game fleshed out and working so that we can quickly identify any problems or constrains (particularly with Sprite Kit) prior to starting a more ambitious second game project later in the year.