So, four main characters with about ten actions and ten to twenty frames of motion for each.. plus all the baddies.. weapons.. Ahem.. HOW many drawings would we need? And these need to be done by when? Lesson learned: Never underestimate the time your...

Last Friday I attended the GameDevelopers.ie annual Shindig, at which various Irish games publishers - and companies with offices in Ireland - gave presentations on the state of games development in Ireland (strong, and getting stronger) and developers...

Writing a game is difficult, but we're rapidly learning that getting the art for the game is just as difficult. In fact, given that we're all nerds rather than artists, it's even harder. The options are to use thousands of frames of character animation...

I'm very interested to see this site which records the process of writing a game (Darwinia+) and getting it published on Xbox Live Arcade. We're working on several game projects here too, so hopefully can we benefit. Currently we are at the design stage...

An excellent idea came from lunch today: Scroga - the combination of Yoga and Scrum. Normally we do our 15 minute scrum standup meetings in the morning just, well, standing around. Now we can combine them with Yoga poses. Talk about agile and flexible...

I'm not a particularly subtle person. Which is why I wore my nice green "I'm a PC!" t-shirt (with only a hint of irony) to the Tipperary Game Flaedh. I was probably supposed to wear Microsoft approved company khakis and blue shirt, but pfffttt... this...

I'm back from The Games Fleadh in Tipperary, where I was lucky enough to be a judge in one of the games categories, and hand out a rather nice cup. It's always hard to pick just one winning team when everyone had worked so hard, but that's the way it...

This year I'm going to be a judge at the Tipperary Institute Gamesfleagh ( http://www.gamesfleadh.ie/ ) which is very exciting but also worrying, as 1. I can't pronouce it, and 2. I'm going to have to find Tipperary. Is it a long way to Tipperary...

After working in Microsoft's Redmond campus for almost ten years, I was used to the two or three days a year when it snowed and complete and utter panic ensued. It was always exciting to watch the entire city of Seattle grind to a halt, and the Microsoft...

If you happen to be an Apple user, you'll be interested to know that Microsoft have released a Mac client for Mesh. Mesh is a cloud-based storage system, that works by creating a virtual desktop you can access over the internet - as well as synchronizing...

Yup, get yerself a nice fresh non-Beta Games Studio release: http://creators.xna.com/en-us/xnags_islive

Very please to see that Games Studio 3.0 will leave Beta and have a full release on October 30th! I'm hoping the list of countries that will be able to access Community Games is expanded to include Ireland. Currently it will be US, Canada, UK, France...

XNA is a wonderful thing, and what makes it even more wonderful is that it is supported on the Zune. All you need is a Zune updated to the latest OS, and the beta of Game Studio 3.0 (and Visual Studio C# Express or better). In next to no time I was able...

Today at the lunch table I discovered that I was the only person there not to have done any programming whilst in bed. I'm not sure what to make of this. For a minute I considered this as meaning I wasn't as "hardcode" as the rest of them, but then...

In the time it took me to post about XNA Game Studio 3.0, I was able to download and install it, and create this amazing smash-hit title: Goat Attack. Yes, it really is that easy to make games from the 1980s in about an hour. This one has a scrolling...

I told you more good things were coming: XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta has gone live. This is a huge update to the XNA development system, and delightfully includes support for writing games for the Zune media player. Yup, don't let those fruit-themed phone...

It's a great time to be an Xbox fan: the price is coming down this Friday to 180 Euro, or 160 UK quid for the Arcade version - that's quite a deal. You can also get versions with 60Gb and 120Gb hard drives, which are probably a better deal in the long...

This weekend was the first weekend I’ve been in Dublin and left to my own devices. It was also the first weekend I’ve had transport other than my bicycle, as I have ironed out the issues relating to importing my motorcycle from Seattle and got it legal...

Recently I was trying to debug some code, and getting nowhere. So I went for a walk, and within about thirty seconds of being away from the problem realized I had to be looking outside the bounds of an array. When I got back to my desk, voila - that was...

As pointed out by Shawn Hargreaves on his excellent blog , the content from the GameFest 2008 conference is now available online. You'll find all the details here . You'll find useful information and previews of Game Studio 3.0.

As part of my new job here in MS Dublin, I’m getting acquainted with XNA and the XNA Games Studio. This is the customized layer that uses Visual Studio (including the free Visual Studio C# edition) to create applications – usually games – for Windows...

Yesterday, the Live Mesh team expanded their Technical Preview to include Ireland (and Canada and India). What does this mean? It means that if you are in one of the countries covered, you can sign in to Live Mesh and try it out. If you have more...

My friends in Redmond were complaining about the heat around the Seattle area during the week, and oh, my heart reached out for them in sympathy. Not. Ireland is having rather a wet summer so far, and the forecast has it continuing for another month...

I'm delighted to be able to attend Gamefest 2008 in Seattle this July. I'm looking forward to the XNA tracks very much. If you are in Europe, the event travels to London in early August . But now more about living in Dublin. Dublin, as it turns...

Yes, it's true - no more NEO. Now it's "On-Boarding". So, apart from being a hugely ugly word, what is "On-Boarding"? When you join Microsoft, there is a huge amount of information to take in. From company values, to pension information, to health...