All posts

These are all the blog posts ever. Some posts have been archived from other sources.

The Return of WormWorld: Revisiting my first steps in game development

I think I’ve always enjoyed making games more than playing them. Long before I realised that game development was an actual job, and even longer before it became my career, I’d already tried making my own games in any way I could. I made games on paper, with different pages for different scenes, in a kind of visual “choose your own adventure”. With little in the way of programming taught at school, I used what tools I had, combining slide transitions and hyperlinks in Microsoft PowerPoint to make shooters and adventure games. I was fascinated by games that included any sort of editing tools, be it Sim City 3000, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, or later Valve’s Source Engine games.

Posted on 01 September 2024

Towards more decentralised computing with Syncthing

For individuals, a personal computer is more and more just a window to services that are provided over the internet. One of the driving factors for that is the expectation for your stuff to be “available everywhere”. When most people use multiple devices, from phones to tablets to desktops, local files are not good enough any more, leading to the proliferation of “cloud” services.

Posted on 25 April 2021

Learning about game engine architecture

Over the past few years I’ve been fortunate to work on several big video games. I’ve mostly worked on gameplay, such as the implementation of parts of the “game feel” for characters and interactions, or the frameworks that power game modes and rules. In my spare time I’ve sometimes wanted to learn more in other areas of software engineering for games, such as lower level engine architecture or rendering. Some of that learning has gone into a project called freeplanet (naming things is hard).

Posted on 27 December 2020

Getting started with a Linux smartphone

I’ve been using GNU/Linux as the main operating system on my desktop (and laptop) for a few years. The same has not really been possible on other devices like my phone, but fortunately several projects are working to change that. One example is Pine64’s PinePhone, a phone aimed at enthusiasts and developers who are working on mobile Linux distributions and apps.

Posted on 26 July 2020