In Defence of Steam Greenlight
A few days ago, Steam’s already controversial service “Greenlight” (intended as a way to let the community decide which indie games are to be published by it) was surrounded by a true storm of controversy on Steam when they announced that all developers would be forced to pay a one-off US $100 fee before they […]
Math for Game Programmers 05 – Vector Cheat Sheet
This is the long due fifth article in this series. If you aren’t comfortable with vectors, you might want to take a look at the first four articles in this series before: Introduction, Vectors 101, Geometrical Representation of Vectors, Operations on Vectors. This cheat sheet will list several common geometrical problems found in games, and […]
The guide to implementing 2D platformers
Having previously been disappointed by the information available on the topic, this is my attempt at categorizing different ways to implement 2D platform games, list their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss some implementation details. The long-term goal is to make this an exhaustive and comprehensible guide to the implementation of 2D platform games. If you […]
On how Diablo III fails to live up to the Diablo legacy
[Edit: I’m now halfway through Act II, and everything I say stands – and, in fact, the problems have become even more obvious] Diablo III just got released this week, to a spectacularly catastrophic launch day in which almost nobody could play. But once the server loads normalized and the initial hype died out, a surge of […]
“Fourteen years were not enough” / “14 anos não foram o suficiente”
A while ago, there was a discussion in a mail group composed of members of the Brazilian videogame industry, regarding its perceived lack of progress when compared to many other countries – the case in point was that even Iran was showing more impressive results than us. I sent the following email, and since people […]
SPJam 2011 – Down Goes the Phoenix
Last weekend, I was in São Paulo with my friends at Studio Miniboss to join the first edition of SPJam. The event was lots of fun and a success, with almost a hundred entrants and over 20 digital or board games. Our entry, made in the 48 hours of the event, is “Down Goes the […]
Best of Game Development Videos and Presentations
Here’s a list of my favourite videos and presentations on several subjects related to game development. I strongly recommend every single video listed below, at least those that match your area of expertise. If you can think of any good videos that I missed, please leave a link on the comments. I will update the […]
Religion in MMOs: Proposal of an Experiment
Here’s an experiment idea: It’s common in RPGs to have some sort of religion system, generally with a multitude of deities which are more-or-less at peace with one another, and whose followers typically do not try to murder each other at the first opportunity. Sometimes, you can offer donations to churches to get some bonuses, […]
Multi-thread OpenGL texture loading
Those who have used OpenGL are probably aware that you can only invoke OpenGL procedures for a given context on the thread that currently owns it – usually, the main thread. This leads many programmers to assume that OpenGL is strictly single-threaded, and that no loading can be done on the background, inside some loader […]
Programming is Art
Programming is a subject most often lumped in with engineering or science, and there are countless books dedicated to writing better code, but is this a good approach? To me, it seems much more reasonable to understand it as a form of art. Does it matter? Yes, I think it does. I believe that this […]
About
I'm Rodrigo Monteiro, and I have been programming video games since 1997, ranging from Klik & Play to C++ and Java. I'm the creator of the Aegisub subtitling software (together with Niels Hansen), and I like joining game programming challenges such as the Allegro SpeedHack and the Global Game Jam.
I currently work as a professional video game programmer at Bossa Studios, in London, United Kingdom.
All opinions are my own.