Category Archives: Game Development

The BipBuffer Rides Again

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Simon Cooke

So a while back, I invented a datastructure I call the Bip-Buffer. It’s a rather neat little thing that if you pump data through it fast enough works pretty much as fast as a true circular buffer. It has a … Continue reading →

Posted in computer science, Game Development, Games, me, programming | Leave a comment

New Blog from Jason Weiler (Airtight Games)

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Simon Cooke

My good pal Jason Weiler has posted up his first article on his new blog – Myopic Topics (http://myopictopics.com). This one’s the first part in a series about writing an add-in for Visual Studio’s Evaluation Engine (the bit that tells … Continue reading →

Posted in Game Development, programming | Leave a comment

Quick rules for Cache-Friendly Algorithms

Posted on February 14, 2009 by Simon Cooke

Games programming on current architectures require that a certain amount of attention be paid to your algorithms to make sure that they’re cache friendly. It takes a long time for a memory access to be brought back from a page … Continue reading →

Posted in algorithms, Game Development, programming | Leave a comment

XNA SpriteBatch Stalling every Second

Posted on August 30, 2008 by Simon Cooke

Public Service Announcement: If you’re doing simple 2D sprite stuff in XNA, and every second or so, the GC is hitching, it’s because of SpriteBatch. Every call to SpriteBatch creates a new object, which eventually needs to be GC’d. This … Continue reading →

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What makes games fun?

Posted on August 11, 2008 by Simon Cooke

It’s an interesting question. A better one, though, might be… what makes play fun? Bet you’ve not made one of these since you were a kid… There’s a lot of psychology being worked on right now on why games are … Continue reading →

Posted in Game design, Game Development, Games, psychology, theory | Leave a comment