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I’m taking a little bit of a break from Archaos at the moment as more immediate priorities have arisen – notably my financial status! As you probably know, I quit my full time job in September of last year to work on Archaos, and indeed I’ve made a lot of progress; as much if not more in my abilities as a programmer as on the game itself.

As it stands, I need to do a partial rewrite on the client, as some aspects of it (mainly legacy stuff from last year) have become unmaintainable. Sounds drastic but I assure you this is only a minor setback; lots of Archaos is done and working to my satisfaction (the server for example is in a pretty good state at the moment, and the implemented features are working very efficiently) however the rigours of dealing with stateful asynchronous stuff all over the place (via the network, player inputs, waiting for animations and so on) combined with the lack of any kind of pattern have led to a game which as it stands is becoming near impossible to debug. Action must be taken, and that will begin with the application of a proper MVC pattern to the client game code.

In order to continue to be able to work on Archaos, I’ve taken on some web jobs (which bizarrely appeared totally out of nowhere from friends right as my savings were about to dry up) but this is a temporary thing and as soon as they’re done, I’ll be back onto Archaos and aiming for a beta release.

I can only apologise for the seemingly endless false starts and broken deadlines for those of you who’re following this project – it’s embarrassing to keep having to explain myself. My focus is however still solidly on getting Archaos finished and released, and then getting to the bit I’ve been really looking forward to; extending the game through new modes, features, spells and units!

Stay tuned!

Apologies for no updates in a month – I’ve been working on other small prototype projects, sharpening my skills and learning new languages (such as C# in Unity 3D – which I cannot recommend enough!) as well as just recently attending a rather prolonged hospital stay. Needless to say I’m back on with things now so expect to see some more updates and progress in the coming days and weeks!

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. Immediately the laws of physics ensured that everything would work the way it does. Without physics, the universe wouldn’t exist and we wouldn’t be able to ask the question. From the physics that cause the stars to shine and eventually die came chemistry. Every element of every molecule in every compound in the universe came from a dying star. The abundance of elements and the laws of chemistry resulted in biology – life. For billions of years physics, chemistry and biology interacted, resulting in all of the people you have known, all the pets you’ve owned, all of the birds you’ve heard sing, and all of the insects you’ve unwittingly stood on.

You’re here because physics, chemistry and biology have been at work shaping energy and matter for 13.75 billion years, and will continue to do so long after you are gone. Your purpose is to enjoy your short waking moment in time, to learn and to explore, and to recognise that you are part of a magnificently ancient, complex and purposeless universe that has produced you with your own complexity and consciousness, and given you the ability to comprehend your place in it and choose your own purpose.

Earlier on I got wind of news that very nearly made my heart stop.

OK it's official! I am working on a sequel/remake to my classic ZX Spectrum game 'Chaos' – for iOS, PC, Mac – maybe more.

— Julian Gollop (@julian_gollop) November 2, 2012

Yes, Julian Gollop – creator of the original Chaos, of the original X-Com, and of many other seminal classics, has begun work on his own remake of Chaos using Unity 3D to initially target PC, Mac and iOS. He also stated:

@MullinsDaRapper I want to keep combat/movement very close to the original, with some tweeks.

— Julian Gollop (@julian_gollop) November 2, 2012

…which bodes well for it sticking to the original winning formula.

Development on the game has only just begun, and Julian is currently looking for good artists. He has estimated that the game will take around a year to finish, so we’ll all have to be patient.

I guess the recent massive success of XCOM: Enemy Unknown has brought Gollop back to the forefront and given him the motivation needed to revisit what has to be in my (and many other people’s) opinion one of the greatest games of all time.

Julian, if you read this, I wish you all the very best with your remake. Chaos has been crying out to be remade for a modern market, and a market that’s now clearly in the right place to readily accept a multi-platform turn-based strategy title such as this.

What however does this mean for Archaos? Surely with this title coming out, it makes Archaos obsolete and possibly in danger of legal action as it will directly compete with Julian’s version on the same platforms?

@lewster32 I have no problem with it, don't worry.

— Julian Gollop (@julian_gollop) November 2, 2012

Sometimes it really is worth meeting your heroes.

Over the last 6 months, I’ve been putting together plans to do something pretty radical, and as of a few weeks ago, those plans reached a head. I have now left my previous employer, the wonderful Cool Blue, and I’ve set out to work on Archaos and other projects full time, as an independent game developer.

It’s a big and somewhat scary step for anyone to abandon a guaranteed monthly income in pursuit of something which may likely end up falling flat on its face, but on the other hand games have been pretty much my whole life for a long time.

Earlier this year I held a LAN party at my house for a few of my long time mates, all of whom I met through games (most via Quake 2) and it happened to be just after this year’s E3. On the Sunday morning I was up before most people, and I sat watching trailers and coverage of games like WatchDogs, The Last of Us and X-Com: Enemy Unknown and started to yearn to be a part of this industry. Gaming is what I’ve always done, and what I want to do.

I’m now in the early stages of setting up my own business and I’m both refactoring and redesigning what I’ve now spent what amounts to many years of time, effort and planning on, with a cross-platform (desktop and mobile) release of a fully working, multiplayer Archaos as my primary goal.

The plan is still to allow players on all platforms to play together, and to switch from one platform to another (so a game can begin on your desktop, then you can continue to play turns on the train to work via your phone for instance) and to make use of the features afforded by devices (e.g. push notifications when it’s your turn) and I think in that respect, there’s not much else out there that I can find that offers that kind of seamless strategy gaming experience.

Anyway, just to give a bit of a taste of what I’ve been working on…

Note that these are still early concepts and some things are likely to change, but I’m much happier with the look of Archaos now that I feel I have a consistent style.

Stay tuned for more news, as well as a big update to this site coming soon!

First of all, apologies for not updating in yonks – I could give you the usual programmer excuses about real life, work and so on but you’ve heard them all before, so I’ll dive right in to what I’ve been doing:

Archaos is very, very slowly moving along – we’re talking geologically slow here, but nonetheless there’s still a roadmap and there’s still progress on it. My aim now is to have a release before my 30th birthday (next year) and I’ll be damned if I don’t make it!

I’ve been experimenting with presentation and so on, and came up with a little thing tonight which I thought was quite cute.  I’m really feeling the love for CSS3 and HTML5 now.

WordPress has become my new powerhouse tool at work, and I’ve been churning out sites left, right and centre in this wonderful blog engine turned CMS (as of 3.1 especially so) – check out some of the following:

• www.lovegeobar.com
• www.communityfoundation.org.uk
• www.redboxdesign.com

The last is our most recent project, and is very much not a site you’d expect to be WordPress powered – such is its flexibility!

I don’t update on Twitter much anymore, as it’s become a bit of a joke now with all of the celebrities and ridiculous trends; it pains me to say it but I think Twitter is more about Justin Bieber now than anything sensible. Alas, I spend most of my social networking time now on Facebook.

Finally, I’ve booked a flight to Arizona in September for a two week photography road trip with two of my good friends – should be awesome!

Anyway, hopefully that’s got everyone up to speed on what I’m doing – keep your eyes peeled in the coming months for updates on Archaos and other projects.

Well well well, I guess I haven’t posted here in… ohhh, ages? I owe you all an apology to be perfectly honest, as I’ve neglected to work on Archaos (or indeed any personal projects) in the time since my last update.

Life has panned out for me – work became extremely busy in the last few months, and my ever expanding role has ever expanded – and indeed shifted towards a more theoretical and management-style thang. I’ve been working directly with clients and producing a lot of exciting stuff for a lot of exciting projects which, if I get off my lazy arse and update this blog more often, you will no doubt hear about!

Another significant development is that I’m no longer a lonely geek sat in his room listening to chip music and writing Javascript – I’m a very much not lonely geek sat in his room listening to chip music and writing Javascript. I have indeed found a (dare I say it) lady geek – though to her credit, not even close to the caliber of my pure unadulterated nerdiness – whom I spend as much time with as my work and her sanity allows. I won’t allow myself to become soppy and embarrass her (and myself) but… well, I absolutely love you, and you make me a very, very happy boy. Oh bugger, I don’t think I succeeded there. Never mind!

This has meant of course (yes, you all knew it!) that my personal projects have taken a back burner in all of this. Well, I say a back burner, but I actually mean ‘have been placed in tupperware tubs and frozen’. I must say now that my passion for Archaos in particular has not waned one bit – however after such a hiatus, I’d like to start a lot of it again rather than try and work my way back into the existing code base. A problem with learning as you create is that everything you did a month previous is a bit crap – so stuff I started last year is gonna be pretty goddamn terrible now.

I will return to Archaos. I absolutely promise I will, and I have been reading Gooey Blob and other Chaos related stuff. The end of the year always proves to be a better time to get on with personal projects, and I hope to have something playable in December.

To those of you who still read this, still follow me on my similarly neglected Twitter account, I salute you – and I’ll be around more often!

P.S. Check this out. WOW!

I’ve been exceptionally busy with work, and only had the energy left to play Global Agenda on an evening – I’ve not made any progress with Archaos since the last update but once I’ve gotten this swathe of hard labour out of the way, I’ll be finishing the server, building a basic client and inviting people to begin beta testing. Sorry to those few of you who are still checking the site every day (I love you all!), I will have goodies for you soon – promise!