The extraordinary brilliance — and occasional spectacular stupidity — of AI-assisted software development. I’ve been a software developer for decades, primarily working with Visual FoxPro. Yes, Visual FoxPro. That ancient Microsoft development environment that supposedly died years ago but stubbornly refuses to go away. Recently, I’ve been using AI to help build something rather ridiculous: … Read more
How a small rendering bug made a surprisingly big difference to Galactic Gladiators. Sometimes the biggest improvements to a game don’t come from adding new features. They come from fixing something that’s been broken for ages. For quite some time, the subtitles in Galactic Gladiators have been behaving rather strangely. They’d appear for a split … Read more
One of the features I’m particularly pleased with in Galactic Gladiators is controller support. The game uses Microsoft’s XInput interface, with DS4Windows allowing PlayStation controllers to be recognised as compatible controllers. This gives the game proper controller support, including vibration effects for explosions, collisions and other suitably dramatic moments. Everything worked nicely on my development … Read more
The continuing adventures of building an arcade game in Visual FoxPro 9. It’s been a little while since my last Galactic Gladiators update, but that doesn’t mean things have been quiet. Quite the opposite. The game has continued to grow, with more features, more polish and, inevitably, more opportunities for things to go spectacularly wrong. … Read more
There comes a point when “it works” is no longer quite enough. The ships move. The weapons fire. The health goes down. But does landing a shot feel satisfying? Does a huge enemy ship look as though it’s actually being damaged? Does its retreat give you a moment to enjoy what you’ve achieved? That’s where … Read more
BARF’s voice has bothered me for ages. He’s gradually become much more than a way of delivering instructions in Galactic Gladiators. He complains. He panics. He’s sarcastic. Occasionally he’s even impressed by the player — although he’d probably rather not admit it. The problem was that his voice never really reflected any of that. Tonight … Read more
The shield cell in Galactic Gladiators had a problem: it only absorbed one hit. In an asteroid field full of tempting salvage, that didn’t give you much reason to pick it up. It now has four charges. The cargo display shows SHIELD [ 4/4 ], counting down with each impact. That makes finding one feel … Read more
I originally added Pong to Galactic Gladiators simply because of its place in gaming history. It is one of the earliest and most recognisable video games ever made, so it felt like exactly the sort of thing BARF might have hidden away in the ship’s computer. At first, it was just going to be a … Read more
Every new sound effect added to Galactic Gladiators makes the battle feel more alive. The small fighters now have their own weapon sound. The medium ships fire with considerably more authority. Missiles hit the player with a proper impact, ships arrive with mechanical pulses, explosions have weight, and the appearance of an etheric hole is … Read more
Today’s work on Galactic Gladiators began with a simple sound effect for two medium-sized enemy ships entering the final battle. As usual, “add a sound” turned out not to be quite that simple. First, an ethereal sound was added for the dimensional opening. Then a heavier mechanical pulse was timed to begin when the ships … Read more