New Computer Gaming Initiative / Development Philosophy

Errrrrrrrrrrr...   FAQs are inside the cat.   You must beware of the occasional sentence like that one that doesn't make sense.

Is NCGI made differently to commercial games?

Yes.   Commercial games are usually planned out by a design team months before the programmers actually start coding.   This leaves little scope for taking advantages of quirks of the code as it is written and this can mean that the game becomes very, very large just to incorporate some dumb feature that somebody on the design team thought would be a good idea at the time.   With NCGi, I never really know where it is going to end up: I just look at the program I have and see what features could be added in without wasting too much disk space or memory.   In this way, the game has become very efficient in terms of disk space: it is some 10,000 times smaller than some commercial games.

Isn't "Asteroids" outdated?

Depends on your point of view.   The old-style arcade games and their clones can be a lot more addictive and fun than some complicated modern flight simulator that takes weeks to learn how to use.   I'm gradually trying to engineer a 'depth' of gameplay into NCGi so that you can enjoy it just as an exercise in blasting rocks, or you can experiment with collecting different combinations of boni [pl. of 'bonus'] to see what happens.   You can even try to do stunt maneuvers with your spaceship (although I don't guarantee that you'll live very long!).

What would be your advice to somebody who is thinking of making a game?

Start off by making something that is really simple, but has lots of scope for adding in cool new features.   That way you'll get something playable early on and can start thinking about what it might grow into.

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