Peter Harries

 I recently picked up a Dell 27" IPS 165hz 1ms S2721DGF Gaming Monitor . It's a bit of a beast. If you're not a monitor nerd, "hz" aka "Hertz" is how many frames it can show on the screen per second. This is also known as refresh rate.  Most monitors display at around 60hz. This means if your game is running at above 60 fps your monitor won't really show it. Enabling a feature like V-sync, which matches the games FPS to the monitors refresh rate will demonstrate this as you will notice (if you are running above 60 fps on a 60hz monitor) that your fps is now clamped at 60. G-sync / Free sync are similar, these features match your monitors refresh rate to your games FPS (freeing up your GPU to pump more frames instead of running V-sync).  If you spot screen tearing in your game, that's usually down to your FPS not matching your monitors refresh rate. So now I have a beefy monitor that is G-Sync / Freesync compatible and can display 165 frames per

A few months ago I decided I to try out the free to play Call of Duty: Warzone. I've not enjoyed a CoD game since Modern Warfare 2. So my expectations were low. I just don't enjoy CoD these days - was my initial and incredibly incorrect thought. But I'm a game Designer, this is the new hot shit, I need to take a look! It's good. Very good. Several months later I'm still regularly playing (with a Season 3 battle pass maxed out and a paid for copy of the full game). Here's some of the reasons I love it: Cross platform support + Free to play is a very powerful combination of systems. It means I have a group of around 10 friends, some playing on Xbox, some on PC and some on PS4. For no cost, we can group up and play together. I realise CoD isn't the first game to do this (looking at you Fortnite) but that doesn't detract from just how accessible this makes the game. Plus, the fact this game out shortly before the world went into lock-down and we were all lo

In my search for a reliable space to write, that could also be customised enough to create a clean, minimalist theme I was led, full circle, back to Blogger. 7 Years since I last used this blog. 11 Years since I started it. And all my posts are still here (the several blogs I have had since this one have been lost for various reasons, mainly hosting my own WordPress blog and forgetting to back up the content before switching provider...) I'm back and this is where I'll be writing stuff. Mainly about games.

A few days ago I agreed to take part in a DnD game. So this is a documentation of, well, how it went and whether I learn anything related to game design from the experience! I've heard stories of many a game developer participating in DnD (The id teams lengthy game mentioned in the book " Masters of doom " for example!) so I hope participating will give me an opportunity to participate in a different style of gaming that may even result in learning about game design from a different angle. So I grabbed my battleaxe and dove right in! The basics The first meeting was pretty light the GM (a seasoned DnD veteran and experienced game designer) gave us the run down of how things work, expanding on the details he had given to us on the Facebook event page. Our IRL (in real life) party consists of myself, a game development tools QA tester with zero experience points in my DnD stat. A producer who also has zero experience. A lead QA tester with previous DnD experience

Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the Develop Conference in Brighton this year, but I did manage to keep up to date on Twitter to some extent! So here are a collection of some of the great tweets that were made during the conference! I've tried to be as accurate with credit as possible, but some of these may be re-tweets or quotes from talks. Anyway it's the content itself that really matters! Hope you find something useful in there :) "Enter awards. Takes time but it's worth it" - Brian Baglow @Flackboy "Your players first experience of the game has to be a good one" - David Wood @DaveTheMusical "You have to be part of the dialogue and engaged with the community from the outset. Listen to them. Respond" - Brian Baglow @Flackboy "Prominence on a site is hugely important. If there's a new games list, be prepared to capitalise on your time there" - Brian Baglow @Flackboy "Use Analytics. Get to know

Last night Jase got in touch with me with some finished tree models, we decided to get the textures on and get them in engine. A maya shot, complete with texturing problem! No Alpha :( Alpha with dodgy edge :( wahd out textur and no lighting built :( Lighting built, almost there! And some grass! ------------------------------------------------------ and done :D Let us know what you think we love to get feedback! oh and we also have a website (although I've been told by my good friend Max Jensch that a single page with a couple of links on is not a website) sorry max! www.fatpancake.com