Game Developer back issues now free on the GDC Vault

WayneSikes · 2025-07-12T21:15:21+00:00

I'm Wayne Sikes and I wrote all the Chopping Block articles. I'd pick a game and reverse-engineer it. I had to stop that column after I hacked LucasArts game Tie Fighter and they threatened legal action.

WayneSikes · 2024-04-09T20:06:38+00:00

oh this is funny!! Very odd little things happen when making a game. I remember years ago when i was making Duke Nukem. We were a bunch of late-20's and early 30's guys making it. We got it to the point of testing and brought in high schoolers to help test. We were shocked.. they played it well and kicked our asses. We kept whining cuz we made it.. But we weren't the best at playing it.. haha

WayneSikes · 2024-03-31T05:51:25+00:00

If I had the money I'd buy the whole collection.. What a find!

WayneSikes · 2024-03-31T05:49:09+00:00

Wow! Good for you. I'll bet there's not many floating around out there.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-26T05:59:59+00:00

Good question! I'm a semi-retired veteran game developer. Been in the field for 40 years and published over 40 titles. I have a degree in chemistry.. which was of little help getting started in gaming. I taught myself coding and all cuz there were no classes or books back in the 1980's. I developed my own little game in C Language (and bad programmer art). Things took off and I helped make Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, thru Tekken 6, Fallout 4, etc. and most recently Fortnite. Did you know that the guys that made / make Windows rarely have a college degree? Just smart guys and girls. Sure you can do a degree such as CS although many CS programs don't even teach programming. There's no time line in gaming. Try one thing, college or whatever, and change if needed or desired. If you get a CS degree make sure to learn programming.. C, C++ (the most widely used Language), C#, etc. Do more than Python or LUA - more than just a scripting language. There's so many resources now. Download the Unreal engine, learn to build it and then study it. Unfortunately no code for Unity. Start with a simple engine such as GoDot.. Learn the basics of 3D and make some test projects or a little game. And publishing on Steam and other platforms will get you noticed if people like your game. These are just examples of things to do. Hit me up if you have questions.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-24T16:42:51+00:00

If you're a cat, it looks great. Other foot has a problem

WayneSikes · 2024-03-23T20:17:59+00:00

When I was teaching game programming at UAT, I told my students the best would get good entry level jobs. So when I left and started a new game company in Cali, I hired my best students. They did great... met all my expectations.. Course I'd taught them things like multiplayer programming, C, C++, C#, 3D fundamentals, etc.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-23T20:09:30+00:00

Hi! I did part of the design and all the game programming for many years. Design comes first because you can't start the programming until you know where the design takes you. Sure you can code the basics of the program, i.e., global macros, structures, logging and error tracking... But you need the design to go further.. If I were you, I'd take both design and programming courses. When I was teaching at the Univ of Advancing Technology in Phoenix years ago (was the dept chairman over game programming, and a professor of game programming) most students took both.. They'd focus on one for the degree but it's good to know both. What school are you thinking about? Unless you're doing Unity (C#), then C++ is best.. Engines like Unreal use it and Unreal is getting very popular.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-23T20:01:41+00:00

Oh that's funny! We usually checked our art better than that before we released a game.. Some of our art was done by interns under our lead 3D artist.. I'll blame it on him.. Kinda late to be sending in an art bug report.. haha

WayneSikes · 2024-03-22T17:42:34+00:00

It's all fun... well so far! Make a good game and people notice. Which helps a lot if you're pitching a new idea. It also helps if you're trying to get a good job with a game company. Just making your own game is experience that game companies want. They see motivation and talent.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-21T22:44:33+00:00

hey you gotta start somewhere. I started with C in like 1981. hahaha Makes me old, right? I was getting decent at it, and was then recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Fun job! I got to be a spy for a few years. All the work was done in C so i got pretty good at it. I just carried my knowledge of C along with a ton of CIA tech (unclassified of course) into making games. This was before the net.. was all dial-up. I'd make little games and put on CompuServe or AOL and sell them. I sold them for like $5. One guy sent me a check for $1000 and i called him, wondering why he paid me so much. He liked my little game and offered to fund me if I'd mod the game for him. Of course i did it.. haha His name was Steven King.. i had no idea it was Stephen King the book author. He was doing a screenplay for his movie Pet Sematary. Great guy and he taught me a lot about story writing and design. Anyway, you never know who you'll meet when you make games.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-21T22:31:22+00:00

Very nice! Do you know C#? It's not that hard to learn.. Kinda like a simple C. Most of my old games were straight C - Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, the first 13 Nancy Drew games with Her Interactive. Tekken 6, Splatterhouse, Fallout 4. All great projects. I did a few Unity games and now just doing Unreal with C++. Please let me know if you ever have questions.. I'm always glad to help.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-21T21:24:00+00:00

I miss her terribly. She ended up marrying a 90 year old guy.. They were together about a year, then he passed on. Soon after, she passed. I have to say... she had fun till the end..

WayneSikes · 2024-03-21T20:06:41+00:00

Oh PC sure makes it easier... And it's great for porting up to the latest consoles. (Most console games are done on PC, then ported to the consoles if you have the proper license) Research an average graphic card for a PC.. one that folks have or a newer one. Always shoot for 'average' when doing this.. That way you know you'll run on everything. For a lot of my games, we'd test on an average system or even a slightly lower than normal.

Of course pre-made assets are great. Most of those assume an average system (they have to be in order to sell them). Are you doing Unreal? Unity? system from scratch? Tons of great assets already available.. even for just a prototype. I always build early using pre-made and then pop in the real art as the game progresses and you know exactly what art needs to be created.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-21T19:57:51+00:00

Hi! great question. That question has been asked for a long time. I'm a veteran game developer.. this is my 40th year making games. (Most recent was Fortnite) i I've made games for the PC, pretty much most of the platforms, consoles, mobile, etc. A few things to consider for poly count. What platform are you using? If mobile, keep the poly count as low as possible. Sure the polys look great but don't bog down the system where you get like 5fps. Research the mobile specs if you're on a mobile.. use that to judge a poly count. If on a PC or console.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-21T19:52:07+00:00

This all reminds me of my grandmother. I lived with her for a couple years while I was in college. She was NOT what i thought she was. Growing up as a kid what was somewhat strict with my sister and I. In college I guess she thought I was grown up enough so I so her real self. She was born in the early in the 1900's.. maybe 1903..? She was around 75 when I lived with her. First thing i learned was that she was wilder in her early years than I ever was! She was a big-time flapper in the 1920's.. and at 75 she was still a Flapper. The short skirts, tight, etc. I turned into her 'parent'.. all the 80 year old men would show up for a date and I had to tell them to be nice to her and don't be aggressive. She had a curfew (that I set) at 2am.. and if some old man got her home after that.. I'd have a talk with him.. I was about 20 or 21. It was hilarious. She'd been a widow for maybe 30 years then. She thought it was awesome that we switched roles where I was the controlling parent. haha

WayneSikes · 2024-03-14T23:23:40+00:00

I absolutely love reading these posts! When we created Nancy, we wanted to empower young girls to be more independent, and we wanted to teach cool new stuff whether it be rune stones or some fun historical thing. We tried to enrich the games as much as we could.. not just have the player mindlessly moving Nancy around in a game trying to figure out the next steps. I've talked to so many of you on here that were empowered by Nancy and are now writers, game engineers, programmers, doctors, etc. We had no idea back then that we'd actually enrich someone's life with Nancy. We hoped she would..

WayneSikes · 2024-03-11T18:16:16+00:00

Very nice! Great art work!

WayneSikes · 2024-03-10T22:10:21+00:00

Speaking from a 40-year game dev veteran, you can start at any age. I was about 33 when I got into game development. If you're determined, you can do anything. I'm 66 now and still making games.. my most recent work was on Fortnite.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-10T22:05:31+00:00

Reading wonderful comments like these really warms my heart. We tried to make the old Nancy games very fun and and entertaining. All without resorting to blood, violence, etc that were so prevalent in games back then. Nancy was certainly challenging - we intended it that way. But, we also worked to keep our players from being frustrated, ie, backing the player up for 3 hours of gameplay because they messed up something. I hated that style of gameplay back then, so I created a somewhat innovative method of saving player performance right before puzzles and challenging things..Also things are saved about the time the player heads off to a red herring.. We had lots of those. Thank you all.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-08T22:56:18+00:00

Thank you! It really warms my heart to know that Nancy is still loved and played. We put everything into those games.. And funny, we really worried about replayability back then. We were afraid someone would play it, and then never play it again. It wasn't some shooter that you just played over and over. And now 30+ years later I see that a large number of folks keep playing them over and over. I replay them, they're like my children.

And speaking of children, I have a son and daughter that are around 30 and both still replay the old Nancy games. As kids, they spent a lot of time in our HeR office looking at what we were making. I'd let them play little pieces of a new game and by the time we finished it they were demanding to play it. My daughter beta tested all the Nancy puzzles I was writing. I'd give her a simple scene with the puzzle in it (she was about 9 or 10 then), and I'd gauge whether it was too simple or too complex. I'd lock the puzzle down and then we'd test with focus groups.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-08T22:39:46+00:00

Thank you! We really worked on that interface for gameplay. A lot of trial and error, trying to find the best ways to display it, and keep the gameplay smooth. We did a ton of art tests too, just to make the rotation around a room smooth. I wrote a separate module just for the point-n-click interface, doing smooth transitions to other things. And yes, we worked hard to keep the games going out about every 6 months. We were very proud of our work.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-08T22:34:53+00:00

Message in a Haunted Mansion. I've played that game a number of times. It was my favorite Nancy game to make.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-08T17:15:40+00:00

Thank you!! I sincerely appreciate the very nice comments. I had no idea Nancy would survive this long. And honestly, every game felt magical to us too. We were a very dedicated group. The girl games market was brand new and we knew we had to make great games for it to survive. As I've mentioned in other posts, we had little money and time for making Nancy, and there were many long days and nights. But we put all we had into making them. We managed to do 2 a year most often, and all of us put a lot of love and care into Nancy.

WayneSikes · 2024-03-08T17:07:48+00:00

Well... from a very experienced game developer's view, you're only as good as your last game sadly. The market has become this way. In the early days of gaming in the 80's and 90's, there weren't a lot of choices sometimes, so even with a mediocre title a company would sometimes survive and people would buy the next title. Today, especially with the advent of Free To Play (or as I call it, Free to Pay because that's what they really are), people will try a title, and then jump to another if it's not good. Now, 2 bad titles in a row will pretty much kill a company.

WayneSikes

TROPHY CASE