But I felt like writing something today because in some ways it’s quite an important date for me. Ten years ago today I joined the Natural Selection forums. In that time a lot has changed and the truth is that I owe much of it to being a part of that community.

When I joined the NS community I was interested in art, and in making games, but I’d never really found anything to focus on. But I was so inspired by what Charlie Cleveland and his team were doing with NS that I felt like I wanted to be a part of it, and found myself amongst a group of people that helped to push me forward as a designer, many of whom I still consider friends. NS made it clear to me how interested I was in level design, which definitely pushed me towards Architecture. When that fell through (although not without learning a great deal in the process), there was still that passion for making games to come back to, and I soon realised that it was always what I really wanted to do.

Ten years later and I’ve been working on the sequel to NS for two and a half years. As a happy coincidence I’ll be working full-time on NS2 for the next month, starting tomorrow. For various reasons I can usually only work on the game part-time, but I am really looking forward to making it my highest priority for a little while.

And that’s great because I feel like Natural Selection has given me so much over the last ten years that it’s a privilege to be able to put something of myself back into it. With the game in a transitional, incomplete beta format at the moment, it’s easy for some people to lose faith in it; and I do understand why. But the truth is that there hasn’t been a single moment while I’ve been working on NS2 when I’ve thought we wouldn’t release something fantastic. The biggest reason for that is that I’ve been lucky enough to see the intelligence, creativity and passion that’s being put into the game, every day, for the last two and a half years.

Seeing that has given me complete confidence in NS2, and I’m sure the players will agree with me when we release this summer. It has been, and will continue to be, a blast.

I promise to write something less self-indulgent next week.

Nanogrid – The NS2 Web-Based Server Browser.

I’ve decided to call this v1.0 and just put it up, although there are still a few issues with it, and things I want to add. First of all, there will soon be “Join” buttons next to each server for quick access. At the moment those don’t work – Max, NS2′s Technical Director, suggested there might be an issue with the way NS2 is set up with the Steam API, so this may or may not get resolved soon. Secondly, some of the country flags are incorrect. I’ll need to see what can be done to fix those.

I wish I could put up some of the Natural Selection 2 I’ve been doing but it’s not ready to go public yet. When it does I’ll certainly put a whole load of it up.

Once upon a time there was a boy who played obnoxiously loud music through a mobile phone speaker on a bus.
When he was suddenly mauled by a ravenous urban badger, nobody lifted a finger to help him.

Flavio Samelo

The Beginners’ Guide to SEO.

A handy resource, and really nicely designed and illustrated, too.

Check it out: Scraps & Influences

I’ve got a whole bunch of web projects that I’m finishing up right now. I’m currently working on something related to my last web design work, Nuglass, that should be close to final by the end of the week.

Last night Flood Theatre tested a whole bunch of new material at show we put on at East 15 drama school. It went down pretty well, all things considering. Some material bombed, some of it soared. That’s what these nights are for, anyway, and the feedback so far has been positive. Here’s the poster I whipped up for it:

Natural Selection 2 is going from strength to strength and it’s a fantastic experience to be able to work alongside such a talented and inspired team – even though I’m thousands of miles away from most of them. I can’t wait to be able to show off what I’ve been working on, and hopefully that won’t be too long now.

I finally upgraded to a whole new PC. In the interests of learning something new, as well as keeping costs down and getting exactly what I want, I ordered all the individual components and put it together myself. That went much more smoothly than it had any right to, and I’m really enjoying being able to play modern games. Given that the last PC I bought was in 2005, the upgrade was considerable even though I didn’t spend all that much.

A few puzzle pieces are falling into place now, and now that I’m close to completing a few outstanding projects, I’m looking forward to moving on and trying a few design projects outside my comfort zone. No idea what that will be yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve kept the blue textured style from the old site, but have made it darker and more sullen. This sits in contrast to violently orange elements scattered across the page. As I worked on the design, it seemed increasingly appropriate to switch from black, blue and hot pink to dark blue and bright orange. It felt like it was simultaneously more murky, heavier in contrast and simpler in execution.

One of the main issues with the old site was that I hadn’t really designed it with the addition of new content in mind. It was what it was, and we just needed something indicative of the company in time for our first public show. But as we began to make plans for this year, it became clear that we needed to be able to do a lot more with it. So the horizontal scrolling style was abandoned and replaced with a vertically scrolling arrangement that makes it much easier to just slip in new content. I also got rid of the one page set-up in favour of a bigger site. The single-page design was appropriate at the time, but as we have become more ambitious, this no longer feels like the correct approach.

As things currently stand, it will be relatively simple to integrate with a content management system like WordPress, and that is most likely the next step for the site. Social media is going to be important in promoting the company, so it is vital that the site is responsive as possible.