Game design, game programming and more

Avoiding game crashes related to linked lists

Diagram of memory layout for a doubly-linked list created using C++ STL library

In this post I'm going to talk about linked lists, a seemingly trivial subject that many programmers -- even good ones -- seem to get terribly wrong! Then I'm going to share techniques (with source code) to make your game engine code simpler, … [Continue reading]

Tough times on the road to Starcraft

Starcraft "Orcs in space" screenshot prior to the project reboot

I've been writing about the early development of Warcraft, but a recent blog post I read prompted me to start scribbling furiously, and the result is this three-part, twenty-plus page article about the development of StarCraft, along with my thoughts … [Continue reading]

The making of Warcraft part 2

In my previous article about Warcraft I talked about the beginnings of a series that would come to define Blizzard Entertainment and lead it to being one of the best-known and most-loved game companies in the world. But how did Warcraft go from an … [Continue reading]

Debugging running server applications

This traffic jam shows what a programming deadlock looks like in real life

So you've written an awesome online game that works perfectly in the test environment, but when real users are playing the game server doesn't work properly. Now what?!? I was reading an article by Mike Perham called Debugging with Thread Dumps and … [Continue reading]

Marketing yourself as a programmer

A number of readers asked questions about programming careers, both about getting into game-development as well as staying employed in software engineering. I started writing a comment to JM about age-discrimination but it turned into this blog post … [Continue reading]