Game design, game programming and more

The StarCraft path-finding hack

Game-unit path-finding is something that most players never notice until it doesn’t work quite right, and then that minor issue becomes a rage-inducing, end-of-the-world problem. During the development of StarCraft there were times when path-finding just didn’t work at all. As the development of StarCraft dragged on it seemed like it would never be done: […]

Whose bug is this anyway?!?

At a certain point in every programmer’s career we each find a bug that seems impossible because the code is right, dammit! So it must be the operating system, the tools or the computer that’s causing the problem. Right?!? Today’s story is about some of those bugs I’ve discovered in my career. This bug is […]

StarCraft: Orcs in space go down in flames

In my previous article about StarCraft I talked about why we rebooted the project and changed it from a follow-on to Warcraft — derisively called “Orcs in space” in 1996 — into the award-winning game that we were finally able to deliver after two more years of hardship. But one noteworthy source of inspiration didn’t […]

Tough times on the road to Starcraft

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 about writing more reliable game code. I’ll be posting the latter parts over the next […]