If Only I could tell you how it is...

One of the frustrating things for me at the moment is not being able to talk about the work I’m doing (except for my colleagues at work, of course). Considering that I’m pretty excited about what we’re doing, it’s a real shame.

I particularly can’t tell you how the design for ****** and ****** is going. I can tell you that it’s going well, but that’s all I can say. Except, we’ve certainly learned our lessons from Broken Sword – The Sleeping Dragon as far as the PC interface goes and it’s a shame we hadn’t thought of it for that game.

Some interesting things came out of the Game Developers Conference – of the bits that I’ve managed to read in my busy schedule, of course. Some interesting comments from Warren Spector on not giving the player too much freedom. The XNA piece from Microsoft. Exciting Half-Life 2 footage. And the first glimpse of a working PSP game. Plus much more that seems to have escaped my mind at this moment (the stress of work).

I think that the next year or two will be an interesting time in game development and I really look forward to meeting the challenges that increasing sophistication and a more demanding audience will bring to the games we develop. Constantly having to re-think how we approach our projects and attempt to create games that remain fresh and exciting with a unique flavour, is something that makes the job such a delight and a headache at the same time. But you’ve always got to take the rough with the smooth.

And I look forward to the day when I share the juicy details of what we’re doing with all of you.

Ah, spring...
The clocks have gone forward, which for me officially announces the start of spring. Aside from the disturbance of my sleeping patterns for a few days, I always love it when suddenly the evenings are lighter and the day no longer feels over the minute you leave work.

Yesterday turned out beautiful in the afternoon and this morning is fabulous. The bright sunshine and slight haziness in the air make me feel good to be alive. The bus has just passed some fields where the mist hangs a few feet off the ground like a protective blanket, coddling the ground until the day has fully woken.

A kind driver has just let the bus out of one of the side roads quite quickly this morning. A sure signthat the onset of spring is having a positive effect on the populace - usually it takes ages and the bus ends up late.

As you will have seen from one of the new photos and this week's Juniper Crescent strip, we have frogspawn in the pond. Aside from the weird way it looks, I'm always baffled by how it's always so much bigger than the female frog it came out of. How on earth does that work?