My name is Mike Parker. You can find me around the web in many game development communities and in online games under the moniker ‘Aldacron’. I’m a self taught programmer with several years of experience under my belt. I am in the process of putting together my first commercial game project for my new game company, StatBuff Studios.
Most of my game programming experience has been with C, the language with which I am most experienced and competent. I’ve never been a fan of C++, but I’m not afraid to use it. My C++ style is very simple — I tend to avoid heavy use of templates and I have an (irrational, I know) aversion to the standard library. I also have quite a bit of experience with Java, though mostly in the web application arena. Over the last couple of years I’ve been toying with Java for game development. I’m a big fan of Java’s dynamic features and see several applications for them in game tools. These days, I’m also liking the D programming language from Digital Mars. I maintain an open-source project that provides a set of D bindings to several C libraries useful for game development (such as OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL, and more). I also enjoy working with LUA and Python, though most of my scripting experience is with PHP and JavaScript for web development. I despise Perl, I’ve barely touched C#, and I’ve never used any functional languages.
I have been teaching English, part-time and full-time, in Korea since 1994. Over the years, I’ve learned that I really enjoy helping people. Part of the purpose of this blog is to share some of the game development knowledge I have gained over the years, from source snippets, to algorithm explanations and whole modules. Time is always a factor though, so the lion’s share of posts here are interesting news items from the game industry, short game reviews, and my opinions on different game industry topics.
If you are new to game development, or still consider yourself an amateur, I hope my little blog becomes regular reading for you. By no means do I consider myself an expert. I still have much to learn. But in the years I have been studying and practicing game development, I have gained much knowledge to share. I hope others can benefit from some of it and manage to save some time in the process.