Articles by David Bolton
-
SimCity: How Not to Launch a Game
Unless you live in a cave, you've probably heard of Electronic Arts' disastrous launch of the latest SimCity. It was designed to play for only about 20 minutes offline before closing down. Since… -
Understanding Variable Types in Dart
In my first tutorial about working with Dart, we looked at how to use its editor, definitely the best way to learn your way around. Now, we'll get ready to do some real work. First, A Tip In Tool… -
The Basics of Perforce, a Free Enterprise VCS
It's hard to believe that as recently as 10 years ago, many bedroom developers hadn't got into using Version Control Systems. Shamefully, I can remember occasions when I had multiple source versi… -
An Outstanding Guide to JavaScript and jQuery
jQuery is open source at its finest. It's a fast and small JavaScript library that streamlines things HTML document traversal and manipulation, event handling, animation and Ajax. It offers a sim… -
Learn How to Program in Dart
This is the first tutorial in a series on learning to program in Dart, Google's alternative to JavaScript. Although no other browser manufacturer has shown any interest in implementing Dart, Java… -
Learn Python Online With Coursera
In a 30-year programming career, I've learned and used many languages, but never got around to picking up Python. In this post I talked about taking a free course on "Interactive Programming With… -
How to Use a Linux Virtual Private Server
For my development of Web games, I've hit a point where I need a Virtual Private Server. (For more on this see My Search for Game Hosting Begins.) I initially chose a Windows VPS because I know W… -
How to Win a Capture-the-Flag Programming Challenge
Back in May, I described how entering coding challenges can be a way in to the industry. A recent AI competition that's just started is offering prizes, and one of the competition's supporters, G… -
How to Produce Dynamic Mulitplayer Games With PHP
It's relatively easy to set up a Web-based massively multiplayer game (MMO), though realistically you probably won't have more than a few hundred players. I've chosen World of Phaos (WoP), which…