Information about Myself

"As this game is supposed to be part of my portfolio I thought I should write a bit about me here. Not usually being a person who talks about myself I'm sure I will find selling "me" to a new company a little difficult. This is the reason for bulking out my porfolio with all that i can do before i even attempt it."

Phil Glanville

Bulk out your Portfolio? How much experience do you actaully have?

I'm 30, which in many peoples eyes will not allow me to put myself in the same sentence as experience ;) However i do feel that - from a work point of view - i'm in a very good situation.

When it comes to pure coding I've been doing that since i was 7, albeit it was mainly copying code in to a ZX Spectrum to play games and then intially on my Amiga.. But i definitely caught the bug very early on and was soon hacking together alsorts of things to make mad little games and programs.

For the last 9-10 years however i've been mostly working on the web. True, I'd say my pure coding skills have been lowered by all the highlevel scripting required for the job. But i always found pure coding to be very slow and the one major thing i love about the web is that there are now technologies in place that allow an amazing development pace. The web also allows me to keep the two creatives sides of my personality happy, the coding and the designing. Plus it also means i can muck around with JavaScript on a daily basis.. a language that i have loved for many years although i'm still not sure why.

So back to the question, yes, my portfolio was a little on the sparse side. Mainly because for 6 out of those 10 years i was starting up a company with a few friends from college called Fubra. I'm really happy to say they are still going strong, but i found that i was needing to go off in a different direction... Mainly so i could do more work with Flash.

So i spent another 2 years starting my own company only to find that the life wasn't really for me. I'm not the greatest of business minds and i also need a friendly team around me.. otherwise the days just get long and lonesome.

So we reach where i am today which is basically "getting by" in order to learn more and develop a few ideas that i've had running around in my head for a while. I felt for one - before i could settle to another proper job - i needed to get a few things out of my system.. and Twilight is one of those ideas.

So what parts of Twilight
are purely your work?

All of it. I realise that boasting is all part of the whole portfolio thing - i've never been very good at it - but that simple fact is actually something i'm very proud of. Thanks to my years of experience i am now pretty much able to take any idea and realise it all with my own skills. Sure i'd say my server administrator knowledge is a little lacking but nothing i couldn't refresh if i was required. But i very definitely specialise in art & design, client-side coding, server-side coding, building hybrid systems and working with abstract ideas.

This, i guess, is actually one of the major reasons why i like both ActionScript and JavaScript because (acting as mediator languages) they allow me to amalgamate all my skills together as one. On top of that, now with the ability to publish web content to the Desktop (via Adobe Air and Adobe Flex) there is really nothing stopping me from creating whatever i would like.

core skills

• Flash Development (ActionScript 2 -> 3)
• Adobe Photoshop (7 -> CS3)
• HTML (older & modern browsers)
• CSS (older & modern browsers)
• Javscript (older & modern browsers)
• PHP (3 -> 5+)
• XML (used in a variety of ways)

developing skills

• Adobe Flex
• Adobe Air
• Adobe Flash 10

weaker skills

• Java (basic)
• Python (basic)
• ASP (basic)
• C++ (basic)

What are you looking for in a job?

I'm hoping to find a job in the online games industry, but with a company that sets out to make real games online. And not just one hit wonders that are only used to attract viral advertisers. I think the web is now a perfect place to develop fully applicable (and chargable) games online. Ones that the user keeps coming back to. I mean as an example just take a look at this 3D engine developed by a Russian company called Alternativa Game.

[ Alternativa Platform ]

If that isn't amazing for an online engine i don't know what would be! Or you could have a look at another demo i've set up (not quite as impressive as a 3D engine however) which is based on an old game i used to have on my Amiga. I had tried making it again on many systems and even on the web before. But always found either time was - or (as with the internet) the technologies were - a problem. But now as another example of where the web is today i have a basic version up and running:

[ Gravity Jam Game ]

[ Gravity Jam Site ]

Basically what i'm trying to say is that today i don't think there is anything that couldn't be attempted as a fully browser enabled game. Obviously you have to worry speed & optimisation more as working in-browser will always be more cpu intensive. But the advantages of a user just clicking on a link and being taken straight to the game are unsurmountable. No downloads, no cross system issues, quicker development time, the code is hosted in one place so makes updating easy and when something goes wrong you'll have systems in place to report exactly what went wrong and where. Considering that personal computing is heading towards a much more online (buzzworded as cloud) existence, it makes perfect sense for game companies to do the same... especially as Flash Astro will be out soon and i'm sure the abilities in that will far outstrip what is currently possible.

So yes, i would be looking for a job that covers my interests. I don't personally know what the online game industry is currently like. Judging on the sheer number of throw away little games you see around the web i'd say it's probably not in a great state. But i think it's at the perfect time for it to improve no end.

Aside from the actual job - and even if i do end up just carrying on with web design - the more important thing will be the people i get to work with. The fact that i've had to work off by myself for a many years has shown me how much i miss being in a room full of smart and friendly people. Bouncing ideas is something i came to really enjoy doing so I definitely miss that, plus just the simple sense of being part of a team. At the end of the day I would quite happily put "my colleagues" as my number one priority. Basically meaning - even if i did find the dream online game job - if their team wasn't in a good situation i wouldn't apply.