Unity as a Leading Game Engine

Unity is now the most popular game engine used for 2D and 3D games, AR and VR applications and a wide variety of rich media apps. Unity's real power lies in the ecosystem of supporting technologies that work with the engine. These include cross platform support, analytics, monetisation, multiplayer, artificial intelligence and collaborative work systems.

Naming Conventions in Game Development

I am still amazed by the amount of game developers that don’t use naming conventions. Yes, developers need freedom to create original expressive code but unless you are working alone with Yoda in the Dagobah system, you and your code will need to work with others. Even if you are working completely alone, a code convention will help you avoid headaches down the line.

Fierce Fun's Game Development Services

Fierce Fun provides a complete range of game and app development services. Our professional team have experience in designing bespoke games for clients in a variety of sectors including game publishing, education and virtual reality. Our multi-stage design process allows us to produce complex games for both core and casual players. We use proven cross-platform technology to reach a wider audience.

Game Safety for Children

As the graphic quality and production values used in console games are on a par with movies, it is important for parents to consider which games are suitable for their children. Children can play games on a variety of devices from consoles to mobiles. Regardless of the device, the game’s rating should be checked to ensure it is appropriate.

Funding Game Development in Ireland

Like many countries, funding your computer game development project is not an easy task in Ireland. Though there is now a very vibrant indie game development scene in Ireland as well as a few larger established companies, the industry is comparatively small compared to other Irish media sectors such as film, tv and animation.

Tips for Games Start-ups

I originally had created a blog post on tips for tech start-ups. I have updated it for games companies and games start-ups. Also, most of these don’t specifically apply to Irish games companies – hopefully, you find them useful. They are based on my experience with a number of games and mobile start-ups. Your majority of the points will apply universally.

Transition to Unity

Before Unity, Fierce Fun used the Adobe Air platform extensively. It was a great piece of technology designed as a wrapper for Flash applications. It meant you could deploy Flash apps and games on PC and mobile devices – something Flash was never designed for. The original Macromedia Flash was developed as an animation tool.

Impressions of Unity

Fierce Fun is moving some of our client code over to the Unity game engine. We have been working with it for a while now and are impressed by its game dev specific feature list. It’s component approach to programming takes a bit of getting used to and we miss running the main game loop in the way we did before.

Dublin as a Start-up Capital

Many of the components are already in place to make Dublin the start-up capital of Europe. We believe Dublin (and Ireland) has real identifiable strengths in software development, rather than hardware. Owing to their nature, software businesses require less resources to start and, in general, grow faster. With the right focus and structures, Dublin has the potential to flourish.

Understanding WebGL

WebGL (Web Graphics Library) is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard for a low-level 2D/3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES 2.0, exposed through the HTML5 Canvas element as Document Object Model interfaces. In plain English, WebGL is a JavaScript library for displaying interactive 3D and 2D graphics within any compatible web browser without the need for plugins.