The random ramblings of a French programmer living in Norway...
2021
  Pitching Riders
Tue 11th May 2021   
After years of working on racing games, some people at Eden Studios wanted to do something "more creative", so some designers and artists worked on some pitchs for new games.

  Time Commando Marketing
Sat 1st May 2021   
Time Commando was released in July 1996, and since my old Time Commando web page only had small resolution pictures, I decided to make some new scans on fan's requests on my Youtube channel, a bit in advanced for the 25 years anniversary of the game release.

2020
  Half a Life in Video Games
Sat 4th January 2020   
Time flies.

We just entered 2020, and since I started working at Adeline Software in January 1995, it means I've been working in the Video Game Industry for 25 years, without a single interruption... and since I'll be celebrating my 50th birthday this year, it also means I've spent half of my life doing it.

2019
  The Oriclopedia
Tue 3rd December 2019   
This is now December, and I decided to take a break with the Oriclopedia videos, so this is a small summary of what was published this year.

2018
  Job Application
Mon 10th September 2018   
When I moved to Norway in 2005, I kept some of my most precious Oric and Atari hardware, but I left the rest to some of the Oric and Atari people I trusted to put them to good use.

Some of our unreleased demos have since appeared in various compilations after they were found in the old stack of floppies, but now and then they have found some old forgotten treasures.

2015
  My software history (part 4)
Wed 29th April 2015   

Welcome to the fourth (and last) part of this series of articles.

The previous part was about Eden Games, this new one covers the period from when I moved from France to Norway in 2005 to join Funcom.

This article is a bit different from the others, because I am still working at Funcom. All the content of course represents my personal views, other people may disagree :)

2014
  My software history (part 3)
Sun 16th March 2014   

Welcome to the third part of this series of articles.

The second part was about my time at Adeline Software and Héliovisions Productions, now this entire article will cover the 1998-2005 period at Eden Studios (aka Eden Games).

Help wanted

I joined Eden Studios in October 1998 and immediately started to play with the Dreamcast development kit.

Soon I had my old ZBuffer house moving smoothly on the screen.

  Time Commando The Storyboard
Thu 13th March 2014   
And without further comments, here is the storyboard for the intro sequence.

  My software history (part 1)
Sun 2nd March 2014   
Sometimes on IRC you find people you've not met in many, many years. Inevitably at some point the discussion have to go round what you've been doing all these years, if you are still a programmer, where you are working, etc.. etc... and then of course younger participants start asking questions about our older stuff, probably because they are not used to interact with dinosaurs who actually programmed in COBOL, used black and white terminals, and even touched punch cards.

2010
  The cooking process theory
Wed 15th December 2010   
These few last weeks I've been doing a number of unrelated things: I watched Master Chef on BBC LifeStyle, finished Fallout: New Vegas then started to play Titan Quest, finished a book from 37signals and another from Microsoft Press about project management, and finally spent time reading blog posts on some various famous IT heroes.

In some perverted way it all makes sense.

So, what's the common idea between these seemingly unrelated elements? Well, the common element is the notion of recipe.

  Mini review Fallout New Vegas (ObsidianBethesda Softworks)
Sat 27th November 2010   
After 71 hours playing Fallout: New Vegas, I've finally reached the end of the story.

Mind you, I'm not done with the game: Since you can't continue to play after reaching the end of the main story line, I loaded a previously saved game to explore parts of the world I did not visit yet (I picked-up the Adventurer Perk just to get the list of all locations), which is about half of the possible locations.

Talk about a huge game :)

  What happened to the story line
Tue 13th April 2010   


Recently I finished a number of games, of the types that are supposed to be bundled with a story in it: Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2 and yesterday I finished Dreamfall.

Dreamfall as a game is probably not perfect, if only because it was originally a Xbox game, so some of the textures are a bit wonky, the controls on PC could have been better (damn you camera!), there's a bit too many fed-ex missions, and the fight sequences could have been more interesting... but as an engaging story, it's ace: You could watch it as a movie.

  Mini review Dragon Age (Bioware-Electronic Arts)
Sun 28th February 2010   
I just finished Dragon Age this evening, apparently I only managed to do about 40% of the whole content of the game, but when I'm being told that the survival of the land is on my shoulders and that time is of the essence I don't stop to do side quests...


So anyway, I killed the villain, saved the land, got the glory, and then the super long end credits.

  15 years working in videogames
Mon 25th January 2010   
Damn, that's typical of me - and of the industry - to miss a deadline!

On the 2nd of January 1995 I started working at Adeline Software, so the 2nd of January 2010 was my 15th anniversary in this interesting industry :)