In game development your tool-chain is the most important weapon in your armoury. The right tools make the process of developing games much easier and neglecting this aspect can create real headaches. I have seen companies that had a tool chain that wasn’t really understood and when issues arose there was a real panic about how to solve them. It’s for this exact reason that I make sure that I have a set of tools that I know well and can maintain myself.

Since I transitioned to developing on a Mac I transferred all my tools such as Photoshop and Flash to their OSX versions. Adobe made this very easy. This raises an interesting issue though - that of legit software. You wouldn’t believe how many companies I have worked for in the past that had a lot of dodgy software. I used to hear excuses that the companies that made these packages knew it went on and they didn’t really mind. That was crap of course. I made the decision early on that if I were to form a company then it would be built on the back of legit software and I have remained true to that premise - every piece of software that Xiotex Studios uses is fully paid for.

The transition to Mac did have some issues though. Previously I was using XSI as the 3d Modelling package but there wasn’t an OSX version so I looked around and settled on Cinema 4D. The scripting language that C4D uses is so easy to master that within minutes of installing it I had a basic custom mesh exporter up and running. Now all I have to do is get used to the quirks of XCode 3.0.

The game design re-think is progressing well too and I have settled onto a design that would work well on the iPhone/Mac/OSX.