The Pickford Bros Blog
Posts from John and Ste
Blog posted by Ste Pickford on Fri, 11 May 2012
It's a funny thing being a self publishing indie game developer. The 'self publishing indie' bit can take up so much time and effort that I sometimes forget about about 'game developer' bit.
I still consider myself to be primarily a video game graphic ...
Is fairness the first casualty of b...
Blog posted by JPickford
Tue, 1 May 2012
Over the last few weeks I've heard of a business practice amongst indie developers that I found quite shockingly unfair. This lead me to thinking about the concept of fairness in business. I suppose, along with my brother Ste, I've been a businessman ...
Blog posted by JPickford
Sun, 1 Apr 2012
Squish is the second of the prototypes built into Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint v2.0. Unlike ISMMTTM, Squish isn't an entirely new game; It's a potential new arcade mode based on the MB game mechanic with a few key changes. History I've been tin...
ISMMTTM - Developing a new prototyp...
Blog posted by JPickford
Thu, 22 Mar 2012
ISMMTTM? The full title is "I Sent My Monkey To The Moon" and is named after a song by a musician friend of ours Loop Aznavvour. We'll include the song in the full version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkgY-NtstK8 Why? The main reason for...
Introducing Blueprint Prototypes
Blog posted by JPickford
Wed, 21 Mar 2012
The idea of building prototypes into Magnetic Billiards was inspired by the App Store's rather neat update system. We can push an update out at any time and anyone with our game installed will receive update notification the next time they visit the App ...
Oops! Magnetic Billiards and the ...
Blog posted by JPickford
Mon, 19 Mar 2012
I was already on the way to London for the Bafta awards on Friday when I heard the bad news. Magnetic Billiards wasn't working properly on the new iPad. This was particularly bad timing as we'd just been featured by Apple on the front page of the U...
Blog posted by JPickford
Mon, 21 Mar 2011
Ste and I spent most of Saturday creating footage for our second (and final) Magnetic Billiards trailer. We filmed lots of gameplay footage on the iPad but the majority of the time was spent creating an 8 second animated sequence (250 hand drawn frames...
Magnetic Billiards:Blueprint hits A...
Blog posted by JPickford
Fri, 4 Mar 2011
Yesterday I added the tutorial pages to Magnetic Billiards:Blueprint. This was the final missing element so we are now officially 'feature complete'. There's still a fair bit of work left to do but it's mostly polish & bug fixing.
Blog posted by JPickford
Fri, 4 Mar 2011
A couple of weeks ago I came up with an idea for trailer to promote our upcoming iOS (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch) game Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint. Originally inspired by the wildly successful Dead Island trailer; I thought it would be fun to make a spoof...
Blog posted by JPickford
Mon, 18 Oct 2010
Playing Magnetic Billiards on iPhone 3G. Speed problems seem to have vanished with appropriately sized graphics (previously I was using iPad graphics scaled down in realtime). The iPad controls are surprisingly okay - at least on the earlier tables.
Blog posted by JPickford
Thu, 14 Oct 2010
Tidying up lots of loose ends on Magnetic Billiards today. Quite chuffed with the visual effects for 'Foul' and 'Buzz'. Really simple but effective. We're only missing cluster shape detection and a couple bonuses and the core gameplay will be done. Plen...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Thu, 3 May 2012
Earlier this week my brother wrote a blog post about fairness in the video game business. One part of his post talked about how supportive and helpful indie developers are to each other, freely swapping information, tips, even code itself. It's always ...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Fri, 27 Apr 2012
Another lovely photo of a Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint Hall of Fame certificate landed in our inbox last week. This is certificate number 4, owned by ex-world champion Blueprint player, and creator of the brilliant Tap! Magazine tutorial video for th...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Thu, 26 Apr 2012
Andrew Davies, the first member of the Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint Hall of Fame kindly sent us this beautiful close up picture of his unique 'number 1' certificate. It has pride of place on his wall now, I hope!
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Thu, 26 Apr 2012
A journalist asked me last week if I had any photographs lying around of either me or John working on a ZX Spectrum for an article he was writing about the early British computer scene. I don't have any photos from when I was a kid so I give my Mum a ri...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Mon, 23 Apr 2012
Andrew Davies, the world number one Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint player, sent us this brilliant, epic video last week. In it he explains in great detail his techniques for earning record breaking scores, and, using those techniques, he takes you throug...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Fri, 20 Apr 2012
Here's an excellent Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint tutorial video made by Jim McCauley for the equally excellent Tap! Magazine. Jim reviewed the game for Tap! Mag (giving it 5 stars!) and was briefly the best player in the world, topping the Game Centre ...
Now we're up to 98 million points i...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Thu, 19 Apr 2012
Andrew Davies is back! The top Magnetic Billiards player in the Leaderboards and the Hall of Fame has beaten yesterday's 84m scoring shot by Jim McCauley with an assured 98m shot. Surely the 100m barrier will be broken before too long? Keep the shot vid...
84m scoring Magnetic Billiards: Blu...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Wed, 18 Apr 2012
Just after he gave us a video yesterday of a 50 million scoring shot, Magnetic Billiards: Hall of Fame member Jim McCauley sent us this follow up video, smashing that record with a shot worth 84 million! We think that's throwing down the gauntlet to all...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Tue, 17 Apr 2012
Hot on the heels of the incredible 103 Buzz Multiplier shot posted yesterday that earned a staggering 26 million points, here's an even higher scoring shot from Jim McCauley, another member of the Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint Hall of Fame. While not qu...
We are The Pickford Bros, veteran independent video game designers based in the UK.
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