Postmortem Two Timing: TimeGate Studios' Kohan II and Axis & Allies
By Adel Chaveleh
After bursting onto the scene with Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, TimeGate Studios became a hot topic overnight. For its second feat, TimeGate took on two projects at once. Adel Chaveleh, president of TimeGate Studios, walks us through the growing pains his small company experienced as it expanded for the development of Kohan II and Axis & Allies, both of which shipped in the same quarter.

Visual Finite State Machine AI Systems
By Sunbir Gill
AI can be tough to write effectively, and most top end programmers can't be expected to chart out the habits of dim-witted creatures. For simple enemies, like Goombas, Koopas, and Swoopers, finite state machines can provide a simple and quick way to create enemy attack patterns without all that nasty coding. Sunbir Gill lays out a method of designing AI systems in Microsoft Visio, outputting the charts to XML, and then translating the XML into your game as creature AI.  
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Writesizing
By Stephen Jacobs
It wasn't so long ago that most games featured plots and stories that could be summed up in two pages of the manual. But anyone who's ever played Metal Gear Solid or Morrowind knows story has become much more than filler text. Today, many companies have on-staff writers who create the dialog, story elements, and history that flesh out the deep worlds of games. Stephen Jacobs interviews a number of top game writers to find out just what makes a good game wordsmith, and discovers that writing for games is nothing like writing books or movies.

Game Plan
By Alex Handy
Maiden Voyage

Feedback Loop
Letters from our Readers

Heads Up Display
Acclaim Goes Under, TGS Wrap-up, and more

Skunk Works
By Gregg Tavares
Virtools 3.0

The Inner Product
By Sean Barrett
Blending Does Not Distribute Over Lerp

Pixel Pusher
By Steve Theodore
Get Some Backbone

Aural Fixation
By Alexander Brandon
The Unofficial Top Five Classic Game Soundtracks

Necessary Evil
By Patrick Sweeney
Getting to Your Best Deal

Game Shui
By Noah Falstein
Paradigm Shifts

A Thousand Words
Cryptic Studios' and NCsoft's City of Heroes

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