Last Updated 8 May 2003

What is DragonShadow Industries?

Really, we're just a couple of guys that like games.

DragonShadow Industries is the name we slap on any of our creations. It originally came from the handles we used a long time ago - Dave was Dragon and I was Shadow. We squashed them into one word (with two capital letters) and appended the cool-sounding "Industries" on the end. Before DSI we used the name "Enforcers" which you'll find on one of our games, Mega-Gun.

We've played and made games for as long as we've known each other (since 1983 by my recollection). Most of our creations originated from construction sets released for various games (Adventure Construction Set, Racing Destruction Set, etc). We also made some original games using game-creation programs such as Gary Kitchen's Game Maker and Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit. Off the top of my head here's a list of the various programs we used:

• Adventure Construction Set (ACS)
• Racing Destruction Set
• Gary Kitchen's Game Maker
• Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit (SEUCK)
• Movie Maker
• Load Runner & Load Runner's Rescue
• Wizard
• War Game Construction Set
• I'm forgetting like five billion others...

Unfortunately when we were young we rarely finished making a full game. We have countless ACS adventures started, some more complete than others. Our SEUCK game, a vertical scrolling shooter, has no ending. I personally created a full game on the Atari 800 called Snowball Fight. I submitted it to Antic Magazine, but was rejected. Unfortunately I gave away my Atari some time ago so all our creations on there are lost :(

Our first complete game is called Mega-Gun and was made on Gary Kitchen's Game Maker. It's rather simple, but provided good fun at the time. After that we started another Game Maker project called October 31st. It was to be a kind of Halloween-themed shooting gallery. We didn't get very far with that.

Not much happened after that. I moved out to California after college so it became difficult for the two of us to do anything. I have started various projects on my own over the years, but never really got far with them. That is until Sony announced their Net Yaroze. For several hundred bucks you would get a special black PSOne, a compiler, libraries, and the necessary hardware to allow you to transfer compiled programs from your PC to the unit. While piddling around with learning the 2D library a game formed in my head. The game grew and grew until it eventually became Decaying Orbit and was released on the cover disc to the UK Official Playstation Magazine. Dave did some of the artwork, my wife provided the computer voice, and I handled most everything else.

It took three years to finish the demo, which actually only comprises one-fifth of the the full game I had envisioned. By that time I started running into hard & fast limitations of the Yaroze. Also, since Decaying Orbit is all 2D I wanted to move on and do something in 3D.

Roughly around this time I left my job at Intel and moved to VM Labs. Their technology (known at the time as Project X, now known as NUON) looked cool to me. I thought I could get in on the ground floor of a cool new game platform and hopefully move into making games for it.

I worked as a hardware engineer at VML for three years and was able to tinker with the system on my own. The neat thing about NUON is that you can roll your own renderer. Sure you can use a polygon engine if you want, but since everything is done in software you can go any other route you want. I have my own unique renderer running, but haven't had time to create a game with it yet.

Now that VM Labs has been bought then killed by Genesis Microchip the future of NUON is even more bleak. Still, I will carry on with current (and future) projects. I know the Aries architecture better than any other, especially that x86 crap. I want to create a knock-out game that can't be done on other systems.

Keep checking back for Game Progress updates or to see what games I'm currently playing. Thrilling stuff for sure.