A Success Story - A Console Soccer Game (in C++)

Earlier today I visited a former colleague and friend of mine Roger Womack who has been working on a Soccer management game for 20 years. It is launched on the Nintendo DS console later this week. Many thousands of cartridges have been manufactured and distributed to shops. He is a genuine work from home developer and through partnership with another company has managed to get it onto a major console.

The game was programmed in C++ using a proprietary match engine that simulates blow by blow every aspect of a soccer match. Roger has developed and modified this engine over twenty years. I wrote one myself a long time ago and its not a simple thing to do. Mine was thrown together very quickly and so wasn't very good. Think of all the things such as formations, wind directions, individual characteristics and you need a complex piece of software that has to play the match blow-by-blow. This is needed so a match commentary can be generated. That's no trivial task!

In the past I've said that I thought the day of the individual working from home was long over but this is more a case of couple of developers and an artist working from their homes instead. The internet has made virtual teams possible; it works for open source and if done properly can work for commercial development. It requires a great deal of of self-discipline to work alone when you're at home- the TV is in easy reach and so is your games collection!

• Link to C++ Tutorials