Ive been deliberately keeping quiet on here for a while because of job obligations and legal issues.

Well, these are no longer a real concern (moving on) so I think maybe its time for an introduction.

My name is Phil Carlisle and I'm a soon-to-be-ex employee of Team17 software in the uk. (Best known for the worms series of games)

I'm leaving there to pursue my own indie company startup, which is due to be funded by me working part-time as a senior lecturer for a local university.

Ive been at Team17 for 7 years or more now, so once we ship Worms 3D It should be good to get away and do some development with little time pressure!

I know Ive met a few of you guys at the IGC conference last year (which I recommend btw) and I hope to meet some of you again next IGC!

Plans for the next 5 years are various, but involve mainly building up a successful development portfolio, you've already seen the mockup shot of my 2D game titled "The Secret Life Of Aliens", I'll post the website url for my new company soon, which will have some stuff about my slightly bigger (and longer term project) called Deep Space Legends, which is a multiplayer space combat game in the XWA,Tie Fighter, XWing vein.

After these are done, I'll be looking at interesting projects that appeal to a wider audience.

Anyway, Heya! and thanks for reading!

Phil.

That's great phil, somehow I made the connection that zoombapup = phil carlsile a while ago. Maybe it was in conjunction with the GG forums. Anyway, I read your .plan about getting a new job and I must say it soulds pretty much ideal. Somehow I missed meeting you at IGC last year, but hopefully not this year! :) I look forward to seeing some tantalizing (Torque Engine?) screenshots comming from you in the near future.

Best of luck in your new ventures!

Wow! Interesting bomb you dropped there. In a few threads you have mentioned that you were working professionally in the game industry and for awhile I've been really curious as to where you were rooted. Thanks for finally telling us. :)

Yep, space game is done with torque. Enhanced a bit, but torque all the same :)

Phil.

Hey Phil, congratulations on getting out from under Martyn's thumb ;). All the best with your new company.

Hi Phil,

Good look with the change of job hats :) The job obligations thing sounded familiar, I have to be careful what I say myself at the moment and even this sentence may not be cryptic enough :eek: Anyway, I can understand what you're going through. For me the move to indie work has been extremely rewarding, I wish you all the best.

By the way, do you know (or able to tell) what happened to Andy Davidson? I only met him briefly during his (and Team 17's) very outspoken and awkward 'leaving the Amiga' stage :) Andy and perhaps others from Team 17 used to hang around on an irc channel called #worms ... The irc channel itself is still going after all these years although it moved to the Arcnet network a while back. The general topic of conversation is long ceased to be worms related but the name stuck for historical reasons :D

As I say, I don't really know Andy myself but I was an indie game programmer using Blitz basic back when Andy got caught up in the whole Team17 Worms thing. All us indie programers were very jealous ;)

Heya Phil - cool ta' see ya on here! Are ya' gonna have games to show off at the next IGC? (Whenever that ends up bein'?)

(Davis)

Oct 10-12th.... Same location as last year.

Really? Cool - I hadn't heard any official word on it yet. Finally - I can setup my vacation time accordingly :-)

Yeah, I'm gonna have some in-progress work to show off at IGC. It wont be finished then (W3D and new job preps getting in the way, I had originally planned a Demo version for IGC, but being me, I slacked off enough for it to slip off my "todo" radar for too long).

Anyway, yes, I'll be able to fully pimp my new company, new games, myself, my dog, cat.. everything.

Oh, and of course I have to pimp the uni I'm working for (as part of the reason they'll let me take the time off in my first two weeks there :))

Phil.

Holler if an extra hand might help ya' get the demo done in time. Looks like TZ had finally firmed up to the point of testing - after I stick a fork in that puppy, might be abke to lend a hand if it help :-)

Yep, I worked (well, I say worked, I met him a couple of times) with Andy Davidson post Worms 1.

He was, by then, pretty damn rich from it all (4 years of bedroom coding had ended up with him being considerably well off! :)

He turned up to a couple of meetings, tried to pitch a (and I'm not being too unkind here) pretty pathetic game idea to team17, got pissed when they said no, then didnt appear ever again.

Frankly, he did VERY well out of the deal from my someone jaded and probably innacurate recollection of events. I'm amazed he's still bitching about it (having gotten royalties on Worms 2 as well, and he did pretty well out of that).

Fair play to the guy, he is what keeps Team17 going after all.

Team17 are the ultimate indie success story though really, bedroom programmer takes game to them, they take it onboard and it ends up a multi-million worldwide hit! how much more proof do you need that indie CAN be done!

Of course these days Martyn says its not possible to do that anymore (even going so far as to say that in a magazine article in develop, pity that in the same mag the guys who did that hacking game (Uplink) were saying they'd shipped 100k copies and were doing pretty well :))

Anyway, my motivations arent monetary, but more social and personal. I like development, but dont want another 2-3 year grind only to find that I'm not happy with the result OR that its supporting someone else's project only to see that fail.

I'm much happier looking forward to producing a game in 3 months, having fun doing it (2D games can be fun still!), working for myself and my partners and generally saying "screw the system, I do what I want!". Publishers be damned! theyre not required anymore.

Phil.

I'm not likely going to be able to get into proper development on it before IGC anyway (i start my new job october 1st, so that leaves a total of about 2 days development before IGC looms large :))

Dont worry though, I'll put together something that'll have the flavour of my new direction (probably a flash thing, or shockwave or the like).

I might get the chance to knock together a "demo" that simply moves a camera around the world in an interesting screensaver-style motion and plays some stupid techno-music in background.

I think IGC will pretty much be the epitome of the NEW IMPROVED me :) after IGC I'll be fully functioning as a company, working in a new job and generally fired up (plus a whole lot more motivated, like I was buzzing about last year).

Cant wait! and its only a couple of months away!!!

Phil.