When I was first following along with videogames on the internet, there were these things called .plan files. They were essentially blogs, or Twitter before Twitter, but they were updated by game developers like John Carmack, Cliff Bleszinski, Randy Pitchford and more before everyone grew too busy, too old, or too ensconced in the PR machine to speak so openly and frequently.

They were great, because they were a glimpse both into the development process ("Post Q3A, I plan on doing a research engine that is fully dynamically lit and shadowed instead of using lightmaps," writes Carmack in one 1999 post, marking the moment he worked out how to make Doom 3), but also into the people making those games (I only understand half of everything Carmack writes; he must be very smart).

It's a good thing that indie development and Kickstarter have brought back regularly updated development blogs, then. It's a sensible thing, then, that I write this still-not-sure-it'll-be-a-regular column charting some recent updates from those devlogs.

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