About Black Company Studios
Formed in April 2005 by Chris Chapman, and based in Edinburgh, the Company is a small independent developer of computer games, and gaming related technology. We are a software focused business, and the bulk of our time is spent working with other studios, collaborating on game projects. Recently we have been working with Add Knowledge on an educational title in development, and with 4J Studios on an as yet unannounced title.
Effective development processes are important to us, and we put great effort into making the Company an enjoyable place to work, while still being efficient and productive. Making games is highly creative work, and it requires happy and enthusiastic developers.
We are Associate Members of TIGA (The Independent Games developers Association) - a trade body committed to furthering the interests of independent developers in the UK and EU like ourselves.
Our office
We are based in a little office on Palmerston Place, a minute or two's walk from the Haymarket train station in Edinburgh. It is easy to find, and you should have no trouble getting to Haymarket by train or by bus. Parking nearby is scarce, so if driving you are best to park at one of the car parks near Haymarket station and walk from there.
Our Team
Chris Chapman
Company founder and owner, Chris is the main voice you will read on the Company blog, as MrCranky. Generally known as a grumpy old man (without the handicap of actually being old), he claims to view the world as "something which gets in the way of making games".
Despite being told several times to 'cut his hair and get a proper job', he still thinks that games development is the best work around, and would probably keep doing it even if he was independently wealthy.
He has strong opinions on software architecture, usability and user interfaces, development processes, grammar, spelling, and the ever rising price of alcohol.
Peter Mackay
Pete is perhaps best known for his relentless habit of making games on whatever platforms he can get his hands on. If it can render a polygon, then Pete will do what he can to get Quake running on it. Of course, we made him stop when we got our hands on actual development kits, but whatever he managed on his own, we're sure he can do much more with proper tools.
When pressed, Pete will confess an fondness for retro games, especially the Zelda series. He claims to still own an Amiga, and we secretly think he goes home to gently polish it and croon over Another World most nights.
Our Skills
We've been at the business of making games for over 6 years now, and have touched on making games on all the big platforms - PS2, XBox, PC, etc. We've been down the long hard development road, and know what mistakes not to make.
You might be interested in the last game we made (while working for the now-defunct VIS entertainment) - Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer, developed as a second party developer for SCEE, and now being published by Evolved in North America.
Or, if your taste run more to aliens, marines, giant mechanical suits, and just generally large amounts of killing, you might want to check out Tremulous, a newly popular FPS based on the Quake III engine, developed as an Open Source project headed by our associate Tim Angus. With over 60,000 games and more than 150,000 downloads, it's quite a success!
Here's a list to give a brief overview of the areas of game development in which we excel:
- Engine design/programming
- Scripting (Lua, Python)
- Loading/streaming
- Memory management
- Skeletal animation
- User Interfaces
- Playstation 2 TRCs
- Rendering engines (PC/XBox)
- Video streaming
- Distributed network architecture
- Content work
- In game cut-scenes
- Visual Effects
- Artificial Intelligence
- Audio & Interactive Music
- Optimisation (high and low level)
- Platform specific abstraction layers
- Automated build processes
- Tools/Exporters
- Maya
- 3DS Max
Our Own Games
We like multi-player games. Simple as that. We like contests of will, frantic battles over scores, team-based combat, and any other kind of game that can make you stand up from your computer chair, point your finger at the screen, and shout 'A-ha! Eat that!'. We think there are a lot of other gamers out there who like that too.
Multi-player gaming is one of the fastest growing niches in the games industry. While it isn't the largest sector, it is the sector with the most growth potential - more and more people are getting connected to the Internet; gamers who would previously have only considered console games and single-player PC games are being introduced to the on-line gaming phenomenon.
We are in the process of developing our own concepts for the next generation of technology for online gaming, and are always happy to hear from other developers interested in collaboration or sharing of ideas.