Hi, my name's

Luke.

I write code, mostly...

A software developer by trade, I create games, write music and run D&D sessions. Come join me for musings on each, with only a small spattering of incoherent rambling.

Recent Posts
AI: No hate, no hype

Like an impatient commuter on the 7:45 to London Waterloo, it’s time for me to cram myself onto the unreasonably overloaded hype train that is AI blog posts. This aims to be a balanced (albeit opinionated) view of what AI is, what I think it’s useful for, and where I see it heading.

Everyone is interesting

I love it when I find someone who’s deeply interested in something and can talk about it for hours on end. I don’t care what it is: rocket science, extreme ironing, or a long-held passion for ’80s stamps. Everyone’s interesting, you just have to ask the right questions.

Burnout

You may have spotted a rather large gap between this and my last post. I’ve had a particularly busy three months at work and I’ve been pushing hard to get an important project over the line. Given that there’s no better time to talk about burnout…

Business versus tech

Do you feeling like there’s always overwhelming pressure to get things delivered? Good news! It’s something you can change and it’s completely within your control. Let’s talk about why the pressure exists, why it always will, and what you can do to get rid of it.

Fun with British Airways

Whilst attempting to fly back from a work trip in South Africa, I had the displeasure of experiencing some abysmal customer service from British Airways. Whilst I would love for the world to know about how bad they are, instead this blog is about a universal technique for being a better coder.

A case for slower career progression

The lure of money makes it enticing to push yourself to climb the career ladder as fast as possible and to eagerly prompt those above you to advance you to the next role quickly. In this post I’d like to make a case for taking your time to find your feet before reaching for the next rung.

Projects

DiscStorm
C# Unity
DiscStorm
Fast-paced and furious arena combat, where split-second reactions are essential to dodge flying discs as they ricochet around at breakneck speed. Brave formidable single player adventures or meet up with your friends and challenge them to intense local multiplayer battles.
Yonder
C# Unity D&D 5e
Yonder
A character builder and optimiser for Dungeons and Dragons 5e and similar TTRPGs. I'm currently building the underlying models to build character optimising tooling on top of, and possibly a VTT further down the line.
Out of Office (Abandoned)
C# Unity VR
Out of Office (Abandoned)
A VR room escape in which you take on the role of a spy going undercover at a confusing corporation riddled with strange futuristic technology. Explore each room and solve puzzles to figure out what Deep Vertical Industries are up to (it can't all be 'synergy' and 'blue-sky thinking').

About Me

Ever since my early teens, I’ve been drawn to making melodies, with my first steps into the musical world coming via writing trance and playing the cello. It wasn’t long before I picked up a guitar and started singing in rock bands. These days, I channel my creative energies into writing music for games, recording covers, and writing my own solo metal music.

I came to coding fairly late in life during college, although my interest in making games started as a young child. After studying Computer Science with Maths at Warwick, I went on to work as a System Tester and Tooling Engineer at IBM. During that time I also ran a group which taught new graduates how to code in C++ - we built games from scratch and then took them to local primary schools to teach children STEM lessons. This later went on to become XMPT Games.

At present, I’m an engineering lead for Corporate Banking at Investec, as well as a director and developer of XMPT Games. I’m currently working with the following…

  • Azure
  • C# | C++ | Python
  • Unity | Unreal
  • Midjourney | ChatGPT
  • Cubase | Reaper
  • Blender | Substance