Holy!

Well!

It's been a while since I've posted anything up here... Not that I really have any readers yet.

Just a bit of news for now:

Notice the brand new title! We finally have a theme for the game and a bit of a backstory to go with it. Art will be coming soon, as we finally have an artist. For now, we're still stuck with my MS paint abilities.

Introducing... Edgar!

The game is finally starting to come together. Just about all of the features are implemented and ready to go in it's single player form. Online networked support is just about caught up to single player.

It's all getting closer and closer!

I've also built up a personal profile on Indie Freaks which can be seen HERE. Check it out for most of our future screenshots and videos.

Back to gaming!

I'm going to start this off with the funny fact that I have never owned an XBox 360 before I borrowed my bosses (I suppose I still don't, har har). Yet I'm building a game for XBox Live Indie Games.

The real point to that fact is that I suck with this controller and I am terrible at my own game...

I'm a PC gamer at heart. These analog sticks, buttons and triggers are no match for WSAD,12345,Ctrl,Shift and a mouse.... But alas! I'm afraid to even bother with creating PC games for the simple fact of piracy. Why make a game when the minute it becomes popular, it shows up in torrent sites.

Anyways, back to the points. I would love to know if other devs ever run in to the problem of being terrible at their own games.

Also, here's some video! I would recommend clicking the youTube logo and watching it there. Waaay better quality.

Oh Torque X... You silly bugger

Well... I've always seen people complain about Garage Games, or Torque by IA as it is now. They've always said how fickle they are and how they do a half-assed job.

Now, I half agree and I half don't agree with this.

I use Torque X, which anyone reading this who uses it will know TX did not get the love it needed or deserved. I'd say Torque built an awesome engine, which they did, but they failed to make it work... I've only used it for a year and a half but I've seen a ton of hopeful tid-bits from the staff that things will be better, they're going to fix it properly, they're going to do this and that. In the end they end-of-lifed it and moved on.

They decided to scrap their XNA 3.1 platform entirely to switch to an XNA 4.0 platform and totally focus on the new Windows Phone 7 (which is overhyped and a bit late in the game, iPhone and Android beat them to it). I can understand their intentions seeing as how Microsoft is putting a TON of money in to advertising to try to hype it as much as possible. I hope it works out, I'll be porting some of my games to Windows Phone 7 if it turns out to be reliable. In the mean time, Microsoft pushed XBox 360 to the backburner and Torque followed suit.

Now, we're left with some amazing forum community members who have taken it upon themselves to totally port Torque X 3.1 to the new 4.0 framework. Which is awesome! I can't thank these guys enough for taking one for the team and doing what Torque should have done (I think I forgot to mention that Torque will be charging for the new version of TX most likely, leaving us with a broken product). I'm gladly beta-testing and hopefully making a difference.

Cheers out to Pino and AlexR!


There's my two cents at least.

Enjoy the little things.

Ran through the first real test run today.

This is the first time any game I've made has been played by anyone other than myself. A nice little milestone.

My girlfriend and I had a 2 player match deployed on the XBox. Now, she's not a gamer in the least and she was laughing like a maniac so something must be right. I had no enemy cap and watching her flail around trying to get her orbs was priceless.

The point though, is that it was actually pretty fun to play. Now it's time to throw in some powerups, enemy attacks and, hopefully soon, some new art.

The most interesting thing I'm waiting for is to have my design team test play the game with full control over certain variables, enemy spawn time, damages, hit points and the like. Should make for good times. Hell, I enjoy playing with the little things.

And it's all coming together.

This is a beutifull time in game development...

When it all starts to actually feel like a game instead of just some primary features.

I've found this feeling at different points in my previous work-in-progress games. With Cosmic Lacrosse I got that feeling as soon as the bright flashing goal image came up and the players instantly teleport back to face-off positions.

Well wait. I suppose it's all the same because I have this feeling now with Cosmic Harvest when I can get all my points, get to my gate and then press a restart button.

I guess what it comes down to, for me at least, is the constant play feeling.

Prior to this update I've had to simply close the game, restart and begin anew. Now I simply press the replay button!


Replaying is definately a prime factor in this feeling of coming together that I have. Auto-spawning enemies definately helps as well. This is way more fun when I don't have to press B to spawn an enemy.


Anyways, here's some footage! I'm definately pumped to see all of these videos in reverse once the game is done.

Progress!

At last! Progress!

Of my indie game dev experience to date, the biggest setback to progress is the day job. But alas, bills need to be paid.

Enough whining though, on to some news. After a decent ammount of time spend today some difficulty is actually being worked out in the game. We now have enemies! (As harmless as they may seem) Not only that but attacks no longer fire through walls! Huzzah!

As a treat, here's some video of the latest build.

Twitter

Well... I finally caved and got a twitter account. Good for game publicity I suppose.

Mah first twitter