Life of an XNA developer

Xbox Indie Games Review - Poker Stacker 2

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:00:00 +0000

The description describes the game pretty well but the general idea of the game here is that cards drop from the top, Tetris style, but instead of making a full line of blocks you need to make a valid poker hand. This includes 2 of a kind, full house, royal flush, etc. If you have no idea what any of that meant then there's a helpful instructions screen that shows examples of each combo you can make.

The game gets more difficult by increasing the difficulty of the hand you need to make. It starts with asking you to make any pair (2's or higher) and it gets harder by jumping to 8's or higher, 10's or higher, etc. It seemed to jump up the difficulty every 2/3 levels (with 3/4 pairs in each level).

I enjoyed the game but after 2/3 playthroughs it started to get pretty repetitive. You have a local highscore table, showing the top 3 scores, but there's not much incentive to beat my previous scores. One thing I could see improving the replayability is awards (aka achievements but indie games can't use the word 'achievements'). Having some awards like 'Make 5 royal flushes' and the like would give me incentive to try and build the better hands instead of just matching the lowest mark.

The game gives you hints when you can make a higher combo. If you have 2 aces in a line and another one pops up it'll say 'Try making 3 of a kind' or something similar so I would start scanning the cards to see where I had 2 aces in one line. I thought that was really helpful but it was almost like cheating. I have a flush and royal flush opportunity that I never would've caught if it wasn't for the hints. I got about one hint per level which wasn't nearly enough to be over the top so that was a cool feature.

If you're looking for a Tetris fix or you're a poker fan (even though it's not really a 'poker' game) I'd recommend it for a quick fix.

Rating - 7/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Magnetic Wars

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Magnetic Wars is a twin stick shooter at it's core but you can also attract/repel enemies and bullets using the left/right triggers.

The game comes with 10 levels and 4 difficulty levels so that's a total of 40 levels (even though there's only 10 different ones) for you to conquer. The level select screen shows which levels on which shows you all 40 levels and highlights the ones that you've completed. For those that like to play 100% through their games it's a nice feature so you can keep track of what you've already done. You don't get access to the Impossible levels until you beat all 10 levels on Hard. I've played through all 10 Easy levels and levels 8/9/10 on Hard so far. The Impossible levels might be different from the other since I don't have access to them but I'm guessing they just increase the amount of damage you take. On Easy bullets to 0.25 damage and on Hard they did 1.0 damage.

You've got a standard weapon to start with that shoots a steady stream of bullets in a single line. Powerups include homing missiles, rate of fire, damage, multiplier, speed and health increases. They all seem to disappear after you shoot enough or they may be on a timer I couldn't exactly tell.

Each level ends with a boss battle that you need to kill before you complete the level and they're all different so that adds some variety. There's also plenty of different enemies and patterns in the levels so each level is completely different from the others.

There's high scores but I'm not sure if they're global or not. I was the only one on the list but it's also possible nobody else was playing at the time.

I have a couple minor complaints that could've improved my experience. I found it a little hard to be accurate with the weapons, probably because the bullets you shoot are pretty small. The controls also felt like they could've been tighter. Your ship will always be moving slightly even if you aren't moving him around which I found annoying because I couldn't sit still and shoot if I wanted to.

If you have a $1 or 80 MSP laying around and are a fan of shooters I'd recommend checking out the trial and buy it if it entices you.

Rating - 8/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Isagoras

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:00:00 +0000

To be honest, it's a pretty cool game and it has some cool bullet patterns but sometimes stuff just blends in too much that puts a strain on my ability to keep track of everything.

The gameplay is a top-down shooter with what looks like 3D models. You have to dodge mass amounts of bullets (sometimes called a 'bullet hell' game) while destroying lots of little enemies and occasional boss battles.

One really cool feature is the ability to slow down time to make dodging between the bullet patterns a lot easier.

If you're a fan of bullet hell style games, you should give it a try to see if it's your cup of tea.

Rating - 7/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Breeze

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:00:00 +0000

This is kind of similar to Blow since you're blowing something around and gravity and other factors are in the game to hurt/help you. You control a fan that rotates around a flower and you blow it around the level to collect sun orbs and reach the exit. The closer your fan is to the flower, the quicker you can blow it around. If you touch anything around the level though it's gameover! Some levels you need to collect a certain amount of sun orbs before the exit opens up and some levels you just need to get to the exit before time runs out and without hitting anything in the level. I've played through 25 out of the 60 levels so far and there's only been 1 level that I died 15+ times on.

There are 2 things that I dislike about the game though. You can move the fan in any direction around your flower but if you come in contact with it you lose! It rarely happens on the less difficult levels but I noticed it happening a lot more often on harder levels because I had to stay close so I could move my flower on a moments notice. The second problem I had is when you collect a sun orb you get a bright glow about 4 times the size of the orb itself, which covers your flower and/or fan. When you're navigating tight spaces and you collect one of these it's anyone's guess where you'll end up with the bright burst fades away. Making it more transparent so you can see through the burst or moving the flower/fan on top of the burst would've helped out.

In general, if you enjoyed Blow or you're a fan of puzzle games (that you need to take your time on) then check out Breeze.

Rating - 8/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:00:00 +0000

There's a few flaws with an otherwise really fun game. The general story of the game is... yep you guessed it. You're run through a total of 5 levels in order to get to the princess.

The gameplay has you jumping on platforms, which increases your combo until you jump on the same platform again, and you need to double jump to hit the monster and hurt it. Each monster takes 3 hits and when you hit it once it jumps up the screen a ways so you need to start, or continue, your combo while making your way back up to attack it again. You have to be quick though because if the monster makes it to the door at the top you will fail and must retry the level. Levels are as wide as the screen but plenty high so you'll do plenty of climbing to reach the monster as they float up.

There's cutscenes in between each level which are fun and a little quirky since the main character, dracula, is a little full of himself. I found them to be quite enjoyable though and they help move the story along.

I loaded up the game and jumped right into story mode and about 10 minutes later I beat the game. I failed once on the first and second level since I was learning to play but otherwise it's pretty easy if you want to just beat the game. You can always go back through the Donkey Kong style map and replay levels to get a higher combo. There's also awards and a scrapbook of unlockables you can earn so while the story mode is very short there's still more you can do before you put the game down.

Overall, it gets a 8 from me because it's terribly short. It's presented in a cool way so you should at least check out the demo and find out if it's worth your $3.

Rating - 8/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Hypership Out of Control

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:00:00 +0000

If you're a fan of retro shooters, look no further!

Hypership has you starting at a fairly slow pace but as you progress your max speed increases and you start going faster and faster. There's a handful of powerups that can make you invincible for a period of time, allow you to shoot through walls or a shield to give you a free hit instead of exploding.

The game doesn't really have enemies or bosses that most other shooters have but it's replaced with moving blocks and skinny passages that you have to navigate through. You can shoot the smaller object to blow them out of your way but the bigger stuff you'll have to navigate (unless you have the powerup that lets you shoot and destroy anything).

There's 10 waves and once you beat all 10 they start over again. Your speed increases level by level so eventually, based on your skill, it'll just be too fast for you to react to anything and you'll die.

There's a handful of modes that let you practice, play with 3 lives, play with 1 life and a mode called coindown that you must collect coins in order to stay alive. There's plenty to do here instead of just the usual 'normal' mode.

There's one flaw to the game that I think will be a deal breaker for some people. If you don't have very good hand/eye coordination or your reflexes aren't what they used to be then you're in for a rough ride. The increasing speed will just make it too hard for some people to react and could get frustrating especially if you're not very smooth with your flying and find yourself always running into walls.

If you have the patience and memory to find the perfect paths through a level and the reflexes to navigate through some small spaces at a fast speed then you'll find yourself constantly coming back to get just a little bit further than your last attempt. Highscore leaderboards should keep people competitive and push the bar further than anyone thought was possible.

I highly recommend everyone to at least give it a shot because it's one of the games I find myself coming back to play every once in a while!

Rating - 9/10

Forge World in Halo: Reach

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 06:51:00 +0000

Not really relevant to anything we're working on but I figured it's somewhat related to game design in general (Forge World being a level editor). Forge World is basically a huge world in which you can create a level inside of it using any amount (big or small) of the world you choose. Most Bungie made levels made with Forge World only use 1/5 of the space (guessing) so there's plenty of room to work around. If you really wanted you could use teleporters to navigate the huge terrain in an Invasion map or such.

The good:

You can edit coordinates for each piece you place so you can line things up almost perfectly.
The different physics modes (Normal, Fixed, Phased). Normal lets object react to explosions and stuff so you can move them around the level. Fixed lets the object react and collide with other objects while you're placing it (also good for making things line up and NOT overlap) but it doesn't react to explosions so once you place it that is where it'll stay. Finally, Phased allows you to overlap objects so you can build stuff in the sides of mountains or inside of other buildings.

The bad:

No undo button! Even if you could just undo your last move that would be greatly appreciated for when you accidentally delete something.

Features I wish they had:

The ability to make myself the only person that can edit the map and anyone else in the game can only play and not move my stuff around. I like showing my friends the progress on my level but it always ends up with everyone dropping in stuff all over the place... It's a good thing to save right when someone joins and don't plan on doing anything productive while there's someone else in the game because they may fly to some random corner and place 47 warthogs in the corner of the map. :)
To make objective gametypes (capture the flag, etc) you need to change the gametype before you enter the game. There's a gametype called 'Basic Editing' which just lets you edit levels without scoring or objectives and that's what I always used. When I wanted to add flag spawns to my level I had to quit out, change from 'Basic Editing' to a capture the flag gametype and then I was finally able to set some properties to actually get my flags to work in game. It's not really a bad thing but it's a little bit of a hassle to change through gametypes to get all of my objectives to work.

Xbox Indie Games Review - Snailien Invasion

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 03:25:00 +0000

I played this quite a while ago with a friend before it came out and we played it for at least an hour as it's much more enjoyable with a friend!

Since then the game has come a long way and added a level up kind of system where you earn 0.1 points per kill (I think) and you unlock different weapons/classes as you progress. The last unlock seemed to be at 500 points which puts that unlock at 50,000 kills if I did my math correctly. My first game gave me about 65 kills and it goes up a little bit each game I play. I did have some previous experience so I knew what I was doing from the start.

If you don't have a friend to play with there's a local mode where you kill drones that chase after you. I thought it was awesome (especially considering the game was going to be released as a multiplayer-only game at one point!) as it gets a little tougher as you go but you're always working towards that next unlock. I didn't have a chance to test multiplayer, either system link or on Xbox Live, but if it's anything like it was when I played with a friend long ago then it's definitely worth checking out!

The game has plenty of replayability if you're going for those unlocks but since some of the last unlocks are at a pretty ridiculous standard you might have to do some grinding to get those last few. If you have a friend to play against and you enjoy just jumping around, setting traps, tag, whatever floats your boat there's plenty to do with your imagination. My friend and I played king of the hill and used the anti-mater gun (which creates little circles of dirt that you must blow your way through or slowly dig through it) and that in itself was loads of fun.

The game plays super smooth and I only had one instance of a slight lag spike. I think the $3 price range is scaring off some of the initial buyers but you should at least check out the demo. Especially if you're a Worms fan!

Rating: 8.5/10

Preorder Call of Duty: Black Ops and get $20 off your next purchase!

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:52:00 +0000

Amazon has a deal going on right now if you order Call of Duty: Black ops on the PS3 or 360 you'll get a $20 discount on your next video game purchase. You can see all of the details on the amazon site.

P.S. I have a friend that's currently playtesting it and he says it's better than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and that's saying a LOT since I thought MW2 was amazing.

Xbox Indie Games Review - Star Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:14:00 +0000

I guess you could label this as a side-scrolling retro shooter but there's an added feature of gravity which makes it really fun. You're either sitting at the bottom of the screen or using your thruster to move towards the top of the screen. The only controls are left trigger to use the thruster and right trigger to shoot. It's easy to pick up and play and I think I'll find myself coming back to this one every once in a while to play. There's global leaderboards so you can fight for those top spots and multiple difficulties so there's always something challenging based on your skill level. The retro style art and sprite explosions are pretty cool but the music reminds me more of an adventure game than a shooter.

Rating - 8/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Towers

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

I'm a huge tower defense fan and man is this game hard!

This is your basic tower defense game and if you're reading this and are a fan of the genre you should probably just buy it now. Towers does an awesome job on incorporating new and old ideas to the mix. Build towers, kill baddies, all the stuff you expect in the game is there but the way you place towers is pretty cool. There are trees placed around the level and you can only place a tower where a tree is (or has previously been) so this adds a bit more strategy to the game. Hardcore tower defense fans will enjoy the difficulty of this game but it will scare newcomers off who don't completely understand everything. There's a variety of towers (6+ or so) that all do your basic tower defense stuff. Slow, poision, splash and air are all present so you'll catch on pretty quickly if you know your stuff.

The difficulty of the game is something that I felt challenged me and made me try strategy after strategy until something worked. I never felt like anything was frustrating but having to find the 'perfect strategy' in order to beat a level can get tedious after 10+ attempts. The game was updated and the ability to change the difficulty level was added but I haven't played it since the update so I can't give my opinion on the different difficulties.

If you like the genre, buy it. If you like a challenge, buy it. If you've never played a tower defense game before, you should probably start with something more forgiving.

Rating - 8.5/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Leximo

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0000

The general premise of this game is to make words (either randomly or specifically if that's one of your objectives) with single letters falling from the top of the screen.

When you first start out you'll actually try to spell things because you get points by making words. Eventually you'll find out that there's no benefit to taking your time (unless you need to spell a specific word) so you start button mashing moving from left to right in order to just fill the board nearly full then hit the button that finds words for you. You'll get a larger combo bonus when more words are found so my game plan was to fill the board as full as I could, while I was still safe from losing, and then let the game search for words as I watched the points rack up. Watching the game sort through all of the words it finds is enjoyable because it's presented very well and the 5 or so most recent words are shown on the side of the screen so you can see what's being found. The game has a lot of polish into it but don't expect to play it like a word game.

The general idea of the game is cool but I'm not sure there's any hype or want for this type of game. If you have a dollar to burn and want to try something completely new then this might be a game worth trying.

Rating - 7/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - AvaGlide

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I should probably start off saying that I never played Pilot Wings but I'm told this is a lot like it.

In AvaGlide you control your avatar flying a glider and there's 3 different game modes you can play.
-In Ring Rush you're suppose to fly through rings to increase your time and collect stars in between those rings for extra points.
-Delivery Dash has you dropping crates off on platforms to score points. The crates react to physics so you have to be careful in your drops otherwise they'll roll right off the platform!
-Star Smash has clocks to increase your time and gold/silver/bronze stars to increase your points. Score as many points as you can before you crash or the time runs out.

The game controls very smoothly and if I ever flew a glider I think it would control exactly the same so it does a good job of simulating that experience. There's also 'air lifts' around the place that help send you back in the air so when you start running out of juice they'll give you some extra oomph. Everything is score based and it also has global high scores so that should add a lot of replayability and record breaking attempts. :)

Rating - 9/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Lethal Judgement

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:00:00 +0000

As a developer myself I'll probably be a little harsher on this review than most. A few criticisms first.

1) I have a pretty old controller and my joysticks don't always revert to 0,0 (no movement) so there were plenty of times that my ship would automatically float to the back of the screen while I was paying attention to other things happening. Developers usually give a 'leeway' that prevents this from happening but that wasn't present here.

2) Title safe problems. By this I mean that some stuff is cutoff by the edges of the screen (like the life bar and boss health bar in this game) and you're actually able to fly off the edge of the screen on the left hand side. I thought this was a pretty big issue because plenty of times I was forced back from lots of enemies or bullets and then my ship disappeared and sometimes I would hit enemies that were also off screen. A big no-no in my books.

3) WAY too much going on. Sometimes there would be rocks falling from the ceiling that look like you have to dodge them but they're just there to look pretty. They're very distracting because my first reaction is to dodge them then I get shot by something that does actually hurt me. I know plenty of shooters do this next one but it seemed too distracting/slow in this game. Some enemies fly on screen (from left to right) and they start big and gradually get smaller. You can't shoot them and they can't hurt you until they reach the right side of the screen but again, I thought they were going to hit me so I stayed away. They also cover the smaller enemies up so I'm thinking 'hey they don't hurt me so I can fly through them' but then I hit a smaller enemy that is hidden by them. Maybe if these flew in faster it wouldn't be as big of a distraction.

Now onto some actual gameplay. It's your basic side scrolling shooter with little guys that are in masses but easy to kill and eventually large boss fights. You get an occasional powerup that adds more bullets to your shots and even lets you shoot fireballs. You also have the ability to activate a 'laser shield' of sorts that kills anything it comes into contact with for a short period of time. It's a decently fun game and if there were less distractions I would definitely recommend it. A few things stop me from recommending it at the 240MSP ($3) range because it does give you a score at the end but it's never saved. A shooter that gives you points while playing through and doesn't save them to a local or global leaderboard when you eventually die is a bad no-no. If you have some time to burn, are a fan of shooters and just want something to fill some free time (with no record breaking attempts) then you'll probably enjoy it.

Rating - 6/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - 7strains : The Infectious

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 21:17:00 +0000

There's one HUGE feature that holds this game back from being really enjoyable and that's the lack of shooting while moving.

So a little about how the game plays. You must avoid different strains of infections at all cost or it's game over. There's 7 different strains that all have their own abilities and you have to pick up rocks across the map in order to kill the strains. Once you throw a rock you must go collect it again, if it's safe, so you can throw it again. You can collect a few rocks at a time so it's not always shoot once, collect once. To shoot you have to hold one of the face buttons (A/B/X/Y) and you get a cursor which you can use to help you aim. The only drawback that keeps this from being an enjoyable experience is that you're froze while trying to aim. You can shoot directly in front of you while moving but without a cursor it's impossible to hit anything reliably. The only way to really kill things is to just get close enough to them so they chase you, and get your cursor lined up so they walk into your shots. The strains randomly move around so killing them while they aren't chasing you is near impossible.

The game offers a ton of custom options that make any and every game you play different. You can change how many strains there are, the difficulty, the speed, the map and the list goes on. Maps are randomly generated based on options so that always gives a fresh feeling to the gameplay. I tried playing on Insane difficulty and everything is faster than you so if a strain sneaks up on you you're dead because you can't turn around fast enough to do anything. Maybe it's better in multiplayer where someone can watch your back.

The game offers up to 4 player local co-op/versus which is pretty neat because once one of you gets infected you can chase your buddies around and slow them down so the strains infect them also. Since there's no high scores or stat saving, besides and end of round results, playing with friends is a must to enjoy the game over a period of time.

Rating - 6/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Decay - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:03:00 +0000

You don't necessarily need to play Decay - Part 1 to enjoy this game but it helps put the story in line since it's a continuation from the first game.

This can be best described as a point and click adventure game. It's almost a detective type game where you need to figure out certain puzzles or find a key to open a locked door. The game is very dark and creepy and it does a perfect job of setting that mood.

There's a few things that prevent a perfect 10 from this review and those are as follows.
1) A notepad or similar feature to keep track of important things. If you forget something you must travel to the location (if you remember where it was). At one point the game says something along the lines of 'this looks important, maybe I should write it down' but who has a pad/pen laying around and is willing to take notes on paper while playing a video game.
2) There's a few times where you can get really stuck and there's no 'help' option where you can get a push in the right direction. Maybe there could be help clues for the next objective that push you in the right direction or remind you of what you just accomplished.

Otherwise Decay - Part 2 is just as good as Part 1 and you'll have a fun time playing detective throughout the game. It's only about an hour long or so, depending on how often you get stuck, but it's enjoyable the entire time.

Rating - 9/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Immunogen

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:00:00 +0000

The game is pretty different from anything I've seen on Xbox Live Indie Games and that could be a good or bad thing. You're given a cursor that you use to drop colored pills onto viruses to kill them. Using a cursor on a console game isn't a bad thing if the game isn't based on speed. Once you reach higher levels or play on a higher difficulty you have to be really quick and accurate while selecting and dropping the pills and that's the only downfall of the game. At the beginning of each round you're shown the set of viruses (colored) and which colored pill you must use to kill that specific virus. For example. Green kills pink, blue kills red, and so forth. This game really keeps you thinking because EVERY round it changes making you learn everything over again. On top of that they'll eventually add more and more matches you must remember (it starts at 4 but can increase up to 12 I believe!?).

It also has a set of awards so you have some replayability in order to get them all. One of them is to reach level 46 in any difficulty and while I played the game I only got up to level 7...

They've talked about porting it to smartphones of some sort and I think that'll be an awesome market for this game because it's a drag and drop game which works a lot better on a PC/touch phone then for a console with thumbsticks. Getting to level 46 and remembering 12 matches of colors is going to take a photographic memory or some serious memory skills.

Rating - 7.5/10.

Xbox Indie Games Review - Lumi

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Lumi review (as written on xblaratings.com)

First off I have to express that this game is beautiful! There's all kinds of parallax going on (sometimes gets in the way of your character) and particle effects and even a couple cutscenes (intro and ending).

Lumi also won the DreamBuildPlay 2010 challenge so you can guess that it's a pretty well polished game.

While this game was going through review there was a lot of talk about the difficulty of the game being too harsh. The thing about this game that makes it difficult is based on the main mechanic of the game, magnetism. You have 2 buttons, left/right trigger, that either attract or repel you from certain obstacles. Use the blue to attract to blue points, or use red near a blue point to repel away from it. This is a very cool mechanic but it falls short because of its unforgiveness. If you don't physically touch the point you're trying to attract to then you'll miss it. You have to be pixel perfect with your jumps and there's some points in the game where you have to be successful in 6+ jumps in a row or else you'll fail (or have to retry). When you have to be near perfect in each of these jumps it can get pretty frustrating especially after having to retry 20+ times which happened on a few levels for me. I think I'm a pretty patient guy but I had to walk away from this game a couple times because I was getting way too frustrated.

I do recommend it to anyone who likes a challenge and the top notch art just adds to the experience. The Impossible Game is a difficult game and that's doing quite well so I think this one should also do well.

I'd give Lumi an 8.5/10 solely based on the difficulty level. Don't get me wrong I'm all for games that test my skill but I think it was a frustrating difficulty based on its unforgiveness rather than just a difficult game.

Xbox 360 HDMI vs Component

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Is it worth it to upgrade? I've always used the component cables that came with my 360. I'm sure you get a little quality boost but is it enough to warrant an upgrade? I don't have any experience with HDMI so is there anyone out there with experience/opinions on HDMI vs component? I'd love to hear from people currently using HDMI or even better if you went from HDMI to component so you can sell me on the idea! :)

EDIT: I got pointed to this link on twitter by @theBigDaddio: http://bit.ly/dfhMSA. Basically if you're a movie fanatic and/or you have an HD DVD player you should upgrade. Some shadows are more defined with HDMI but you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference. The component cables can only scale video to 480p so there's another movie fan stat.

Current Xbox 360 HDMI vs component verdict: Go with HDMI if you're a movie fanatic and want to get resolutions higher than 480p.

Space Swine, VS2010 and more tutorials!

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:19:00 +0000

It's been a while since the last post but I've been pretty busy with a wedding this past weekend and we put Space Swine through its first peer review session. A few people commented on some things that we're now changing and there was a loss of control issue so we would've had to pull the game for that reason anyways. On a positive note they seemed to enjoy the humor in the game so that's always good.

I also installed Visual Studio 2010 because I've had it on a disc for a while now but haven't felt the need to install it. I'm still using Windows XP on this laptop so I can't use the Windows Phone 7 dev tools until I upgrade to Vista or 7. The XNA 4.0 beta just came out as well but it doesn't support Xbox 360 development yet so that's another bust. I mainly installed it so I could play around with the new interface and play around with some new stuff like Silverlight until I either move my desktop, which has Windows 7, or upgrade my laptop.

Since we've had some downtime and there's not much to do while Space Swine is readying for release I've wrote a handful of tutorials to share with the world. You can find a list of them on the XNA Tutorials tab at the top of this blog or at our website. They're nothing special but hopefully they help the newer people with some basic things that they'd want to do in their game.

Ford GT Unwrapped/Textured

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:21:00 +0000

Here's a little storyboard of the progress so far today. I think it's ready to go into XNA so that'll be my next step.
First I separated my model into 'clusters' as the Mod Tool calls them. Basically they're just groups of selected polygons so the unwrap process goes a lot smoother. Once you get everything separated into clusters you can start unwrapping your model. You can see how I separated my clusters in the picture below.

It took awhile to unwrap but it's the first time I've done it in a couple years and the first time ever for Mod Tool. When I was done I found some more tips/suggestions from a tutorial I missed that would've helped a ton... Here is what my final unwrap looked like:

Pretty sloppy but I'm no artist/modeler and this is just a practice run to learn everything. Then I went into Photoshop and worked some magic and this was my final texture.

I know it's pretty awesome so you can ask for tips later. I just wanted to get the hang of unwrapping and texturing with Mod Tool so I know how it works for future reference. Next I'll work on a shader of some sort but I'm not really sure what I'll do. I have a basic understanding of shaders so I'll have to find a tutorial or sample somewhere to get me started. I know the XNA website has plenty of examples so I'll go through some there. Here's a few shots I rendered out from Mod Tool. Everything is default lighting and such so don't expect anything special!

Mod Tool Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:38:00 +0000

I finished my model as much as I'm going to go at this point so I can texture it tomorrow. I'm not very fast at modeling something good in a quick amount of time and I'm very picky so if I don't stop now there's always going to be something that just isn't quite right. I'm not a modeler anyways so I'll move on and see what I can get done tomorrow AND this model isn't going in a game so no need to improve it right now, I'll keep it as a side project.

I want to do a quick texture just so I can get the hang of it and get it thrown into XNA and maybe start working on some shaders. If I'm feeling lucky maybe I'll see how animations work and turn my car into a transformer. :)

Mod Tool Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 04:18:00 +0000

Here's a few pictures of what my Ford GT looks like. I haven't touched the back at all so that's why it's really boxy at the moment. The front end isn't quite where I'd like it but it's totally fine for now because this isn't actually going anywhere it's just for learning purposes so I can get a feel for how everything works. Feel free to comment if you want to point out some improvements or tips.

Mod Tool Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 06:42:00 +0000

Eventually we'll be jumping head first into the 3D world so I'm getting familiar with the Mod Tool (3D modeling) so I can help our modeler in getting things ready to import to XNA. And if our modeler gets overwhelmed, or has other priorities, I can jump it to get some assets created. I haven't touched a modeling program for at least 12 months (3DS Max) and I've never used Mod Tool before so I'm remembering/learning along the way. I figured I'd model a car since I think it's a relatively easy thing to start with.

Eventually I'll come to shaders/textures/importing to XNA but for now I'm just learning the tool. I won't post any pictures today because I basically only have a box with wheels. :)

FIFA hates technology

noreply@blogger.com (FinalMirage) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:10:00 +0000

Someone in the #xna chat on efnet.org posted this picture and it was too good to pass up! Pretty much every sport has allowed technology to play some part in the decision making but FIFA seems pretty against it. Today I watched 2 terrible calls that could have been reversed, and should've been reversed, but they don't use replays or anything to help with their call making. The first one I watched was what should've been England's 2nd goal of their game vs Germany. As you can see in the picture above the ball clearly passed the line (well, not in the picture :P) but it wasn't called a goal. Then Argentina's 2nd goal was scored by someone who was 2+ yards offsides. That one caused a giant battle of words from both teams as they surrounded the referees as they discussed it.
Whatever their reason for not allowing technology to play a part things like these could be fixed in a matter of seconds by someone in a booth watching the game from above. The refs already use mics and such to communicate with each other so why not allow someone to chime in and reverse a call if needed?