John Zeitler

Over the past couple of days, there have been some… interesting revelations regarding how well XNA Community Games have sold on the Xbox 360. To sum up the GamerBytes article in brief: ( they don’t… » )

Code work for the XNA Project Tech Demo is complete. Which is kind of a big deal. It could have been done yesterday if I had not been struck by a massive case of Lazy. Still, today is just as good, since it’s a whole nine days before I expected to have to code like crazy in order to get it up in time for Tekkoshocon. As I said on the Twitter feed, though, it’s not “done” done yet: there’s a handful of tweaks I need to make to the script in order to get it to a point where it really shows off what can be done. But, by the end of March, you folks will be able to download a demo that you can play, so you can finally find out what the hell I’ve been running off at the mouth about for three months. Just have a little more patience, please.

At the very least, I think I’ve earned the right to enjoy this convention.

Okay. I spent a bit more time working on the game last night, but today’s progress– even thus far– has been tremendous. I’ve got a preliminary loading screen, I’ve got things set up for dynamic loading (read: loading only what you need for the scene ahead of time, then unloading only that when switching scenes), I did up the character positioning setup and drawing code AND created artwork for the demo characters…

…and I got it running on Windows. It’s optimized for 720p right now (which means it’s WAY too big for average screens), so my biggest problem right now is getting the art rescaled to a standard size for the Windows version. I also have to set up an alternate control scheme, as I’m not going to demand that the people I’m giving this to have 360 controllers attached to their computers. Overall, I think I’m about 6 more hours away from a publishable alpha game (I chose not to put any music in for this alpha, beyond some sounds that will probably need to be replaced).

Those six hours are going to be next weekend, folks– I’m going to go enjoy the rest of this one, now that I can.

I’m still not feeling 100% better, but today has managed to be productive in spite of my hazy mindset. For example, I finished the script for the tech demo, figured out the preliminaries for sound and have working sounds in the demo, and fixed a VERY nasty bug that would have bit me in the ass if I didn’t catch it now. I really only have the character framework to do tomorrow, and then the hard part of getting the Windows version converted will begin. The XML assistant program I wrote was good in that it saved me a ton of typing, but on the other hand it’s not terribly helpful when it comes to assembling dialogue fragments– THAT part had to be done by hand in notepad. All in all, though, today was damn good for six hours’ worth of work.

I’m still holding off on the celebrations until I have the executable available for download. But I’m so very close.

There’s been a lot of discussion regarding the effect that illicit copying of video games has on independent game developers. Seeing how as I am about to become an independent developer, I figure it’s probably worth a look at ( what I expect out of the experience of working on my game… » )

I do want to continue this discussion, as well as get some input on some of the specifics of the game. I invite you all to take a look at the thread in the forums to see what progress has been made (literally more information than you require on that aspect, I’m afraid) and give feedback on the whole deal. I’ll be asking some questions sooner or later in a more public manner.

I feel like Rocky Balboa climbing those steps in Philadelphia right now. Seriously, the sense of accomplishment I’m getting just from having gotten this far along in development of the XNA project has me incredibly psyched, even as it’s slowly sinking into my subconscious that I have a hell of a long way left to go. Still, as the video below adequately demonstrates (despite my rambling), my C# skillz are getting stronger.

I decided to forego playing more of Tales of Vesperia tonight in order to do a little bit of “testing the waters” coding with XNA (yes, again). I’m getting much more comfortable with it and with C# in general, to the point where I’m starting to think a step ahead of each command I enter– meaning, I’m not struggling to do the most basic tasks anymore. I have to admit that Visual Studio does a lot to make programmers feel at home, and the newest XNA Framework has advanced enough where I don’t feel overwhelmed anymore. It’s to the point where I’m no longer relying on code samples exclusively and can branch out on my own.

As soon as I have something worth showing off, I’ll upload it for perusal. In the meantime, just take my word for it: I’ve made more progress tonight than I have in quite literally years.