Over a Year

Well, it's been a little over a year since I started development of "Deep Blue". And yes, it's true I sorta figured I'd be well on with my second game by now but I can't say it hasn't been worthwhile.

In the past year I've taken big steps in learning C#, the XNA development platform, as well as the basics of object oriented programming. I've read through 2 books on C# programming, 2 additional books that deal with C# programming specifically in XNA. I've done my fair share of tutorials, studied code from over a dozen other games. I've built a working version of "Deep Blue", then torn it down again to make a much more efficient version. All this in my 'free time'.

All in all, it's been a productive year, even if the game isn't launched yet. We'll see what 2010 holds. And yes, I'm crossing my fingers once again that the launch of Deep Blue is in there somewhere.

Back Up And Running

Thanks to my wonderful in-house tech support department (a.k.a. my wife) I'm back up and running with a completely fresh and new hard drive and no viruses.

I successfully have both rectangle vs rectangle collision detection as well as per pixel collision detection test working in-game. Now to get the per pixel working while a rotate transform is taking place, so everything checks out with the spinning O2 tank.

I've also gone back and reworked the animation and animation player classes. They were designed with the assumption that all sprites would be squares which is not the case, pretty much across the board in "Deep Blue". But I still have another modification to make to it so my animation sprite sheets are not required to be laid out completely horizontally...like in the platformer sample.

So, more to do, but stuff is blowing up now and that's usually a good thing.

Visual Studio Malware???

So, I've been fighting a virus on my computer and I used an anti-malware software to get rid of it. It did a full scan, found a number of things and removed them.

And now....I can't seem to build ANYTHING in Visual Studio Express. Every time I "build" it acts like it does a successful build, even to the point that the UI shifts into "debug" mode but no window with the game actually comes up to display anything.

And it no longer seems to be creating an exe in the debug folder of the project. I've tried this with other "sample" projects and even a "raw" new project where I should have gotten the light blue screen.....but nothin.

I've uninstalled/redownloaded/and reinstalled Visual Studio Express but no change.

So, now what?!

Version Problem Solved...sort of

It took a bit more browsing through the XNA forums to find a 'solution' to my XACT audio problem. Here are a few important things to note.

First, the 'version' of the project is not entirely dictated by the 'version' of Visual Studio that you're currently using. The project is versioned when you start the project. I began "Deep Blue" with Game Studio 2.0 but then upgraded to 3.0 when it was mandated by the rules.

The problem with that is that XACT 3.0 wasn't compatible with Game Studio 3.0...even though they were a part of the same download...mmm...yeah....but anyhow. They fixed the compatibility issue with Game Studio 3.1 so I upgraded my version of Game Studio. But that didn't mean I upgraded the project...which remained at version 3.0, even though I was developing it in 3.1 at the time. So I had to manually 'upgrade' my project to 3.1.

Solved.....right? Not quite.

Even after doing this I got some really odd version errors on the audio so I decided to open XACT 3.0 and rebuild the sound banks again. But that didn't seem to help. I confirmed that the files were being overwritten (updated), but it didn't seem to have any effect.

I had to manually delete the compiled sound bank files and THEN rebuild the sound banks to finally get the project to compile without error. So now it all works, but it still doesn't make much sense.

Version Problems...

See, and I was going to make this post about how cool and awesome the XACT audio tool was for sound engineering. But instead, this post is about how screwy version control and backwards compatibility can be.

I'm having some odd version problems with XACT and Game Studio 2.0 or 3.0 (it's hard to tell which is causing the problems). The XACT audio tool is what enables you to create sound banks for XNA games.

At this point, one solution (sort of) appears to be to make a new sound bank with all the sounds in it. Which believe it or not is a little more complex than simply including a bunch of wav files in one collection. And honestly, that was supposed to be the 'cool' part...unless I have to do the whole thing twice.

Bottom line...or as much as I can tell right now...is that I began this project with Game Studio 2.0, which came with the XACT 2.0 tool. Then I had to upgrade to Game Studio 3.0 (all XNA submissions must be in 3.0 at this time). Well Game Studio 3.0 came with the XACT 3.0 audio tool...HOWEVER...the 3.0 audio tool was not compatible with Game Studio 3.0. (Yeah, I have no idea how THAT passed any kind of QA). This is an error they fixed in Game Studio 3.1. So you'd think everything would be cool (now). But it looks like (judging from the XNA forums), that if you start a project with an older version of Game Studio...it won't accept newer file format of XACT.

Ok, so worst case is that I have to recreate all the audio I just finished in XACT 3.0....back in the 2.0 version since any sound bank created with XACT 2.0 seems to work fine. ACCEPT for the funny thing call the XACT auditioning tool which is another app that runs in the background along with XACT that enables you to listen to the sounds you're creating in XACT. Without the auditioning tool...you can't hear a single thing of what you're creating. The totally cool and awesome part now is...the 3.0 version of the auditioning tool deleted/overwrote the 2.0 version. So now, if I try to use the XACT 2.0 tool to recreate the sounds....I can't listen to a single thing I'm doing.

So....a bit stuck on audio at the moment. Still searching the forums for a better answer than the one I've found so far.

My First Game Component

I'm very pleased to say I've completed my first independent Game Component. I created a messaging system for common message types. So far that includes floating score bubbles and sinking messages that I'll use in "Deep Blue" for things like "Ready, Dive!" or "Level 1".

It's a message system that is complete independent of the rest of the game code. It's easily integrated into any future game with....I think 2 lines of code. It's also something I can easily build new message types into with simple additional classes.

Things are moving along pretty well.

Unity 3d is now FREE

A 3d engine that's caught a lot of attention lately from the likes of EA and myself is Unity 3d. Mr. Chris Griffith at work showed it off a couple of years ago. At that time it was Mac only, which didn't help us out much, but it's come a long way since then.

The MMO "Fusion Fall" was created with it, as is the upcoming Tiger Woods Online among other games. Anyhow...the point to this post...as the title would suggest is that they have opted to drop the $200 license fee for the indy license.

The other cool thing is that they "Unity" has reported that it is...or will soon be...compatible with the 360. Sweet! The only real question is whether or not the 360 export will be included with the indy version.

I'll definitely be playing around with it sometime in the future, and researching it as a possible 3d engine.

Signed In!

Another little victory. I've now programmed in Xbox Live sign in to the beginning of the game, and it's even pulling in the players Xbox Live Gamertag name and displaying it where "Player 1" was being shown.

I know, it's nothing huge...but a nice little step none-the-less.

To Multiplay, Or Not To Multiplay

Currently weighing the value and use of multiplayer in "Deep Blue". Does it make sense? What does it add (if anything)? What does it require? What does it take away? Is there a "gotta have" reason for it?

Ever since early on in the play testing process Connor made the request for multiplayer. However, since this was my first shot into XNA and C# the best I've been shooting for at this point was couch play with two player co-op in two MANTA subs. Couch play seemed only logical since, barring some incredible miracle, I don't see "Deep Blue" having enough concurrent game plays to support a XBox Live multiplayer mode.

But the domino effect of including simple couch play will be felt throughout the game. How do we allow two players in the water and still have a balanced game that isn't twice as easy with two people? Then there's the whole process of registering two controllers and possibly two XBox Live accounts. Some of the UI elements (like showing the current depth) become confusing with two players.

At this point I think I'd rather toss multiplayer this time around and possibly use that time to create an awards/achievement system and more story elements.

I guess I'll run it past the game design boss, Connor, and see if he'll let it go. I just don't want to add multiplayer if it doesn't truely add something to the game play. Having it just to have it, does not increase the fun.

October Video Update

Here's a quick look* at how things stand. Obviously the new collision detection isn't in and I had made a noob mistake while rendering the latest rammer enemy which left the annoying light halo around the outter edge of the ship.

See the few previous posts for a short breakdown of what is new and/or changed.

Anyhow, progress is being made. More to come.

(* Facebook folks may have to follow the link: http://deepbluexna.blogspot.com )

Connor the Game Designer

Now that I've got a level system in place for "Deep Blue" I introduced Connor to the level editor, basically just a .txt file inside Studio Express. I laid out the rules for him of what each level needed to be valid and showed him how to do a build so he could test. So I put him in the role of both level designer and head of Q.A.

And here's Connor working on very intense level design.

....followed only moments later by Connor explaining to me all the things that were wrong.

Yes..."Deep Blue" still has a long way to go.

He's ALIVE!!!!

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm referring to the enemy ships that are now animated (swimming). I used the "Sample Platformer" game that came with Studio Express as a base for the sprite animation system.

Even better, using the level system I've got enemy placement in the level with multiple enemy types, one animated and one non-animated. So now I guess I'd better get to work on working in a few more enemy types to play with.

I've got Connor working hard on level design, he's working in Studio Express on a .txt file for enemy placement. He's going through all the create/test/alter cycle to get things the way he wants them.

Hopefully I'll get a video up soon to show progress.

Deep Blue 2.0

Things are moving pretty well with the restructuring. Here's a list of some of the changes, both big and small.

- (new) Logo screen with an image that may be swapped with a video before launched.
- (new functionality) Pop up windows ("How to Play" and "Credits") support multiple pages and an "open/close" state.
- (change) Projectiles are now stored in a List instead of an array to support infinite shots and stop the rubberbanding on the shotgun weapon.
- (new) Level object created, to support actual level design over the random spawn style game. Levels are designed and read in from a .txt file.
- (change) Enemies are now stored in a List instead of an array to support a variable number of enemies per level, as part of the level design change.
- (change) various cleanups of methods and classes.
- (change) and the big change was that the whole system is built in a modular fashion, instead of 90% of the code being found in one file. Individual classes for game screens, pickups, enemies, player, weapons, UI...etc. This was the entire reason for the teardown, so that the code could much more easily be modified for future games. It's also much easier to read through.

Still have a ways to go, but things are headed in the right direction now.

Making Progress

Mr. Montgomery's solution seems to be working. After commenting code and excluding classes throughout the project "Deep Blue" is up and running again. I've got a logo screen, splash screen, main menu, game over screen, and the beginnings of the main game screen complete with controllable MANTA ship.

The work ahead still looks pretty daunting if I step back and look at the whole thing in it's entirety, but plugging things in one little step at a time hasn't been too bad so far.

I just hope all the extra time it's cost me on "Deep Blue" will be worth it (both for the completion of Deep Blue and for the next game...themed around the same engine).

Back at it, with a new strategy

Ok, so although I've had a rush of other things that have popped up...like Cub Scouts and Scribblenauts...I have to say I've been a little discouraged with "Deep Blue". I had the goal of breaking the game and restructuring it, then putting it back together. Well, I managed to do the first part reeeeaaaally well. Maybe a little too well.

I've had trouble finding a way to approach "fixing" the code. I begun following the flow of the game from the beginning and fixing things that were broken along the way, but with the whole thing a wreck it made it impossible to compile and thus, test.

Then I tried looking at the debug code and fixing things one class at a time, beginning with the class with the least amount of errors. I found it proved very hard to tell if I was making progress or not. Again, without the ability to compile, it's hard to get a good feel for progress.

I THINK the restructuring was going pretty well. It definately cleaned up the main game class a ton, but I had no way to test.

So I spoke with a couple of friends at work skilled in programming and Mr. Jim Montgomery (honestly one of the most impressive sounding names at work, you really have to say the whole thing) suggested commenting virtually everything out in the main game class, just to get the game to compile and slowly turn things on one piece at a time.

So that's was the new plan. Even if I had to comment it down to a blue screen, I was going to get it to run again.

After my initial tests, things seem a little better than the worst case senario...after a ton of commenting I've returned to a logo screen, to a splash screen, to a menu screen (and the menu still works). And now begins the slow process of turning things back on and fixing as I go.

Sucker Shark

Initial 3d model of an enemy tentatively called the "Sucker Shark". They travel in packs, are quick and agile and attach themselves to the players ship sucking the oxygen out of it.

The oversized reflective eye is required for the deep sea low light environment.

The new book has arrived

The new xna book I ordered has finally arrived and I'm definately going to have to step up my progamming skills to put it to use but it looks like it will be very help on many fronts. I really like the way it's presented, in a "problem/solution" type of manner. It definately wasn't designed to be read through in a linear manner. It's more bite-sized bits of programming.

The majority of the book seems to be centered around 3d games, which will come in handy later, but there are also several lessons or segments on things I've been wondering about for "Deep Blue", such as save game states, game components, and signing in to xbox live.

So I'll be reading through sections this weekend.

Good 'n Broke

Oh yeah, she's good 'n broke now captain.

And I now have a plan "A" and "B". Plan A: is I continue trying to straighten things out as is (a plan that's taking much long than expected). Plan B: I've got my new XNA book coming in and maybe I'll find something that will help and make things click in there...but that isn't supposed to arrive until the next Friday :(

So, back to plan "A" for now.

Purchased a new XNA book

Just ordered a new book from Amazon: "XNA 3.0 Game Programming Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice in XNA)"

The bad news is, it's not going to get here before my extended Memorial Day vacation is over. Whenever it gets here I guess we'll see if I've graduated past the "beginner" XNA developer stage.

Working on more concept art at the moment centered around the game's story.

Stone Squid Animation

Here's a look at the initial animation test for the heavily armored "Stone Squid".

I has no ranged attack but instead rams the player with it's heavy protective forward shell.

(rss feed folks may have to follow this link to view the video http://deepbluexna.blogspot.com)

Music is excerpt from an original piece for the game.

Christmas Lights...

I like Christmas lights, I really do. All bright and shiny, flashing and twinkling. They really set the mood for the holidays. However, putting the lights up may be one of my most disliked tasks. You dig out the box from the attic, open it up and pull out a huge ball of wires and bulbs.

No matter how well you TRIED to pack everything up the year before, it always ends up a mess. A mess you spend probably just as much time untangling, sorting, and testing as you do actually hanging the lights up.

"Deep Blue" right now is a lot like that ball of wires and bulbs. It's going to take a lot of untangling, sorting and testing to get things all straightened out. But I still believe that I will be able to get it all done, and when I do it will finally be done in a way that will be easy to adapt to and use in the future.

I'm studying the platform sample that was included in the XNA documentation at the moment. It's something I probably should have done, and would have done earlier had I know where to find it. Anyhow, I'm reading up on loading in an external file for level design and also still trying to encapsulate the classes in an intelligent and helpful way.

I'd say "cross your fingers" but at the moment, I don't think I need anything else crossed.

Another major restructuring

Crossing my fingers and toes as I'm about to hit the code with a great big sledgehammer with hopes that I can come out with a better structure...and not shatter the entire thing.

Major refactoring and encapsulation about to take place to improve the engine and lay a better foundation for the next game.

...here goes...

Slugging through

Currently still going through a series of studying other XNA games and tutorials and then revisiting code for "Deep Blue". At this point I don't think there's much of the original code left but that's probably a good thing.

For the record I guess it's worth noting my reference material up to this point...since I had no C# experience prior to this.

It would be hard to list all the online tutorials I've read through so for the moment I'll stick to the books.

XNA Game Studio 2.0 - by Rob Miles. A very basic good that was a good first look into XNA but falls a little short full production. It's a "friendly" read.
Beginning C# by Karli Watson - Lays the basics of C# in more tech terms than the book above but about half of it is reserved for .net and Windows apps. Thanks for Matt S. for letting me borrow the book.
Visual C# 2005 Step-by-step - byJohn Sharp. This one was actually paired up with XNA Game Studio 2.0. It too is a more serious look at C# and spends a little time with Windows apps. All in all it's very comparable to Beginning C#.

At this moment, I feel I've got a pretty good understanding of some of the basic concepts of C# but still lack how to tie everything together. Creating classes, moving a player around the screen and having him blow things up is working fine, but it still feels a like it's not 'put together' quite right yet. So, back to reading and reviewing.

A Few Underwater Facts

Finishing up an illustration commission has paused serious development of "Deep Blue", although I'm still able to get a little research and art done.

Here are some interesting bits I've learned throughout the course of the project. - 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by water.

• Bouyancy of an object underwater decreases as depth increases.
• We know more about the surface of the moon than the deepest parts of the ocean.
• Modern submarines create breathable oxygen by electrolysis of water.
• A fathom is 6 ft deep.
• Water shooting from a deep thermal vent can reach temperatures of over 750 degrees but the extreme high pressure keeps it from boiling.
• In extremely deep water sound travels at almost a mile a second, over 5 times the speed of sound in the air.
• Most scientists agreed that life could not be sustained at the bottom of the deepest parts of the ocean. They were proved wrong when two men saw fish swimming at the bottom of the Marianas Trench at 35,761 ft below sea level. That was in 1960. They sat on the bottom of the ocean for 20 minutes before starting the 4 hour trip back to the surface. That was the last time anyone has been to the bottom.

If nothing else, I'm learning a lot about the ocean and underwater technologies.

In-Game Screenshots

New in-game screenshots from "Deep Blue" have been added to the web album. This is the first look at the user interface...most of it at least.

Video Update

So, here's what I've got at the present time. It's coming along but there's still quite a bit of work to be done on it. I did comment out the Co-Op mode and a few other things that still weren't solid yet. The question being thrown around here is...whether or not to submit it to the XNA contest.

Do I think it has any shot at placing? No. Not in a million years. But here we are. It's our 15 year anniversary tonight and we're preping to head out for dinner and possibly Six Flags. Danielle commented that if I submitted it that it would feel that I was doing something halfway, which is something I never do. And I have to agree with her.

And I guess that pretty much sums it up right there. I'll post my would be contest entry video and screenshots here but I think I'd feel better overall not sending them in. It's just not...me.

So...enjoy all and the development will continue. Having too much fun.

Successful Music test...sort of

The good news is that I finally got the two programs to talk to each other in order to combine the looped and MIDI music. The bad news is it took way to long for what was supposed to be a short cut for the score.

Sooooo, I may end up using the technique for the final music, but for this first cut it will be all looped. :(

Musical Score

At the moment, trying to throw together a quick musical score for the game. For now it will serve more as a placeholder and reference for tempo and feel more than anything else. The full score to come later.

I am trying something a little different even with the short timeline. I'm experimenting with going half loops and half original music to see if I can combine the two and see if that won't give a less mechanical...loopy feel to the score.

A Few Days Focus on Deep Blue

I'm taking a few days off my normal job. The main reason is it's our 15 year anniversary, but as an added bonus it also gives me a little time to focus on "Deep Blue". The XNA contest is wrapping up this Thursday (ironically the very same day as our anniversary) and I'd like to submit it to the contest...not so much that I think it has any chance of placing, but more because I'd like the 4 month subscription for entering. :)

Besides, if it wasn't for the contest in the first place I never would have gotten this far in the development. So I've spent today working on pickups and screen flow and taking out a few things (such as co-op) for the contest entry.

"Deep Blue" won't be..."done" by Thursday, but at least I'd like to have it in a stable and playable state.

Things taken out that I would still love to include in the final version.
- Signing in the the players to XBox Live.
- An achievement/ranking system, with a save state.
- a "Level" system with multiple levels including bad guys and environments
- and local co-op (saving XBox Live co-op for another project)
- oh...and a better timing system for entering and exiting a game.

So with all that it still may be a little while until "Deep Blue" is ready to hit the marketplace but if I can get all those in then I feel it will be a very "complete" game.

Enemy Mine...

...no, not the Dennis Quaid movie, these are simply proximity/radius enemies in Deep Blue. Whether or not they have movement yet is still to be tested.

Enemy Ship 2

Fresh on the heels of the armored enemy ZBrush design is this second enemy ship. This ship, which is still unnamed, is much smaller and faster than the bulky armored ship. It's oversized claws are inspired by the real-world "Pistol Crab" which can essentially create a sonic burst with it's claws so powerful it actually creates LIGHT and stuns it's prey (soon to be dinner) from a distance. Seriously, I'm not making this up, search for it online.

Anyhow, just like the Pistol Crab, the claws here are an excuse to have a ranged weapon. Yes, the first of our bad guys that actually fires back at you.

Armored Enemy Ship

Here's the inital design of the armored enemy ship. The ship has no projectiles, but it's heavily armored in the front to ram the player's ship. Created and rendered in ZBrush this is a untouched render just showing a swarm of ships deep underwater.

Enemy Ship Design in ZBrush

I've taken a variety of approaches to enemy ship design for Deep Blue. I've tried traditional concept sketches, an experimental drawing program called Alchemy, and speed painting and so far...I still haven't been able to produce anything I really like.

I'm going to something that is a combination of vehicle and organic and something that could be a never before seen species of sea creature, or extra terrestrial origin. So today I tried something a little different and gave a 3d sketch a shot using ZBrush.

And I'm happy to report, the results are MUCH closer to what I was hoping for. Take a look at this little video above to see how it developed. The colors may be a bit off but I think I've finally managed the right balance of natural/ship and creature/alien.

Co-Op has begun

Since it was the number one requested feature by my co-game designers (that would be my 6 and 9 year old kids Connor and Katie), and since they obviously weren't going to stop asking about it until the game included it, I'm happy to announce the two player co-op game mode on "Deep Blue".

I haven't quite figured out exactly how that's going to all play out but at the moment we've got a pair of MANTA subs swimming through the water and blasting everything in sight.

What this also means is that sometime in the not-to-distant future I'll need to pick up another USB 360 controller for testing on the PC. I can already tell that running from the computer room to the living room to test multiplayer isn't going to fly.

Huge Cleanup and Big XNA Announcement

While the details of the game play and rules are starting to take shape, I'm now in the middle of a huge process of breaking out a lot of the code to external classes...and praying I don't break the whole thing in the process.

I've done a few tests centered around one of the simpler classes and I think I'm ready to start tearing the bigger pieces out. *cross your fingers...mine are*

Along with the code side of things, I've been playing around with various icons for the different pickups in the game. Hopefully I'll have something to post soon on that.

On other news I was pretty pumped to hear the details about the upcoming changes to the XNA Community Games. Among them are a global name change, free tokens for marketing purposes, update pushes for existing games, and a price structure change.

XNA Community Games will soon be known as "XBox Live Indie Games". I think the name change is purely for restart purposes and honestly with all the 'non-games' that currently sit in the top 10 list I'm very surprised it wasn't renamed "XBox Live Apps".

Very soon when a new game is launched on the marketplace the game creator will be given 50 "tokens" to distribute to publications and...whoever they wish...to help promote the game and spread the word. I think this is a great call...at the very least it means I won't have to charge my friends and family in order to let them play the full game.

Something I had no idea, until it was spelled out in the new press release, is that current XNA games on the marketplace really have to way of letting people know an update has been made to the game. The best they could do was post something on a website and hope existing users saw it. Soon, they'll be able to notify current customers of an update to their game when the game launches....I'm guessing very much in the same way normal games do now.

And the final change, which caused the largest ripples in the water, was the pricing structure change. Instead of games being priced at either 800, 400, or 200 Microsoft points, the new prices will be either 400, 240, or 80 Microsoft points. One hard rule is that if your game is larger than a 50M download it can't be priced at 80MSP.

This announcement got quite a few people worked up on the Creator's Club site but I think it's a good thing. Some say it will open the doors to flood the marketplace with 'crap' games. Well, I'd hate to say it, but that door may have swung open quite a while ago. If I see another 'massager or image viewer' app referenced as a 'game' I'm gonna have to hurt someone. The Creator's Club, I believe, was created for aspiring and hobbiest game designers to let their visions loose on the world and bring their ideas to life. While the current tools may not allow 'everyone' to fullfill this dream (with a decent hill to climb) it is, at it's base, aimed at hobbiests. Make these games because they're fun and/or challenging to make, or to use it you create a game to help you break into the gaming industry, or...simply because you've always wanted to...not because you've got a multi-million dollar businessplan behind it.

Video Update

Long overdue, but finally I've put together a tiny video update. Some things are still obviously placeholder, such as the UI and the enemies, but things are starting to fall together.

As all the basic pieces come together and playtesting the full experience really gets moving, a real game is beginning to emerge.

When I began, I started trying to select the simplest of game mechanics, trying not to bite off too much. I started off with a single player, controlled by a thumbstick, had him fire a single weapon and blast as many bad guys as he could. Calculate a score and we've got a basic game. Mission Complete!

However, as I began to feel a little more comfortable with C# and XNA other ideas began to pop up, ideas that didn't seem to hide behind mounds of terrifying C# code, so I figured I'd give them a shot. Throw in an oxygen resource and cost/benefit mechanic...done. How about a secondary bubble burst weapon....done. What about a depth mechanic that ties to the oxygen usage...done.

Step back and things begin to really shape up. Then more ideas hit that seem to make sense, other enemy/hazard types. More weapon variations. Upgradable ship node with an associated economy system.

IF I can actually manage to get all that in "Deep Blue". IF I manage to write to code to make it all behave properly. And IF makes the game more fun...then this little experiment of a project may become something a little bit more.

Variable Screen Resolution...

....should be close to "step 1" when you start planning and programming your game. Variable screen resolutions and their effect on the game is a pretty global change and it's much better to think about that up front than having to sort through your code later and try to correct everything....like I'm having to do now.

Variable screen resolution doesn't simply effect layout (although that would probably be enough of a hassle). It effects game object speeds (or apparent speed), as well as any limitations based on screen position. The goal, of course, is to have your game play the same on any resolution. That, so far, appears to be much easier said than done.

Trust me, you're going to want to plan ahead on this. I know I will next time.

Successful Sound on the 360

Well I've completed my initial sound tests which included a looping sound effect for the ambient underwater noise as well as a full deploy to the 360 and all went relatively well.

The sound levels need to be worked out but they were all definately there.

I'm still having some horizontal 'stretching' issues going on with all the graphics that I'll have to look into. It would make a certain amount of sense with the background stretching...but all the graphics...something weird is going on.

But yea for sound!

And then there was sound

I've got a pretty decent amount of experience with audio creation in my past. So I have to admit, it is a little bit of a relief to step away from the "bold/new" of C# and get back on more familiar ground of music and sound effects.

Even being more familiar to me, I was a little concerned about getting audio into XNA with all the posts and questions/troubles that I've seen people had about audio on the forums. Luckly...so far, knock on wood, things are going remarkably smoothly. Honestly, I really like the authoring tool.

I've created a few simple sounds for the gameplay and the UI, create a few variations on certain sound effects and tweek volume and pitch levels so it all blends together correctly. The two remaining big steps I have to take with the audio are longer audio files, such as background music, and testing out the files on the 360. But so far, everything has worked out painlessly on the PC.

Kodu Fun

For those of you aspiring game designers out there (especially the ones without a masters degree in programming), I highly recommend checking out the "Kodu Game Lab" available for the xBox 360 on the Live Marketplace.

It released last week and is a great way for starting game creators to get their ideas going. All authoring is done on the 360 through a series of circular menus and iconic programming. The programming feels very "LEGO". It's very easy and quick to get a game up and running.

There are of course limitations. You're not going to be creating Halo any time soon on Kodu, but for simple games it's a lot of fun. There are currently around 200 3d assets to choose from (I've heard...but personally I find that number a little high) and the dev crew did a good job of creating assets for a wide range of games (sports, racing, shooter, platformer...etc.). It's a little like going to Toys R Us and grabbing a lot of generic playing pieces out of the board game isle and throwing them all in a box

There is a free trial, but the program itself is $5.00, but well worth it for the time you'll spend playing around.

Hopefully in the future they'll release 'asset packs' which will enable you to have even more items to play with.

All Hail 4-Day Weekends

Thanks to the 4th of July, I've got a 4 day weekend and I'm determined to make a good amount of headway on "Deep Blue". I'm currently finishing up the main menu screen and dealing with resolution variations for different TV's .

I'm pretty much cycling through the following steps: program something, play/debug, then review for clean up.

Some of this C# must be sinking in because the amount of "what the heck was I thinking!" during the review process has gotten much less frequent.

Soon I'll turn back to design, user interface specifically, and story. I'm not looking for an epic backstory here, just a little something that makes a little sense for what you're doing underwater.

But for now...off to July 4th barb-b-que and fireworks.

Still poking along at about 1/4 speed

Work had me pretty tied up last week but this weekend I've managed to get a little done on the main menu screen. Special thanks to Matt Schmulen for his assistance on casting, and then for getting things really rolling on the main menu.

I also have the oxygen tank pickup in the game but I need to place a timer on the respawn of it. Right now it spawns another one the instant the first one leaves the screen for any reason.

I'll post an updated video once I get a few more art updates in place.

Inspired By

I've posted a folder filled with art and styles that inspired "Deep Blue". Mainly from the old TV show "Sea Quest" and the deep ocean look of "the Abyss".

Other reference included a number of images from underwater animal life and sunken ship wrecks.

inspired by

Reading....analyzing....reading....analyzing

Slacking around? Off the job? No way. Even though I haven't had the change to post updates recently I'm still pretty heavily focused on "Deep Blue". Right now I'm doing a lot more reading on C# and studying a lot of code provided on the Creators Club site.

The funny thing is, it seems everyone has pretty much their own way of doing things. In all the samples I've looked at I have yet to see two people handle the structuring of the code the same. The good news is, I've managed to not break anything in all the refactoring going on. The bad news is, it doesn't look terribly different than a couple of weeks ago.

But since this is a learning exercise I'm not bound by any timeline and it is helping me get a much clearer picture of C# and XNA.

Conversion to XNA 3.0

Well I jumped in a little earlier than I originally planned to and converted "Deep Blue" from XNA 2.0 to XNA 3.0 and to my surprise, and relief, it was pretty painless. The only fall out seems to be a couple of warning messages during deployment which I'll track down pretty soon.

Deep Blue on the 360

I signed up for the XNA Creators Club 2009 game contest, if for nothing else than to get the free 12-month trial XNA membership. Deep Blue would most likely not be something I would enter into a contest like this but getting the trial membership enables me to once again run Deep Blue on our 360.

I was relatively surprised that deploying to the 360 went so smoothly. There were a couple of things that popped up as different than designed. The first of which was the color. It was much more saturated on the HD TV. Most of the time that would be a good thing, but I think it went a little overboard on the explosions. I'll end up darkening and desaturating the explosion sprite a little.

The other surprise was that all the graphics seemed to be stretched. If I remember correctly, that would make sense for the background and title screen, but not so much for the ship sprites. So I'll have to take another look at that and see what's going on.

Fun with particles

Moving along again. I've got bad guy ships exploding, a simple scoring system rolling and I just finished up a very helpful tutorial from the XNA site, by jFoss on creating a particle system. It was a lengthy tutorial, but well worth it. I think I managed to absorb about 75%-80% of it.

Tomorrow night may be time to turn a little focus back to the art side so I can get better looking enemies and particles in there.

The particle system tutorial is a part of the extra credit tutorials on the 2d game lessons.
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted/bg2d/ExtraCredit

Back at it

After five months off I finally have a little time to throw some more attention to Deep Blue. I'm experimenting with some alternative ways of doing ship design for the enemies, as well as still finishing out the programming of the core game mechanics. I'm putting the scrolling background on the back burner until I get the rest of the core game play worked out. And I've got to get the menu screen set up with buttons.

So...diving back in (sorry, I couldn't help it).

3 Week Video - a Little Late

I got to reviewing the Deep Blue folder and trying to get caught up to where I last left off before I ran out of free time here and I found this video. The video shows progress after the first 3 weeks. I really have no idea why I didn't post it before, unless I was waiting to add one last clip of something.

But since I've now forgotten what that would have been, I'm going to go ahead and post it.

So, a little late...here's the video of where the game was/is after 3 weeks of development. I hope to be able to spend some more time on it in the not too distant future, but we'll just see how busy other things go.

Happy New Year All!

Ok, the holidays have now passed, like a hurricane...but that's a much longer post, and I'm going to try to get things rolling again with "Deep Blue".

We last left off with around 50 hours of work done which included a little of everything, art, documentation, even programming.

For the first post of the new year here's our look at the very valuable air tank pickup, both large and in-game size.