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.