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.