Happy Holidays

Christmas is around the corner (for those that celebrate it), along with New Years. It’s a busy time of the year that’s for certain, and I’m busy just like the rest of you. Mark Coffman announced the winners and prizes for the xbox360homebrew contest over the last week, and I’m certainly happy at the results :). In regards to WildBoarders, the game has reached over one thousand downloads this past week!...

December 22, 2006 · Alex

D-d-d-d-do Watcha Want…

That’s how the title of blog entries suffer when I’m caught listening to some catchy tune. I made a new Dev Blog entry for WildBoarders over at xbox360homebrew and I posted an article in my Tutorials section for dealing with large 2D worlds in fast paced scrolling games. On the gaming front, Gears of War kicks major ass. I was skeptical after the initial announcement many months ago. I just couldn’t see how the gameplay would end up interesting, but the graphics were sure a joy to look at....

November 13, 2006 · Alex

Rock On

I realize there’s been a delay on my updates on this blog. But if you follow the xbox360homebrew site you’ll know I’ve been keeping up with my weekly updates. You can find my 7th dev entry there describing the art process of my game. Seems like everything is pressuring me to update update update! WordPress just released a new version that I’m going to eventually get around to. Most exciting is XNA Game Studio Express released Beta 2....

November 3, 2006 · Alex

Mid-Week Shuffle

Strange how sometimes I feel like there’s nothing to do for a while and then suddenly I’m swamped with things that need to get done. I wish it would come gradually, but I guess I do this to myself. I’m in the process of fleshing out my project plan so I can get a better picture of my progress on the game I’m developing for the xbox360homebrew contest. I’ll be managing it within my blog so I’ll make a post linking to the page so for those interested can see the current progress of the project, otherwise just look out for my weekly updates on the homebrew site or here....

October 19, 2006 · Alex

Vision is everything

Every once in a while I see a game that really goes off in a different direction. Sometimes it’s a gameplay innovation/evolution other times it’s a visual style that seems so out there that I can’t help but appreciate it. Games like this just reaffirm the fact that games can be art. It really takes an open mind to break free of typical game conventions such as creating photorealistic graphics, or going for the typical cartoon style of graphics seen in many 2D games....

October 10, 2006 · Alex

No time like the present.

I had a long weekend and took some of the extra time to try to get ahead of schedule. Much to my surprise I got a rather good chunk of the ‘to-do’ list done thanks to XNA game components and open-source libraries. I posted a list of the libraries and components I’m currently using for my game and where to get them. I’ve also made a library of classes for loading Endgen map files into XNA....

October 9, 2006 · Alex