Ben James :: adventures in gaming

15 hours after starting and Expert mode is beaten. I’m getting quicker at this! I dropped about 100 places in the ranking overnight though, and finished at 296 this morning (Career Mode). I get the feeling there’s going to be some tough competition out there.

So, Harmonix announced their next game is going to be Rock Band, which is pretty damned awesome. Hopefully we can use the Guitar Hero guitars with it, I don’t really want to have to be buying even more peripherals if I don’t have to.

I haven’t talked about much except Guitar Hero in this blog lately, but Rob and I have been working hard on our music project. It’s extremely close to release, so for those interested, look out for it real soon.

The long wait is over and Guitar Hero for 360 is in my hands. Leaderboards and downloadable tracks for the win!

I managed to get all the way to Psychobilly Freakout on Expert without failing a song, placing me at 206 on the worldwide scoreboard for Career Score. I’m pretty happy with that. Man are my hands sore.

The game looks awesome in HD though, and the new lighting looks great. Where’s the downloadable content that was meant to be available at launch though?

to my hopes of getting in early on Guitar Hero 360. Looks like some places in the US have broken the street date.

Proof by Bill Harris

Guess I’ll just have to get to the top of the leaderboards the hard way….

So, Guitar Hero II comes out for 360 in 6 days, us Aussies get it slightly before the US so I’m hoping I can get a headstart and get my name to the top of the leaderboards, before all the USians get online and smash my scores.

I was thinking though, will XNA let us use the Guitar Hero controller in our games? I think some people could do some great things with that, if so, and I’m not just talking about the inevitable Guitar Hero clone; I’m thinking a role playing game with Guitar combat, or a puzzle game utilising the fret buttons and the strum bar, or an on rails shooter where you have to rock out to destroy the bad guys.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated, huh?  I’ve been pretty busy the past month, unfortunaltely not with game programming, though I’ve got a bunch of ideas up my sleeve. I think I’m going to have a play with Flash though, it seems like it might be a better way to prototype game ideas before implementing them in XNA (because I eventually want to get them on the 360). I got the wireless adaptor for Windows so I can finally test my games with the 360 controller now.

What I’ve mostly been busy with is the music project I’ve been doing with Rob, we’re nearly finished and will be mixing this weekend, as well as finishing up the cover art and a few other things. kurodust.net will have all the details once it’s done.

Just noting down an idea I got whilst hanging out with friends last night for a possible remake - Alley Cat! It would be awesome to see an updated version of this game with nicely animated graphics and maybe some new gameplay ideas.

I don’t think this is something I’ll be doing any time soon, as the next couple of games I’m planning on doing are already lined up, plus I think I’d prefer to stick to original ideas. Just thought I’d make a mention of the idea though, so if anybody feels like remaking this game, I’d love to see it!

In Sopwith XNA news, I plan on releasing the source code sometime this week. I haven’t really had a chance to go over it at all, but I figured screw it, I’ll just release it as is. So look out for that in the next couple of days.

Damn, it’s hot. Summer sucks, bring on Winter!

Microsoft have finally announced some details on their Dream Build Play contest, though details of the full contest are still elusive. They are doing a warm up challenge called ‘Relatives Of Space War’, where you have to use either code or assets from the Spacewar Starter Kit and put them into a game.

I’ve been trying to come up with some good ideas all day but all my ideas would either require too much and work (and therefore time, the deadline is in 2 weeks), or are too little and wouldn’t be worth entering.

The prize is pretty nice though, $500USD (and a copy of Windows Vista, if I’m reading the terms and conditions correctly (hrmm, I just checked this and it doesn’t seem to be true… I’m sure I saw it in there earlier today)), so I just had the idea of maybe just changing the graphics of Sopwith XNA, chucking in some assets from Spacewar and entering that. Hey, it’s worth a shot, right?
Wait, Spacewar is in 3D, isn’t it? Hrmm, that might be more difficult than I thought. I wonder if I converted them to sprites whether it would still be consisted a close enough relative? Distant cousin, perhaps?

Hey, I got reviewed! Thanks Daniel for the kind words, though calling Sopwith my sophomore effort is a bit much, seeing as Kurodust Fighter barely got off the ground, heh. I am still planning on releasing the source code sometime in the future, so maybe I’ll get that extra star
I’ve been working on my next game when I can, it’s working title is Attack and Defense, though I will be trying to come up something catchier before release. I’m still getting the gameplay worked out so once that’s going well, I’ll put up some screenshots and a bit more detail about the game. I guess I’ll have to fork out for a Creator’s Club membership at some point too, seeing as I’m targetting the Xbox 360 for this one.
So what’s happening with Dream Build Play? I was hoping we’d have all the details by now, I’d like to know what we are expected to actually deliver.

I was thinking about Kurodust Fighter in bed last night, as it’s still very much the game I want to be making, but don’t have the skills for. To make it more difficult on myself, I think I’ve decided to try to delve into 3D when I get back to working on it. I ran through a few tutorials and the 3D stuff actually looks like it might not be completely over my head.

It’s been such a buzz having people actually playing my game! I’ve had a lot of positive feedback, which is fantastic, so I’m glad people are enjoying it. I’ve had a couple of requests for the source code so I’ll consider releasing it, though I need to figure out what sort of license I should do that under. I assume it will be some sort of GPL thing, but I’m not quite sure how that all works.

I also want to comment my code a bit more before I release any source code, as it’s pretty messy at the moment. (You know, I’m not even sure whether it’s a good idea to release it, I’m sure my coding is nowhere near the proper way you should be doing things)

Anyway, I’ve started on my new game which is going to be an original design so I can hopefully enter it into Microsoft’s Dream, Build, Play contest (anyone know when that’s meant to be starting? It says January but they’ve only got a week to make that deadline) It’s going to be a 2 player only game specifically designed for Xbox 360 controls (though I’ll try to include PC controls as well, and of course you’ll be able to play with a wired 360 controller).

No screenshots yet (not much to show), but I should get a chance to do some more work on it this week provided my DS doesn’t take up too much of my time, not to mention the Crackdown demo which has nearly finished downloading. Of course, being that my game is full of programmer art, there’s never much to look at anyway. If the game is turning out fun I may have to find somebody to partner with so I can get some decent art in there, but for now I’ll just be working on getting it all together and working.

Wow, I wasn’t expecting to have a release ready tonight, but I pushed through and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got. There’s only one map and there are still a few small things I was going to try to implement, but I’m impatient to get something out there so I’m calling this the 0.9 release.

If you want to try it out you will need the following software installed first:

• .NET Framework 2.0
• XNA Runtime Redistributable
• DirectX 9.0c

Once you’ve got those, you can:

DOWNLOAD SOPWITH XNA 0.9 (2.8MB)

Here are some screenshots to hopefully whet your appetite:

Please let me know if you come across any bugs or have any comments regarding the gameplay, this release is sort of a beta test and I would like to make this game fun to play. I’ve tried to include all the elements of the original Sopwith, plus added a few of my own, so hopefully that adds up to a fun little game.

If you want to try out the original Sopwith, or just read about it the best site for it is probably http://sopwith.classicgaming.gamespy.com/

Wow, I might actually get this game finished this week like I’d planned. I didn’t get much done on Monday (I got sunburnt at the beach on Sunday, plus it was the first day of my temporary unemployment, so I was feeling a bit lethargic I guess), but yesterday and today I spent quite a few hours doing new graphics, implementing sound effects, implementing bird flocks, and fixing a bunch of fiddly bugs.

The main things left to do are the splash screens/menus (splash screens are working, just need to tweak them), end of map summary, game over screens, and a few extra graphical tweaks.

I’ve mostly solved the performance problems I was having with the collision detection, so it’s running pretty smoothly at the moment, even when a bunch of stuff is exploding (with sound effects now as well!) All in all, I’m feeling pretty proud of myself, and I’m looking forward to actually releasing a game!

Here are a couple of screenshots of the latest build:

In other breaking news, apparently Neversoft are going to be working on Guitar Hero III in some capacity, which is kind of scary. I’m hoping they’re just going to be doing the PS3 port and that Harmonix will be continuing to develop Guitar Hero III with the 360 as the main platform. Here’s hoping Neversoft aren’t taking over and if they are, here’s hoping they don’t screw it up.