Do I have anything to say?

Yah I do. Been too busy at work to post here while at my desk, and when I get home, I don't pick up a PC.

So anyway... My wife in the last two days has played 5 hours + of Heavy Weapon. I like the game too, but her liking it was a real surprise. She says it reminds her of "older" games. She also figured out the control quickly since she occasionally plays Geomertry Wars (but only one game, this she plays over and over)

Anyway, I have been playing alot lately. RB6:V is still interesting. I can't wait for Baine's Clan Bloodsport tournement. 1v1 and 2v2 sound very interesting to me right now. I am not sure how well I will do though. I have good nights, and wretchedly bad nights. I tend to be way too impatient, and that leads to death in RB6:V  Oh well, I wonder what the hell I was thinking getting into a tactical shooters clan? Anyway, even if I suck, I expect it will be fun.

I also just got Lost Planet. Haven't even tried the MP yet, just going through single player now, but I really like it.

The arcade games are something that are like crack to me. I buy way too many. I play them too, but man, I need some self restraint. I think I may start posting reviews of the arcade games here. Not sure if anybody cares what the hell I think, but hey why the hell not?

Games of 2K7

2006 was a good year for gaming. I had a lot of fun. But I can't help but look to the future. Here are the games I know that I want to play this year (assuming they get released... )

Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions

This is the game most likely to disappoint me, but I have been seeing parts of it for so long, I need to play it. I am a sucker for robot armor and sci-fi shooters. Lost Planet had me at Hello.

Bioshock

It's underwater, has guns, and looks cool. Not sure if its a rent or a buy, but i want to see it.

Too Human

I thought it should have been out by now, but since its not, and even if it is I haven't played it, when I see it I want to. Its supposed to be most a normal action style game with some RPG as well. Its on the rent list because the replay value seems limited.

Mass Effect

This RPG looks great! The real time battles and dialog systems from the limited footage I have seen are really exciting. I may even buy it despite lack of replay. Hopefully it lives up to potential.

Fable 2

Too lazy to get a decent picture, but I want to try out this series. I skipped RPG's when the first came out for the xbox, so I want to hop on board.

That's all for now, though a little game called Halo 3 is coming out too. That sounds cool.

Vegas Baby!

So there is progress on the game I am writing in XNA, but that isn’t this post. Today is about Rainbow 6: Vegas

I got it a day before Christmas when I learned that I wouldn’t be getting it. In fact, I learned that my brother-in-law bought me Lego Star Wars for the Xbox. Way to go, couldn’t you find anything cheaper? He plays games too, he understands how they work, and had he put a little thought it…

Anyway, since I wanted it, I went out and got it. I have to say that the multiplayer is really good. Joining yup with your friends is easy, and that counts for a lot with me. There are some game play parts that I don’t like. I don’t like it when I can’t look down over a ledge, I like having the “roadie run” in Gears. I actually think the GoW cover system is better. I also think that some of the Maps are unbalanced. They give a definite advantage to one side, and after rounds, they don’t flip starting position. I also don’t like the team shuffle when maps change. I think that we would do a decent job of balancing teams if they let us, and if we balance it then they shuffle, I get pissed.

But for all the knocks against it, this is clearly the multiplayer that I will have for a while. CoD3 will go back to Gamefly. I still like Gears though. I think it’s a great multiplayer session if you can get it set up with a full room and they all stick around you can have a really good time. It’s just stupid that I have to plan out my 8 person gears session.

Back to RB6:V, the single player is tough, but what really annoys me is that  twice its not saved an area after I completed it. I even got the stinking achievement and started the next area, but then it didn’t save it. I may have to beat some one with a stick should this continue.

In up to my elbows

First post about learning XNA
Second post about learning XNA

Well, I am getting into building the actual game I hope to make. My clan mates already know the basic premise since I forced them into giving me ideas. Anyway, it’s going to be a Super Mario Brothers like side-scroller.  

                My first task yesterday was to get a few images ready to be sprites. I can’t draw, but that didn’t seem to stop me. I got five backgrounds ready, all which would work if set right next to each other. So really the plan is to make it look like one background 5 times as wide as the screen that loops over and over. I set it up several times as different widths, more on that later. Then I built my main character. I have more to do since it’s not at all animated. He is just frozen in space, but for now it’s good enough.  Having never made an animated Gif I didn’t try, although I have a how-to on that. I can also animate the thing programmatically, so I have to figure out what will work best for me. I have actually seen the code that moves through the frames of an animated gif in synch with the program, as well as the one to build an animation on the spot, but didn’t look at it at all.

                So then I took my “art” and fired up a new project in the TorqueX app I mentioned yesterday. I still like that I can convert the target platform with one of their apps, but to use their main app to build a game, I have yet to get excited. I actually assumed that this thing was going to win my heart, and when the 30 day demo was up, I was going to buy it for $150. So far, I won’t do that. It gives an easy way to import art work and set up properties about it, but overall when I look at a premade game, and a blank project, I have a hard time breaking the game down to reconstruct one myself. Maybe I need to find more to read on this thing, but so far I feel like I am making more progress working directly with the code itself.

After tinkering with the TorqueX program for a bit and getting nowhere, I went back and worked directly out of the XNA Game Studio again. I found some code that I could adapt to do just what I had planned for the background. In just a few minutes, the wonder world I had created came alive, but horribly squished and cut off. (All sky, no ground) Now my images were 1280x720 worthy, but the program from what I could see look like it was working at 800x600, and after some poking around I found that I was right.  I didn’t, and still don’t know where the code had pulled it from. It may be the default, but I want to find that somewhere before I speak it as Gospel. What I did find was some code to hard code the background to a width and height. It’s a solution that is good enough for today, but I want to stretch the height to what’s available and leave the width alone (it’s a side-scroller, so let it scroll). Now I am not sure if I altered the background, or the whole application. I think I altered the whole application. Overall though, I am ok with what I have.

                Then I tried to add in my main character. I tried to pull code from another game, basically to place the sprite in the left hand corner, let it run back and forth, and it had jump too, but I was going to save that for the next step. After adding in all my code to the same app where I had my backgrounds, I blew the thing up. I saw immediately what I had not caught, some of the objects were being used in different ways between the two sets of code I stole... ah… borrowed… from open source games. I decided to just get the running man working in its own app first, even though I was confident with some find and replace that I could get it working. Well, as I went through it the second time, it became clear that there were no controls for the controller. Just keyboard controls. That pissed me off, and I was done for the night. I have games that use BOTH too, but I don’t think I have any that are just for the 360. I will have to start looking into those more complex examples and see what I can learn from it. Overall, I am enjoying this.

I can do this...

So if you didn't see it, here's yesterday's post. I am pretty much picking up where I left off. Read that if you need to.

My adventures of XNA Creator's Club continued last night. In 15 minutes I did the basic tutorial where you draw a graphic (I used the .jpg of my avatar) on the screen and get it to bounce around like a screen saver.) Again this took almost no independent thought on my part, but at least I am getting a better feel for the parts of the code. I definitely see patterns about where things should be, and where the game logic is built. Since I was feeling adventurous I didn't stop, and I attempted several of the customizations recommended by the help file (like adding a second sprite, adding collision detection, and steering the sprite with the controller).

I didn’t even tinker with them, but that is supposed to be easy as well. We’ll see about that later today.