Recieved my new development machine off of ebay today. It works pretty well; I just needed to strip and rebuild it.
After configuring the hardware (about 4 hours to unbuild & rebuild), I was able to set up pretty much my whole dev environment in about 4 hours. I’m running Windows 7 RC, with C# Express and Game Studio 3.1.
How geeky!
I fixed the crasher reported during playtest, and then uploaded Revision 51 to go into full Peer Review.
I also identified a few threads which should prove useful in the future (recorded here for posterity):
Extremely useful!
I can see where playtesting and reviewing could end up taking a lot of time from a person’s day. It also ends up exercising your brain in a different way from making or playing a game.
How alien!
The next game from Red Mawashi Entertainment has entered it’s envisioning phase.
I’ve engaged a local artist (who is also a gamer), and I think he might actually be MORE excited about making this game than me! We’ve met a few times now, and are beginning to iron out some of the bigger details for the game.
One thing that we’ll definitely need if we’re going to fit into the 150 MB cap for XNA games is a Game Editor. I’d originally hoped to have all distinct art, so that I could leverage some of my previous work, but the artist made some excellent points in favor of the editor.
So, today I gathered requirements with him, and got comfortable with what he expects from an editor. Once I have some basic functionality configured, I’ll also begin work on the game engine itself. I hope to leverage the game engine for both the editor and the game itself, simplifying my life significantly.
How awesome!
Today, I made several of the modifications recommended from the first playtesting cycle.
I was somewhat surprised that more people did not comment during playtest. I suppose since it IS a very informal stage, though, that it’s likely to get ignored for the most part. We’ll see how this week goes, fix any issues that come up, then submit for Review after that.
How accomodating!
PS – What happened to Revision 49? I have no idea.
I’ll be taking feedback from the playtest forum post and posting it up here.
How thorough.
Unlink is feature complete!
I’ll be testing the product tomorrow morning, maybe also doing some performance testing.
Then I’ll upload it to the community site tomorrow afternoon, and see what else needs to happen!
How very nerve-wracking!
After a long delay, I’ve finally input the text for the tutorial section.
I’ll be jotting down some ideas on images this weekend, pulling mostly from the stock I currently have. I should have this submitted by Sunday (I’d originally estimated tonight, but I want to put a little more effort into things).
How nearly submitted!
Today, I accomplished some great things.
First off, I finally figured out how to get gamer info. Whew. I don’t know why it took so long, but now the GamerPic shows up in the right place, unless you sign out in the middle of a game.
I also think I integrated the IsTrialMode into things, so that failures during Trial mode will not be racked up. Of course, I’ll have to check that out once I send all of this to the 360 for further testing.
I was also thinking about keeping stuff from getting saved in Trial mode, but maybe the Xbox will just handle that for me?
Thus, I think the only item remaining is to work out the “Training” section.
How climactic!
Tonight, I switched out the hint layer for some actual useful hints.
In easy mode, it will show both the white matches and the black matches.
In normal mode, it will only show the white matches.
In hard mode, it will show nothing.
I argued with myself for a while about whether to show white or black in normal mode. I’m still not sure I made the right choice. Hopefully some other folks play testing the game will shake out those kinds of design decisions.
I also heard from the artist, which brought me some outstanding box art. So, I can scratch that off my to-do list…
So, now all that’s left is… basically, everything that was on my list from January 21st.
How lacking in progress.
Through more experimentation, I’ve only made myself more and more confused.
Other people seem to have no problems AT ALL dealing with SendInput from User32.dll. I’m not sure why it’s so difficult for me!
I started off trying to use VKs directly. That produced unexpected results. So then, I just started iterating through numbers. I would get really strange results that way, too – but at least they were reproducible. Thus, I knew I was dealing with SOME KIND of pattern.
Further internet research revealed an archived article which referenced some PDFs. This is how I learned that, for whatever reason, the scancodes in use on my development computer are the PS/1 make/break codes.
So, I’m pretty baffled as to what I’m supposed to be doing here, since everyone else seems to be getting along very well without having to do crazy lookups.
Tomorrow, I go back to basics: perhaps MSDN will have an article on SendInput, with some examples. Ha.
How… frustrating.