Lone Wolf

Woof.

This lone wolf game company thing is a lot of work! And more often than not, I don't want to actually do the work, ya know? 

Mostly the setbacks are artistic ones.  Anyone want to make models or textures for me? 

This weekend I am going to try to buckle down and make some progress.  Recently I did complete the main menu system for the current focus of my efforts (I've mentioned before that I've got four different projects in progress, right?).  The one I'm working on right now is a multiplayer tank combat game.  The other three are a unique approach to brick-breaker games, a maze navigation game, and a racing game.

So, hopefully that means I'll have something worthwhile to report next week.  Some actual progress, hey?  That'll be novel.

What Were They Thinking?

I am stepping slightly out of character and significantly off-topic because I am watching Stargate Atlantis on Netflix.

Why is Tayla singing?!?!?!

In other news, I'm working on menus for the next game I think is most likely to hit the market.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

I've realized that my biggest obstacle to releasing a game is my tendency to over-complicate it.  Not necessarily in the sense of complicated game-play, but in the sense of thinking of feature after feature to add.  That of course means more time spent developing and debugging.

The reality is that this is a game I'm going to sell for a dollar.  One measly dollar!  So, I've reached a conclusion. Simplify!  Simpler features, simpler graphics, simpler everything.

This'll be hard to stick to!  We'll see how it goes.

The Sound of Silence

I've not posted anything in a while.  That's because I haven't done much XNA coding lately.  Work and other demands on my time have left me with little energy for it!  I'm at the second of two trade shows for my employer at the moment; once I'm home from this, my summer should mellow out and I'll have more time for Xbox development.

Animating Avatars

I've started on a side project to create a tool to make it easy to create animations for avatars (whew, what a string of infinitives!).  Once I'm done with it, I may release it as an open-source tool for the community, assuming the community doesn't already have something better!

After that, I'll be tackling XACT.

Monetization

I don't think (m)any people read this blog yet, but I've gone ahead and added AdSense advertising to the layout.

So.  Despite your best intentions, please do not click the ads unless you're genuinely interested in the advertised product.  If AdSense has any reason to suspect click fraud, I could have my account suspended.

Thanks!

Apparently, 12,000 Vertices is a Lot

I discovered that the slowdown had nothing to do with my camera class, and possibly everything to do with something called predicated tiling.  In short, the Xbox has but 10 MB of high-speed video RAM (a major WTF factor for many developers, although clearly a well-designed game can make do).  When rendering in 1080p resolution, that means there's a good bit of memory shuffle going on in order to get everything drawn.  When "everything" is 12,000+ vertices, that means a LOT of shuffle, and draw cycles don't complete on time.

So, for now, I've dropped back to rendering at 720p.  I don't like the loss of resolution, but it eliminates the problem.  Later I will start to investigate mechanisms for only drawing subgroups of vertices that have a high probability of being visible.

For now, I think I am going to focus on gameplay.  I have three or four main modes of play in mind, each of which shouldn't present an insurmountable challenge, and together should make for a game with plenty of replay value and should sell pretty well.