Fun Infused Friday 13
It's been nearly two months since my last Fun Infused Friday... I'm sorry to deprive you all of fun for so long! It's not that I haven't been up to anything but rather that I've been up to too much (mostly Summer Uprising related, which I'll talk about more later). Thankfully my schedule is appearing to be a bit more normal these days and I will hopefully be back to doing these pieces every week.
Indie Game Summer Uprising
By now I'm hoping that you've heard of the Summer Uprising (if you haven't, go to that link and read the FAQ section). We've narrowed down the list of games to 8 finalists and are currently in the process of fan voting to add two more games to this list. It's been a lot of work but everything has gone really well. The Summer Uprising has received a ton of media coverage already and not one game has been released yet! I think the Uprising is doing a lot to really showcase the great games that can be made on XBLIG.
Volchaos
First, if you haven't seen the latest video of Volchaos, check it out below, it's some kind of awesome. Thanks to Master Blud at VVGTV.com for putting it together.
Currently 39 of 40 levels are done. I am still working on the behavior of the boss (for some odd reason he likes to jump up and down on one of the platforms, I think he may be insane) and tweaking existing levels. I've spent a ton of time lately adding mountains and clouds and varied blocks to make each level look a little better. My todo list has gotten pretty small though I still feel I'm a month or more from release.
The big remaining feature I want to add is unlockables. Currently each level has X number of gems in it. The game keeps track of each level in which you can collect all the gems and finish the level (no easy task, much harder than just finishing the level). I want some kind of reward for performing these tasks in the way of unlockable characters. I'm not set on how many or what characters you will be able to unlock (there will probably be 3-4) but I feel like the game really needs some kind of reward system to get players motivated to collect all the gems (which may in fact be the most fun and challenging part of the game).
Hypership Out of Control
In the event you haven't heard the big news yet, Hypership Out of Control is coming soon to iOS (iPod and iPad). Thanks to Jesse Chounard for handling the port. The game will also include Game Center support of true achievements and leaderboards. The waves in the game will be slightly modified versions of the WP7 waves. And the graphics will be getting a facelift too (I've hired the artist I used for Volchaos to redo the entire game). This promises to be the best version of Hypership EVER!
For WP7 gamers, I will do a free update soon with the new Hypership artwork. Sadly I won't be doing so for the XBLIG version. The XBLIG version of Hypership currently on the Marketplace was built with XNA 3.1. Currently you can only submit XNA 4.0 games to the Marketplace. The XNA 4.0 changes broke a lot of things in the online high scoring that would ultimately take me a ton of time to fix and test.
Other Stuffs
I seriously lost all my PC games... no idea where they want, vanished. Perhaps a thief snuck into my home one night and took them all? Or more likely, I moved them somewhere out of the way and now cannot remember where that somewhere was. This is where digital distribution is nice... if I had bought them all on Steam or a similar service, I could just download them again. I look forward to a day when physical media for games, movies, and music is dead.
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