Development Blog

CyberDeck, the port of a GPL project to the 360 is now complete! It was placed into peer review last weekend, but I removed it when a reviewer discovered a crash due to a bit of code that was left in by accident from the development cycle. The issue has now been fixed, and I am just waiting for the mandatory seven days to pass before I put it back in peer review. I am hoping that it will pass quickly, but there is a minimum of 48 hours to be spent in peer review. It will probably take longer simply because most things do, but also because of the massive scale of the game. It has massive replayability and can be played for hours on end.

Here's an example of some gameplay:

It is very difficult on XBLIG to sell a good game with great content that you have put a lot of effort into. This is for a lot of reasons about which I will not wax eloquent at this time. However, I have begun work on a new project that is a port of a GPL'd Windows game to the XBox. Fortunately, the original developer was kind enough to give me permission to develop the project. It would not have been possible without his permission as XBLIG is incompatible with the GPL since end users cannot pass their copy on to others for free. I am not quite ready to disclose what the project is, but I will when I get closer to completion. Hopefully about a week from now...

Well, it's been a while since I've blogged, so I have a lot to catch up on. The last post was back in July, prior to the release of Assembly Line. I am rather surprised that Assembly Line has not done better than Euchre 360, but Euchre has far outsold Assembly Line in any given time since release and also when compared in most time intervals. That's not to say that Euchre is selling like hotcakes, but I have been satisfied with the success of both. They have netted enough to keep my subscription to AppHub active at least.

So, it's now on to my next projects. I am currently working on two. One is another puzzle game that is suffering from feature bloat right now. It started as a simple net puzzle game. You know, the type where you are given a network of objects and you have to connect them. It was going to include a level editor until I came up with my new idea. I stumbled across Simon Tatham's puzzle collection and thought that it would be great to port it to the XBox. This would be allowable under the MIT license under which it is licensed. For most of the puzzles, though, I would start from scratch and some would be eliminated as they are not well suited for an XBox controller. Implementing the puzzle collection would mean that the game would randomly create levels.

The second game is a space adventure similar to an old DOS game (and C64) that was always a favorite of mine. It includes adventure, combat, and two-player head-to-head combat. I have a basic framework done, but need to write the code for the encounters, finish up the melee, create a starmap, and add the entire story. The story is nothing like the original, so it isn't really a clone. It is on hold right now, though, as I try to get some decent images to use in the game.

For anyone wondering, CityBuilder is on hold indefinitely as I do these other projects.

Assembly Line has once again been pulled from review. This time, a change that had been made over the last week resulted in another issue for which I had failed to test. Thanks to the two reviewers who did find it, though. I have pulled it for now, will take the 30 seconds that I need to fix it, and will repost in a week.

The update for Euchre 360 was just approved and went to the marketplace. This update changes some of the fonts, fixes a crash when you sign in, select a device, exit the game, switch profiles, and reenter the menu. Obscure, I know, but it was a crash. It also adds the option to choose between three different sizes of cards while you play and fixes a scoring issue where you only got 1 point when you and your partner take all five tricks. Now, you get two.

Enjoy!