Me and a few people have been working hard on a game with the aim of submitting it to dream build play.

The other day though, I had a look at the rules one final time. Don't know how i didn't see it before, but I didn't realize that the entry had to be a 360 build, unlike last year where PC entries were fine.

It's kind of late to start porting (besides, none of us have 360's to test with) so unfortunately we won't be entering. Maybe next year.

Anyway, here are a few screenshots of the game. You can see a video here

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That's really unfortunate! You should just compile it as a 360 package and submit it even if you can't test it, it might run OK!

That is so sad. The game is AMAZING. I love the graphic stile with those artistic pixel-by-pixel sprites... What you need is just somebody that can help you to port it to Xbox. Maybe for the contest is a little late, but, that game should be in the community. I love it.

Just set the controls to 360 controls, export the project as a 360 project, and create a creators club game with the 360 project and hope that it works.

Doing what the others said has a high probability of working straight away (The first time I made a 360 conversion for my game, after I worked on it on the PC for about a month, all was smooth).

You've got nothing to lose by submitting "blindly", but everything to gain.

 

For a little bit of warning... I've spent a whole day fixing XBox issues when porting mine game and a few days more optimizing things... But... maybe somebody could test it for you? I think there's a lot of people who have their entries ready and uploaded (i still have hands full of work today to make my game cooler).

Regards,
Pawel

aw i'm sorry to hear that. you're game looks really good. congrats on that accomplishment at least. hope it works out for DBP

Thanks for the support guys.

Unfortunately, I am barely using the content pipeline. A lot of my engine code is recycled for my editor, so I tend to use the texture loading functions instead of the pipeline. Plus the way I am doing the Post Processing with the render targets wouldn't work with the 360, from the stuff I've read. It's really my fault for not noticing before. Had i noticed this last week we might have had a change of getting it in. Oh well.

Do it anyway for the 4month CC subscription.

what is the goal of the game? Is going to be a windows game so sell it via web, or do you plan to make the game for xbox comunity games?

too bad,but hey,there's still plenty o' time,like 20 hours, for such time you could get an arcade (200$ ) if in the US ,of course,or 200E in europe. There's also the possibility you have a friend with xbox that is avaliable today :)

Like the rest suggested, porting it could be made blindly . That said, if you are strict to the XNA framework. I,for one, use the system.IO for files,and can load files directly by filename ,but on the 360 i cant save them (like leaderboards,saves,etc) . Will find another way,but not for my entry :)
Also there are differences on the 360. In my project ,there is only 1 check for running on the 360, and that is the point sprite coordinates in one of the shaders. Other stuff works.

Come on dude... months of work and you are going to give up. You still have 14 hours...... FromFile textures should be easy enough to switch to the content pipeline... the rendertargets are not that different... do you have windows only/native components in there too?

Everybody here is offering you help.Take it!

.. by the way... do you have more screenshots? (the game looks great)

Silvermax:

Everybody here is offering you help.Take it!

Actually, everyone is offering moral support and encouragement. ;-)

And yes, the game looks great, at it would be a shame if they didn't at least try to enter it. Not much time left, though...

when you give a suggestion as an option about what they can do to solve the situation... that's helping, isn't it? A lot of people here a suggesting solutions.

 

Anyway, this is the kind of game i was planning to do when i have enough knowledge about c# and xna. In fact, right now I'm playing Castelvania SOTN (one more time... since i got it in my old and broken psx , i think is the six time...)  ...which lead me to another question about emulation that i will make in another post...

 

 

arrogancy:

Do it anyway for the 4month CC subscription.

 

At least get your code.

You just got two more days for porting since submission period is extended till 25th.

TCT:

You just got two more days for porting since submission period is extended till 25th.

 Great news!

Thanks for the support guys. You've encouraged me to go for it and get the game ported. I'll have to take the day off uni tomorrow but I'll try my hardest to finish it. Cheers.

it might run OK!

No. Really, it won't. Shipping any software that you haven't tested on the target platform is akin to suicide, and is likely to end up on http://www.thedailywtf.com/

If he has no Xbox to try on, then he probably shouldn't spend his time trying something which is just a bad idea. Even if it builds as a Xbox executable (which is unlikely in step 1), and even if it works well with an Xbox controller (does he even have one,  if he doesn't have an Xbox?), there's enough things that are different (speed of CPU is much lower, graphics chip is different, there are no windows, storage is different, etc) that encouraging someone to "just ship it" is quite irresponsible to those who would download and attempt to play the game.

 

 

jwatte:

No. Really, it won't. Shipping any software that you haven't tested on the target platform is akin to suicide, and is likely to end up on http://www.thedailywtf.com/

If he has no Xbox to try on, then he probably shouldn't spend his time trying something which is just a bad idea. Even if it builds as a Xbox executable (which is unlikely in step 1), and even if it works well with an Xbox controller (does he even have one,  if he doesn't have an Xbox?), there's enough things that are different (speed of CPU is much lower, graphics chip is different, there are no windows, storage is different, etc) that encouraging someone to "just ship it" is quite irresponsible to those who would download and attempt to play the game.

 
I agree that developing without a XBOX is almost impossible. But maybe he can find a tester! And dream build play competition obviously has a lot of half finished games, but polishing is only 30% of the judgement. Moreover its not a public release so he is not really shipping an unfinished game. And who knows its better to try it since he might get it working. Motivating him is not a bad thing esp. when he has only like 30 hours of his life to "lose". He and most of the others wouldn't even see it at lost time, since we all know there are only 4 prizes and hundreds of submissions. Its not mainly for the competition but for the experiences you make and for feeling the accomplishment in having others play what you created. Besides that I think XNA games are almost not publishable as Windows games, since it needs so much installed on the target system. So yes its almost impossible to develop for XBOX without having a system to try on but its not wasted time for sure.

I've got a 360 controller, the game uses it for input now though it defaults to keyboard if it can't find it. Performance is something I am worried about though. Let's see how it goes.

Ok, I managed to get it ported (I think). I can't test it though. Turns out our musician has a 360 and a silver live membership, but no premium account. I don't get the free premium creators club account without submitting the game, so that's out of the question. Is there a way I can buy him the premium membership?

you don't need premium to test it

you only need a trial account, and he needs to install XNA Game Studio 2.0, so he can deploy. You should have a creator's club trial from signing up on the dreambuildplay site

Ringo:

Ok, I managed to get it ported (I think). I can't test it though. Turns out our musician has a 360 and a silver live membership, but no premium account. I don't get the free premium creators club account without submitting the game, so that's out of the question. Is there a way I can buy him the premium membership?

Just have him sign up for the contest and he gets the trial membership.