CarlosNYM:

Wow, you guys have some really amazing stuff so far. For me, I'm in high school and been learning XNA for about a year now and I decided to try my hand in this year's contest. Obviously I'm not winning a prize but participating in something with a particular deadline really will keep my focus and just being able to finish and release a game would be so awesome, regardless of how it stacks up. Currently our build team is made up of about 4-5 volunteers all working on games for the first time, and even though it's stacked against us I'm proud of the progress we've made so far in the game programming and design. Here is an early trailer that I made, once again I know it's not great but making this game is some of the most fun I've had.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JU0iyOFLx0

Hey... Don't beat yourself up. Just taken a look at the game. Looking good!

Love the concept artwork. I suspect your going for an 8 bit shooter feel (constant value movement on x & y?). That said, you might wany to consider ship movement based on acceleration (physics) value rather than a constant value. Will smooth out the movement (a bit more polish for DBP!). You need to adjust movement based on frame rate, with something like (pseudo'ish code)...

float timeFraction = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds;

if (Thumbstick goes Left) {
if (accel > 0) accel*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
accel -= 1;
}
else if (Thumbstick goes Right) {
if (accel < 0) accel*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
accel += 1;
} else {
accel*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
}
shipx += (accel * timeFraction);

That sort of thing!

Good luck with dream build play!

Duckocide:

CarlosNYM:

Wow, you guys have some really amazing stuff so far. For me, I'm in high school and been learning XNA for about a year now and I decided to try my hand in this year's contest. Obviously I'm not winning a prize but participating in something with a particular deadline really will keep my focus and just being able to finish and release a game would be so awesome, regardless of how it stacks up. Currently our build team is made up of about 4-5 volunteers all working on games for the first time, and even though it's stacked against us I'm proud of the progress we've made so far in the game programming and design. Here is an early trailer that I made, once again I know it's not great but making this game is some of the most fun I've had.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JU0iyOFLx0

Hey... Don't beat yourself up. Just taken a look at the game. Looking good!

Love the concept artwork. I suspect your going for an 8 bit shooter feel (constant value movement on x & y?). That said, you might wany to consider ship movement based on acceleration (physics) value rather than a constant value. Will smooth out the movement (a bit more polish for DBP!). You need to adjust movement based on frame rate, with something like (pseudo'ish code)...

float timeFraction = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds;

if (Thumbstick goes Left) {
if (accel > 0) accel*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
accel -= 1;
}
else if (Thumbstick goes Right) {
if (accel < 0) accel*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
accel += 1;
} else {
accel*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
}
shipx += (accel * timeFraction);

That sort of thing!

Good luck with dream build play!

The accel variable will confuse sorry, should be speed (as acceleration is distance over time)

float timeFraction = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds;

if (Thumbstick goes Left) {
if (speed > 0) speed*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
speed -= 1;
}
else if (Thumbstick goes Right) {
if (speed < 0) speed*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
speed += 1;
} else {
speed*=0.5f; // deaccelerate hard (we are not on ice)
}
shipx += (speed * timeFraction);

@ CarlosNYM

Hey you guys have a great start...! Is your project part of a class? Or you just a bunch of friends? Either way way I think you guys are really on the right path... Regardless of skill the key to your success will be not biting off more than you can chew... Keep your milestones small and attainable and you guys will no doubt have a great game by august....

Keep posting updates I want to follow your game!

Well we are finally far enough along that I feel comfortable posting at least an official announcement... Along with some art to kick things off right...haha

http://asegawa.blogspot.com/

It's not much, More to come soon...

Hi guys!

I'm really excited to see all this kick ass competition for DBP! I will be entering as well with Gum Drop (http://www.occasionalgamer.com). I hope to see more videos of your creations soon!

Here's a video of a recent build of the game :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfRWb5uo9y4

-Elbert

Hey,

I'm still in the procrastination stages ;-)

I still haven't got my tech finished, let alone assets.  I think what will mostly happen is that I focus on getting one or two complete levels finished for DBP.

I'm in the "I keep telling myself I'm going to enter yet I have no idea what to do and haven't started anything" phase. I'd say it's going well. :p

Nick Gravelyn:

I'm in the "I keep telling myself I'm going to enter yet I have no idea what to do and haven't started anything" phase. I'd say it's going well. :p

I'm in the "Make a game for XBLCG and if you finish it in time submit it to DBP" phase.

Catalin Zima:

I'm in the "Make a game for XBLCG and if you finish it in time submit it to DBP" phase.

Happens every year to me...

I've hit the ... "How the hell am I going to get all those feature ready in time ???" phase as well. This is closely followed by the "I'm struggling to drum up the enthusiam now..." and concludes litterally days before the deadline with "I must take sometime off work to get this game finished". Of course, once you get past that final stage, then get the "Did my game upload correctly?" phase (happens right up until the results). Plus the rather amusing, "I've just read the rules and I think I've forgotten something..." denial paradox. Still, I keep coming back for more (!) Good Luck everyone!

The ZMan:

I'm still in the procrastination stages ;-)

Nick Gravelyn:

I'm in the "I keep telling myself I'm going to enter yet I have no idea what to do and haven't started anything" phase. I'd say it's going well. :p

Haha, me too! I have The Virtual Store Channel and Dungeon Adventure in development right now, but I don't think either of them are "DBP-worthy". I have a bunch of ideas for more involved games but they would take a long time to finish and I just don't have that much time right now. I may just submit Awesome Tank if I don't get anything else finished. I just found out that DBP was actually coming back, so next year I'll definatly have something much more impressive...

I essentially finished a build of my game for the PAX10 deadline, a week or two ago. So, I'm really just going to take the next couple months to polish the experience, work on the UI, tweak the difficulty, things like that. If I can implement the second or third floors out of seven, I will, but for me, it's really about making the experience feel like a professional title, as opposed to the standard XBLCG look.

Anyway, best of luck to everyone who will be going through crunchtime. I was doing it for around three weeks straight...caffeine is your friend. = (

<engage envy chip/>

The ZMan:

I'm still in the procrastination stages ;-)

Same method here.. although looking at all the vids and pics, i'm thinking.. ugh.. do I even have a chance? hehe

My game that i expected to be done about two months ago will hopefully be finished in time for DPB. 87 levels out of 100 done, most features implimented, most bugs squashed, most artwork done. Hoping to finish up the core of the game in early June and then get to spend a few weeks adding a glossy shine.

The Turbo Pixels were already designing a game when we heard about the contest.  We plan on being done with the code design by the 1st of June, and having the implementation by July 1st.  Then, debugging and polish until the end of the deadline.  Here's wishing everyone the best of luck!

Well... it's been a few weeks since this thread was started. Fantastic to see so many creative people entering the compo. Me, I put a bit of a late (or early?) one in last night and managed to get some things exploding. You can take a peek at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16RiuS0rMoU.

I've been watching your game progress. You're making a lot better progress than I am. Those explosions look really good. I think the color palette is a little too normal for such a different game. If the atmosphere on one of those planets is methane for instance you might have green explosions. It's just you have such unique models and gameplay and then the explosions are very Earth.

They do look good though, regardless of color, I like the textures and the speed of the fading out etc.

nikescar:

I've been watching your game progress. You're making a lot better progress than I am. Those explosions look really good. I think the color palette is a little too normal for such a different game. If the atmosphere on one of those planets is methane for instance you might have green explosions. It's just you have such unique models and gameplay and then the explosions are very Earth.

Great job though.

Fair comment. you are right about the explosions looking a bit "normal". It's a first pass to be honest (just pleased it worked last night!). I like the idea of varying the main explosion texture and colour as the planets change. thanks for the critique.

Ok... Valuable lessons learnt ... In previous DBP years, I've always developed on a PC with less gaming power than an XBOX. This year is different though. I treated myself to an Alienware AMD Phenom quad core with NVIDIA 9800 GX2.

OMFG! Tonight (errr... This morning), I just ported my game to the Xbox for the first time. Everything compiled and ran. Lessoned learnt here (take heed DBP noobs) ... Unlike my super fast PC happily throwing thousands of objects around at 60 fps, the 360 managed about 2 fps!!! Unlike days of old when my games got a performance boost going on to 360, suddenly, it is of course the other way around!

Well, I spent several hours tonight "tuning" the game for 360 and the FPS is back to within spitting distance of 60fps. Phew! I'm sure I can squeeze a little more performance, but I think I'll leave that until July crunch...!  

I know how you feel Duckocide.  My PC could probably run a couple 360 and PS3 games at the same time.  When I first deployed my game to the 360 my heart nearly sank!  It had to do with my use of the ToString() in my code (hey, I was learning).  I learned pretty quickly to deploy everything daily just to make sure I'm locked at 60fps.

Noogy:

I know how you feel Duckocide.  My PC could probably run a couple 360 and PS3 games at the same time.  When I first deployed my game to the 360 my heart nearly sank!  It had to do with my use of the ToString() in my code (hey, I was learning).  I learned pretty quickly to deploy everything daily just to make sure I'm locked at 60fps.

Tell me about it :) I'd be lying if I said a wave of panic didn't wash over me.