GDExercise Two: ROUND 1 PASSED

After much inner conflict as to what the game should be (designing for an audience is tricky business), I finally threw together a little design doc and sent it off, complete with in game art. After four days, the judges decided that 15 of the 27 designs were worth pursuing. Although I don’t quite agree with the final selection, it’s probably better to hold off on my own judgement until the final prototypes come out. After all, what it comes down to is how well the game actually plays, right?

As the title implies, I was able to make the top fifteen cut. But this is no time to start celebrating, the REAL battle begins now. Soon, true distinction will be made, between realists and dreamers, between action heroes and idea-men. I wish good luck to all.

If anyone is interested in my submission, click here.

Microsoft Xbox 360’s XNA

To tell the truth, I had not planned on getting an Xbox 360 until I heard the news.

Suddenly life as a game developer just got a whole lot easier. With everyone running on the same machine, XNA has nearly eliminated any time spent on cross-hardware issues. Also, with more game-specific libraries, more game centered tools, and not to mention the unseen benefits of joining a dev community, it’s without a doubt that the number of indie game developers will grow tremendously.

Of course, the news that C# is to replace C++ as the indie dev’s weapon of choice brings a bit of a tear to my eye (what will I do without my army of pointers?), but I’m sure the adjustment to managed code won’t be too brutal.

But there’s one thing that really catches my eye…

“The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.”

Microsoft not only promoting open source, but forcing it? Sure, if everything’s open source, not only does it foster a community of cooperation but it also auto-solves malignant software issues (any that might pop up despite the closed environment anyway), but I still can’t stop help but feel that we’ve entered into some sort of ironic dimensional warp…