Should be interesting, although there may be pretty strict guidelines in place regarding what you can do with them--e.g. Microsoft probably doesn't want you using them in ultra-violent stuff.
I'm more excited about them fixing serialization for the Xbox 360, finally. Should save a lot of trouble in save/load routines.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
Are they going to have the same rules and restrictions as Arcade games? I'm sure I read that they can't be in anything above the absolute lowest age rating.
edit: huh, I see I was beaten without even realising it.
Should be interesting, although there may be pretty strict guidelines in place regarding what you can do with them--e.g. Microsoft probably doesn't want you using them in ultra-violent stuff.
I'm more excited about them fixing serialization for the Xbox 360, finally. Should save a lot of trouble in save/load routines.
I wonder if that will effect the content pipeline.
I gave Supercow a try. Nice graphics, okay music. It seems to be very much "My First Platformer" - controls are literally "A = Jump" and you have lots of life so even if you get hurt, you're not in any huge danger. As far as I can tell, there aren't any power-ups. Level design is better than most platformers on the service at the moment (there are various secret areas scattered throughout with extra coins). The fact that you get bonus points for killing multiple enemies without touching the ground is a nice touch. Lots of levels (I think the buy screen said 50?), a few bosses, as well as achievements.
All in all, it seems like a good game for the casual platformer fan, but as someone who counts N+ & Mirror's Edge as some of their favorite games, Supercow's lack of difficulty & complexity means I'll probably skip on it unless I read some impressions that say that it picks up in the later levels.
"Fading Memories & ZenHak are both attrocious games so it's a real shame to see them on there."
Do you really have to bag on my game ZenHak quite that harshly? I guess some lack the true vision and enlightenment to see the Hak for what it is the perfect combination of cyberpunk and craps using hexadecimal mathematics and dice ten sided.
In all seriousness I wanted to do something experimental, that is one of the things indie games can do best, but perhaps I went to far and didn't include enough classic RPG elements? I plan an update to make the Haking game more clear and perhaps add additional content. I welcome constructive criticism and I know some people love the game, well at least me and a random forum poster named outback76.
"Fading Memories & ZenHak are both attrocious games so it's a real shame to see them on there."
Do you really have to bag on my game ZenHak quite that harshly? I guess some lack the true vision and enlightenment to see the Hak for what it is the perfect combination of cyberpunk and craps using hexadecimal mathematics and dice ten sided.
In all seriousness I wanted to do something experimental, that is one of the things indie games can do best, but perhaps I went to far and didn't include enough classic RPG elements? I plan an update to make the Haking game more clear and perhaps add additional content. I welcome constructive criticism and I know some people love the game, well at least me and a random forum poster named outback76.
"Fading Memories & ZenHak are both attrocious games so it's a real shame to see them on there."
Do you really have to bag on my game ZenHak quite that harshly? I guess some lack the true vision and enlightenment to see the Hak for what it is the perfect combination of cyberpunk and craps using hexadecimal mathematics and dice ten sided.
In all seriousness I wanted to do something experimental, that is one of the things indie games can do best, but perhaps I went to far and didn't include enough classic RPG elements? I plan an update to make the Haking game more clear and perhaps add additional content. I welcome constructive criticism and I know some people love the game, well at least me and a random forum poster named outback76.
Cheers,
Zenfar
You could make a game out of solid gold and people will find a way to hate it. Just sayin' man, don't take it personally.
EliteBattleman on
This is my sig.
There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
"Fading Memories & ZenHak are both attrocious games so it's a real shame to see them on there."
Do you really have to bag on my game ZenHak quite that harshly? I guess some lack the true vision and enlightenment to see the Hak for what it is the perfect combination of cyberpunk and craps using hexadecimal mathematics and dice ten sided.
In all seriousness I wanted to do something experimental, that is one of the things indie games can do best, but perhaps I went to far and didn't include enough classic RPG elements? I plan an update to make the Haking game more clear and perhaps add additional content. I welcome constructive criticism and I know some people love the game, well at least me and a random forum poster named outback76.
Cheers,
Zenfar
Doing something experimental requires you to communicate your ideas to the player. ZenHak does not do this. As someone who has probably played over 100 RPGs, I had no clue how to play ZenHak. After messing around with it for 5 minutes, I had no idea if I was succeeding or failing. If you had included good instructions in the game, then my inability to understand how to play the game would have been my own fault, but as the game had no instructions, then it's your fault. Requiring the player to email the creator for instructions is not a good way to endear yourself.
Reasons why ZenHak is an awful game.
#1 - No instructions.
#2 - Spelling Hack as Hak. Complete with wonderful words like haking.
#3 - No instructions.
#4 - There are only 2 things to do in the starting room. 1 of these things says "Feature not available in demo" and doesn't actually tell the user what the feature is.
#5 - No instructions.
#6 - As far as I can tell from your description and my own attempts at playing it, the gameplay is mostly luck based. Games that are mostly luck based tend not to be fun outside of gambling diversions.
#7 - No instructions.
Again, there might be a good game hidden in ZenHak for all I know, but the atrocious demo did nothing to indicate that to me. Heck, I wanted to like ZenHak; cyberpunk is a woefully underused genre for RPGs. A good cyberpunk RPG would easily be a must buy from me.
Thanks EliteBattleman, I found this thread through Google but I joined because any thread that is hyped about Avatar based games and Solar can't be all bad.
Thanks for the comment RainbowDespair I will see what I can do about #4 and #6 in an update (and 1,3,5, and 7).
As far as Avatar based games go I can't wait to generate random Avatars in a loop and see if I can't make an Agent Smith style fight scene with them.
Sorry if I was too harsh. As someone who is making their own XNA Community Game, I understand the long hours involved in making any game and believe that just about anyone who releases a game is worthy of a pat on the back. There might be a good, maybe even a great game in ZenHak, but I feel that the game as it is now feels incomplete: a proof of concept that needed a few more months of fine tuning & play testing before it was released.
But honestly, I think the biggest mistake was probably assuming that most people knew how to play Craps & would make the connection between that game & yours. Poker, you could probably get away with, since many games since the NES days have included various Poker mini-games (see the Dragon Quest titles), but something like Craps is unlikely to be understand by your average gamer who doesn't vacation in Vegas.
Is Miner Dig Deep any good? I was downloading Community demos, and accidentally added the full version to the queue.
I really liked the demo. It'll probably be my next Community Game purchase (my last was A Fading Melody).
EDIT: Since I just realized I hadn't posted my impressions on A Fading Melody yet: I thought it was a fun and well designed game. Graphics & audio were both nice. Level progression was well done with each new level upping the difficulty and usually adding a new monster or gameplay element. There were a few parts in the various levels that I thought were particularly clever. It wasn't perfect (it's a little on the short side), but on the whole, I enjoyed it and don't regret my purchase.
Should be interesting, although there may be pretty strict guidelines in place regarding what you can do with them--e.g. Microsoft probably doesn't want you using them in ultra-violent stuff.
I'm more excited about them fixing serialization for the Xbox 360, finally. Should save a lot of trouble in save/load routines.
I have a game I've been fiddling with in a tiny fraction of my spare time (I am employed an a programmer by day so a lot of the time just don't want to open visual studio when I get home) and was thinking about adding a little bubble-window in the corner with your avatar that would react to damage to your ship and other things. Like a little view of your pilot.
Is Miner Dig Deep any good? I was downloading Community demos, and accidentally added the full version to the queue.
EDIT: Since I just realized I hadn't posted my impressions on A Fading Melody yet: I thought it was a fun and well designed game. Graphics & audio were both nice. Level progression was well done with each new level upping the difficulty and usually adding a new monster or gameplay element. There were a few parts in the various levels that I thought were particularly clever. It wasn't perfect (it's a little on the short side), but on the whole, I enjoyed it and don't regret my purchase.
Thanks for the review!
As a post-mortem, I do think I should have added in two or three more levels and introduced a couple new enemies or environmental challenges. In retrospect, I also probably should have removed the Sprint function and made it so that the player always runs (I'm doing this for the PC version).
However, what's done is done, and I think I'll just move onto my next game. Or I could port Core Fighter over, although that would be an awful lot of work.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
Yeah, I think unless you find a major bug, it's best to just leave finished games alone and devote your energy towards your next project rather than endlessly tinkering with them. The exception, of course, being certain multiplayer games.
EDIT: Here's a nifty quote from this year's GDC:
"I think we sometimes value innovation too highly," said Pardo of the game development community. "We really don't teach lessons of execution enough."
I think that's something that a lot of Community Game developers should take to heart. I've seen so many examples of Community Games that have a good idea, but they botch the basics. Soldier of Time is a good example: time manipulation in an action game is a good idea, but the enemy AI & player control in that game are horrible which renders the whole thing unplayable.
Should be interesting, although there may be pretty strict guidelines in place regarding what you can do with them--e.g. Microsoft probably doesn't want you using them in ultra-violent stuff.
I'm more excited about them fixing serialization for the Xbox 360, finally. Should save a lot of trouble in save/load routines.
Won't be able to serialize to .xnb files, so save is out of the question.
Yeah, I think unless you find a major bug, it's best to just leave finished games alone and devote your energy towards your next project rather than endlessly tinkering with them. The exception, of course, being certain multiplayer games.
EDIT: Here's a nifty quote from this year's GDC:
"I think we sometimes value innovation too highly," said Pardo of the game development community. "We really don't teach lessons of execution enough."
I think that's something that a lot of Community Game developers should take to heart. I've seen so many examples of Community Games that have a good idea, but they botch the basics. Soldier of Time is a good example: time manipulation in an action game is a good idea, but the enemy AI & player control in that game are horrible which renders the whole thing unplayable.
This is my whole philosophy, basically. I don't care if I make something that's new or innovative (though, I wouldn't mind it), I'm just trying to make something high quality.
My game is just a pretty basic platformer (put simply, as represented in German in my sig, "a jump'n run with a stick-man"), sort of like a cross between Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario Bros, so I'm spending a lot of time on the details trying to make it as polished as possible.
Couldn't you just serialize save game data to an XML?
You can already do that now with the XmlSerializer. I was just speaking about automatic xnb serialization in the new 3.1 update, which is what I thought you were talking about
Couldn't you just serialize save game data to an XML?
You can already do that now with the XmlSerializer. I was just speaking about automatic xnb serialization in the new 3.1 update, which is what I thought you were talking about
Ah, I meant that there are some serious issues with XmlSerializer, like being unable to use [NonSerialized], which makes class design difficult and often makes it better to just not serialize data at all.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
Ah, I meant that there are some serious issues with XmlSerializer, like being unable to use [NonSerialized], which makes class design difficult and often makes it better to just not serialize data at all.
Since we're on the subject of saving & loading, any tips for someone who hasn't written that part of the code yet? My current project doesn't need to save or load a ton (just an array of integers for keeping track of scores for each level which will double as letting me know which levels have been unlocked) although future projects will, no doubt, save a lot more data.
Since we're on the subject of saving & loading, any tips for someone who hasn't written that part of the code yet? My current project doesn't need to save or load a ton (just an array of integers for keeping track of scores for each level which will double as letting me know which levels have been unlocked) although future projects will, no doubt, save a lot more data.
I used XmlSerializer extensively. Worked great. Don't have to worry about the CurrentInfo.
My advice would be this: Load and save to a text file while you're programming logic. Depending on how you output data, it has the advantage of being human readable and editable in your choice of editors. You can also edit outside, load, or save during runtime. Because serialized files are loaded at runtime, if you save stageX to xml, you can't load it immediately because the game is looking for stageX.xnb, which won't have been created yet.
Ah, I meant that there are some serious issues with XmlSerializer, like being unable to use [NonSerialized], which makes class design difficult and often makes it better to just not serialize data at all.
[XmlIgnore]
Oh, does that actually work? I feel like an idiot, now.
...hey, this will make porting Core Fighter a lot easier.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
0
DyvionBack in Sunny Florida!!Registered Userregular
Is Miner Dig Deep any good? I was downloading Community demos, and accidentally added the full version to the queue.
Miner Dig Deep is excellent and well worth the points. I've put many hours into it.
ditto. Also, Solar is a ton of fun. I've been speaking with the author through e-mail and giving him my ideas for additional/optional challenges and he seems like he's getting a lot of good input from people and will be expanding the title. I can't wait.
Dyvion on
Steam: No Safety In Life
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
Yep, Solar rules quite a bit. Great idea for a game.
By the way, I've just written a (really lengthy, so avoid if you don't like tl;dr) post mortem of A Fading Melody, so if anyone's interested in what went into the game:
Very interesting. I was considering doing something similar for my own game, but have it built into the game as a Commentary option (perhaps unlocked after the player beats the game). Now that I think about it, though, I think doing it as a blog entry (or even multiple entries) is probably better: easier, plus it could potentially be used as marketing.
See, more developers need to do postmortems. It was a very interesting read, and reading about the Fading mechanic got me really interested in it. I'll try/probably buy it tomorrow
Ah, I meant that there are some serious issues with XmlSerializer, like being unable to use [NonSerialized], which makes class design difficult and often makes it better to just not serialize data at all.
[XmlIgnore]
Oh, does that actually work? I feel like an idiot, now.
...hey, this will make porting Core Fighter a lot easier.
Yep, Solar rules quite a bit. Great idea for a game.
By the way, I've just written a (really lengthy, so avoid if you don't like tl;dr) post mortem of A Fading Melody, so if anyone's interested in what went into the game:
Funny, A Fading Melody is rather similar (in terms of genre, visuals and narration method) to a project I'm working on, Ønes.
Actually, I'd love for some initial feedback on the game concept and artworks.
You can check out our website, but keep in mind that it's a little outdated and empty. We should get around to fixing that, but we're working against a deadline and time is precious.
Ønes is a 2D Platform/Puzzle game hybrid that combines classic platforming with its own unique gameplay.
You play a God-like entity that watches over a strange man and guides him through dangerous levels. It soon becomes apparent that the man alone cannot succeed, and so you grant him a fragment of your ubiquity.
Create copies of yourself that mimic your actions and discover the joys of multitasking! With up to three copies, challenge your way of thinking: perform cooperative moves, create powerful new actions and fuse them to create a powerful ally
Rewind time to correct mistakes and better coordinate your actions with your copies. Practice makes perfect, and perfection is what you'll need to survive in Ønes.
The current objective is 50-60 levels and a June 2009 release. Price tag should be 200 or 400 points.
It's a student project, but we're actually bringing in quite a fair bit of talent together for this and we want the players to get their money's worth from the quality and content of the game. (That means staying up until midnight every day for the past few months and until June working on this. God damn deadlines )
Wow, that's neat. It makes me think of how cool the multi-character system in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin could have been.
Edit: A suggestion for your website, though - you might want to shadowbox the popup windows, because otherwise it looks like all the links are still clickable. Or have clicking outside of them transition them off would work, too.
Supercow is a great example of what Community Games is desperately lacking. Not easy platformers staring bovines with extraordinary strength, but polish. Even a lot of the good games on XNA really feel like they were pushed out as quick as possible rather than getting an extra fews weeks to touch up some physics, animations, menus, transitions, and extra features. The game looks and feels high quality, and there's only a handful of games on XNA that are like that.
The sales numbers are out. I've made a decent chunk of change over the last six days off of A Fading Melody, especially given its no-budget nature and short development cycle, but not enough to elevate it beyond "hobbyist, secondary income" level.
The Solar developer shared his income over the past week on the XNA forums, and he says he's made $2,500, though--significantly more than I did. I think if you're one of the very top sellers and stay on the Popular chart consistently you could probably live off it, but I don't think anybody should count on being able to quit their day job.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
0
Dusdais ashamed of this postSLC, UTRegistered Userregular
edited March 2009
Bah, the forum tanked while I was writing a post about screenshots. I explained this in greater detail, but lost it, so...
Someone a few pages back mentioned taking screenshots in your game. You can actually build functionality for taking screenshots pretty easily. Basically all you do is use your GraphicsDevice's ResolveBackBuffer method, which dumps the current frame in the buffer into a texture, which you can then just save in whatever format you choose.
using (ResolveTexture2D dstTexture =
new ResolveTexture2D(
myDevice, screenWidth,
screenHeight, 1, SurfaceFormat.Color))
{
//get data with help of resolve method, using the Graphics Device
myDevice.ResolveBackBuffer(dstTexture);
dstTexture.Save("C:\Screenshots\screenshot.jpg", ImageFileFormat.Bmp);
}
The sales numbers are out. I've made a decent chunk of change over the last six days off of A Fading Melody, especially given its no-budget nature and short development cycle, but not enough to elevate it beyond "hobbyist, secondary income" level.
The Solar developer shared his income over the past week on the XNA forums, and he says he's made $2,500, though--significantly more than I did. I think if you're one of the very top sellers and stay on the Popular chart consistently you could probably live off it, but I don't think anybody should count on being able to quit their day job.
It really seems to me that most of the people talking about low total download numbers made knock off games, things I had never heard of or had no interest in playing.
For example, I have a book my mom got me of a Soduku puzzles and a web site where I can play it for free. Why would I want to do that on my xbox?
Solar on the other hand is a unique concept and he marketed his game on newgrounds. It was smart and proves that you can do well on there if, you know, you make something worth buying.
Posts
I'm more excited about them fixing serialization for the Xbox 360, finally. Should save a lot of trouble in save/load routines.
edit: huh, I see I was beaten without even realising it.
I wonder if that will effect the content pipeline.
All in all, it seems like a good game for the casual platformer fan, but as someone who counts N+ & Mirror's Edge as some of their favorite games, Supercow's lack of difficulty & complexity means I'll probably skip on it unless I read some impressions that say that it picks up in the later levels.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Do you really have to bag on my game ZenHak quite that harshly? I guess some lack the true vision and enlightenment to see the Hak for what it is the perfect combination of cyberpunk and craps using hexadecimal mathematics and dice ten sided.
In all seriousness I wanted to do something experimental, that is one of the things indie games can do best, but perhaps I went to far and didn't include enough classic RPG elements? I plan an update to make the Haking game more clear and perhaps add additional content. I welcome constructive criticism and I know some people love the game, well at least me and a random forum poster named outback76.
Cheers,
Zenfar
Site: Zenfar
Did you really just join to fight back?
You could make a game out of solid gold and people will find a way to hate it. Just sayin' man, don't take it personally.
There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
Doing something experimental requires you to communicate your ideas to the player. ZenHak does not do this. As someone who has probably played over 100 RPGs, I had no clue how to play ZenHak. After messing around with it for 5 minutes, I had no idea if I was succeeding or failing. If you had included good instructions in the game, then my inability to understand how to play the game would have been my own fault, but as the game had no instructions, then it's your fault. Requiring the player to email the creator for instructions is not a good way to endear yourself.
Reasons why ZenHak is an awful game.
#1 - No instructions.
#2 - Spelling Hack as Hak. Complete with wonderful words like haking.
#3 - No instructions.
#4 - There are only 2 things to do in the starting room. 1 of these things says "Feature not available in demo" and doesn't actually tell the user what the feature is.
#5 - No instructions.
#6 - As far as I can tell from your description and my own attempts at playing it, the gameplay is mostly luck based. Games that are mostly luck based tend not to be fun outside of gambling diversions.
#7 - No instructions.
Again, there might be a good game hidden in ZenHak for all I know, but the atrocious demo did nothing to indicate that to me. Heck, I wanted to like ZenHak; cyberpunk is a woefully underused genre for RPGs. A good cyberpunk RPG would easily be a must buy from me.
XNPlay's review of ZenHak & the comments under it sum up my thoughts on the demo nicely: http://www.xnplay.co.uk/2009/03/18/zenhak/#more-1162
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Thanks for the comment RainbowDespair I will see what I can do about #4 and #6 in an update (and 1,3,5, and 7).
As far as Avatar based games go I can't wait to generate random Avatars in a loop and see if I can't make an Agent Smith style fight scene with them.
Site: Zenfar
But honestly, I think the biggest mistake was probably assuming that most people knew how to play Craps & would make the connection between that game & yours. Poker, you could probably get away with, since many games since the NES days have included various Poker mini-games (see the Dragon Quest titles), but something like Craps is unlikely to be understand by your average gamer who doesn't vacation in Vegas.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Twitter
Miner Dig Deep is excellent and well worth the points. I've put many hours into it.
I really liked the demo. It'll probably be my next Community Game purchase (my last was A Fading Melody).
EDIT: Since I just realized I hadn't posted my impressions on A Fading Melody yet: I thought it was a fun and well designed game. Graphics & audio were both nice. Level progression was well done with each new level upping the difficulty and usually adding a new monster or gameplay element. There were a few parts in the various levels that I thought were particularly clever. It wasn't perfect (it's a little on the short side), but on the whole, I enjoyed it and don't regret my purchase.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
I have a game I've been fiddling with in a tiny fraction of my spare time (I am employed an a programmer by day so a lot of the time just don't want to open visual studio when I get home) and was thinking about adding a little bubble-window in the corner with your avatar that would react to damage to your ship and other things. Like a little view of your pilot.
Thanks for the review!
As a post-mortem, I do think I should have added in two or three more levels and introduced a couple new enemies or environmental challenges. In retrospect, I also probably should have removed the Sprint function and made it so that the player always runs (I'm doing this for the PC version).
However, what's done is done, and I think I'll just move onto my next game. Or I could port Core Fighter over, although that would be an awful lot of work.
EDIT: Here's a nifty quote from this year's GDC:
"I think we sometimes value innovation too highly," said Pardo of the game development community. "We really don't teach lessons of execution enough."
I think that's something that a lot of Community Game developers should take to heart. I've seen so many examples of Community Games that have a good idea, but they botch the basics. Soldier of Time is a good example: time manipulation in an action game is a good idea, but the enemy AI & player control in that game are horrible which renders the whole thing unplayable.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Won't be able to serialize to .xnb files, so save is out of the question.
This is my whole philosophy, basically. I don't care if I make something that's new or innovative (though, I wouldn't mind it), I'm just trying to make something high quality.
My game is just a pretty basic platformer (put simply, as represented in German in my sig, "a jump'n run with a stick-man"), sort of like a cross between Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario Bros, so I'm spending a lot of time on the details trying to make it as polished as possible.
You can already do that now with the XmlSerializer. I was just speaking about automatic xnb serialization in the new 3.1 update, which is what I thought you were talking about
Ah, I meant that there are some serious issues with XmlSerializer, like being unable to use [NonSerialized], which makes class design difficult and often makes it better to just not serialize data at all.
[XmlIgnore]
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
According the XNA site, the breakout game is gone.
I used XmlSerializer extensively. Worked great. Don't have to worry about the CurrentInfo.
Oh, does that actually work? I feel like an idiot, now.
...hey, this will make porting Core Fighter a lot easier.
ditto. Also, Solar is a ton of fun. I've been speaking with the author through e-mail and giving him my ideas for additional/optional challenges and he seems like he's getting a lot of good input from people and will be expanding the title. I can't wait.
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
By the way, I've just written a (really lengthy, so avoid if you don't like tl;dr) post mortem of A Fading Melody, so if anyone's interested in what went into the game:
http://www.geekcodex.com/?p=290
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Twitter
Works like a champ.
Funny, A Fading Melody is rather similar (in terms of genre, visuals and narration method) to a project I'm working on, Ønes.
Actually, I'd love for some initial feedback on the game concept and artworks.
You can check out our website, but keep in mind that it's a little outdated and empty. We should get around to fixing that, but we're working against a deadline and time is precious.
The current objective is 50-60 levels and a June 2009 release. Price tag should be 200 or 400 points.
It's a student project, but we're actually bringing in quite a fair bit of talent together for this and we want the players to get their money's worth from the quality and content of the game. (That means staying up until midnight every day for the past few months and until June working on this. God damn deadlines
Edit: A suggestion for your website, though - you might want to shadowbox the popup windows, because otherwise it looks like all the links are still clickable. Or have clicking outside of them transition them off would work, too.
The Solar developer shared his income over the past week on the XNA forums, and he says he's made $2,500, though--significantly more than I did. I think if you're one of the very top sellers and stay on the Popular chart consistently you could probably live off it, but I don't think anybody should count on being able to quit their day job.
Someone a few pages back mentioned taking screenshots in your game. You can actually build functionality for taking screenshots pretty easily. Basically all you do is use your GraphicsDevice's ResolveBackBuffer method, which dumps the current frame in the buffer into a texture, which you can then just save in whatever format you choose.
using (ResolveTexture2D dstTexture = new ResolveTexture2D( myDevice, screenWidth, screenHeight, 1, SurfaceFormat.Color)) { //get data with help of resolve method, using the Graphics Device myDevice.ResolveBackBuffer(dstTexture); dstTexture.Save("C:\Screenshots\screenshot.jpg", ImageFileFormat.Bmp); }It really seems to me that most of the people talking about low total download numbers made knock off games, things I had never heard of or had no interest in playing.
For example, I have a book my mom got me of a Soduku puzzles and a web site where I can play it for free. Why would I want to do that on my xbox?
Solar on the other hand is a unique concept and he marketed his game on newgrounds. It was smart and proves that you can do well on there if, you know, you make something worth buying.