Occasional Gamer

XNA development blog of Elbert Perez

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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

© Copyright 2010

Introducing Scribble Defense

After weeks of trying to find a name for my new tower defense game I have settled for the name Scribble Defense. I chose this name because the game reminds me of scribbles I made when I was younger. Mixing contrasting white lines on a black background, as well as having colorful towers to accentuate and add colors to the game.

Currently I added some new concepts to the game. First of all the game now supports 2 player co-op. Having two players in the game will increase the challenge level to account for the added player. Also I have added a money drop system, money no longer automatically add to the player's bank, but has to be picked up by either player to be added to the bank. This makes the game more dynamic as the player has to constantly move around in order to get money he needs to buy more towers.

 

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Posted by Elbert on Friday, March 05, 2010 2:12 AM
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Impossible Shoota Postmortem

General Thoughts:

 

  1. This is my third game to be published on XBLIG
  2. Code base was derived from a unpublished game which had the framework setup
  3. I just wanted to create a simple shooter game
  4. Attempted to do cross marketing between my games
  5. Development time took 2 months

 

What went right:

 

  1. Very fast development time because I knew I just wanted a simple dual stick shooter
  2. The code base I have been using has been mature enough that I did not spend alot of time scratching my head
  3. Simpler menus allowed me to concentrate on the gameplay better

 

What went wrong: 

 

  1. The cross marketing seemed to have ticked some people off, even comparing my game to the Yaris game that came out of XBLA
  2. The game was not quite as impossible during the first release, I had to fix gameplay for a patch but that probably hurt my sales
  3. I did not try to innovate as much with this game to differentiate it from the dozens of twin stick shooters out there 

 

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Posted by Elbert on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 3:06 PM
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Neo Terra ready for download on Zune HD

I recently put up the alpha version of Neo Terra Zune HD here. It is a simpler version of my Xbox game Neo Terra (Xbox.com).  You can download the game from here: Neo Terra Zune HD

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Categories: XNA | Zune HD
Posted by Elbert on Monday, March 01, 2010 8:57 PM
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My new tower defense game is shaping up

Looks like my latest creation is starting to shape up. I've nailed down a couple of key gameplay features that will differentiate my game from other Tower Defense Games. First of all my cursor that I use to drop down towers also serves double duty as tower enhancer. Towers don't get upgraded traditionally like other tower defense games, but the presence of the player avatar near the towers effectively upgrades them while within the radius of the avatar. Secondly, I have movable waypoints, not all of them are movable but some are. There is a special tower that you can buy that can move the waypoints to the direction you choose. Also it is possible for certain waypoints to randomly move in different directions. This gameplay feature makes the game a bit more dynamic as the flow of the creeps can change at any moment in time.  I posted a video to show the new gameplay features. Enjoy! 

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Categories: Videos | XNA
Posted by Elbert on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 1:24 AM
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Getting the Tower Defense Game Framework into shape

This has always been my problem in making games. Assets! I don't have the resources to hire a proper artist for every project so I tend to gravitate towards less asset intensive games. I think this has to stop, so I've decided to take up art work generation for my games to the next level! I've added 2d animation classes to the framework I am using. This has already been implemented to my latest update to Impossible Shoota. 
Anyways, the video I posted up here is about my current tower defense game project. I called it What? because I seriously have no idea what to name it yet or what central theme it should be. But this is my current work in progress. 

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Categories: XNA | Tower Defense
Posted by Elbert on Thursday, February 18, 2010 1:32 AM
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Impossible Shoota released on Xbox Live Indie Games for 80 ms pts

 

Click the image to go to Xbox.com and download the game

 

My game Impossible Shoota has just been released on Xbox Live Indie Games for 80 ms pts. It is a straightforward dual stick shoota where you fight 500 enemies, and at the end you are rewarded with a game code for my other game Neo Terra!

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Categories: Impossible Shoota | XNA
Posted by Elbert on Tuesday, February 09, 2010 5:54 PM
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Another Color Defense Prototype

I recently implemented non-movable waypoints to bring a bit more organization into the chaos that happens when the waypoints for the creeps wander around. I've also added different types of creeps mainly the soldier, tank, and runner. I am still currently hanging on to the idea of saturation vs de-saturation like my other game impossible shoota.

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Categories: XNA | Color Defense
Posted by Elbert on Sunday, February 07, 2010 12:12 PM
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Prototype for my next game

This is a more organic version of a tower defense game. This is just the prototyping stage, but I have been playing with color to relay information about the enemies as well as a more dynamic routing system for the AI. 

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Categories: Games Research | XNA
Posted by Elbert on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 10:14 AM
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Impossible Shoota almost ready to release

I'm in the final stages of getting Impossible Shoota ono the XBLIG service, hopefully I won't have anymore setbacks to getting it to the service. Here is the final trailer for the game. Enjoy!

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Categories: Impossible Shoota | XNA
Posted by Elbert on Friday, January 29, 2010 1:24 PM
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More changes to the game

After discovering that the game had an inefficient way of handling the turrets I have been able to increase performance of the game on the Xbox 360 which has always been a pain point in developing on XNA. I've also cleaned up the collision handling code and removed alot of excess calls that were not needed in the first place. I've also changed how the projectiles are rendered to make them more visible and crisper to the user, I used to do additive blend to make them more glowy, but the end resultas a bit blurrier and less defined outline that made them hard to see. I also made the background into a darker shade to make the ships seem more saturated/desaturated. I have also been tweaking with gameplay as I am trying to find the balance of making the game exciting at the first enemy versus easing in the player into the action. Overall though I am happy with the changes to the game both visually and techincally. However I am still unhappy with the gameplay. Here is a video of the latest changes:

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Categories: Impossible Shoota | XNA
Posted by Elbert on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:06 AM
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