bluescrn.net

Well, there’s another LD48 approaching, and it looks like I’m free that weekend…

I think I’ll have a go with C#/XNA this time, if I’ve had a chance to learn a bit more about XNA by then

For now, I’ve updated my LD48 page, with some screenshots and info on all my previous LD48 games, including my last one, ‘0xF0′:

Hmm… haven’t posted anything here for almost a year…

Mostly a fairly dull year dominated by work and WoW (after giving up completely for a short period, I started playing again… still playing it a bit, but much more casually now)

For a while I’d been working on a physics-based platform game - concentrating more on the tool/tech side of things than the game - I had a quite advanced C# level editing tool, shader effects (bloom, ‘2D lighting’, water, etc), was using the Chipmunk physics engine, and it was going really quite nicely.  But I made the mistake of taking it into work during the ‘downtime’ between finishing one project and waiting for another to get started - and thinking maybe we could get them interested in making a 2D XBLA/WiiWare game.

But the next project never came,  and our team was made redundant shortly afterwards, leaving me without a job, and the project, which was written maybe least mostly in my spare time, owned by my previous employer…  Which sucks. Anyway, being made redundant turned out to be a fairly good thing, as I quickly found a new job working on an exciting project - and working on the ‘big consoles’ again after a year or so of DS work. No spare time projects on the go yet - been reading up on XNA and on iPhone development, but I’ve been too busy to get motivated….  And there’s Street Fighter IV to be played

Time to clean the cobwebs off the old OpenGL+SDL base code, so I’m not wasting valuable time setting up lib/include paths, and fighting with MSVC’s desire to inflict Unicode pain on anything you try to build…

Here’s what I’m planning to use, should be acceptable under the ‘custom libraries’ rule (except for the font texture, which will have to be replaced during the 48hrs)

http://www.bluescrn.net/LD48/LD48Base.zip

Contains OpenGL+SDL init code (now featuring resolution switching), Texture loading, simple 2D blitting, and some pretty incomplete/untested vector maths code. Linked with FMOD and Chipmunk in case I get a chance to put some audio in, or want to use physics…  And of course a very quick test of getting some stuff on screen:

So I’ve given up WoW again… Well over 100 days (2500 hours+) played over the last 3 years, spread across 3 lv70 characters… It’s been a lot of fun - could be a long time before any other game matches the excitement of a 25-man co-operative boss fight. But playing so much really isn’t healthy, and I started to realised what I could have achieved if all those hours had gone into something a bit more productive, like coding projects or learning to play the keyboard.

And I don’t really like the direction Blizzard is taking the game… more and more grinding/farming (PvP points, 1000000x heroic badgers, uber-boring daily quests), and less significant endgame challenges

Plus guild politics/drama can make it seem more like a job than a game at times…

So about 2 weeks ago I uninstalled the game and cancelled my subscription, and going ‘cold turkey’. I couldn’t quite bring myself to deleting the characters, though. And I’ve written more code in the last couple of weeks than the 6 months or so before!

Anyway, goodbye to Afterglow (Gnome warlock), Wildflower (Human mage), and Eternia (Night Elf resto druid)… you will be missed!