XNA UK User Group

Almost halfway there chaps and chapesses : )

Anyone who's cracking on with this at the mo, why not post here to tell us how it's going?

Well here's the blog.txt file ive been keeping along the way, i guess this is a good a as any place to put it! 

Friday 15th 10pm
It all starts now! got no idea what im going to make. gone through all the music and art, found a few things i like, but nothing that gives me an idea... well, i get loads of ideas but all completely out of scope for what one person can tape together over a weekend! So the plan now is to create 3 scenes. the first, the decent into the water, 2rd is doing something in the water and the third... err not sure yet, probly some form of profit!. ill just wee what happens!

Saturday 16th 4:30
Well ive finished my first stage now! no damn gameplay in it! i suppose its more of an intro sceen. in a diveing bell takeing you to the sea bed. theres a loud speaker in there to tell you the controls for the next segment. no idea what there going to be either! im realy just playing around still hopeing ill come across something cool
Ive decided to implement a flocking algorithm for the in the water bit. get loads of fishes swimming around. try and collect fish or something? i dont know! Ive wanted to implement steering behavurs for a while but never really had time. now's a good a time as any!>_<

Saturday 16th 6:50
I think its going well! read up on steering behavures again to refresh my memory on em, and started to inplment all the classes for the second stage. I think the majority of the game play will take place here. the first stage is ment to set the mood, kind of a cinimatic i guess... wonder if that counts?

Saturday 16th 12:00
Food time! got further on the flocking, taking as long as id feard to make it all work right! got some nasty show stopper bugs at the moment

Saturday 16th 3pm
Gone out to cafe nero with a friend, to drink wonderous caffiene and brainstorm game ideas, the upshot is i have an idea of what to do now and an artist! go team nekocake!

Saturday 16th 7 pm
dinner. nothing to report.

 Saturday 8 pm
Fianaly fixed all the main showstopper bugs in the flocking. WORST IDEA EVER! got some backgrounds ready for the second stage, going to read up on doing audio in a min to get some of the great music and sfx in! hopefully by midnight ill see the game start to form, otherwise it may all be to a loss!

Saturday 10pm
The next 20 hours better go a million times better than these! that about sums up my progress. nowhere.

Sunday 4am

Last day now, since 10 last night ive actuals made some strides in the game! player movement is in, the gameplay in the second stage is shaping up and ive bullied the steering behavious to creat a fairly good fish effect! :)

As you can see, ive got a fairly basic paralax scrolling engine built up, with different layers of stuff in between and on top. Fish and the player (placeholders atm)  live on the top layer. The player has to catch as many of these red herrings as possible. You can allso see bubbles. the player has to swim through these to replenish oxygen (stole that from sonic! oh, and since i took that screen dump bubbles have become alot harder to find!)

what im working on now is nets and big fish (which are to be cut out of concept art pages :) ). the player will have a limited number of nets they can use to catch big fish.

The ultimate aim of the game is to catch as many fish as possible to make as much profit as possible on the fish! fairly simple, but im hopeing it will be enjoyable for a good 10 mins! :P hopefully ill have time for balanceing at the end! Im fairly tired now, my writeing is getting awfull! Its been well worth it though! damn good fun! :)

I've just got home and am about to score some well earned kip. I've finished all my 3D stuff now, but still a few bits left for Sam to do in the morning. My team has been very lucky to have the help of some altruistic members of our society who have been sharing their skills throughout the 3 teams. (shout out to Ali and Alan). Tomorrow I'll post up some pics of what we've been working on, but probably just little teasers :) I'm really pleased with some of my models, we had some early problems with file format conversions losing texture information, but we found a workaround so my models are now shown in all their glory. I've been having problems keeping my poly budget under control though, lucklily XNA is pretty robust :)

 I think in a time this short you cant really expect any gameplay that's too complicated. Unless you've already been working on an engine for months, 48 hours only just gives you enough time to cobble together all of the component parts that make up a game. Certainly no-one at Warwick had started any development beyond an engine framework before Friday.

 I like the sound of your game Cubed2d, it sounds like it could be good stuff. Its a bit like feeding frenzy I guess, which is really addictive. I'm interested to see how it looks once the placeholders are replaced, I think your last minute team addition will be a helping hand as time draws to a close.

I know the other Warwick guys are checking this thread, so I wish them good luck, and advise them that the food I left is fair game so they can help themselves :)

p.s. I wonder when the submission page opens :) 

 feeding frenzy eh? ill have to have a look out for that next week :P never heard of it, but i love the name allready! :)

 and yes! Goodluck everyone in Warwick!

Nico Waller:

richardhp:

It seems posts we make while on the University campus don't show up.  We're all in a hired room coding together, but Internet access is limited only to the teaching PC in that room, IT services haven't managed to enable the network ports in time and wireless is pretty poor.  This should be interesting when it comes to submission time...

Computers, gotta love 'em.

We'll work something out dude don't worry, not going to let anyone's hard work go to waste just cos of some clogged tubes.

Same goes for everyone here - PM either myself or Leaf if you're having any problems.

Cheers

Rob 

 another update, incase anyones interested in my battle agaist sleep :) 

Sunday 10am

Since my last update, ive included big fish, nets, music, better control system, the ability to proply pick fish up, a fish counter, made the second stage look a whole lot prittier and had breakfast!

Well, i lied, still just finishing off nets :P nearly done! after that its the oxygen/life system, the whole 3rd level/metagame, revisiting the first, then the second again and then the whole lot again hopefully for the last bit of polish! ohh and sound effects!

Nico Waller:

p.s. I wonder when the submission page opens :) 

Submission page is now open. See here for details.

Cheers,
Leaf.

 Yay entries being open! 3 hours left, good luck everyone!

well, ive uploaded my game. Just have no idea if it got on the site proply! there dosnt seem to be any conformation screens or email.

Anyways, Thanks to everyone who helped organise this, ive had bucketloads of fun :)

I'm afraid it's true - we're rocking the lo-fi approach. Nothing wrong with a bit of web 1.0 : )

Anyway, Mr Cubed2D - your entry is safely running on my machine right now - so please go to bed, you nutter!

As for the rest of you, 35 mins to go. We'll confirm everything we receive.

Rob