Well, Nut Harvest is out to the public and so far it seems most that have tried it have enjoyed it. That’s always good to hear, considering it was just a toy-around game for my friends and I 
. Unfortunately, I know that it certainly won’t get as big of an audience as WildBoarders simply because it’s an XBox360 XNA exclusive. There just doesn’t seem to be a good venue yet to release Xbox360 XNA games. Sure, there are community sites on the net such is homebrew or gameprojects.com but they still seem to be focused on PC development or the ‘wanderers’ there simply don’t have creator’s club and it’s still not convienent to put games on the 360. Add in the fact that getting games on your 360 isn’t free, and your audience shrinks yet again. But I’m not that disappointed. Going into the project I knew what to expect. But now that it’s done I’m not sure I’ll be inclined to do another 360 only game for a while; at least until Microsoft comes up with an easier way to share games. Sure, I could do games that work on both systems (such as WildBoarders), but there still are some fundamental differences to the platforms in question that kind of limit my choices. For example, if I make a single player game then I really don’t have any reason not to make it runnable on the 360. Yet, once I get into the realm of multiplayer things start to diverge rather quickly. On the PC, multiplayer these days usually implies some sort of internet connectivity. This isn’t possible on the 360 (yet). It’s rare (at least in my experience) to have multiplayer games be played on the same computer. On the 360, multiplayer can mean split-screen, xbox live, or a combination of both! I designed Nut Harvest to be a multiplayer game where everyone is on the same screen. So I was presented with two choices. Make it playable over the internet or simply make it 360 only. Going the internet route would have increased development time, and at the same time the game simply would lose a certain social element of the experience (*click* “OMG I pwn3d joo” *click* on ventrilo doesn’t count). Playing next to your buddies just makes this particular game more fun since communication is part of the experience (players teaming up against others). So yea, that was my reasoning as to why I stuck with just doing a 360 version.
In other news, I’m rolling along with development for our entry for the Dream.Build.Play contest that is coming up. Downside: it won’t be done in as short amount of time as my prior games. Upside: more time = better game, right?….RIGHT? Well, let’s hope so 
. July 2nd is apparently the due date, and according to the design doc we have laid out we’ll need it all 
. I just finished coding the networking architecture for the game last week, and Martin has the custom physics up and running also. It’s possible to join servers and move around and such, but there’s still a ton of work to be done. Adam’s handling the art-side of things once again so I can focus along with Martin on the coding/gameplay. With that said, my blog entries might slow down over the coming months as school gets busier and the game gets closer to being finished. Don’t want to say anything too specific or talk about what’s planned for the game until we have something to actually show, so that’ll be atleast a month or so away. Anyway, now I got to go study for an exam and work on a CS project.
February 20th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
I don’t see why it is 360 only. I was able to get the game compiled and running in windows without changing a single line of code
February 20th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Yea, I figured it would be compatible with Windows 100%. Reason I didn’t release or support a windows version was frankly because it sucks to play with 1 player. So it wasn’t a technical reason. Unless you happen to have multiple controllers for your PC (which I mentioned hasn’t been that common in my experience), it really doesn’t seem worth it to me. But since it includes source, those that are able to play with multiple players on a single PC monitor are welcome to do so
. I’m happy the code was fully compatible!
February 23rd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
When you target your game for 360 with XNA, you are targeting a niche (Creator’s Club members) within a niche (Xbox owners) within a niche (programmers, because the code has to be compiled). So, taken that way, you can feel good about the level of success you’ve achieved with your games since just about every XNA site I’ve seen has mentioned them. Still, the overall audience is tiny, which is why I expanded the focus of my own site (gameprojects.com) to incorporate other platforms. You will likely have to make the same decision going forward if you really want to achieve any kind of major success.
And really, it’s not like XNA/GSE is some sort of magical development system that creates games for you. It’s just an API that you write to like any other, and even though it does simplify some things it complicates a great many others so in the end there really is no difference. You would do well to start exploring other avenues for development, such as SDL (since most everything you’ve done is 2D) or even just going straight to DirectX. You’ll expand your games’ reach immensely and be in a much better position to be successful since people can actually give you their money rather than pay $100 for a Creator’s Club membership.
Anyhow, you’re a talented guy and I’m sure you’ll figure out what’s best for you in the long run.
February 26th, 2007 at 10:37 am
your targetting the creators club NOW… but remember come end of 2007 microsoft is set to launch the youGame or whatever their gonna call it for people to share compiled versons straight over marketplace, for free…
I’d say stick with xna it might be slow going right now, but as more contests open up (dream build play) and once the public xbox distribution marketplace is opened up later this year, you’ll see your notoriaty get expanded.
February 26th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Umm also buddy… i notice you said “our submission to dream build play” you do realize that each dev team can enroll as many games as they want, so i really would hope your gonna enroll nut harvest and the snowboarding one as well because they are both really good sharp games that i belive have a chance of winning… i mean ya your other project might be better but 3 chances is better than 1 …
February 26th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Hi All,
. Certainly, XNA is still new and is going to take a bit of time before some more user-friendly distribution channels open up for the 360 (that don’t break the bank as I’m only a student). As for the PC, I think it’s like any other indie game, and requires a lot of work to stand out from the crowd.
Yes, I do intend to submit my other XNA games as I don’t see a reason why I shouldn’t
I’m certainly always on the look out for different venues for game development, and XNA just happens to be the one I’m currently playing around with. So when MS finally comes up with something (as it sounds like they are) to help promote XNA games, maybe I’ll have a little collection of games by then to put on display
.
March 3rd, 2007 at 10:32 am
Hey Alex.
Congrats on being in Xbox Official Magazine.
Very nice!
March 3rd, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Thank you! I haven’t had a chance to see the article myself, maybe I’ll try to pick it up sometime today.
March 3rd, 2007 at 10:37 pm
It’s a good write up. They use you one of you characters a couple times as art for the overall article. Plus they have a couple screenshots in the section where they talk about Wildboarders.
March 4th, 2007 at 5:16 am
Hmm looks like the april issue hasn’t hit newsstands yet. Guess I’ll have to wait a few weeks