A Brief Interlude on the Road to Madness

The journey to madness started by an inability to understand the workings of the XNA Content Pipeline and more specifically how the heck to get XML working in that context.

Despite trying several web pages containing explanations and code, nothing would work and the road was becoming more like a motorway.

Until discovering a Project Reference in one of the examples.  Which finally made everything click into place.  And a week or so of demotivation has been replaced with a new optimism that it will work after all.

It may only be displaying a level name, but every time the XML data is changed the new level name is displayed.

Small victories – now let’s hope we can get back on track with the rest of it.

Sum of Parts

The game’s assets are building up now and the more you add the more like a ‘proper’ game it seems to be.  What was initially a one screen prototype has evolved to something with a menu screen and ‘win’ screen, and with each addition it feels more like a game.

Last night the sound effects were added into the main game screen, and what a difference.  It makes you think that those developers who spend hours and hours getting sounds just right aren’t wasting time after all.  It’s the age-old thing that you often don’t seem to notice something until it’s no longer there.

So, with the editor in a useable state – and soon to be pumping out the XML our game needs – and the sonix and graphix coming along, we are making progress.

Level Editor

It might not seem the most obvious choice, but we’re building a level editor using Microsoft Access.  There are good reasons for the choice however.

Firstly, Access is a database system and so it’s ideal for storing the level data while we decide what the final format for the game data will be.  It also makes it nice and easy to add new data items as required.

Secondly, Access is fantastic for developing Windows applications quickly and easily.  And because the data and app are all bound up in one file, it makes it easy for us to deploy no matter where we are developing.

The editor will be ready for use later today, and as feature complete as the current scope not long after.  Pretty exciting, as we’ll finally be able to design some of those wicked levels we’ve been dreaming about.

Scope Agreed

We had a bit of a brainwave last night, and we think we’ve got the scope nailed down now, right from the menus to the number of levels through to the way everything is presented.  We’re limiting the colours of balls to just three colours for the time being, but introducing a padlock icon to a few puzzles to change things around a little bit.

The game will now consist of three difficulty levels, each with 36 levels in each.  There’s no longer a time limit, but there is a move limit and the option to ‘ace’ a level if you do it within an even stricter move limit, which will be reflected on the main level select grid.  We’re going to do a full ‘Puzzle Mode’ where you can pick the levels you want (with later difficulties unlocked as you go) and then a ‘Quick Play’ mode which will either push a non-completed level to you at random or give you the option to work through all the non-completed levels in sequence, which might be handy.

We’ve also made a start on the music, which will be subtle loops of background musak, at least initially, and we’ve got the main sound effects sorted, although XNA is struggling with MP3s as spot effects, so we’ll need to convert them back into WAVs.

So, yeah, full steam ahead still.  Just got to keep that motivation up and hopefully we’ll have something playable by the end of the weekend.

Coders’ Block

We’re trying to be organised about the development by keeping a proper (ish) task list, setting due-dates for them, and then working towards that with regular communication about any issues.

But even all that doesn’t always help.  Last night some minor things were ironed out: screen res, full screen, how to draw text on screen.  Then I was left with the big list and what to do next.  Just pick something, right?  I mean, it all needs doing?  Yes, it does, but then the coder inside you takes over and starts working out which order is the most efficient.  And that clashes with the other voice telling you to just get basic game working and do it ‘properly’ in the remaining weeks.

We’ve pretty much decided on XML as the storage format for game data.  Which meant learning how to manipulate that in XNA.  Or should we just hard code the data for the first level to test the game?  Or do it properly now?  And then 30 minutes have gone by and all you’ve done is read about XML Serialisation while your mind wanders onto whether John Sergeant should stay in Strictly*.

Tonight it’s onto making the target grid work.  To hell with XML for today.

* the answer has now been revealed as no.

A Gamer’s Work…

…is never done.

As usual, there’s always more to do than there initially seemed to be.  What started as a quick prototype of one basic level soon turned into a little re-write to set up a few constants.  And then a few more, because once you’ve done a couple you may as well go the whole hog.  Before you know it, you’ve spent an hour making the code more general and easier to maintain, but you’ve still not got anything moving on screen.  At least things are a tad neater.

Sometimes you just have to know where to draw the line, sometimes ‘it works’ is good enough.  We reached that stage last night, but far from feeling like we’re part-way through the journey, it feels like someone just built a new section of road.

That’s exciting though.  Because although there is always more code to write, or graphics to design, you can see where it’s headed.  We’re pretty set on the game now, we know what we want.  We’ve just got to get on the road – thumbing lifts of a few XNA pros as we go – and get to the end.

Cost

Just a note, actually: we’ll be selling this at the cheapest possible price.  We’re expecting the download to be < 50 MB, so the price in Microsoft Points will be 200.  We’d do it for cheaper if we could.