Nasty Game Progress Update 1
For some months, it has been my sincerest hope that I can complete my game (Nasty) before March. Besides my obvious excitement to get the game into the hands of the players, March also coincides with the release of the first Xbox Community Games sales numbers. In the event that these sales are high (which is possibly give 17 million Xbox owners nationwide), I fully expect a swarm of developers running to this service. I'd like to be there before my game gets lost in a sea of other games.
Progress on the game has not gone as quickly as planned though and I doubt I can meet this release date. Things like optimizing the game to run at a steady 60 fps in every level, some tiny movement bugs, and fleshing out the menu system have eaten up considerable amounts of my time that would otherwise be spent creating new levels/enemies/and items. A slew of small new features lead to small new bugs and my todo list, instead of shrinking, has about double in size this month.
As much as I would like to rush to release, I want to have a fully polished game first and foremost. I am still hopeful that I can release sometime in March, though I'm not ruling out an April release either. The game will be solid, bug free, and awesome before I release it (it's already bordering on awesome).
Feature/scope creep has been somewhat of an issue, as new ideas that are cool have made their way into the game. While feature creep is normally advisable to avoid, some of these features proved to be necessary in order to provide an entertaining game play experience. I've carefully weighed each new feature and only implemented them if they truly made the game better.
The major feature I have left to implement is the local multiplayer battle mode, which will allow up to four players to duke it out for heaps and heaps of glory. I don't anticipate this will be overly difficult, as it can use the same level loading procedures and collision detection routines as the normal game play. I've never seen a 2D action game like this offer multiplayer battle so I am quite interested in how it turns out. I wish I could do an Xbox Live version of the battle, but I have my doubts of the number of people playing Xbox Live Community Games online and also this would likely push my release date far out. I will consider it for a future update of the game though.
As of now, I have about 25 levels that are pretty solid and will likely appear close to as is in the final version of the game. Initially I wanted to include 100 levels in the game, but I may end up trimming that number down. I want the levels to be unique and enjoyable to play... I'm already having some issues coming up with new ideas (this is a single screen game for those that don't know) at only a quarter of that amount. There will definitely be fifty levels (including four boss levels) but I'm not going to simply include a bunch of lackluster levels just to get to one hundred.
I've been spending some time this past week getting a PC version ready for release too. While the initial release of Nasty will be Xbox 360 only, allowing others to play test my game is much more easily accomplished on the computer (playing the pre-release game on Xbox requires a $99 a year Creators Club membership). I still have some control issues to straighten out (adding keyboard support for the PC) and then I hope to be able to get this first public beta version out later this week.
All in all, the progress is going well abet a bit behind schedule. I started this game this past summer and have been hard at work on it since November. It is quite exhilarating to finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. I can't wait to get this release and hopefully you all enjoy playing it as much as I have enjoyed creating it.
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