Abduction Action! Game Progress Update 5
This will probably be my last update on Abduction Action! before it is released to on Xbox Live Indie Games. Before I spend too much time talking about what's changed, take a look at a gameplay video of level one for yourself. Sorry for the small sizing, it's been a while since I made a gameplay video and inadvertently made the window much smaller than it needed to be. I may put up a new version of this video at the correct size this weekend.
Gameplay-wise, everything is in Abduction Action! right now... four levels, four bosses (though once still needs some work done with his collission detection), intro and ending screens, score attack mode, global high scores, etc.
Speaking of the global high scores, I am a little worried about them once Abduction Action! goes live. Currently this piece of the game has been largely untested on account of no people simultaneously testing Abduction Action! with me, thus leaving me with no one to share scores with. Hopefully I can find a foolish unsuspecting nice XNA developer to test this with before release... it would be a nightmare if this piece didn't work right and caused errors once a few scores are shared. It would take me at least a week to get a new version of Abduction Action! out and that could completely kill my "New Release" sales bump.
The biggest area left that needs work on Abduction Action!, something I've been putting off for some time, is the sound. Giving each different enemy their own unique voice will really go a long way to making the game feel more alive. Most likely I'll be doing all the voice work myself, which should be interesting (expect some especially humorous female voices). My worst fear with the voices is that they'll become annoying after playing for extended periods, so I'll be taking extra care to avoid this. I'll probably have a couple voices for each enemy so that they don't get too repetitive. Blizzard always did a good job with this sort of thing and I'll be trying my best to follow in their footsteps.
I've got some graphics work to be done too. Graphics take a long time to make, especially when you're not that experienced (me) and trying really hard to make them look average. It will be a real welcome change when working on my next project with a dedicated artist.
I've been spending a lot of time these last weeks with small tasks that need to be done... things like setting up the trial mode, spellchecking, completely redoing the code for the music class because the old way sucked and sometimes music just wouldn't loop like it should, etc. Thankfully I'm mostly done with these items and I hope to spend most of next week (and until I submit Abduction Action! for review) play testing and trying to make the game more fun (if that's possible).
I'm almost certain Abduction Action! will be complete and submitted for review in January... whether or not it goes live on the XBox Live Marketplace is kinda questionable, so you might still have to wait until February to play it.
0" heigh
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