I'm no stranger to development contests, and this one caught my attention. I've already drunk the Kool-Aid when it comes to Microsoft's console, and the chance at giving my studio life was something that I had to take a shot at. The first phase of their contest was a Warm-Up, letting people take the XNA example project "SpaceWar" and using it to base a game on. I assumed most would just tweak SpaceWar slightly or just change gameplay. I of course always bite off more than I can chew, and I decided I would totally change it: content, gameplay, everything. The result has been submitted: PEX. It's a mixture of Pong and Breakout, with two players and two pucks. In between them is a wall of hexagons, each one taking a few hits to destroy. What results is a chaotic game where you're trying to score on your opponent while defending against both their puck and the rebounds of your own. Here's some shots:

POST-MORTEM

What Went Right:

- I like the look I settled on. It came almost by accident as I had modeled the game board in 3ds max to get a feel of how it would look. I rendered it out using max's light tracer which adds global illumination, and this nice gray, shadowed look inspired me to make the whole game look similar. I think it's unique enough to garner attention

- XNA. It's very easy to use, and C# is really a decent language. You don't have to worry about the low level stuff and it's C-like structure is familiar to me.

What Went Wrong:

- Not enough time. I wanted to include powerups, which would have made the game more interesting. Also, the collision is spotty at best. I needed at least another day to tweak, if not completely rewrite it. I flirted briefly with bounding boxes and spheres, but my bad implementation was too cumbersome to get right in the amount of time I had.

Overall, this was a good experience, and I'm anxious to see if I win and then what the next challenge will be.

I quit MyTriggers, went back to Integrate, the kids started school (all of them), Beth got a job, and I've been very busy with freelance work and side projects. To say that life has been hectic would be somewhat of an understatement. I know that's also cliched, but I'm feeling lazy. And yes I'm aware I'm leaving the accent out of cliched, but I'm not in Windows and I don't know what the key combo is.

Which brings up another topic: I've become a full-fledged Linux convert. I have dabbled with it in the past, but being immersed in the Unix-only environment at MyTriggers compelled me to see if I could function without Microsoft. In the end, I still need Windows for Photoshop, Flash, and 3ds max, but I can run them within a virtual machine thanks to VMWare. Gone are the days of a clunky, inflexible interface and the shackles of overpriced, buggy software. In it's place I have free, somewhat bug-ridden, but frequently updated open-source software, and I like it better. For the record, my distro of choice is Ubuntu, which is easy to install and has a great community.

On the game front, I still want to work on something, but my ever shrinking schedule is tempering my ambition. I played around with writing a game framework based on the the Enginuity articles on GameDev, but I haven't been able to get it to fully compile yet on my system, and finding time to go back to it has been hard. It's not that I'm lazy, far from it. I just have too many other things on my plate that actually bring income.

Work, work and more work. I finished up a very busy period at Integrate and decided to take a chance on another opportunity. Before I left, I had the pleasure of working on some big projects, namely the COSI redesign and the upcoming WOSU redesign. My content management system was used for both sites, and I have to say that it's performed rather well for being developed by one semi-competent PHP programmer.

I hated to leave Integrate in a tough position, but my new gig at MyTriggers was something I had to jump on. It's an e-commerce search engine, with a focus on alerts. Right now we have email and RSS alerting, but we'll soon have IM, SMS, and Voice. I'm currently reworking the entire user account management scheme to make it more robust and easy to use. Hopefully I'll succeed.

Even though I've been slammed with day job and freelance work, I've been making time to play Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion. It's quite addictive, since it takes the 'sandbox' notion to extremes. You can do or be just about anything in the context of the game world. I'm currently playing a virtuous knight character, but I think next time through I'll be some kind of rogue assassin/thief... see how many times I can break out of jail, and how high I can get my bounty. Yee haw!

I have found the time to play a few games, namely Call of Duty 2 and The Movies.

I'm a big fan of the WWII games, even though there's a ton. Call of Duty was one of the better games in the genre, and the sequel is just more/bigger/better. It doesn't really innovate, but the new health system that everyone is stealing from Halo lets you stay in the action without worrying about where your next magical health pack is going to come from. Helps the flow. Graphically it's great, with the fancy bump-mapping and great smoke effects. Game of the Year? Probably not but any FPS fan should check it out.

The Movies started strong, but I've lost my interest a bit. It's fun to build your studio, but I've reached a point in the game where I'm just basically 'maintaining' my studio, which turns out to be not much fun. Keeping stars happy isn't my idea of a good time. I haven't sat down and just played with the Sandbox mode, where I assume you can use everything the game has to offer to make a movie. That might be fun, but at the moment I have no clue as to what I would make.

My wife might like it though.

That wacky Unreal site BeyondUnreal has just launched a PSP version. I had actually been hoping for this, since I regularly check BU with my PSP browser. I wish more sites would follow suit, especially Blue's News, which frequently maxes out my PSP's memory.

The big news of the day is that Halo 3 probably won't make the PS3 launch. Shocking. Really.

If anyone took Bill Gates' comment about people 'going to the store for the PS3 launch and walking into Halo 3' seriously, they don't know the games business. It's a nice thought, but a flagship title like Halo 3 does not get a solid release date this far out. It's just not feasible. Reason being, what if the schedule slips, that means breaking 'the promise', or sacrificing quality, and neither are good ways to win over the buying public.

Anyway, GameHarvest is doing well, but we still aren't even on the radar of the big search engines. Time will tell I guess.

Well, based on the evidence, yes they are. Year after year they sell less than the competition, but make more profit. This isn't by accident, it's by design. I have to admit that when I first heard about the controller, I was skeptical. Would a motion-sensitive uber-remote actually deliver an innovative experience?

The games aren't here yet, so the proof hasn't quite materialized, but ask yourself this question: would your mother rather thumb a D-pad, or wave a virtual 'baton' to say, conduct an orchestra? I think you get my point.

Nintendo has found a way to deliver an unparalleled amount of gameplay experiences with one device, and I for one hope they succeed (which history has shown us they usually do).

Chalk me up for the Revolution!

Refreshingly, the traffic patterns to my sites have taken a turn after GameHarvest was featured on Blue's News on Monday. It's just a small step in what I hope will be a continuing upward trend for the new site.

And speaking of GameHarvest (indulge me), we've added something new. You can now buy full versions of certain games, like King of the Ball (a pretty cool game), right from the site.

What would you like to see on GameHarvest? If you have suggestions for us as far as functionality and features, we're all ears. If you know of a game that we should have in our database, by all means, point us to it. We're really trying to make this site the best of its kind, and you can help us do that. w00p!

* note: Finnish people are welcome too!

The purpose of the site is showcase totally free games. That means web-based games, downloadable free games, game demos, and last but not least (and my personal favorite) game mods. No other site that I know of puts it all in one place. If it's free and it's a game, it'll be on GameHarvest.

Please drop in and suport my little site. It's just the beginning.

It makes me wonder if IGN/GameSpy's revenues are actually worth the $650+ million Rupert Murdoch paid for the company. I know the development arm of GameSpy is doing very well, and their traffic stats are indeed impressive, but any decent shift south in ad prices and they look a lot worse. I guess they are banking on market share, which the combined IGN/GameSpy armada has in spades.

This news item makes me ponder two things: (warning, rampant arrogance follows)

1. If I were ever get GameHarvest to a point where it was a desirable aquisition target, would I sell? Answer: In a heartbeat.
2. How much would those GameSpy stock options be worth today if I still had them? It's better not to think about that...

Anyway, I'm glad my peeps at GameSpy are doing well, and seemingly don't have to worry about where their next paycheck is coming from. I know some have bought houses in real estate crazy Southern California, so they have to be doing fairly well. Viva Capitalism!

Now anyone that knows me knows I love my Xbox. (I finally got Ninja Gaiden. Hard, but awesome!) I bought (or rather my wife did for me) at launch. But, Halo was there to greet me. It was a 'must have'. I'm excited about the 360, but there's nothing that will be at launch that I would die without, and I'm even a big fan of Project Gotham. Now, when Halo 3 hits, I'll be right there. But who knows when that will be?

The first mod that has really stood out is The Soulkeeper. It's been in development for quite some time, and with each news update the team gives, the quality and quantity of the content grows. The latest update drops the word of the mods imminent release and the inclusion of dragons. Any mod with dragons is worthy of a look.

Another BeyondUnreal-hosted mod that I've followed is UnWheel. They were great competition in the Make Something Unreal contest in the Non-FPS category, and unlike us, have continued to expand their game. That alone is worth some kudos, but now they've added realtime reflections to the cars. I've seen this effect achieved before, most notably in Marble Mania (now defunct).

Filling the mecha void is the Transformers-inspired Counter Organic Revolution (COR for short). The control is a little sketchy, and the scale of interiors feels slightly awkward, but the idea and the animation are impressive.

One has to assume that these groups are somewhat in it to prove themselves as game developers (which is fine and applaudible; heck, it was our motivation), but I'm wondering if even a tiny fraction of such teams will ever make it to the big time as a complete team. The status quo seems to be that successful mod work tends to get individual members jobs in the game industry, but a precious few ever become legitimate companies. (Many claim to be, but how easy is it to become an LLC in any given state.)

I can only think of a few that have done it: Splash Damage, Trauma Studios (which was recently closed by DICE), and Tripwire, who made Red Orchestra and won the MSUC.

So why is that? If these mods are so great, why aren't more teams getting paid for it? Simply put, the games business is hard. These mods might be top-notch, but they typically still don't match the level of commercial-quality games. Many ambitious mod makers have to realize they they just won't find the resources in art and code to really compete and garner the respect it takes for publishers to write them checks. A decent game idea won't cut it. Those are as plentiful as blades of grass.

Well, enough of my rambling.

What this ultimately does for me is prohibit me from using any of the homebrew apps and emulators on my PSP, at least until the hackers crack this latest version. I figured I wasn't playing any of that stuff anyway, and would rather have a nice browser to use on the couch. Time will tell.

The new project is coming along, although I'm a little behind in my self-imposed schedule. I have a design I really like, and the ideas for the site and the future are sprouting. For instance, we've decided to support game mods as well, considering most sites of this nature ignore them, but they ad real value to existing games. I predict good things.

First of all, Rockstar, as Greg Costikyan put it, needs to be slapped. I don't care if the mini-game in question was part of the original design, (if it was, what possible value did it add?) the content should have been removed. This is a the fault of the producer.

Anyway, the real villian here isn't the producer, or even the artists/programmers that created the mini-game (note: those who would think it was one guy who did this on his own in secret know nothing about game development). It's Rockstar upper management. They keep blaming everyone else for their mistake. The arrow I take most offense with is the accusation that it's the users fault. "How dare they modify our game!" It would be one thing if that mini-game did not exist in the orignal game, but it was merely 'unlocked'. Shame on you, Rockstar, for making your customers out to be saboteurs.

What I hope doesn't happen (and I don't think it will), is that publishers will tighten up EULAs and disallow mods completely. Modding is practically an industry unto itself, and there's a lot of talent out there that wouldn't have as easy an outlet if that were to happen. But as I said, I believe it's unlikely.

The other big gripe I have about this whole thing is it gives Mr. 'I hate games and gamers' Jack Thompson more ammo. This guy's motivation is two-fold: 1. Fame/Publicity, 2. He's just a jerk. Anyway, he's now after the Sims 2, and he's spewing more uninformed and blatantly false bile to the media. Of course the gaming press is all too familiar with his diatribes, but the mainstream press has taken up the stories and is casting a very negative light on the gaming industry. Ugh.

What this really boils down to is the public at large has to realize that games aren't just for kids. Games (like movies) have ratings for a reason. Censorship and legislation is not the answer. Knowledge and personal responsibility are.

I am actually starting a new website project that will hopefully get a decent amount of traffic and generate some ad revenue. It won't be one of those empty 'just put content up and get a good search engine placement' deals; this site will actually be useful, and of course it's related to games. I'm pretty excited about it, and the goal is sometime down the road for it and other ventures to offer me the flexibility to pursue game development full-time. That's the dream at least.

If you have a meaty systems, do yourself a favor and check out the Battlefield 2 demo. It's a hoot, especially with a joystick, flying helicopters. I'm personally fond of taking the Hind out and laying down some rocket justice. But that's just me.

My copy of 3D Game Programming in DirectX 9.0 came, but I haven't had a chance to really get into it yet. I bought the book mainly as a primer for graphics programming, thinking it would be a good idea even though I'm using a pre-built rendering pipeline. It can't hurt.

My illness basically killed any momentum I had on the project, so it's going to be a struggle to get back into it. However, I'm still committed to it, and looking forward to getting my course-creation scheme into practice.