December 27, 2012
12/27/2012
What can I say? I’m dedicated, or something like that. I know I previously posted that I was going into Holiday Silence and would not be working on this, or any of my projects. Well, I just couldn’t help myself. As I mentioned when I started, this project has been whispering to me for years, and has been getting louder the whole time. I finally started this project when the whispering became a steady screaming. As soon as I actually started working on the project, it quieted down. Now, as I attempted to stick to the Holiday Silence, the project started yelling at me again, so I had to get back to it sooner than I had planned. Now for what’s been changed. The game now has an official demo mode that was built for the Xbox indie market place. Yes, that’s right, once it’s published on the Xbox marketplace, you will be able to download a demo version of the game. The demo version is the same game, but it only has 6 levels in each of the game modes, and has a menu option for purchasing the full game. On reviewer suggest I’ve also added an instruction screen. It’s not much, but I think it should provide enough details to let players know how to play the game. Incidentally, the reviewer commented that they didn’t know what to do in the game when it first started, which is why the instruction screen has been added. On the Xbox, there is something called the Title Safe Area. That’s a section of the screen that is safe to use because any screen area outside it may be cut off by some televisions. When I built Short Circuit, I had built it for a targeted resolution of 640 by 480 pixels and hadn’t know anything about title safe areas. While I’m still targeting the 640 by 480 resolution, which is supported by the Xbox natively, I am now also using the title safe area in placing all text or graphics that include text. Finally, one of the last additions was the inclusion of error catching in virtually every function of the game. One of the reviewers pointed out a condition that would cause the game to crash. I’m hoping that the added error catches will prevent this from occurring. Since all these changes are completed, I’ve submitted the game for play testing in the Xbox developer forums. It will remain in play testing for one week, during which I hope to get some good feedback. If it manages to make it through the play testing without any major complaints then I’ll resubmit it for peer review and release.