Category: Articles

Posted on

Peer Review Preparation

Evil Checklist

I started reading about what needs to be done to publish a game, and I noticed a thread on the App Hub site referencing the Evil Checklist.  I’m not sure if my game needs to pass everything in the list to submit it to the contest, but it’s probably better if it does.  For instance all games must have a trial mode to be approved to be published to the XBox Marketplace, but I’m not sure if that is necessarily required for the contest.  Since I still have two weeks until submission, I will try to make sure that my game passes everything on that checklist.

Right out of the gate, I know my game would fail peer review because it doesn’t allow the game to be played on any controller port.  It only registers input from the controller on the first port.  That may not be a quick fix, but it should be relatively simple.

The checklist also provides various tests for the device selector.  I know I had a problem the other night when the game transitioned to the game win screen (and saved) while the Guide was open.  My game may also not function properly if no storage device is selected, since it always reads from the storage device when the level select screen is displayed to show the ranks.  According to the Not So Evil Checklist, I can force the player to select a storage device.  Therefore, I should be able to just modify the code (if needed) to gracefully handle the state when no storage device is selected, such as returning the player to the title screen.  The real kicker is that my primary XBox (slim) doesn’t even have a port for an MU (Memory Unit) for testing multiple storage devices, so I’ll have to try to get the developer tools running on my old XBox (ugh!).

More Rank Updates

Updated the rank values for the last 30 levels, 7-1 through 9-10.  Played each level twice to get the piece, luminosity, and rank values.  If I got a better score the second time, then I usually played it again a third time.  Basically, I kept playing the levels over until I didn’t get a better score, and then I used the best scores for the S ranks.  I think the game should now be functionally complete, but I might go back and update the graphics for the selected cell (currently just a blue square).

Posted on

Comes Full Circle

Back Where We Started

After almost two months of development, I’m back to doing what I started on the first days of development which is updating the sprite graphics.  Updated all of the wire graphics, so now those are filled with light gray (#e0e0e0) with white (#ffffff) and black (#000000) around the edges.  It seems to make the wires stand out a lot better.  Unfortunately, since the shading is on specific sides of the sprites, I can’t do the quick flip/rotate trick that I used when first creating these sprites.  However, Gimp provides the ability to zoom to make the pixels really large, which makes adding the outlines rather easy.  Just tedious.  It should just display as a slightly darker shade of yellow, since Yellow is used as the color parameter of the draw method.  Thought about adding an option to allow the player to select their flow color, but it’s too late to add that now.  Maybe a new flow color will be the reward for completing all of the stages.

 

While I was making graphics, I went ahead and replaced the GameThumbnail.png and Game.ico graphics.  I modified the resistor image with four connections, and replaced the number with just the letter R.  The size for the GameThumbnail was 64×64 pixels, which I believe is used for the dashboard.  The graphic I created is simple, but it does the job.  The Game.ico I believe is only used for when it is running under Windows, and maybe under the XBox system menu.

 

You’re on Trial

Made a trail screen in the game, which subclasses the basic Screen class.  It was a little frustrating to test this, since the game is not in trial mode as I am developing it.  There is a Guide.SimulateTrialMode value that can be set to make the game run in trial mode for testing.  Or I can run the game as trial mode from My Game list, but the game has to be deployed from Xbox Studio Connect first.

Copied a lot of code from the Pause screen to implement two selections, “Buy” and “Back to Title”.  Choosing “Buy” will call the Guide.ShowMarketplace method.  This doesn’t actually purchase the game, but instead takes the player to a standard XBox screen where they can purchase the game.

Added a check in the update method of the trial screen to see if the game has been purchased.  If it has been purchased, then it displays the “Thank you” message and removes the buy option from the screen (leaving only the “Return to Title” option).  From there, the player will have to use level select to pick up at the last level they were playing, because it’s too late now to rework the code for an event that will just happen once for each player.  Ideally, I would have a “Continue” option from the main menu, but I wanted to keep the main menu simple.  Having to find the last level played in the level select screen is the “price” the user has to pay in time for having the simple menu.

Added my cheesy Indie game “song” into the trial screen.  I had to work it in somewhere.

  


Other Fixes

Had to add a special case to fix the level 10 LED (piece ID 30), just as I had to do with the level 10 battery.  Made comments in the code that these should be optimized later.

Added code to center the numeric text of the batteries and LEDs, since the “10” value was displaying near the edge  of the battery and LED.

Maybe it’s just me, but the scrolling background for the game level screen on the XBox seems choppy.  It doesn’t do this for the PC version.  Not sure if that is fixable, or if it’s just my eyes playing tricks on me from looking at monitors too long.  The scrolling background for the title screen doesn’t look this way either.  I may have to re-evaluate some of the code that I used for the slow scroll method.  Alternatively, I could just set the level select background to scroll one pixel per update, just like the title screen does.

Noticed a problem when the level ends and tries to save.  If the Guide is already open, then the game will crash, because the file save operation uses the BeginShowSelector method which conflicts with the Gudie.  To fix this rare scenario, I think I can just pause the game when Game.IsActive is false which is suggested by this article.  This only happens if the player draws the connections to complete the level, and then presses the Guide button before the level is complete, which will cause the level to complete while the Guide is open.

Posted on

Week 7 Video Update

Level Editing Done

Finished the last ten stages of the game, which use the 10 battery with a maximum resistor of 9.  Went back and fixed the level design issues that I found during playtesting yesterday.  I still need to set the rank values for the last 30 stages.

The level 10 battery caused an issue, because it used block ID “20” in the array.  However, I had defined everything between 20 and 29 as LEDs.  I modified the battery range to use IDs 10 through 20, but the battery showed up as 0, because I was using modulo (%) 10 to get the battery value.  I went ahead and just wrote a special case for this to fix it for now.

Trailer Video Remake

I wasn’t happy with the audio in the trailer video, so I recaptured and re-edited the audio tonight.  However, I kept most of the video clips and edits made last night.  I don’t want to spoil my cheesy indie game song, so I’m keeping it under wraps until the contest is over.

Short Update video