A Couple of Questions for Sharky
Wednesday, January 28 2009 - xna
For a while now I have been helping to Promote Sharky’s Air Legends and showing the progress of the game. Now that the game is finally on Xbox Live and available for all of the allowed regions to download I thought it was time to ask Sharky some questions.
Q: How do you find the process of writing games in XNA
A: The XNA framework is a pleasure to work with. The XNA team have really done an amazing job at providing a friendly, yet powerful framework. On one hand it shields you from the some of the most painful aspects of game development. And on the other, it's like a blank canvas - the sky's the limit. There is nothing "Dumbed down" about it as far as I can tell. Being C# & .NET Framework based is brilliant too because the skills are transferable between regular IT work. Despite the awesome framework, making a game is still a challenge. It can be quite a mind shift sometimes, but very rewarding when you stick at it.
Q: what process did you go through to get your game published on the Community Games, and what did you think of that process.
A: Well, the first step was polishing the game itself making it as good as I could make it - in the time frame I had set myself. Things like following best practises and standards people have come to expect of an Xbox 360 game. Once I'd done that it was simply a matter following web site steps to submit the game on the website. There are a few assets to upload besides the binary. Things like Screenshots, Video, game Thumbnail & Box Cover are deceptively time consuming to sort out.
I made the common mistake of submitting my game straight to Peer review, but I learned the hard way
that you really must submit for Play Test FIRST. No matter how bug free and thoroughly tested
your game is you should go through a Play test phase anyway.All Xbox 360's may be created equal (more or less), but the combinations and permutations of controllers, Memory Units, TV formats & Language settings will throw up surprises. Air Legends actually passed through Peer review 3 times before it reached the marketplace. The first 2 times, it actually passed only to be pulled by myself after spotting an instant fail the peer reviewers missed, and also in response to a peer reviewers valuable feedback.
The process itself is great, but I think human nature is another story. Nobody likes to fail a game, and reasons to do so can be quite fuzzy. I believe this will improve over time. The quality standards of the community as a whole will mature. Now that the game is in the Marketplace it is a wonderful feeling. A childhood dream that I'd long given up on. Without XNA I could never have done it.
The only downer is that right now the Community Games service is not available to consumers down-under yet (coming soon I hope). It's more a pride thing really. I'd love to show it off here, and getting free publicity would have been relatively easy. The feeling is offset by having a game published and available to what is still a considerable number of consumers. USA, UK, Canada, France, Italy & Spain is nothing to scoff at.
Q: What advise do you have for the New Developers to XNA
A:- Start with an idea you love.
- Build the game up bit by bit, but let the it evolve along with your capability.
- The game you end up with will almost certainly be different to your initial grand plan, but it will be of better quality because you haven't been bogged down on over ambitious ideas.
- Be persistent, but don't be afraid to cut features you cannot achieve to a decent quality. Save those for the sequel - your skills will have grown by the end of Game #1.
Q: How Long have you been developing Games
A: That depends on whether you mean elapsed or duration!Elapsed - a long time. Duration - not long at all really.
It's been an off and on thing for me. I started attempting to make games as a kid about 26 years ago. I started so many game ideas, but could never finish anything. The games would always end up unplayable performance. That was the trouble with trying to build a game using interpreted basic on the home computers back then.
Once I left school I gave up the Game dev nerdyness and got a day job. I only resumed the hobby again in mid 2006, and have been tinkering ever since.
Q: What got you into Game Development
A: As a kid I had the same nerdy dream I think many of us have - to not only play games but MAKE games!The trigger for me was seeing my first ZX-81 in "action". Mind blowing - it really was - back then. Fast forward to 2006 and my day job had me rotting in the .NET 1.1 world. I desperately wanted to keep up with technology and do .NET 2.0 and my employer wasn't helping. So I did the only thing I could do and took control. I made the effort to learn & practise .NET 2.0 back home in my spare time. I needed some kind of project to keep things real and motivating. Somehow I heard of MDX (Managed DirectX) and I gave it a crack. I started with an idea I had ~26 years ago in basic. Working title "Legends" and the rest is history.
Q: What Type and Games have Inspired you in your Game Development
A: I get a kick out of "sandbox" games like Battlefield 2, Bad Company, 1942 etc... Games where, it's essentially the players human nature that makes every session feel unique. For me this probably originated from a game I played as a kid on my first home computer - a Spectra Video SV-318. The game was called Armoured Assault, I think. It was 2-player multiplayer ONLY with 2 opposing tanks, destroyable bases, ammo & refuelling spots. The game play was totally up to the 2 players.
Q: What type of Games do you like Playing
A: As above, but all sorts really. Mostly FPS games - on PC (love the mouse + keyboard). I think Live Arcade is great and so are many of the Community Games. Games like Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars 2.
On the console, I especially like games with 2-4 player local play, so I can play along with my kids. I really DON'T enjoy MMORPG, RPG games at all. I'll tinker with RTS games occasionally, but I'm fundamentally crap at them.
As you can see the challenge of putting a Game onto Xbox Live Community Games is not that hard, and even though we are not yet able to download and play the games. Us as Australians or from New Zealand are able to produce and publish games that are successful.
On a Side not, A little while ago I decided that I would give an MSDN Subscription to the First game on Xbox Live Community Games from an Australian, As I did not get much interest at this time I thought I would pass one onto our Nearest Neighbour.
Sharky, It is in the mail… and thanks for Leading the Way.
Also I know that at this moment in time we also have another game from this area published into the Community Games and it is good to see more interest from the Australian Community. I still have another MSDN Subscription here as well as some other Items, over the next few weeks I will be talking with some others and organising an event or competition for our side of the world (Just need to make sure I have all the legal's worked out). So for now if you are Australian and would like to talk with other Australian XNA Developers, we have started a Facebook group so that we can start to get organised.
