sheridanzig

Rewinding My Braid Experience

I tried Braid - briefly - when it first came to XBLA.  I really liked the art style because it was painty and different, but I closed the trial after playing through the first world.  I've never been good at platformers, never really enjoyed them, and even the promise of puzzles and rewinding time wasn't enough to keep me going on Braid.

Fast forward nearly two months.  (How very appropriate.)

Last night, I picked it up again.  I was frustrated trying to get the last few LEGO Indy achievements (grrr...) and wandered into XBLA.  I had intended to play Rocket Bowl, but saw Braid and started it up.  Honestly, I thought maybe I'd somehow acquired some massive platformer skills through black magic in the past couple of months and might totally rock.

So I started playing again.  And I still don't rock - in fact, I still massively suck.  But I have a totally different experience this time, because whenever I do something stupid - as I do far too often - I hit X to rewind.  Don't ask me why this didn't occur to me during my first try.  And as I used X more and more, I found that if I were thisclose to killing an enemy, rewinding to just before the critical point might be enough to make the kill, the leap, whatever.  Hmmm...kind of my own personal idiot button.  I DO like that.

So I still find the platformer-jump-on-an-enemy-make-that-cloud-leap-don't-get-eaten mechanic frustrating.  I still am very, very bad at it.  But I think I'll try playing the rest of the way through Braid. 

Xbox Mayonaise-hat Zooventure

I was reading Evil Avatar a couple of weeks ago and came across what I think is an awesome name for the New Xbox Experience (or for anything, for that matter) - "Xbox Mayonaise-hat Zooventure". (posted by Chimpbot)

Okay, so maybe it's not REALISTIC as a name for the NXE, but I still like it.  It made me laugh the first time (okay, and second and third times) that I read it and for me it captures the OMGYOUHAVEGOTTOSEETHISITISAWESOME excitement I have for the new dash and guide.

So although it may officially known as the New Xbox Experience, it will always be Xbox Mayonaise-hat Zooventure to me.

Testing out mobile blogging/photo posts.

Yes, I dyed my hair pink-purple. Matches my lipstick!

Tick tick tick...

LEGO Batman comes out later this month.
And I know that after I start playing it, I probably won't go back to LEGO Indiana Jones. Therefore, it's time to get serious about the remaining 13 LIJ achievements I still need to get (for remaining 255 gamerscore).

Most of them look pretty straightforward - "Do x, n number of times". It'll be interesting to see how far away I am from that 'n', since I've already completed the game to 100%.

Hrm.

Tough Hairballs

I've always wanted to create my own game.

And not in the way I used to: thumbing through 3-2-1-Contact Magazine for the code they printed in the back. Typing in lines upon lines of Basic into the TRS-80 my dad brought home from work. Then modifying, breaking, fixing, breaking, modifying, etc. until I had a snake game or a trivia game that would call out my brother by name when he played it.

So I started creating a game a bit ago using XNA Game Studio 2.0. Installing everything and getting it all set up was the easy part. I went to http://creators.xna.com/, followed the instructions and had my blank project deploying to my Xbox 360 in no time.

Coming up with what I wanted to create was pretty easy, too. I decided on "Magic Hairball". Much like a Magic 8-Ball that advises you on the wisest course of action, Magic Hairball would do the same, except a cat would gack up your answer.

So I sat down, used some of the code samples, learned to animate with a sprite sheet...and you know what? Writing code to show different parts of the sprite sheet was easy. Drawing an animation that looks good is freaking HARD. Hats off to animators, they make it look easy.

To add to the difficulty, I decided when I started that I was not going to use the big programs/resources from Microsoft that were available to me internally. So I was using Visual C# 2005 Express Edition (free, and works amazingly well), XNA Game Studio 2.0, MSDN documentation, and samples. I really didn't want to use Paint, so I began using ArtRage. ArtRage is $25 and a really good painting program for the money. You can't select things and move them around, but I like the texture I got from the paint and you can do layers.

So I have drawn and redrawn and making a cat look like they're coughing up a hairball is really tough. But, at last - success!

I give you the star of Magic Hairball...
(click the image to see the animation play)