StepWood Games Development

For Alan and I, our actual jobs have gotten in the way for the last little bit and basically stopped work for StepWood.  The interesting side effect of this is that we’ve both had time to think about what we want to be working on.  Thus we have both recently come up with new proects to work on.  They are both kinda hush hush for now to keep someone else from doing the same things, but let’s just say they both have potential in totally different ways.  Alan’s project can bring to the world something almost no one knows about even though it’s been around for a very long time.  My project has the potential to bring back something many old school gamers may remember and that I believe there to still be a sort of cult following over.  Time will tell how these new projects play out so keep your eyes peeled.

Unlike my experienced game developing counter-part Alan, I can’t claim to have written anything approximating a game with anything more recent than Quick BASIC.  Now, thrust headlong into a development schedule and a desire to produce alongside Alan instead of simply watching him, I must learn XNA, and quickly.  To start down the road of high speed education I am working my way through as many XNA Creators Club tutorials as I can.  I must give the XNA guys credit for very well done tutorials (even if they are a bit slow since they expect to be teaching anyone.)  The tutorials even come complete with easy to follow videos and downloadable assets to use.

I’m excited so far by how easy the first tutorial is, but expect it to get more complicated as I progress.  I’ve done seven videos already and find that building my game produces an innocent seeming window complete with a lovely background texture.  As I understand it, I’ll be doing moving sprites next, and even collision detection in the near future.  I expect to be able to finish the first tutorial tomorrow.

Well, I have the distinct honor of introducing our development team and writing about our current project.  We are a small development shop that is writing our very first XNA title for publishing on the Xbox 360 console.  Our intention is to get this product on the Xbox 360 by November 2008.

We’ll have additional details on the project as we make more progress.

This isn’t likely to remain the most exciting post here for very long, but for now it can claim that title as it’s really the only post here.  We hope you enjoy our development notes.