6 Months Later…

Posted May 26, 2009

Well as you may have guessed from the lack of updates here, I haven’t quite been working on UQM:XNA too much nowadays.

Essentially the project finally ran out of steam.  Factors include: making it onto XBLCG would be complicated since its Toys For Bobs IP, there being a ton of work remaining just to get it to a finished state(not to mention my old code is not very efficient and doesnt run well on the XBOX), and not much interest on my part to pursue making a PC only version.

So what have I been doing lately?  I’ve spent the last few months finishing up what will be my first XBLCG game- Puzzwords!

Essentially it’s Scrabble combined with Columns :)  It took a while to complete but I am pretty satisfied with the end result.  I am very happy I managed to fit in online multiplayer and highscore lists, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to do it at first  :)   I have my fingers crossed that people will actually play it online!  Most XBLCG games dont have big enough audiences to sustain online multiplayer for very long, but I am hoping the 31 player matches will help instead to just limiting it to one vs one.

Coming soon to Community Games (as soon as it passes peer review)

<br /><a href=”http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=ed43f680-9a9a-4d40-9f43-4c9205fdb3da” target=”_new” title=”Puzzwords Trailer”>Video: Puzzwords Trailer</a>

7 Comments so far

  1. Resh Aleph on May 27th, 2009

    Wait, so you’ve given up on this project?!

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! ;_;

    Hot little game you’ve made there, anyway. I, uh… recognize the background music from a porno.

  2. Mr Brian on May 28th, 2009

    Hmm Interesting, porno with classical music sounds pretty funny :)

  3. Resh Aleph on May 28th, 2009

    Well… it’s a porno for people with a very special taste.

    Anyhow, I really liked what you’ve been doing here. Any chance you’ll change your mind? Please? Pretty please? I’ll wash your car! I’ll do your homework! I’ll brush your teeth! o_O

  4. Anthony on May 28th, 2009

    Cool game. I’ve never seen a 31-player match in XBLCG before. Good luck with Puzzwords and thanks for keeping the XNA Star Control II source up. Maybe in the next version, you can throw in some Star Control words, hee hee. :D

  5. Mr Brian on May 29th, 2009

    Resh: If Microsoft allows free games on XBLCG… maybe.. just maybe.. I dont really see that happening soon though :p

    Anyway, the original is really all you need isnt it? Campaign, netplay, no bugs.. Maybe I should have been making a total remake instead :) (but that would have taken even longer) Anyway it will always have been great for learning more about programming while having fun with SC2.

    Anthony: I actually have thought about adding some fun SC words in there, maybe in the next version :) Thanks for your support throughout the project, and keep up the great SC blogging!

    Star Control Forevaz

  6. Resh Aleph on May 30th, 2009

    A remake? No, not really… I would actually be fine with this being Windows-only.

    I was fascinated by the idea of having many ships fight at once. Playing with three friends in a 1080p arena sounds like hella fun.

    I was also interested in unlimited facing angles.

    And UDP netplay.

    And those minigames.

    And the visual effects.

    ;_;

  7. Mr Brian on May 31st, 2009

    Well except the netplay, and arenas, you have those things right now in the last version- although maybe a little unpolished :)

Leave a reply