I’ve decided in the recent month to get cracking at producing an XNA game for the XBOX 360. After a few hours of graft I’m back to handling input, having a static camera and loading a texture on the screen which (by moving the static camera left and right) appears to shoot past the screen. I’m thinking of producing an “old school” platformer game as I just don’t see the kind of Mario/Sonic style of game (that brought me so much entertainment as a kid) sold in the shops these days. I do understand that games developers would rather take advantage of the technologies on offer to the fullest extent, but I’m not only going to produce a platformer as a learning exercise, but also to try and get platformers back on to a few XBOX 360′s. I’ll post code and examples when it looks good enough for me to share!

Whilst this may not be the newest thing to come out of Google Maps, I was startled to find that all of Colchester is available in Google Maps Streetview in old-school 3D (the kind where you need the glasses that have red and blue lenses). Here is an example looking at the Jumbo water tower in Colchester. You’ll have to click on the little chap on the left hand side to get the 3d effect enabled.

I have an idea for a mapping web application, that whilst not using old-school 3D, will take advantage of the ever growing feature set of Google Maps. It will give me some valueable web application practice, and hopefully put a useful service out on to the Internet. More on that soon!

As for the RTS Game, the mapping engine for that is starting to come on nicely, and I’m hoping to have a few screenshots out within the next 3 weeks. I aim to start jotting down some tutorials on the more useful bits of RTS game development within XNA, and they shall appear in an articles section on this site.

Since receiving Forza Motorsport 3 for Christmas, I’ve been hooked! I’m steadily working my way through the achievements and have several more to achieve as yet. This game, combined with Modern Warfare 2 and FIFA 10 have basically been my gaming titles over the holiday period.

The game that myself and Nick are developing has crept along at a slower-than-usual pace, due largely to the holidays, but nevertheless a SkyBox has been developed, integrated into our game solution as a content pipeline processor. This means that we have the ability to interpret game resources in a custom manner, meaning that it will be “wrapped” around our skybox. This will allow us to process things such as sky and other backdrops, visible and changing depending on the camera rotation etc. More on this when we have a suitable backdrop implemented.

The next month is a very exciting time for AllportGreenhillGames, with a set strategy being developed on how myself and Nick can take our pet project and turn it into something real.

The past two weeks have seen me visit Nick in Birmingham, catch his cold, return to work too early and now I’m unable to shift a cough. Even several sessions in the steam room at my local gym hasn’t helped. Luckily I have the next two days off to enjoy some quality time with my better half, although this coming Saturday I’ll be on a plane in the name of work.