Suteka's Favourite Cereal

My remake of Zatacka (Achtun, die Kurve!) for Xbox 360 is in the peer review stage (again…thanks very much Guitar Hero controllers) on Xbox Live Indie Games. It should be released within weeks at a price of 80 Microsoft Points. Anyone who is interested in a PC version should contact me directly, though the analogue controls on the Xbox 360 make quite a difference to the gameplay. And look out for the great soundtrack!

After a long break (holidays are great!) I started work on Zatacka again, this time ensuring it works on Xbox 360 (if you have a Creator’s Club Subscription and would like to get hold of it, feel free to contact me!) which required a large rewrite. Anyway, here it is now with more consistent collision detection.  As always, please make sure the XNA Framework 2.0 Redistributable is installed.

I’ve finished a beta version of Zatacka. Grab it and give it a try. Let me know what you think. Install the included XNA Framework 2.0 first.

Zatacka Install

*UPDATE*  Uploaded new beta. Make sure to uninstall the old one BEFORE installing the new one. See changelog for details

Finally, some time to program. What a relief. Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 2.0 was released in beta form a few days ago, so I’ve ported my work to the new framework. The game is very close to beta stage, with only a few menu screens missing. The menu is an (incomplete) adaptation of the example given at the XNA Creators Club Website.

So the hype has really started. Halo 3 seems to be the biggest videogame launch ever by quite some distance. It’s certainly the first time I’ve seen Microsoft put up Xbox related advertising in my university. Odd. I never really caught on to the whole Master Chief saga. Perhaps this one will be different. But with so many other games (and so much to do in REAL LIFE as well) I think I’ll give it a miss, although by the sound of it, I’m the only one: Preorders for Halo 3 surpassed 1 million some time ago. At 60 per game that’s over 60 Million revenue straight away. Not bad for a first person shooter Considering developing costs are around $20 million, that’s a pretty nice profit straight off. No wonder there’s a spinoff in the works.

I’ve been hard at work procrastinating. Today a friend showed me an archaic game called Zatacka, which is an open source clone of the DOS game "Achtung, Die Kurve". It’s a really great game (although it’s strictly multiplayer…) and I decided to give it a bit of an update so to speak. At the moment I’m working on an XNA version that will eventually run on both Windows PCs and the Xbox 360. Of course, numerous improvements and special features will be added but for now I’ve just recreated the good old look and feel.

UPDATE: Here’s an idea of what I’ve done so far. Bloom shaders are used to give it that nice neon look and I have a few effects up my sleeve I’ll implement soon…

As I’m sure you’ve read, the Xbox 360 is a poor excuse for a device. It’s noisy, it overheats, it breaks. Always. But still. I think mine is somehow special. sure it breaks. A lot. But it fixes itself nicely. On encountering the so called “Red Ring of Death”: basically, the GPU heats up so much that it de-solders itself from the mainboard. Great manufacturing scheme there. It turns out that in an effort to shave off roughly 0.50 from the cost of a 400 dollar machine. Microsoft chose to use a generic low quality thermal compound on the GPU/heatsink interface, instead of something like Arctic Silver which according to tests would have fixed the majority of these issues. Anyway, the one crazy fix that I read about on the net was the “Towel Technique”. Basically, you wrap the Xbox snugly in a warm towel so that there is no air flow, turn it on and leave to bake for 10-15 min (or until golden brown). During this process, the GPU heats up so much that the solder melts (again) and it re-solders itself to the board. Magic. Sounds like a crackpot theory. Except it actually works. I tried it a couple of months back and it kept me going until last Saturday. During this period I was sure to keep the box well ventilated and even sprung for a new (quieter but more efficient) exhaust fan. But then it hit again. Hard. This time I was prepared though. It didn’t work the first time. Or the second time. But the third worked like a charm (although I did use two towels this time…) So now it’s up and running again, in time for Blue Dragon! Hurray.