Category Archives: AetherFall

A (now canceled) programming project in XNA.

Platformer + RTS = ?

I’ve come up with novel ways to combine elements of both genres in my game thus far. For example, like any good platformer there’s plenty of collectibles lying around (id est coins in Mario, rings in Sonic). There’s also RTS-style resource gathering, where you must have enough resources in order to build/purchase a new unit (id est gold in WarCraft, et cetera).

In fact, both of these things are one and the same! The collectibles are the resources. 😀

Yet Another Screenshot

Still working on my game.

Game prototype screenshot

(You can click on the image to view a larger version.) You may notice that the units are more organized, lining up behind their leader instead of standing around at random points. It’s slowly becoming more and more like a real game. The more I play it, the more I get an idea of what kind of game I want it to be. It’s still not that much fun play, but I’m starting to get glimpses as to what needs to be done to correct that. Hooray for prototyping! 😀

The game was originally just going to be a single player game, but I was careful to keep the door open in case I changed my mind and, low and behold, I decided to test around a little bit and ended up implementing a split screen multiplayer mode. Too bad I don’t have enough controllers to test it like I want to right now, but at least players one and two work. XD

Another Screenshot

When I get a chance in the coming weeks, I’ll probably take some time to explain what’s going on with Vision Riders and why we haven’t been updating. But in the meantime, here’s some more more of that project I’ve working on. (Click on the screenshot to see a larger version.)

Game prototype screenshot

As you can see the game’s come along a little further. Even got the game set up so that I can test it on my new XBox 360! 😀 Unfortunantly, though, it’s not a whole lot of fun to play right now. Your units do most of the work on their own, and there’s no strategy to anything. Hopefully this can be corrected as I continue to work on it and discover the game’s potential, otherwise I’ll just have to scrap the idea and find something else to work on. :'(

Here’s What I’ve Been Up To Lately

Sorry I haven’t been getting Swordmaster Odyssey up lately. I’m hoping to get the comic back on track in a few more weeks, so don’t fret too much. In the meantime, though, I’ve been dabbling in programming again, playing around with C# and Microsoft’s XNA.

Game prototype screenshot
This is a game prototype for a platformer-RTS hybrid I put together over the past week. Not sure if anything will come of it, or if I’ll have the time and/or gumption to continue working on it, but thus far it’s been an interesting endeavor.