So I decide to take a nap and come back 2 hours later only to have my dev work station lock up, blue screen and fail to start up again. A lot of people poke fun at Windows operating systems for being so troublesome and crash-prone, but its these same traits that make solving problems on Windows based machines somewhat easy. If you’re having an issue, chances are you’re not the first, which means someone else has had the same issue and has more than likely already found a solution for it. In my case, I ran into a problem with classpnp.sys (what ever the hell that is). From googling around I found out that its related to some security feature on Windows 7 that prevents the computer from continuing with the start up process if it encounters a driver that has an improper digital signature (Creative hardware such as sound cards are well known for causing such problems apparently). This results in an endless restart loop may include a permanent hang on the start up logo for Windows, a blue screen right after the start up, or just a blank screen. Trying to restart the computer in safe mode will result in the start up process freezing or stopping at the file classpnp.sys. There are multiple solutions out there on how to fix it but the one I managed to use to get my workstation up and running was simply going into the advanced boot options (hitting F8) and disabling the enforcing of digital signatures for drivers. I then restarted the workstation and continued to start windows normally and I was back in action and haven’t crashed (yet…).

I’m currently running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition and I do have a creative sound card (X-Fi Sound Blaster). I didn’t investigate too far into this so I don’t want to conclude the X-Fi drivers caused the issue, but as noted earlier, they have been known to be a source of the problem.

Got together with a friend and we’ve started production on another XBL game. We could use some artists! More info to come soon.

One my my friends just completed his student game project and I must say having assisted his group on a few technical issues and seeing the many troubles they had, I’m quite impressed with what they managed to produce. You can play it at ParasiteGame.com or view it on my projects page.

So obviously making games does require quite abit of artistic talent and not just technical know-how. I’m looking for any free-lance artists who would like to contribute to some of the projects I’m working on. If you’d like to have your work in an XNA based title (meaning Xbox Live Arcade and soon Windows Phone 7), please contact me.

I had totally missed this bit of information regarding the lack of point sprite support in XNA 4.0 and DirectX  10 and 11. Given that some of the particle engines and authoring tools I had worked on relied heavily on point sprites for rendering, I figured I might as well throw this out there in case anyone else planning on using point sprites on current or future projects is aware. More info on this and a work around can be found on Shawn Hargreaves blog.

As a game designer/developer, work on any given project is never complete. Not because there is an infinite list of tasks that need to get done, but because the self criticism of and constant need to improve on your project exists. With Ginger Dead finally over I’m moving on to other projects of mine that are in dire need of attention (Left 4 Dead 2D and Project Light Speed). One challenge of working solo on projects is that there usually isn’t anyone there to criticize or challenge your ideas as often as you would experience while working in a group so getting feedback from other people involves a little more work. Another problem is related to what I mentioned above, the constant desire to make your game as good as it can possibly be and since working solo on individual projects means there really aren’t any deadlines or milestones to be met, project life spans are seemingly endless.

That being said, the two titles I’m currently working on are Left 4 Dead 2D and Project Light Speed. I’ll be putting most of my focus on Light Speed since most of its core systems are complete. Left 4 Dead 2D is going to be a little bit more involved since I have to build tools (such as the level editor) as well as the game itself.  I’ll post more updates as progress is made!

Final release of Ginger Dead is now available for download. Feel free to check it out on my Ginger Dead page. There are still bugs present so if you encounter any please let me know.

Designing a game is a fun and engaging process, especially if you do it with a team of people who are equally as eager and willing to participate in the exchange of various ideas that all get put together in the process of making a game. There is always an element of confusion which leads to many disagreements although in a healthy and constructive way. Ideas may be easily seen in a different way by the different people involved in the game design process. One particular aspect I found is easily overlooked or brushed aside in the initial design discussions or concepts is feedback.

I’m sure very few if any would disagree that in games, feedback is of utmost importance. It may be simple transition effects between menus and HUD elements to a little more complicated systems such as particle effects and lighting. While working on Ginger Dead, one of the major mistakes that came back to bite us towards the end of the project was the lack of adequate player feedback that would make the game feel a bit more lively. The lack adequate player feedback turned out to be an even bigger problem because the asset to engine pipe line we had going didn’t give much way for artists to create effects because our team (primarily programmers) had the mindset that effects would be done code side with a few art assets that would be given to us.

Pre-built geometry effects

Since custom effects based on pre-made geometry like the one to the left was no longer an option towards the final weeks of the project (there were too many other things that needed attention) finding and implementing alternate solutions for feedback became priority. Some of the most obvious candidates would be procedural effects such as particle systems or post process effects. One good bit of advice we I received with regards to effects was particle systems should not be used as a stand-alone or alternate way to give the player feedback. They should instead be used as a way to improve or accentuate other effects such as custom built geometry based effects like the one above.

Many games out there manage to find a great balance between pre-buillt effects and procedural systems while managing to not assault the players visual senses with an overflow of colors and bright flashes on screen (I’ve learned that that is not very difficult to do…). So as mentioned above, using various types of effects and effect systems in game can help produce something that can look good with work being done by both artists and programmers, although some serious thought has to be put into it as it is very easy to forgot about effects and till later in the development phase when you come to the realization that the game is missing something and you can’t quite put your finger on it, or if you do, you find out that you’ve come to far to implement any major new systems and you’re limited to what kind of effects you can have in game.

Different types of effects being put to use

 I’ve come to believe that special effects also require an artistic eye as opposed to a pure technical mindset. Being able to tell which effects are good and which ones are out of place can be key to helping improve the overall game experience and ensuring that time isn’t wasted on trying to build systems that while in theory and from previous games may sound great, may not work at all for your current project. Still being new to this I’m definately looking forward to exploring the different kinds of things that can be done, especially with new hardware available today.

Well its been a long and short (yes) five months working on this particular project. Lots of things learned while doing so but the time has come for this game to finally go gold. I had the pleasure of meeting a few of the developers form Rockstar Games San Diego who worked on Red Dead Redemption. They pointed out a saying in the film industry – “Films are never completed, just abandoned”. While I never heard of that before I think it does echo true for the game industry as well because as a game designer or developer you will most probably never feel that the game you worked on is complete because you can always improve on it and the reality of it is you’ll have to hit your final milestone at some point and that’s when you have to finally say “its done”. I’ll be uploading a release version of Ginger Dead next week!

Well I managed to get everything sorted out with the web server and from here on end it should be smooth sailing. I’ve updated the Left 4 Dead 2D and Ginger Dead pages and Project Light Speed will be up soon. Ginger Dead is my current focus as its past beta and will be going gold at the end of the month, read up about it on the Ginger Dead page. Once that’s done my attention will be back on Left 4 Dead 2D again and hopefully I’ll have a lot more time to continue to work on it and have it in a playable state soon. Thanks for visiting!