Ugh, not a great few days.  Been a bit under the weather, and our web/email host has had an absolute brain-spasm, meaning that I've missed about 500 messages over the llast couple of weeks.  If you're waiting for a reply to anything, please forgive me and I'll be with you shortly.  We also lost a few bits and bobs from the site overnight and I've got to look in to that too.  Sorry guys.

So, what's going on?  SPfT is s..l..o..w..l..y making it's way up the UK top ranking list and we've had a couple of really good reviews which cheered me up no end.  There are still a few glitches for me to sort out and they'll be actioned after we've finished Blazin' Balls.  Speaking of which, we're only about a week from the finishing line and I'm in the process of polishing the levels and getting the par times right.  Looking very positive - I'll have to start the old PR machine up again soon I suppose...

Sorry this isn't a longer post, but I have soooo much to catch up on as well as finishing BB.  As soon as I can I will be adding to the Post Mortem report, and writing some stuff about how XBLIG is changing.  Pip pip!

Oui la la mon petit joujou!  Blazin Balls is making substantial progress towards peer review standard now, so it's time to lay out the full description and feature set for the game.

Game description: "Pick your ball's path along the cosmic causeway avoiding the gaps, collecting coins and trying to beat the par time for each level."
Game features:  One or two player local gameplay, with persistent local high-scores
In-depth description:
Blazin' Balls sets you along a dangerous path along the cosmic causeway.  Use your skill and judgement to pick the safest and fastest route, avoiding the gaps in the road.  The various coloured tiles in the road have different effects on your ball - blue will cause your ball to jump, green will speed you up for a short time, red will slow you down*, cyan reverses your controls, and yellow disrupts your view of the road.  Beat the par time and collect coins to earn points, and get an extra life every 25000 points, up to a maximum of 4 lives.
(* Red and green tiles are differently textured to assist colourblind players)
Screenshots:

The main menu.  2 player mode is enabled when a second player presses START on their controller.  You can play with a gold, silver, local and no profile.  The gamertag you play with is what will appear on the high-score table (if you're good enough!).  If you're using an un-signed-in controller, the name will appear as "Player".


Blue tiles force a jump.  The faster you cover the course the more points you get when you finish the level.




The course winds is way through empty space.  It's just you, your ball and the road.  Steer a course so you collect as many coins as possible, boosting your lives every 25000 points.

The yellow squares pose a particular problem - the screen ripples and wiggles!  Can you keep your head and keep on the road?



Red squares dramatically slow you down.  You can use red squares to regain control after hitting green warp squares, or to pick your way through complex sections.

The terrifying and disorientating cyan squares!  These reverse your left and right controls - keep on your toes to keep rolling!

So what's so great about rolling a ball along a road with some holes in it?  Well, during testing we've seen people sit and play for about an hour without wanting a break.  That's the best kind of indication that it's a good game!  20 testing levels are there for the conquering - some short, some long.  The first 5 introduce you to the different tile types and their effects, and then it's on to the really testing stuff.

One of the most amazing things is that we've squeezed all this gameplay in to just over 2 meg.  Yep, 2 meg for a complete 3D game including music, models, and textures.  Blazin Balls will be our first 80 point title, and is designed as a real fast casual game.  It's only taken the equivilent of 3 weeks dev time to get this far, and we have 5 levels left to tweak and some time in playtest and we'll be ready to go.  In the whole of the development cycle so far, we've not had a single crash and that bodes very well for the stability of the game as we move towards release!

We're very very happy to announce the return of Space Pirates from Tomorrow to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace Indie Games channel!  We've implemented loads of gamer suggestions, including lots of customisation options for controls and UI elements, and fixed all the reported problems people found with the game following the initial release.  We hope you all enjoy the "new and improved" game, and a huge thankyou to everyone here, in the XNA Creators Club, on Twitter and on Facebook for all your support and encouragement over what's been a pretty tough few weeks for us.  Content for the game will begin appearing soon, so keep coming back.  We'll also be running some code competitions over the weekend so if you haven't downloaded the game yet, what are you waiting for?

Hurrumph!  Rhubarb!  Alright alright, a good day's work done today.  Blazin Balls now has 10 levels (7 of which are complete or near complete), a persistant high-score table.  I've added lots more sound effects today too, tidied the scoreboard and bonus coin distribution, and improved the game physics and responsiveness as you bound along the road.  All good stuff.  I'm going to take some video and screenshots soon so everyone can have a good look.  I recon we'll be feature-complete this weekend, and then it's down to getting the levels and polish going on.  I'm trying to think of a good idea for the menu - something different and appealing.  I have the same problem with every game to be honest and usually cop out to a simple "button" menu.  I'd rather do something more fun and eye-popping here because I want the game to be like a shot of espresso - very small but with  lot of poke.  I'll just let my mind run riot and see what comes up.  It's on the task list for Friday so plenty of time to think something up.

I really love this part of the dev cycle.  I'm just ripping through the list, I can code for about 14 hours a day and can see the game forming before my very eyes.  For Space Pirates this peroid lasted about 2 months, but this is going to be much shorter, thank God.  I'm still confident we can get the game out by the 23rd Feb (or at least to peer review by then).  I'm bang on schedule this week too, which is even better!  Tomorrow's jobs are listed on by chalkboard as "P2 controller" and "Backdrop GFX".  I recon 3 hours for the controller selection for player 2 (I expect I'll use the "standard" Xbox multiplayer popup because I like standards for things like that) and maybe 5 for the backdrops.  I'm still not sure if I'm going to skybox it or put some weird 3D object nearby, but skysphere is the favorite at the moment (low overhead and low draw time).  My skybox generator is fast enough to make a new box between levels so it could be fun to use it again.  Have to think about what images to use though.  Can't use the same ones as in Space Pirates obviously, and I'd like to try something non-space to be honest.  Only makes me pine for my telescope, which is currently boxed up in a cupboard, for shame.

Anyway it's gone 3am so I'd better toddle off to my bed, or I won't be up much before midday tomorrow, and that's not good...