Posts filed under: Developing
Well, we missed two weeks of Good Morning Gatos. I’d love to point the blame at the storm that exploded the East Coast last week, but the fact is our area of upstate New York was remarkably untouched, aside from a brief bit of wind that miraculously blew all of the leaves from our yard into the street. Many others south of us were hit hard by Sandy and we can only count our lucky stars that we and the cats are safe and toasty warm. The cause for this Gato delay can only be attributed to good old fashioned “we have been very busy”.
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November 9, 2012
Charlie Murder Takes The Big Stage With Release On Xbox LIVE Arcade
The punk rock adventure of Charlie Murder is in development for an Xbox LIVE Arcade release in 2012.
Schenectady, NY – May 5, 2010 – Ska Studios cleared up some confusion surrounding the release of their arcade title Charlie Murder by officially announcing that the game is being developed with the band’s input and will be released by Microsoft exclusively on Xbox LIVE Arcade sometime in 2012, along with the purported end of the world.
After initially being announced as an Xbox LIVE Indie Games title, developer Ska Studios decided that the Charlie Murder story was worthy of a bigger stage. After intense negotiations with the band and some bribery, Ska Studios was able to convince the Charlie Murder crew to sell out yet again, and commit to bringing their band’s punk rock story to Xbox LIVE Arcade. As part of the agreement terms, the entire band will complete a one year counseling program at Happy Times Recovery Center in Atlantic City, NJ. Their treatment will focus on mending the strife that has kept Charlie Murder on hiatus for nearly a decade as well as addressing, among other things, bassist Tommy Homicide’s recent hoarding tendencies and guitarist Lester Deth’s addiction to other addictions. After the program’s successful completion, the entire crew will join Ska Studios as “Creative Consultants” to make sure the game stays true to the band’s epic story.
“Yeah, the band is in a tough spot, but we’re signed up for that trendy rehab stuff so we can get paid,” said lead singer Charlie Murder. “We sold out and we’ll do our time in counseling. Just know that we are no longer indie, we are Xbox Live Arcade legit and in 2012 we will have the achievements to prove it.”
For the latest on Charlie Murder, please visit us online at www.ska-studios.com, follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/skastudios or like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/skastudios.
May 5, 2010
Well, not quite that exciting.
But thing are moving along pretty well, albeit a little delayed (I think I’m 2 weeks off schedule currently, but who’s counting?)
One interesting little bit of fun is localization. The Dishwasher is coming out in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese. Since I drew my own font, I had to add all sorts of special characters to the graphic. For Japanese and Chinese I had to change the way the game handled fonts so that it could draw some using my font and others using a SpriteFont (the alternative would be hand drawing a couple thousand Asian glyphs). It took a couple of days to get everything working right with all of that, but the big hassle comes with adding changes.
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October 10, 2008
To divert your attention from the late night rant below, here’s a Dishwasheriffic status update:
- The Dishwasher has a million, billion bugs. I’m fixing them all very quickly.
- The GDC build of The Dishwasher was sort of slow. The frame rate hovered around 30. This has been fixed–it’s now a steady 60!
- I’m locking the screen size at 1280 x 720. I figured that because all of my favorite AAA games do this, I’ll do it too. This addresses frame rate fluctuations and cramped menu issues.
- The dishwasher’s weapons and clothes now get stained by blood (small detail).
- There is now a Ranked story mode–it’s a brutal difficulty that’s roughly the same difficulty as Samurai. Ranked is more strict, but playing ranked obviously allows you to compare score and speed against the rest of the world.
- The game supports 3 player co-op in story mode (unranked only). It’s kind of messy. I’m going to make it a little less messy.
It’s been a wild ride, but I’m nearing the end of the tunnel!
July 27, 2008
Since the The Dishwasher trial went live, I’ve been getting a lot of emails from people. At first I did my best to answer them, but now I’ve been so inundated, and I’ve got so many deadlines coming up, that I figure it would be easier to just identify the common thread of questioning and answer that here!
Here are the big ones:
- How do I make games?
I’d definitely recommend taking any classes if they’re available, whether you’re in high school or college. Though XNA is all C#, learning C, C++, or Java will still help to familiarize you with the basics of programming.
Also, my advice to everyone is always this: start small! Not to sound arrogant, but The Dishwasher is basically the culmination of 6 years of hobbyist game development experience; if you’ve only got a week of experience you’re not exactly going to be able to match the caliber of The Dishwasher. And forget 3D altogether if you’re just starting. Basically, if you set out to make something that would’ve been considered cool in the 80′s, you’ve got a fighting chance.
- Is The Dishwasher coming out for Windows?
There aren’t any plans currently, for a few reasons. The biggest reason, of course, is because Microsoft is publishing it as an XBLA title, so I’m going to focus on that. Also, the game plays like rubbish with a keyboard, and adding support for multiple gamepads is always ugly in my opinion. The Dishwasher is made for the Xbox360 controller (though I could see the DualShock working). I also think PC piracy is a really, really, really big problem.
- When is The Dishwasher coming out?
When it’s done! The XNA team and I are both breaking new ground by adding all sorts of new functionality, and there certainly is a lot to do. I’m 99.9% certain it’ll be out in 2008, but beyond that, I can’t really say anything, because it would amount to nothing more than a politician’s promise.
So there you have it! I’m always happy to answer questions, so keep ‘em coming!
April 10, 2008
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