Progress has been made...

So it turns out that even though UNM published my game, Missile Defender, I was informed that I had to take a full three credit class if I actually wanted it to be released to the public. It's obvious to me now that me and the other three developers are just being used as guinea pigs, which is pretty frustrating, but I guess they have to start somewhere. Anyways, this really put a number on me for the following reasons:

• Can't work on Abaddon as much since I'm now taking 2 graduate level classes.
• Won't see any direct benefit from the sales that Missile Defender brings.
• Free time is one of those things that seem like a distant memory.

However, there are some bright sides to this situation. In all honesty, Missile Defender, kind of sucked, in my own opinion. The gameplay was slow. It was almost as if it was caught between trying to be a shooter and a tetris-like game. This class has given me the opportunity to significantly de-suckify Missile Defender. I've added new enemies that move in more interesting ways. You rarely see an enemy just sit still while you blow it of the sky (which all my enemies did before). There simply way more enemies on the screen, your weapons fire faster, and I changed the magnetic field to where you can actually repel the mines back to the enemies and destroy them. Most importantly, I added a two player mode that makes things much more interesting. There are bunch of other little details that I've changed that make the game much more fun, so I'm excited about that.

There is more good news. Both Abaddon and Missile Defender are nearing completion. I should be submitting Missile Defender to XNA's review process within a matter of a week or two. If all goes well, you should be able to download it from XBLA Indie Games by December. Abaddon is only a month behind where MD is at.

I'm learning so much about video game and graphics development this semester. The real-time rendering class at UNM is no joke, and I've learned some pretty advanced techniques such as bump-mapping, hardware accelerated particle systems, and depth peeling. I'm soon going to be spending less time developing and more time marketing. So I should be posting here more frequently.