Place blocks, build quads, get coverage, make music
Parlez vous Français?
Every single message, menu item, tooltip, and pop-up has to work in multiple languages. The idea is to get all this text into a table and look it up when you want to say something. Then, once you have all your text you send it off to get translated.
Well, that’s the theory. Like [...]
Going live!
Now we had Chime working it was time to look through the list of all the things you have to do to make a game work in Xbox Live Arcade. You must have certain things in the main menu such as help and options and control instructions, and then there is entering player’s scores [...]
Where are my particles?
A less obvious difference between PC and console is the way the files are stored. Games are made up of hundreds, sometimes thousands of files, containing things like level data, sounds, graphical elements such as textures, fonts, and 3D models, and so on. Game Studio provides a way of managing all these [...]
Where’s the mouse?
Once we had Chime building for the Xbox 360, it didn’t work straightaway as a playable game; an automatic port can only do so much. There are many differences between a PC and a games console, the most obvious being the controls.
Chime was playing really well with a mouse and keyboard, so the [...]
I remember when I first saw a prototype of Chime. I was fascinated by it and how it created music as you played. When I was assigned to the project I was very excited about it and couldn’t wait to write some music for it.
The original idea was that new music would be written for [...]
Working on Chime threw up several technical challenges, which I will post about in the coming week. It was an interesting project — my first XBOX 360 Live game. First off, conversion to XBOX 360 Live.
Windows to XBOX 360 Live
Chime was originally developed in Zoë Mode’s Lab. The Lab is a great place to experiment, [...]
Much excitement here at Zoë Mode that Chime is about to hit the virtual shelves. It’s been a long and unusual road to release, beginning almost 4 years ago with a design document titled “Cascade – A Musical Puzzle Game”. My original concept was different to the end result in many ways but the central [...]
