Rob Loach .Net

Jim McGinley from TOJam contacted me a while ago, asking if I'd like to present TOBam at the Microsoft Energize IT conference in Toronto. Well, it went really really well. There were about four teams who presented their XNA-related TOJam entries and we got to talk closely with some people in the games industry, some people from the XNA team, and some people from Microsoft. It was a great opportunity and I would like to thank Jim McGinley and Mark Zielinski for all the work they put into both TOJam and Microsoft Energize IT's GameCamp. Make sure to check out the pictures!

I got a short and sweet e-mail from Jim McGinley informing me that TOBam was posted on the TOJam website. He did a great job putting the page together, making sure the video was there, the groovy screenshots. He even wrote a nice note about the game:

"Did you see all those planes? That's NUTS! While it starts seemingly like Capcom's 1943, the sheer number of planes makes this a different beast altogether. I love playing this game on hard. When level 3 hits - you're DEAD. Perhaps the most thrilling game created at the jam. The movement of your plane is subtle and classy, and Toronto makes the perfect scrolling background."

The main menu has been implemented and it looks pretty good. I used some very nice articles posted on the XNA Creators Club website. Now that I have the base game state system of the game down, I can move onto gameplay.

The Toronto Indie Game Jam has just begun. We're given two and a half days to create a video game. I'll be attempting a top-down forward scrolling shooting game using XNA. I will also be posting a status update every stepping stone.

Microsoft has come out with XNA 1.0 Refresh. This release now officially supports Microsoft Vista and comes with a number of new things. Although I'm having the connection problem they talked about when attempting to deploy to the Xbox 360, I'm happy that they now official support Microsoft Vista. Download it!

TOJam is an annual game development contest where contestants have to create a video game in three days. If you're interested in game development and live near Toronto, I strongly suggest you register.

Markus Ewald, aka Cygon, sent me a note saying that he got XNA Game Studio working properly on a Vista machine. I followed his five easy steps, and got it working on my laptop. After playing the XNA recreation of Spacewar for a bit, I decided it was time to get my XNA Creator's Club membership and test it on the Xbox 360.

Microsoft Game Studio Express 1.0 is finally out, and it doesn't work with Microsoft Vista. I'm kind of sad, but most definitely plan on getting the Creator's Club certificate, and I'm assuming that'll work with Vista. It seems like I'll be stuck adding the XNA references manually until the project templates with Visual Studio 2005 Professional.