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So I have always had this dream/desire/hope/wish to be a game developer, will I ever get there?  Who knows….making something as serious as Gears of War 2 - very unlikely, but who knows maybe one day I’ll have something interesting for people to play with.  Either way, I pretty much live and breath code in about any language I can get my hands on - so I am enjoying the ride either way.

After playing around with creators club, reviewing some tutorials, guides and forum threads I decided to give building a game from scratch a shot.  My selection was not perhaps the most interesting of games, I mean everyone has solitaire on the computer all ready - but I figured a card game could be a nice starting point.

Being my first attempt, I might have not done things in the most logical or useful way - but its functional, and I expect the knowledge to grow as time goes on.  As I sit here looking at the final working product I am rather amazed at what is involved in something as simple as creating a game of solitaire.  I say final working product, but in reality it isn’t final. As I sit here and took a few screen shots for this posting I all ready spotted a small glitch that I want to fix - and all ready thinking of more things I could add.

It’s actually a pretty interesting process, one that seems to never be finished.   I have a few other game ideas spinning in my head, and I am bugging friends to come up with some better ideas - maybe one day I will come up with something that makes its way to the Community Games.  Perhaps a bit lofty of a goal - but who knows.

So far this is only functional on windows (as I am not ready to commit to paying for an XNA subscription without something perhaps useful enough to share with everyone) and would require the XNA framework to be installed.  Maybe as I have some spare time and continue to work on it I will provide a download link if people actually want such a thing.

For now, how about some screen shots - again very basic but functional (you should have seen it before i made it somewhat pretty!

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That’s right folks, with the recent news at work I feel its almost required I cut back what I can at least for now.  So perhaps not the end, but both my Tabula Rasa and Warhammer online accounts have been been put on hold for now.  In all reality I keep busy enough with various projects and console gaming that I don’t get to play them nearly enough to be paying monthly anyway - but I really enjoyed both of them and liked to play them when I could.  I kept my subscriptions so that was possible.

As some of you know, my company decided to take a unique approach to the economic problems most businesses face these days.  Instead of selecting whatever number of individuals they needed to trim to cut expenses, they decided to ’share the pain’ (their words not mine) with the entire staff - that is to say we all recieved a 20% pay reduction.  To be completely fair, it was a 20% reduction in the time at work as well - I now have an extra day off of the day job.  All in all a bit of a shock to the system, one which made me think I really should think about what I can do to cut back and save or pay off debts, especially when who knows when things will get better, or worse.

Now of course let me say I know I am not the first that has been impacted by the current state of the economy and sadly I doubt I will be the last but it is my blog so I can rant from time to time if I want.  Do I think that this was the right choice for them to make?  Well honestly I am not in the postion to make that call.  I am sure it wasn’t an easy decision to make either.  I can say that I don’t love it, some might have even said I overreacted at first, but looking back I guess I am happy I still have the 80% left.  Some people I know have not been as lucky in recent times.

So even though I have an extra day off as I continue to fill that day with things to do - I will miss my Tabula Rasa (so close to finally making 30 and selecting my final class selection!) and Warhammer (I barely got to know you), but I have hope I will be back soon enough. 

Truth be told, you probably will see me on Xbox Live from time to time on that day off (Monday)- and you can guarantee I will have a few more hours to dedicate to 360voice and GamerDNA development.  Which my friends, is what I like the call the silver lining of this cloud.

As my wife said this might have been a sign, we will get through it, and who knows maybe I will end up coming out on top from this challenge in the end.

I was just browsing the GamerDNA forums, and one thread caught my eye, not the title really, but the contents.  This guy must be the current day MacGuyver

There you have it his very own hand build lancer - i wonder if he could make that shotgun foot my buddy Ymiris wanted to have attached when he broke his leg.

I have been Avatar…ized! That’s right I made it in on the second wave of NXE previews.  I actually didn’t even notice the email but got a prompt for a system update when I was booting GoW2.  After it completed I noticed the email in my box saying it would be coming. I have to admit, I originally signed up to just give it a shot, and see what it was all about - but I wasn’t super excited to get my hands on it or anything.  I think I have said in the past that console updates don’t get me hot under the collar for the most part - but I have to bite my tongue.  The new features and sexy look make me happy I got my hands on it early. I am actually considering going back to netflix, just for the online streaming (changed to blockbuster online a while back), and the interface just seems to function a ton smoother, but who am I kidding if you really care about the update, you all ready read all about it on 10 news sites - you dont need me to drone on on my blog about it.

Gears of Goodness War 2 Secondly I went out and got Gears of War 2 at the midnight release in my area.  It was pretty quiet - the biggest news from the night was the kid behind me won a free Halo 3 Legendary edition for wearing a Gears of War shirt to the event.  So apparently it does in fact pay to be “that guy”, you know the one that wears the band t-shirt to the concert of said band.  My hat goes off to everyone involved with Gears 2 though - seriously.  I haven’t completed the campaign as of yet, but I have been completely blown away by it every moment so far - and the multiplayer experience has been amazing as well.  The horde mode gets intense, again I haven’t gotten high enough to really gauge this - but it turns into complete mayhem quick - and I love every minute of it.

Well that’s it for now, those two things made such an impact I felt like taking a moment to pimp them out - I expected both to be good, but they surpassed my expectations on so many levels.  I have been tooling around with XNA here and there when I have some free time - so depending on what comes of that I might post up some samples or something.  It will probably be quite some time before I even consider having something thats worthy of the Community Games on Xbox Live - but game development was always a childhood dream of mine - and even if nothing comes of it, I enjoy tinkering. Speaking of tinkering - I have been playing around a bit with some new signatures heavily based on 360voice data & avatars - heres a quick sample - what do you think?

I am going to get cranking away on some code my current GamerDNA and 360voice projects again - and with luck some more Gears 2 soon…very soon