An inspired software developer on the MSDN forums wrote a basic video game using Microsoft's XNA in 24-hours.
With only 601 lines of code (incuding comments apparently) the game is called Asteroid Defense and he's proud of his accomplishment. And why not?
If an inspiring developer has pulled of a game in less then a day can you imagine what a group of developers could write in a month? Or, perhaps three months? This is, in my mind, a major milestone for Independant Game Developers because it means that even "John/Jane Q Developer" can develope new genre's of gaming and bring back the creative process that is lost by major development companies like EA.
Many big companies buy little developers that come up with great ideas (I believe Bungie pulled something off like this) and a few good folks squeek by to become successful themselves (i.e. Valve and Half-Life).
I commend Izzy545 on a job well done - proving that Microsoft may have a successful product line in the future. The console with the easiest software tools will always win the race to success (or so I believe).
To see his post in full click here.
With only 601 lines of code (incuding comments apparently) the game is called Asteroid Defense and he's proud of his accomplishment. And why not?
" In this game you are a ship protecting a planet from incoming asteroids.He goes on to say:
Controls:
360 controller:
Left Joystick -- Move ship left and right.
A -- Shoot
Right or Left Trigger -- Change Weapon.
Keyboard
Left and Right Arrow Keys -- Move ship left and right.
Up and Down Arrow Keys -- Change Weapon
Space -- Shoot
The weapon you are using is shown in the top left corner. The stronger the weapon you use, the less points you get for destroying an asteroid. Levels progress at timed intervals and more and more asteroids come down. You lose when one of them reaches the planet."
"All in all this game took around 24 hours to complete, and comes in at 601 lines of code(including comments.) Awesome job Microsoft, I can't imagine making a game like this using purely DirectX in that amount of time and with so few lines of code(I'm sure I could've gotten it lower if I knew the language better.)"Now, Kotaku reported this story saying "Just the sort of drivel I hope won't start coursing onto Live Arcade. Well, at least it's easy to produce drivel." I disagree completely with this line of thought.
If an inspiring developer has pulled of a game in less then a day can you imagine what a group of developers could write in a month? Or, perhaps three months? This is, in my mind, a major milestone for Independant Game Developers because it means that even "John/Jane Q Developer" can develope new genre's of gaming and bring back the creative process that is lost by major development companies like EA.
Many big companies buy little developers that come up with great ideas (I believe Bungie pulled something off like this) and a few good folks squeek by to become successful themselves (i.e. Valve and Half-Life).
I commend Izzy545 on a job well done - proving that Microsoft may have a successful product line in the future. The console with the easiest software tools will always win the race to success (or so I believe).
To see his post in full click here.
