ToddWorld's Playground

I've created a new blog specifically to track my XNA game develop/education process. Hopefully it won't be too boring. I've started development of my first game which is an underwater submarine shooter.

 

Check it out at http://deepBlueXNA.blogspot.com

 

Here's a first look at the ROUGH game screen...I'm building as I go.

 

Well, the Xbox has returned, in under two weeks I might add. One thing that may have helped speed things up is that we still had the box from the LAST time it broke...but anyhow.

 

The good news, and a surprise at that, is that they didn't repair and send back our 360, it's a brand new, made in August 08 model. That would be the good news...and I'm thankful for that don't get me wrong. However that leads me to the bad news, which is we'll have to go through the whole licensing ordeal again. Last time it took around six months to get the licenses for all downloaded content straightened out (and I'm still not sure we got it all taken care of). Hopefully this time will go a little smoother.

 

The Xbox support person said give it 3 days and everything should be all set, if not give him a call. Which seems like a nice enough guy, but then again I lost track of the customer support people we talked to the first time we had to transfer the licenses.

 

Fingers are crossed, but I'm not holding my breath.

My two kids and I are having a blast with Spore. Each person seems to have their own 'favorite' part of the game, which is pretty easy to understand since it covers so much ground.

 

There's the 2d arcade-style game, an adventure game, a civilization game, and even galaxy conquest game. Each of these are very rudamentary in design, but that's part of the charm of it.

 

While some might assume Spore could be used as an education device, I probably couldn't recommend it in that way. There's a basic science undertone but really, even than is too loose and simplified to be valued from the school system. But that's not the point. Spore is, plain and simple, fun.

 

The only major gripe I have against it is that....after seven years...I had hoped it would be a little more stable. The motto you have to live by while playing spore, even more prominant than "survival of the fittest" is...."save often".

Well, you knew it wasn't the end of the story. The 360 died...again. This time it looks like a video card problem. There I was playing Madden 09 and I notice the gold ring has a flurry of red pixels flying around the gold coloring. So I turn off Madden and drop in Dead Space, which is an awesome game by the way. Anyhow, I put in Dead Space and the entire title screen is overlaid with a heavy static noise.

 

"Turn it off and restart the system.", says Danielle.

 

It sounded like a good idea. I power down the system and when it comes on again....I get a wonderful E74 error message.

 

Anyhow, the good news is it was still well under the year long warranty from it breaking last time. We even still had the box the previous time it shipped in.