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Jonathon Stevens and Patrick Glanville did not take what you'd call the traditional path into game development. After 12 or 13 years software tools for business, the pair decided it was time for a change. Luckily, the community at Garage Games helped them transfer their skills from business development to game development. When Microsoft tapped the pair to compete in the XNA Challenge, there was no question in their minds. "A trip to San Francisco and Microsoft's covering the bill? I'm there," Glanville said.

Glanville said it wasn't that hard transferring his skills in business programming to the game development environment in XNA. "In the past you had to be a hardcore, C++ techie to be a game programmer. Now that's not so true anymore," he said. Still, he admitted there are limits to what XNA can do. "This won't let you replicate everything you see on the Xbox 360. It's not there yet -- you can't build Gears of War -- but Microsoft wants to get there, so maybe in the future..."

Glanville describes his game, Simian Escape, as a standard escape-predators-and-a-meteor-that's-threatening-to-destroy-the-earth platformer. There was a lot of work still to be done on the early build I saw on Tuesday, but with some support form their friends at Garage Games, Glanville seemed confident they'd have a functional prototype when the contest ended on Thursday. Click through for some rough footage after the break.

See also: Other XNA Challenge games

Continue reading XNA Challenge: Simian Escape

JoystiqXNA Challenge: Simian Escape originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 07 Mar 2007 17:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Josh Butterworth is probably better known to NeoGAF readers as Ghost, the author of XNA space shooter Last Alarm. The game got him noticed not just by the NeoGAF community but also by Microsoft, who invited him to take part in the XNA Challenge to create a game from scratch in four days at the Game Developers Conference.

Butterworth's creation is Final Stand, a "static-screen shooter" that he admits draws lots of inspiration from Geometry Wars, right down to the dual stick control scheme. Where Final Stand tweaks the formula is in its multiplayer mode, which will allow four people to work together to kill as many of the swarming yellow enemies as possible. The game is intended as a co-operative exercise, but Butterworth said he'll be leaving friendly fire on so "if you're losing in the scores and have two seconds left and have a missile in your pocket and you see your friend over there, you can feel free to shoot him." Think of it as Space War meets Geometry Wars.

Butterworth is impressed with what he's been able to get out of the XNA environment after only a few months of experience, but he isn't really trying to compete with his more experienced challengers. "It's not really a competition," he said. "It's about showing what's possible on XNA." Watch a video of the work-in-progress after the jump.

Continue reading XNA Challenge: Final Stand

JoystiqXNA Challenge: Final Stand originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 07 Mar 2007 07:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Game developers are used to tight deadlines and pressure-packed schedules. Even so, Microsoft's XNA Challenge at this year's Game Developers Conference pushes the idea of quick turnaround to a ridiculous extreme. Four "teams" (two of them are single people) have been thrown into GDC's crowded, noisy Moscone Center North lobby and given four days to put together a game from scratch using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express.

While the entries will be judged and a winner will be named on Friday, the six competitors seemed more concerned with learning from each other than showing off their l33t programming skillz. Each participant we talked to was more than willing to talk about how impressed they were with their efforts of their adversaries, and the teams apparently commiserate about the lessons they've learned during breaks.

Despite the common development environment, the four games being developed for the contest couldn't be more dissimilar. There's an overhead shooter, a collection-based platformer, a speech-controlled alien abduction simulator and a two-player, first-person, 3D dungeon crawl. We'll be taking a closer look at their efforts in future posts, but for now, enjoy the intensity of the above-pictured competitor Andree Furtado and be glad that you're not under such a tight deadline (and if you are, stop reading this and get back to work).

JoystiqMicrosoft's four-day XNA Challenge originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 06 Mar 2007 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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