Grown_up_voice = TRUE;

I'm quite annoyed with myself that I haven't managed to do much work on anything (let alone the Tetris-clone) for the past three months -- real life seems to keep getting in the way. I need a job writing games, just so I have time set aside for writing games! :-)

Over the past few months, as our son has grown up (he's nearly 11 months old now, and starting crawling) I have been a little concerned playing on the Xbox in front of him. Games like Hexic or Flock! are fine, but I feel really uncomfortable playing Mafia II or Call of Duty when he's in the room (even if he can't see the TV). My games library is uncomfortably devoid of games suitable to play in front of impressionable young minds.

So maybe that's a niche I should be looking at: kid-friendly-games-for-parents. Has to be fun, grown-up, but not something that's going to put little Johnny into therapy.

Urk

The Tetris-clone is proving to be harder to write than I thought it would be. Not hard as in "I can't write this" but hard as in "gosh this is getting boring, I want to move on to something else". I've got two shapes fully implemented, and almost got a third done, but there's still another four to go.

It hasn't help that I've been very busy with non-gamedev (indeed, non-computer) related stuff, so it's been hard to get to the computer at home. I've been keeping the most current version on my laptop as well, in case I get an opportunity to work on it during my breaks, but even then I keep getting interrupted (I know, I shouldn't have tea breaks and lunch at my desk...).

Aargh. Just going to have to force myself to get it done!

Yay!

Pong is done (and only in a couple of hours)! Next project: Tetris-clone!

It's actually a relief to have finished a project, even one as small as this. Gives me the confidence to tackle something larger.

First steps

I've gotten tired of falling over because I've tried to run before I can crawl. All my high-falutin' ideas have been put on the backburner while I return to the basics. And you can't get more basic than Pong.

So far, after around an hour's work in Visual C# and Paint, I've got a ball bouncing around a playing field, with a bat the player can control and a bat the computer controls.

XNA Tutorials

Stumbled across a terrific series of tutorials on XNA, written by Riemer Grootjans (author of XNA 3.0 Game Programming Recipes, a book that's on my to-get list). Thoroughly recommend this series to anyone looking to get a handle on XNA, C# and HLSL.

Idea #9: the Hunt for the Bismarck

One of my favourite sea stories has always been the May 1941 hunt for the German battleship Bismarck. I saw the trailer for the new Silent Hunter V: Battle of the Atlantic, and that got me thinking about a strategy game where you could take on the role of the Royal Navy hunting for the Bismarck, or the Kriegsmarine attempting to evade the British and engage in commerce raiding.

Morality in video games

Gamespot has a very good article on morality in video games -- worth a read!