Torque X Game for Public Testing

I've just completed a 2D puzzle game, named Solicheck . It's a Torque X 2D game for the Xbox 360 LIVE Community platform and I'm interested in getting some open and honest community feedback. It's an adaptation of a TGB game I created last year (YouTube video link) to the Xbox 360 platform with the help of Torque X and XNA.

Download

You can download the Solicheck .ccgame file from www.envygames.com/public/Solicheck_Xbox360.zip (9.5 MB)

Development Background

The original Solicheck game was designed and coded over a month or so with TGB last year. This adaptation to Torque X was done over last weekend. A lot of the artwork was revamped, but most of the game logic and structure was simply ported over to C# from TGB's TorqueScript and re-factored to use Torque X components. The longest part of the weekend conversion to Torque X was creating the menu system, adding a locally-persistent High Score manager, and integration with the LIVE services API. Integrating with LIVE API was a lot of fun - you can replace the game's background music with your own music on your Xbox 360, let other friends see your score, and pick a local sign-in Profile to save your high score.

Environment Requirements

To install this game to your Xbox 360, you must first have XNA Game Studio installed, an Xbox 360 LIVE Gold Subscription, an active Creator's Club account, and XNA Game Studio Connect running on you Xbox 360.
(just a few barriers, eh?)

Game Setup

The .ccgame unpacker is within the downloaded .zip file. After unzipping the download, start your Xbox 360, sign-into your Xbox 360 LIVE profile, launch XNA Game Studio Connect, then launch the downloaded .ccgame file to begin the deployment. When completed, you will find Solicheck with your other Community Games.

Type of Feedback

I appreciate all feedback (good and bad), especially if it's actionable. If you hate something about the game, please try to be specific about it. I'm looking for ways to improve the game and make it more entertaining. I'm also interested in crashesand bugs and how the game looks on your television, especially if you run into any overscan issues, and how the audio sounds.

Built-In Cheating

One last note: This is a "PlayTest" release, so there 's a cheat built-in. Anytime you press the "Left Shoulder" button on your controller, you will automatically advance to the next level.

Contact

You can either post your comments hear or email me directly. My email address is posted in my Profile Page.

Gory Details for You Torque X Developers

The game code is pretty simple and surprisingly small. I created one .txscene file for the game that contains the background, the highlighter sprite, the blue borders, and 2 tilemap layers: one for the checkerboard below and one for setting the position highlighter. For each level, one more tilemap layer (*.lyr file) is loaded and added to the scene containing the game pieces for this level. I did this, so that SceneLoader.UnloadLastScene() will only pop-off the game pieces tilemap layer - not the whole game scene. A GUISceneview derrived class renders the game scene. It has an overridden OnRender() method that checks if there are remaining moves possible, updates the particle effects, draws the timer barfill (by resizing a blank white sprite). All the audio files are .WAV files that pass through XACT. All the menu screens are full-screen GUIControl-based classes with their own InputMaps and text rendered with GUIText objects. It took about 15 hours to pull it all together over the weekend, so there's probably a few bugs that I need to work out.

Thank you very much for taking the time to look at the game and sharing your thoughts.

Best Regards,

John K.