Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Updated Website!

http://xingthegame.com/

We've made a few updates to our website, including new screen shots of the ever-improving look of the game, as well as high-resolution downloadable wallpapers! Check it out!





Saturday, June 23, 2012

Koriel Checking In!

Hey I'm Koriel, and I'm mainly in charge of aesthetics and level design. The making of this game has been a ton of fun so far, and I've been learning so many new things about game design every day. Our setup as of now has John, Speedo and I working about 8+ hours per day, so we're getting a lot done! Right now it's break time, which means: time for some Skyward Sword. Later!

Gamerick.com Article


This was posted today: Gamerick.com Xing article


Articles Featuring XING

A little unexpected how quickly these appeared in the last 2 days, but we're smiling

Game Front
Indie Game Mag
Rock Paper Shotgun
Strategy Informer

Friday, June 22, 2012

Background Info and Rigid Body Update


Hi, I'm John, lead developer on Xing! If you are looking for some jabber about how this game is being made, you are in the right place. Firstly, a little history.


Koriel and I started this game as a simple project for school, but once we started, we couldn't really stop. We were asked by our professor to submit our project to the IEEE GameSig competition at Chapman University. With the deadline in only a few weeks we set out to turn our map into a full fledged game. Many hours and frozen waffles later we created the land of Xing - four levels of atmospheric island goodness, and we made it as one of the top ten finalists for the competition. We created a presentation trailer and in front of a panel of industry professionals took second place in the competion, pleasently suprising us. Knowing we can do better, Kori and I decided to continue production into the summer and turn the award winning demo into a full game.

For me, Xing is the culmination of everything I love about videogames - fantastic environments, interactivity and immersion. I took a look at the moments in games that I absolutely adored, those moments where I thought "This is why I want to get into game development" and decided there is no reason why I can't make a game full of those moments right now. I'm sure if you take a look at some of the media for Xing you can name just a few of my favorite gaming moments. Xing might be my first substantial game dev project but I my goal is for no one to know that without asking me (or reading this blog). 


So with all of that out of the way, let's get into the meat and potatoes of this blog - updates to Xing! We've all been working on a TON of new features and I can't give away everything at once, so listen carefully!



Today I've been messing with a new puzzle mechanic involving rigid body constraints. I've conceptualized a puzzle involving stacking items on a button in order to weigh it down enough to trigger an event. My previous attempts at buttons involve scripted matinee sequences, but while they work great for single item buttons (like put a rock on a pedistal to trigger an event) they won't register multiple objects. After some experimentation with rigid body contstraints it looks like the button should be possible by using the built in physics engine rather then simple scripted animation, which actually should look cooler and will open up a lot of opportunities for future puzzles. I imagine sliding doors, hindged ledges and other physics goodies will show up in the land of Xing in the near future.

Keep an eye out for future updates! Development is really starting to get heated up and I'm excited to get back to work.

May 2012 Teaser


Sunset on the Main Island

Sunset on the Main Island

Welcome to the Xing Blog

The blog was created to provide updates on a daily basis on the development of the indie game Xing. We started this project in April 2012 as 2 college students entering a contest, and since then have added 3 more people to the team. We will be working almost non-stop on this project for the summer, and continue into the fall and winter.

Our team plans to release a demo version of the first level by December 2012, and the complete game by Spring 2013. Check back here for any and all updates on Xing!