Wii Updates!

It's been nearly a year, but a reader has provided some new information about this old post.

Nintendo has setup a page that provides some basic information about Wii updates.

I figured that while we were on the topic, this would be a good time to talk about my Wii experiences so far.

My Wii gets weekly use at a minimum. I've got a full time job, a lovely (yet demanding) woman, and a host of hobbies and interests that take up my time so game play hasn't been a large priority. I still get time in to play Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, mySims and run through many of the Virtual Console games I've got downloaded on the system. It's also fun to spin the globe around in the weather channel and see what the temperature is at the poles.

My Wii qualms come in the form of lacking online play. I've got Mario: Strikers but so many of my games lag out that I've given up trying. My buddy has been rocking in Madden, but the scoring system online is tipped in the favor of quitting instead of losing, so it's near pointless to play.

We've got Smash Bros. Brawl on pre-order and hopefully the on-line play in that will be on or above par with other console ventures.

Online play aside, a big aside, the quality and fun of my existing Wii library is incredible. I think that's the main reason it still gets so much play.

In the past month couple months I've picked up an XBox 360, so it does cut into the Wii time. This is to augment the not-so-greatness of Nintendo's online capabilities. This also has taken time away from some Wii action. Although I find that the games on the 360 are much shorter to beat. I just finished up Ace Combat 6 on hard and I'm working my way through expert. The online play is what I was looking forward to, but there just doesn't seem to be many people on.

I got Halo 3, but the pace for an FPS is abysmal. I don't mean pace of the story, I mean the actual live gameplay, so I don't really play that anymore. If I want quality FPS action, I'll stick to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption or Counter-Strike:Source.

So that's my spiel about the Wii Updates and my updates about the Wii.

Enjoy the holiday season and hit me up if you're looking for some friend codes to play Brawl when it comes out. I also keep my DS with me pretty much wherever I go, so if you're looking for some unique pokèmon or want to get some mario kart action, lemme know.

XNA

Last night I went through the process of installing all the software I needed to start deving on XBox 360. It took longer than I felt it should have to get all the download links for each part.

First I grabbed the XNA specific stuff and tried to install that. It wouldn't work with my copy of Visual Studio 2005 and requires Visual Studio C# Express.

After all that fun, I got all the specifics installed and fired up the IDE for the first time. Visual Studio C# Express has an annoying green tint to it.

So now that all the software is installed on my comp, I need a starting project.

I was thinking of pinball-ish type game. Should be simple enough.

We will see how my motivation turns out.

I picked up Drawn To Life for the DS for nak. Watching her play gave me a nifty game idea, that I may try to flesh out into an project.

Game Development

Some of my peoples know that I consider myself, very lightly now a days, a programmer.

It's always been a goal of mine to write some interesting and useful programs, but more specifically, I'd like to make some games.

I put out a couple small demo's to the Dark Basic community back in those days, but nothing too serious.

Currently though, there are some potential opportunities on the Horizon for me.

WiiWare was announced by Nintendo back in July, 2007 as a low budget, indie-developer solution for creating games on the Wii. I was ecstatic about this! I think of all the current consoles the Wii is my favorite. I've already had a few vague concepts floating around in my mind on what I could develop for the Wii using the unique control system.

On the Microsoft side, there's XNA. A set of tools and whatnot for developing games for the XBox360. I'm already familiar with Visual Studio and slightly so with DirectX so I've got a head start in that department, but I don't really have any motivation to dev anything for the 360. The Wii is clearly my preference.

Unfortunately, Nintendo is sparse on the info relating to WiiWare. Aside from the official announcement that it's coming, they haven't dropped any new info... cost, time frame, API's, etc.

The other problem is that I'm really a one man shop. Not terrible mind you, but it can be crippling when I come to a roadblock. I don't have many system programmer friends, they're mostly web guys. The ones that I do know aren't generally interested in doing this kinda work. I have found one, but I haven't really talked to him in ages (it seems anyway :))

Maybe the next step is to sit down and really flesh out a few of my ideas to see if they're truly feasible or if I'm just spinning my wheels on an unlikely goal.