July 18, 2008 — Summary:

Mike thinks that Nintendo's Wii (and DS) should win because of their fantastic paradigm shift about video games. They're looking at video games in a different and more effective way.

Victor thinks that Microsoft's Xbox 360 should win because they are so heavily focused on developers, and in the long run this will improve game development more than anything.

July 16, 2008 — Summary:
Victor thinks integrated, layered systems are superior to component systems because of their ease of use and conceptual superiority.
Mike thinks component systems are superior because of better flexibility, reduction of "software addiction", and he also believes that components are conceptually natural.

July 10, 2008 — Torpex's new XNA game Schizoid is out and available for download on Xbox Live Arcade. Of course, like all other games, you can get the demo and try it out. But unlike other games, it's the FIRST commercial C#/XNA game released on the 360. I hope these guys sell a lot of units and help push game development more into managed land. Give it a shot - I've played the demo and really enjoyed it. I'll be buying it tonight when I get home.

--Vic--

July 6, 2008 — Today I've uploaded the updates to the FlatRedBall XNA Engine, FlatRedBall MDX Engine, and the FRBDK.

This release doesn't bring a lot of new features except a few improvements to the GUI namespace. We're preparing on expanding support to the FlatRedBall GUI. We're doing this by adding more XML documentation to the objects in this namespace, adding more information to the Wiki, and we'll soon be releasing a new template which can be used as a starting point for new tools.

This release does bring a lot of bug fixes and improved performance. We've spent most of the last month working on the performance of the engine and all areas have been improved. Kyle has also introduced a form of unit testing for FlatRedBall which has helped us identify and fix a lot of new bugs. This should help keep FlatRedBall more stable for future releases as well.

As always, thanks to all who have reported problems in the forums. Keep letting us know what to improve and we'll keep improving!

--Vic--

June 30, 2008 — Mike Smith (http://www.elecorn.com), a good friend and fellow game developer, and I have always had lengthy discussions about game development. These included topics like programming, design, general development, trends, the market, and business considerations. Through these discussions I've learned a lot and I feel we've touched on a lot of topics relevant to anyone involved in game development.

Today we were discussing another topic when he suggested I blog about it. I responded explaining that lately I've been so focused on improving the engine that I haven't spent any time writing any opinion pieces. We decided to try something new - we're going to start a series called Game Spokes which will be blogs in a discussion format posted (hopefully) weekly.

Mike and I will work on these collaboratively in a Google doc, then once we're happy with the result we'll move it over to this blog - one topic at a time. The result will be formatted like a discussion or interview. This will both enable us to write blogs piece by piece making it easier for us to write while presenting you, the reader, with issues from different points of view.

Of course, the name Game Spokes requires some explanation. Mike and I sometimes agree, sometimes completely disagree, much like some spokes in a tire point in the same direction while others point in the opposite direction. However, these opinions combined will (we hope) help others recognize and think about issues facing game developers and similarly assist readers in their game development efforts. While we may disagree our goal in the end is to help advance game development.

I'm looking forward to the discussions produced through this effort and hopefully you find them useful and enjoyable.

--Vic--