blueZhift Blog

Sorry Symantec, these days when I see “360″, I usually think of Microsoft’s game console, not PC security software suites such as Norton 360. Honestly, I haven’t been that happy with Norton’s products lately because on my PCs at least, they seem to have an unquenchable thirst for system resources! I’m not quite ready to switch yet, but I’ll definitely give the Microsoft and McAffee products a look if they cost less and don’t bring my systems to a crawl.

I don’t have a Wii yet, but I plan do before the year is out! Kotaku reports that the N64 classic, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, will be available for download via the Wii Virtual console on Monday in North America. I’ve always wanted to play that one, but didn’t get my hands on it back in the day. Indeed, I’ve missed out on a number of Nintendo classics over the years, but with the Virtual console in play, I feel like I’ve got a second shot at it! This combination of easy , and cheap, to get to classics, plus innovative new titles makes the Wii a strong contender for the top spot in this round of the game console wars. I like Xbox Live Arcade on the 360 too, but overall, Nintendo has a stronger catalog of downloadable games because of their long history as a 1st party developer.

This morning for some reason the kids are all cranky! They’re just screaming their heads off, and I don’t have a clue as to what the problem is…Ugh. Sometimes I think of them as little bits of code I wrote based on my own. So it’s fun to watch them interact and go at it without too much interference from me. Yeah, I’m being a coward today! I feel pretty good about how things are going at work. My Ruby on Rails projects are moving along better and better as I get a grip on using the framework. Now if I can just kick my XNA project into gear, things would be perfect.

In the midst of all of the uproar over Tim Hardaway’s anti-gay remarks, George Takei has created a public service-like announcement that could be Hardaway’s worst nightmare. But don’t worry Tim, gay people don’t hate you, oh no no no!

Games have always been a part of the PC software landscape. And in the era of the PC compatible and the Macintosh, computer game publishers have not been required to pay anyone royalties to publish PC games, as they would have to do to publish a console based game. So Windows PC games sold by 3rd parties do not directly make any money for Microsoft. With that in mind, and the shrinking market share of computer games versus console games, it is no surprise that through XNA Game Studio, Microsoft would make it relatively easy to port PC games to the Xbox 360.

So far this makes perfect sense, or so I thought until I got today’s Xbox.com newsletter. In that newsletter there was an ad for the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver which for less than $20 allows wireless Xbox 360 controllers to be used with a Windows PC. Suddenly it made sense to me why, at present, XNA Game Studio only supports Xbox 360 controllers. It would appear that Microsoft is still very interested in bringing Xbox 360 games to the PC, even though they won’t get any royalties for those games, as far as I know. If it is true that an Xbox 360 game developer can port games to the PC for some royalty-free additional sales without a lot of work, that can only make the 360 a more attractive platform. And depending on the game, it might even sell a few more copies of Windows.

I remember a few years ago, when I was between jobs, feeling very much like a housewife. I started doing all of the wifey sort of things like picking up the kids from school and more housework. Well it may be disputed whether or not I was doing all that much more LOL, but clearly I was finding myself in places frequented by stay at home moms. At the time it was not a happy feeling at all, even though many of those moms were pretty hawt!

Now my own wife is in a similar situation and is similarly unhappy. There are a lot of attendant reasons for the unhappiness, but for now at least, it seems that I have a faux housewife so to speak. There’s nothing wrong with being a stay at home mom, if that is your choice. But in our case, I think rough times may be ahead, at least for a short time. Oh well, at least we got a wonderful Mardi Gras King Cake out of it! She’s a great cook!

I just watched one of the most exciting Daytona 500 finishes I’ve ever seen, and after a week of scandals, one that will only add fuel to the NASCAR rules fire. I like the winner Kevin Harvick and I like runner up Mark Martin too. But why, oh why didn’t NASCAR throw the caution flag as soon as cars started wrecking behind the leaders on the final lap? Normally, in the name of safety, NASCAR is all too eager to throw out the yellow, but not this time. If the yellow had come out as it normally would, we’d have Mark Martin in the winner’s circle instead of Harvick. While one can argue that the yellow may have been held to avoid essentially deciding the outcome of the race in a noncompetitive fashion, NASCAR has made such a big noise about their commitment to the safety of the drivers that an argument like that in the face of such developing auto carnage doesn’t hold any water. So again, why oh NASCAR, why?

Last night my son came across the 2nd controller I bought for the Xbox 360 attached to my computer monitor. My Xbox 360 was bought mainly because I was fed up with trying to run Final Fantasy XI on the PC. So it has never been in the living room or played with by the kids. I explained to him my plan to create an entry for the XNA Game Studio Warm Up Challenge which requires two player support. I also told him that I wanted him and his younger sister to help me as beta testers. So I guess I’m really committed now!

Things are starting to roll with the announcement of the Microsoft XNA Game Studio Warm Up Challenge! The Warm Up Challenge requires you to build a new game based on the Spacewar sample project included with XNA Game Studio Express. I think this is a clever way to start out because it essentially levels the playing field because you can’t just whip out something you’ve already been working on for months. This, instead, is a sort of Iron Chef of game development, and today’s theme ingredient is Spacewar.

For me, a supplemental ingredient was another $40 Xbox 360 controller. Why? Because Spacewar is a two player game, so I needed another controller to develop and test the new game. It’ll be interesting to see how many entries come in during the Feb 21 – 28 entry period. Of course, the one I’m most interested in is mine! I can’t wait to put my gamer kids to work as beta testers!

After weeks of checking the original XNA Game Studio Contest web page, I thought it strange that the contest, scheduled to begin in January, had not appeared to have started yet. As it turns out, the contest apparently started at the end of January, but no one has as yet pointed the old page to the contest web site. I stumbled on the new site after a search in the Microsoft XNA forums. Silly me, I should have been paying more attention.

In any case, the contest has started up and I can shift things into high gear now. I’ve been batting around a few ideas and playing with the tutorials. I’ve gotten quite a thrill out of seeing things I’ve written running on my own Xbox 360. The challenge of a contest is my favorite carrot and stick to getting a project completed from start to finish. So, one way or another, I will submit an entry! Hopefully I’ll be able to elicit a a few WTFs and LOLs.

Dream Build Play Contest Web Site