Editoriffic!

I’ve been working on creating an editor for my free time project, Survival Crisis X, that you use just with an Xbox360 controller, and so far the results are [hate to use this word] pleasing. Here’s a nice shot:

One big difference between the previous shot: it’s 720p, baby!  Survival Crisis Z, by contrast, was good old VGA–640×480, and the previous SCX shot was 800×600 (the XNA default).  Get with the times, James!

Isometric Test!

Here’s an image from some isometric tech I’ve been working on. I’ve been having a lot of fun with the XNA SpriteBatch, which is a basic object in the XNA framework that can be used for all things 2D. I’ve been abusing the heck out of alpha transparency–a computationally expensive thing in the DX7 days, but a relatively cheap tool now–for smooth transition zombification.

This does remind me–I need to add shadows under characters.

Some Dishwasher History

I’ve been hard at work on The Dishwasher for over a year now, and I was just looking at my changelog, which I started in August, after it became apparent that The Dishwasher was not to remain some silly Prototype. To tell you the truth, after The Dishwasher was in the hands of the Dream Build Play judges and before it won the contract, I started working on a new game/reskinning of Dishwasher called Fruit: The Game. The idea of Fruit involved a bunch of fruit battling junk food, the joke was that no matter how gory the evisceration of cupcakes and chips, you couldn’t really complain about the violence, right?

Back to The Dishwasher–a lot of people ask if it’s just me working on it, how I make games, etc., and I figured posting the changelog would provide some insight into the mayhem that goes on here. I hop between sound, art, netcode, core code, level design, and more art sporadically, fixing things as regularly as I break things. There are a lot of features in the changelog that I’ve since gotten rid of, especially with magic use (and fyi, I took out the green skull collect button–all pickups now use the classic DMC/NG/GoW absorb style), and there are a lot of features that won’t make much sense.

Anyway, here’s several months of Dishwasher history. Make sure you start at the bottom for proper chronology!

To Answer All of Your Questions

Since the The Dishwasher trial went live, I’ve been getting a lot of emails from people. At first I did my best to answer them, but now I’ve been so inundated, and I’ve got so many deadlines coming up, that I figure it would be easier to just identify the common thread of questioning and answer that here!

Here are the big ones:

1. How do I make games?
   I’d definitely recommend taking any classes if they’re available, whether you’re in high school or college. Though XNA is all C#, learning C, C++, or Java will still help to familiarize you with the basics of programming.

   Also, my advice to everyone is always this: start small! Not to sound arrogant, but The Dishwasher is basically the culmination of 6 years of hobbyist game development experience; if you’ve only got a week of experience you’re not exactly going to be able to match the caliber of The Dishwasher. And forget 3D altogether if you’re just starting. Basically, if you set out to make something that would’ve been considered cool in the 80’s, you’ve got a fighting chance.

2. Is The Dishwasher coming out for Windows?
   There aren’t any plans currently, for a few reasons. The biggest reason, of course, is because Microsoft is publishing it as an XBLA title, so I’m going to focus on that. Also, the game plays like rubbish with a keyboard, and adding support for multiple gamepads is always ugly in my opinion. The Dishwasher is made for the Xbox360 controller (though I could see the DualShock working). I also think PC piracy is a really, really, really big problem.
3. When is The Dishwasher coming out?
   When it’s done! The XNA team and I are both breaking new ground by adding all sorts of new functionality, and there certainly is a lot to do. I’m 99.9% certain it’ll be out in 2008, but beyond that, I can’t really say anything, because it would amount to nothing more than a politician’s promise.

So there you have it!  I’m always happy to answer questions, so keep ‘em coming!

Just an Experiment…

I get a lot of requests to add multiplayer to SCZ.  While I’m not going to get to work on the code base of that old thing, I was giving some thought to creating an XNA/XBLA version with couch and live co-op and team games, based on smaller scenarios.

Well, long story short, thought gave way to coding, and after a little bit of work, here’s what I came up with:

Brilliant, no?

If you want to play with the old SCZ (warning: won’t work on Vista, won’t work on displays that don’t support 640 x 480, may just not work in general), here’s the zip.

I’m not guaranteeing this game (let’s call it Survival Crisis X for now) will get off the ground, and if it does, everyone will have to wait at least a year for it to see the light of day, but hey, I just love posting screenies!

Random Background

Is your resolution 1440 x 900?

If so, you’re in luck!

I made a new background; I might make this into a T-shirt.

GameSpot Bit

GameSpot let me do a little Q & A with them.  I felt the need to say something!

From the article:

Far from a typical retail boxed product, The Dishwasher is a side-scrolling beat-’em-up with a penchant for Kill Bill-style blood geysers, shambling zombies, and maniacal robots. Inspired by equal parts jeet kune do master Bruce Lee, poseur Italian restaurants, and Ryuhei Kitamura’s epic Versus, The Dishwasher in many ways acts as a proof of concept for Microsoft’s ambitious service and gives players the chance to channel their inner butcher while bounding off walls and mashing on buttons in the process.

And then I say cool things like:

GS: In terms of ease of use, does XNA have the potential to be the magic bullet for bringing game design and development to the masses? As in, are we going to see a lot of average joes making quality, fun games?

JS: Game development is still an extremely ambitious venture, so depending on your definition of “the masses,” we may never see this type of magic bullet. Otherwise, a guy like me is probably always going to be the best you can hope for as an average joe. I went to school for computer science while working a series of crappy jobs and have always dreamed of making video games but have no industry experience or special game development education.

Then I checked the GameSpot forum on this, and found some excellent nuggets of InterWeb wisdom; some good ones:

1 of the best Arcade games out

I want to buy it now but that not a option. Dam you Microsoft, Dam you.

The one drawback to this game being so amazing

Is that every Wed. until it releases will be a disappointment no matter what comes out.

…and some not so good ones:

This is the most hot topic game in the world.

It might as well be called Johnny the Homicidal Douchebag.

There are a lot more good ones then there are not so good ones, so I’m really pleased (and I’m getting a little better at accepting criticism).  It seems like people are really hungry for some XBLA content that isn’t classic arcade games or cutesy casual games.  Not like there’s anything terrifically wrong with classic arcade games and cutesy casual games (I like a little Boom Boom Rocket and Metal Slug 3, thankyouverymuch), but I think people are pretty agreed about the desire for interesting new content, even if it is “hot topic.”

And for the record, I prefer Salvation Army for my counterculture wardrobe over Hot Topic.  Think I can afford Hot Topic?  I’m still poor, you know.

On How I Managed to Wake Up Famous

I live in a freezing apartment in upstate NY.  Rent is $750 a month.  I buy groceries at Wal-Mart.  I buy clothes at Target.  I drive a 1994 Honda Accord that was a hand-me-down from my sister.  Yet, somehow, this happened:

MTV.com:

“The guy that made this game is nuts.”

Wired.com:

As the sole creator of the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game Dishwasher, Silva found himself the poster boy of Microsoft’s efforts to “democratize game development” at the Game Developers Conference. The Utica, NY independent gamemaker shared the stage with game design luminaries like Tomonobu Itagaki and Peter Molyneux at Microsoft’s GDC keynote.

LA Times:

The 26-year-old from Utica, N.Y., paid his way through college by scrubbing dishes at a diner. That job might help him become the Quentin Tarantino of video games: He used it as inspiration for “The Dishwasher,” in which the title character becomes a ninja and slashes his way out of a kitchen overrun by villains.

Ars Technica:

“James has quit his job… it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” James Silva quickly became one of the stars of the GDC this year, and the video Microsoft created to highlight his game and one-man-team ethic showed that it knows how cool James Silva is. Microsoft desperately wants a piece of that cool. 

For the record, Microsoft never quite came across as desperately wanting a piece of my cool, but I thought that quote was too good to leave out.  The XNA team are just about the coolest bunch of geeks I’ve ever met; it was awesome meeting up with them for classy San Francisco dining–I got to meet the team behind the tech that the Dishwasher is based on and they got to meet the guy behind the game that shows off their tech.  There was a lot of mutual gushing.

James Silva - A Life

Short update–here’s a link to the video Microsoft made about me.

Also, a trial of The Dishwasher is available to everyone on XBLA for a very short time, here are instructions on downloading it.

GDC and Me!

I’m at GDC!

I got to step on stage for a minute or so during the keynote and play some Dishwasher.  Joystiq loves me, they really do.

Gamespot got to play the game at the demo kioks.  They did a hands-on, with nice bits like:

The terrific visual design is replete with muddy blacks and rusty reds, and we especially loved the splashes of blood that splattered against the screen and trickled down. Ska Software has delivered a demo with remarkable potential, and we look forward to getting our hands on the complete product.

A trial of The Dishwasher is available on XBL for a very limited time.  Also, this crazy video they made about me should be on XBL somewhere.

This has been an awesome week–so far I’ve met a bunch of Bungie guys, Cliffy B and his lancer (he does impressions), Itagaki-san (major Dishwasher influence right there) and Peter Molyneux, who gave me lots of interesting advice.  It’s a bit surreal to get attention from a total industry icon.

I’ve also been chillaxing with the XNA team a bit, which has been a kind of neat experience all around: I’ve been working with the XNA framework–their baby–for over a year now, and they’ve been watching XNA being promoted by The Dishwasher–my baby–for about the same amount of time.

More updates to come!