Sky Surfer (XNA) Alpha Coming Next Week

Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates. I've been extremely busy lately and the blog has unfortunately been pushed to the back of the priority list. Just have a few things to say quickly. SkyWay has now been renamed to its final name of Sky Surfer (thanks to Gary for the title!). The game is pretty much complete, apart from sound and a few cosmetic changes, all of which will be done by the release at the end of next week. The release I put on my blog will more than likely not feature music for [a] copyright reasons (unless I can find some good royalty free tracks) and [b] size restrictions, as XNA's current audio compression is not highly compressive, compared to the likes of MP3 and WMA. The game has the following features:

• 3D environment platform based game.
• A hover car which the player controls, with the ability to accelerate, brake, turn left and right, and jump.
• 6 Zones, each with differing levels of gravity, lighting, different textures and a different skybox.
• 3 levels per zone, making a total of 18 levels.
• Levels can be played in any order, and can be selected from the game's menu.
  
• Speed and jump boosts.
• Moving barrier obstacles.
• Snow particles (in Zone 3).
• Particles showing on picking up a boost.
• Saved track times, so you can try and beat your previous times.
  
• Each track has a par time associated with it for the player to attempt to beat. A silver trophy is awarded for track completed over par time, a gold awarded for tracks completed under par time.
  
• Achievements (obviously not official Microsoft achievements, but I have coded my own achievements worth 200 points into the game).
• Basic light shading.
• Xbox 360 controller support with vibration.
  

At the moment only Xbox 360 controller is supported. I will add keyboard support extremely soon, possibly before I release the alpha version. Also, the alpha build currently only supports a 1280x720 resolution (720p). I will hopefully be working on 1024x768 and 800x600 support during the summer.

Right now I'm in the process of writing up the whole thing for my final submission. Watch this space!