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!

Great Skybox Resource

Wow, I've just stumbled across this pretty amazing resource of skyboxes. Thought I would mention it here for anyone else who may be on the prowl for good high resolution skybox textures:

Hazel Whorley's Skybox Textures

SkyWay XNA: Snow World (WIP) Video

Here's a short video from 2 of the 3 levels of the snow world, featuring speed and jump boosts. Remember, this is purely work in progress. Particle system (stars on the boosts) thanks to help of this tutorial.

SkyWay Level Design

So the last few days has taught me that I am completely terrible at level design. Thankfully my project's marking won't exactly rely heavily on good level design. In saying that, I've been doing my best to get some good looking skyboxes and textures for each zone. So far there are three zones (each with varying gravity, textures and skybox), and I've made three levels for each zone. My aim is for at least six zones of three levels each. Here's a few screenshots of the zones so far, each showing a different in game camera angle as well:






I have also now added moving barriers to some of the later levels, which, obviously, the player must avoid.

Dreaming of Blue Skies

So the past few days I've been looking for some nice skyboxes to make the game look nicer. After much hunting I found a great resource site at Quadropolis, which has some great high resolution skyboxes uploaded by contributers. Their on-site search seems to be a bit bolloxed at the minute (read 'not working'), so the easiest way to find the skyboxes is using a Google query. Anyway, here's a quick snapshot of how the first level looks now:


Much nicer!