Schenectady, NY – May 5, 2010 – Ska Studios cleared up some confusion surrounding the release of their arcade title Charlie Murder by officially announcing that the game is being developed with the band’s input and will be released by Microsoft exclusively on Xbox LIVE Arcade sometime in 2012, along with the purported end of the world.

After initially being announced as an Xbox LIVE Indie Games title, developer Ska Studios decided that the Charlie Murder story was worthy of a bigger stage. After intense negotiations with the band and some bribery, Ska Studios was able to convince the Charlie Murder crew to sell out yet again, and commit to bringing their band’s punk rock story to Xbox LIVE Arcade. As part of the agreement terms, the entire band will complete a one year counseling program at Happy Times Recovery Center in Atlantic City, NJ. Their treatment will focus on mending the strife that has kept Charlie Murder on hiatus for nearly a decade as well as addressing, among other things, bassist Tommy Homicide’s recent hoarding tendencies and guitarist Lester Deth’s addiction to other addictions. After the program’s successful completion, the entire crew will join Ska Studios as “Creative Consultants” to make sure the game stays true to the band’s epic story.

“Yeah, the band is in a tough spot, but we’re signed up for that trendy rehab stuff so we can get paid,” said lead singer Charlie Murder. “We sold out and we’ll do our time in counseling. Just know that we are no longer indie, we are Xbox Live Arcade legit and in 2012 we will have the achievements to prove it.”

For the latest on Charlie Murder, please visit us online at www.ska-studios.com, follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/skastudios or like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/skastudios.

But thing are moving along pretty well, albeit a little delayed (I think I’m 2 weeks off schedule currently, but who’s counting?)

One interesting little bit of fun is localization.  The Dishwasher is coming out in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese.  Since I drew my own font, I had to add all sorts of special characters to the graphic.  For Japanese and Chinese I had to change the way the game handled fonts so that it could draw some using my font and others using a SpriteFont (the alternative would be hand drawing a couple thousand Asian glyphs).  It took a couple of days to get everything working right with all of that, but the big hassle comes with adding changes.

A lot of bugs that roll in look a bit like “The game quits a multiplayer game with the message ‘you have signed out’ but should show the message ‘you have been disconnected from LIVE,’” or something to that effect.  So, for bugs where the message that shouln’t be displayed hasn’t been added to the game’s text resources, that means I have to:

• Add the line of text to the text resources
• Send the latest text resources file to the various localization people
• Get the localized resource back from the loc people (usually there are 3 handbacks per update)
• Put the updated text resources back in the game

Not too bad, not too unexpected, but when you’ve got bugs showing up every other day to this effect, it starts to feel a bit crazy with all the back and forth.  Gone are the days when I can just add a bit of text here and there with no repercussions!  It’s weird–these are the things you just don’t think about before you get into it.

I added a practice room.  It’s not too exciting; it’s just a way for you to see what the game thinks of what buttons you’re pressing.  I got the idea from Marvel Vs. Capcom.  (This means that the text “Practice Mode” must be put in the text resources, sent off, localized in 7 different languages, sent back, and incorporated–see what I mean?)

I also added support for the Hori Arcade Fighting Stick.  I’m not sure how in love I am with this thing (had to order one), but mashing buttons is fun.  I guess I’m so used to the original Dishwasher control scheme that having to switch over to something that feels so differently is a bit frustrating–in fact, it felt a lot like trying to dominate in Marvel vs Capcom in arcades after mastering it on PSOne!

Anyway, it feels like I’m getting toward the home stretch.  I don’t mean to sound jaded or anything–I’m still having a blast working on all this, even when there’s drudgery involved (I’ve been a student and an office worker, and XBLA-related drudgery simply can’t compare to other types of drudgery out there!)

Also, expect a deluge of themes and gamerpics!  I’ve got 2 themes running on my dev kits and they look pretty slick.  I’m hoping to do one for free and one for …not free.  The free one is good, the not free one is [IMHO] better.  I’m not still entirely convinced people buy themes, but if they do, I think they’ll be impressed.  The gamerpics are cool too.

Ok, back to work for me!

• The Dishwasher has a million, billion bugs.  I’m fixing them all very quickly.
• The GDC build of The Dishwasher was sort of slow.  The frame rate hovered around 30.  This has been fixed–it’s now a steady 60!
• I’m locking the screen size at 1280 x 720.  I figured that because all of my favorite AAA games do this, I’ll do it too.  This addresses frame rate fluctuations and cramped menu issues.
• The dishwasher’s weapons and clothes now get stained by blood (small detail).
• There is now a Ranked story mode–it’s a brutal difficulty that’s roughly the same difficulty as Samurai.  Ranked is more strict, but playing ranked obviously allows you to compare score and speed against the rest of the world.
• The game supports 3 player co-op in story mode (unranked only).  It’s kind of messy.  I’m going to make it a little less messy.

It’s been a wild ride, but I’m nearing the end of the tunnel!

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!

If you haven’t bought a Dishwashirt, it’s not too late!  Visit the Ska Studios store and buy a Dishwashirt today!

Also, if you have any interest in developing your own games, be sure to check out George’s great tutorials at XNA Development.

Check it out!

I had no idea I was so pale and… well… vampire-like, but I think I can live with it. Funny stuff (based on a true story, in fact). Thanks, Raven!

Here’s a nice technical discussion/flamewar on the msdn boards about the topic.

The gist is that some developers are feeling spurned by Microsoft for dropping support for old technologies, but Microsoft has stated that the technology has reached its planned end-of-life, and it’s time to move on.  I tend to side with Microsoft on this one–technology does not age like classic novels.  It is a shame to see old games die, but honestly–we shouldn’t have to bury each new OS release in piles of legacy support.

So, long story short, if you want to play SCZ, ZSX2 or ZSX, use a Windows 2000/Me/XP box.  If anyone figures out how to get the older ones working on Vista, let me know.

They charge $10/day for Internet.

More info to come!

• The original blog somehow died
• The site has become extremely minimal (geocities-esque, even)

I think I know what happened, but I’m not sure. My guess is that somehow someone got some malicious whatnot on my simplePHP blog, which resulted in timeouts for any IP trying to connect to the site after the first attempt. Weeks of timeouts, even.

Well, we can all stop panicking now. I’ve decided to use a wordpress blog because it’s got a robust editor and is most likely more stable than my site.

Anyway…

The big news is that I’m going to GameFest. I’m currently in the Syracuse airport, headed West. The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is a finalist in the dream.build.play competition, and we’ll see how it does on Monday.

For anyone who hasn’t seen The Dishwasher in action, here’s a (slightly dated) video:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=lscKqMsnpJY]