Not much to report today. I had some family engagements so I was only able to spend 20 minutes or so on the game. I did get a new repository on my Subversion server created and a bare-bones project imported into it. I have the simple "Hello World" app per usual. Tomorrow evening I'll really get started on the sucker :).
Why Spaceballs? Well, I was feeling frisky and, frankly, _maybe_ just a tad bit drunk (those of you who know me may laugh now). I also wanted to give a bit of an homage (as we learned (that's Learn-Ed) people call it) to the great Mel Brooks, simply by the name though since the game has absolutely nothing to do with the movie by the same name.
This game that I'm creating for the GWB game coding contest is inspired by the XBox-great Geometry Wars Evolved. There are some changes I'm making though to hopefully give it a little BAM-WHIZ-BANG flavor to it. I'll go into those features at a later date though.
My renewed impressions of Visual C# Express? After being used to using Visual Studio 2005, it is truly striking just how much of the same functionality the Express Editions truly have. So far, I have yet to truly miss a single feature. With the work that Jamie Cansdale has done getting the TestDriven.NET add-in working with the Express Editions, I have nearly everything I need.
The one feature I kind of miss? The Class designer. To tell you the truth, it was basically the only reason I upgraded to Visual Studio 2005 for my hobby projects at home. However, at the time, it was simply because I wanted to start using the feature. In practice, I realized that I don't actually use that feature that much (at least not yet). I kind of expect to go along and not experience too many holes of missing features in the Express Editions for the hobbyist development I'm doing (which is great since they are now officially free forever).
I suppose I'll see you all next time around when I have a bit more information to share with you. Until then, I need to do some thinking about a project plan and how long I have to get a functional prototype so I can start messing around with actual gameplay. Mmmmmmm, gameplay!