Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Wii Wiill Waiit a Whiile

I came upon a fact a couple of days ago that threw a wrench-type dealie at my WiiWare plans. You know that menu that comes up whenever you press the Home button on your Wii remote? The one that shows the buttons asking if you want to return to the main Wii menu, reset the game, or view the operations manual? It turns out that the only way to implement that menu is if you have the official Wii development kit, which I don't. And if you want to get something published on WiiWare, Nintendo has sole discretion as to whether your title is made available or not. Of course they're not going to avail a game that was obviously made using a freeware homebrew development kit and doesn't even have the same Home-button menu that every single other Wii game ever made has!

That is why I've decided to return to DS development for now. I'm more familiar with DS programming anyway...

Since I never got past pre-production, I now intend to develop Enthalpy: Detectiventure for the DS. I figure it'll have enough gameplay that a buyer wouldn't be disappointed (I'm expecting/hoping that it'll be released as a "budget title" anyway); I also read IGN's review of the Shaun the Sheep game for the DS a couple of days ago, and it apparently only has about one hour of gameplay. IGN gave the game a 6.6 out of 10. While I'd hope for my game to get a better score, at least that shows me that my game won't be the shortest.

I'm not starting development on Detectiventure just yet, though. Back in October (I think), I entered DA YCP MAKE A VIDYA GAEM CHALLENGE, intending to make a 3D computer game to teach myself to use Torque Game Engine. A lot of slacking and a lot of problems/glitches led me to decide to make a simpler 2D game instead. I still want my game to stand out, though; thus, I am making the game for the DS. It'll also be a good learning experience, as I'll be teaching myself how to do certain things along the way.

The game is still planned to be called Saunich der Hejhaug and feature that creepy Sonic doppelganger guy. I've already finished the opening splash screens and title screen (music included). I'm pretty sure I can finish this by Christmas.

Currently planned game timeline (subject to change based on my decisions as well as those of others):

-Finish Saunich der Hejhaug game for the DS by Christmas and release it for free as homebrew
-Make a 2D Enthalpy game, also for the DS, and contact O3 Entertainment or another company of that sort. Release it as a commercially available game in stores and such.
-Form an actual company (a sole proprietorship, of course) and apply to be an officially licensed Nintendo developer.
-Buy a Wii devkit, most likely using money obtained from sales of the Enthalpy DS game.
-Hooray! I can make Wiistuffs now (and by now I mean in the semi-distant future).

Irrelevantly, shortly after my previous post, I started feeling like I was being too hard on automatic tweens. I'll talk about that in either my next post or the one after that.

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