High Deaf

Yep, totally misspelled that on purpose.

Right then, after yesterday's, let's use the term "Statement of Purpose" I went ahead and started doing my research. What I propose is difficult - almost to the point of being impossible. The key bit being the almost, but certainly possible provided that I'm prepared, have a clear plan and a clear vision of what I want. I can't go in and say, "Here's my game idea, give me monies, hur hur hur," because that will end in tears. Instead saying, "Here's my game in production, here's more concept art of what the rest will look like, here's a playable version so you can see what the gameplay is all about. This works on Live because there are few well crafted, character based, platforming games on the service and the strong performance of Prince of Persia Classic shows that there is a niche awaiting to be filled. Oh, and I can have this ready to publish on Live in 6 months for $60,000." That may work out better. No matter what? Hardly. More like, that's the tact I'll need a dozen times with a dozen publishers in two dozen meetings. Now, I just have to be prepared. Not for camping, but for war.

Right, so I've been planning the offensive, picking out targets, and when I'm ready with a plan, mobilization of the troops. So, yeah, Google Surfing looking for publishers in San Diego and Los Angeles, but it sounded better in the previous sentence and spread my metaphor a little longer. But no matter. I've found a half dozen publishers that seems to be just what I'm looking for. Either with a track record of Live publishing, or obviously dealing with small budget developers. So, not EA2KActiRockwayQ (there's 6 in there- Figure them out! It's like a game!). So that's promising, now I need to find out what to do to schedule pitch meetings. Hmmm.

-In other news I think I've figured out a hack for high definition. It's by far the most requested, um, request made by the artists and after seeing what the models (especially the skelington enemies) look like when they're bigger, I'm inclined to at least leave the possibilities open. Anyway, the system is currently set up to have a standard size. The images are all sized for 800X600 and more importantly, the collision and physics engine is set up for that too. So it's not as easy as just changing the resolutions, the whole game would have to be changed to make that work on some level. But here's the hack anyway, if I change the way the system tracks placement, I can make the game do any resolution I damn well want.
Basically, instead of absolute placement, I can use relative placement. Let's use 100 as a base like a percentage (although it wouldn't work for real - it's not granular enough). 0 is the far left, 100 the far right and 50 right in the middle. Anyway, if all the movement was based on a percentage it wouldn't matter. So instead of adding 10 to the character placement every frame when they run (moving them 10 pixels to the right) I could add 2 to the percentage. This would give the same proportional movement no matter what the resolution is.
Current problem is one of data. The levels are all constructed using the current space set as they're template, but I suppose if I start with 800X600 as my base, then I could them as my "percentage." Hmm. Either way, when I meet the artists next I'm going to tell them to make all the art in high res before shrinking it. Then when we do have the ability to change, the art's already done. Besides, on Live, It's going to have to run 1080p anyway.

-Maybe, maybe not after all. After reading through all of that again, maybe I could just display the difference. Like on XBox 360, it draws the whole game out 4X the regular size and shrinks it down, but the engines all run assuming the larger size. Just because my engine runs at 800X600 doesn't mean that I can draw different ratio based on what the engine is doing. I mean, I can run the game at 1600X1200 just by doubling all the coordinates when the screen is drawn. That's easier to implement that my rambing on up above and would work just as well. It seems like most things, I can fake it. That's almost doable tomorrow.