It begins...

Welcome to:

• Computer science enthusiasts
• Curious XBox developer wannabes
• Gamers
• Friends and family
• Dondi!!

Welcome to the first blog posting on my senior project, thus far called "Neon Culture". Before I can get down to the good stuff, I must lay down the groundwork for this site, seeing as this is my first time posting here. I should begin with who I am, what I am striving to achieve with the next 3.25 monthes, and what the guiding purpose of this site is.

• My name is Tyler Silber, I am a senior at Loyola Marymount University in the Computer Science department, and in the future I want to become a game developer. I have recently taken up this project as an attempt to combine three key elements of what I am studying this semester into one accomplished, final project. Those elements are:

1. Sound software development practices, and a thorough understanding of the process implied therein.
2. A worthwhile application of artificial intelligence in a working software system.
3. Integration of Microsoft's XBox 360 game console and Windows XP operating system not only as destination platforms, but also as potentials to explore as far as possible.

• The project is currently named "Neon Culture". It is a game of competitive evolution between two brightly colored cultures of bacteria on the battleground of a petri dish. Individual cells possess their own personalities depending on their coloration and attack, defend, or breed accordingly. The original culture is assembled chromatically from a .bmp file provided by the user at the game's beginning, and from there the battle is very hands-off.

• The purpose of this blog is to document the development process this semester with a specific focus on the third part of my project which interacts with the XBox 360 technology. It is a journal of my progress and my plans with regards to XBox interactivity.

Anyway, now that that introduction is out of the way, I practically have nothing to write about. I am using C# as the programming language behind my project with Microsoft Visual Studio as my IDE and XNA as my graphics API. I am using these because of the incredible simplicity behind using them, as well as my experience with similar systems. I have successfully connected a project from the computer to an XBox 360 with the XNA development toolkit running and started up the game. I have also gone through the first two lesson on the following site, from which I am learning as fast as I can: http://www.riemers.net/

So far everything has been smooth. My past experience in OpenGL and Java programming has made the transition to XNA and C# easy. I intend to begin programming the background logic of Neon Culture over the next week, as well as research as far as I can into importing and creating .bmp files on the 360. I will update again within a week with more news.

Thank you everyone,
-Tyler