Gamma 3D

A friend of mine (Janina, link now to the left) recently made me aware of Gamma 3D, the nth (where I don’t know what ‘n’ is) iteration of the Gamma indie gaming competition. These are annual (I think), themed indie gaming competitions: last year’s Gamma256 challenged designers to come up with a game smaller than 256KB (or some other similar ludicrous limitation); this time around, the challenge is to come up with an anaglyph-based game.

The event is November 19th, and the submission deadline is October 15. Do I honestly think I have the time to conceptualise and implement a wicked-sweet 3d game to shock and awe my enemies and win the hearts and minds of the populace? Goodness no. But it does, at the very least, give me a good excuse to get familiar with Microsoft’s XNA framework, as well as the C# language in which it’s written. Been meaning to get around to both of those for a while now, since some random MS rep gave me an XNA starter DVD at McGill, along with Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition. Say what you will about Microsoft, at least they have the will and desire to get the kids hooked when they’re young, or some such. It’s always kind of bothered me that Nintendo doesn’t seem to have an easy (or any) homebrew kit to tool around with making Wii games (something which would be doubly handy now that they’ve introduced WiiWare).

So far the XNA/C#/MSVC#2005EE experience, acronyms notwithstanding, has been a painless one. Drop by Gamma 3D in November to see what manner of anaglyphic madness I have unleashed from the pits of hell.