I’m thrilled to announce that Air Legends is published at last – on the Xbox 360 that is. (A windows version shouldn’t be far off)
It is available on Xbox 360 Community Games marketplace in US, UK, Canada, France, Spain & Italy. Other countries should follow as Microsoft enables them. (I’m guessing they’ll be schmoozing with a government near you to make it so.)
It’s a supremely satisfying moment, though it hasn’t really sunk in yet.
Even if you’re not in the supported countries, you can still check it out on the web marketplace here:
“Air Legends on the Marketplace”
Now to reflect on a little trivia…
- 2 years & 5 months in development. Just me tinkering away in my limited spare time.
- began as a tiny exercise to brush up on my .NET v2.0 skills at home – since my day job had me rotting in v1.1.
- the game is based on an unfinished game I attempted in BASIC back in the 80’s.
- the distinctive rotation of the planes was something I came up with back then. I wanted you to enjoy all angles of the plane rather than the traditional 2D side view.
- I started it as a 2D game. Became 3D when I quickly learned what a mammoth task it would be coming up with sprites for all angles. In the 80’s it was easy with only 16×16, 2 colour sprites.
- I started the game using Managed DirectX with .NET 2.0. I didn’t even know XNA was coming, so it was a very pleasant surprise when Beta 1 emerged late 2006
- the game had no name. The exe name was Legends.exe. David Weller that suggested “Sharky’s Air Legends” when Microsoft needed a title for the first XNA showcase video. The name stuck. Thanks Dave.
- the project was scuttled much of 2007 thanks to certain personal events that hit hard. With a whole new life ahead energy levels returned and I resumed with vigour and a serious goal to make the life dream a reality.
- I dropped the “Sharky’s” prefix one day in 2008, when it dawned on me I could actually publish this thing one day!
That’ll do for now. Bound to be more trivia – but I can blog that later.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
January 4th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
whoohoooooo!
Congratulations!
January 5th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Thanks dude!
January 5th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Kudos for you!
January 5th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Fantastic stuff M8.
As one of the other original crowd, I’ve been watching with keen interest since day 1. Glad you managed to finally get it out there.
Now I finally have a reason to spend some MS points (other than a few select others)
January 6th, 2009 at 12:40 am
COgnrats man – nice to see a properly polished game up on CG and I hope you make lots of money!
January 6th, 2009 at 2:58 am
Congratulations!!
January 6th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Thanks everyone.
xD
January 8th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Nice one Sharky!
It’s available in the UK you say?
I’m going to grab it as soon as I get some more MS points – spent all mine on Rock Band songs.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Hey Stu.
Great to hear from you, and thanks!
I wish we had Rock Band 2 in NZ. Only just got RB1