That said, I’ve started to code a little in my free time. I got a block of time over the Christmas break and I decided to have a good go at doing some stuff with XNA and C#. Was a good experience, I feel a lot more comfortable with C# now. I’ve learnt to live with some of the annoying differences between it and C++. I code in the latter every day for my day job; for another language that’s so close to it, it takes a bit of a leap to leave the old ways behind.

So, hopefully I’ll give this blog a bit of a new lease of life soon with some tidbits from my XNA adventures. I’ve got a couple of ‘in-progress’ articles going already.

Anyway, Metallica…

The last time there was rumblings of a Metallica game was back in 2003:
http://cube.ign.com/articles/422/422960p1.html

… and I would know nothing about such a game at all of course… *whistles*

Damage Inc. [Metallica car combat title] (PC/PS2/GC/XBOX, Climax/VU Games)*

http://www.destructoid.com/surfer-girl-is-back-with-a-cancelled-game-list-50625.phtml
Seems like a very long time ago now… I’d like to say more about it, but it’s probably not a good idea.

Like Aerosmith last year, my involvement is pretty minimal; I’m working on something else right now. The Metallica game is based on the World Tour engine, so all four instruments are playable. Unlike with the Aerosmith game, where you were limited to just guitar and bass.

As per usual, with the press-situation for these sorts of things I really can’t say anything in more detail. It looks fantastic and I think the fans are going to be dead impressed with it.

So, updating this site hasn’t gone entirely to plan. Fortunately though my workload has eased up a little now, there’s a number of things I wanted to write about so hopefully I’ll get the chance now.

Speaking of workload, the last ten months or so I’ve spent working on the now announced: Guitar Hero World Tour. It’s the first Guitar Hero game I’ve been involved with properly, having previously worked on the ‘Tony Hawk’ series at the same studio. I’m really proud of what we’ve done with the new game, and I’m sure everyone’s going to enjoy it when it gets released. Really hoping we can get into that 90-100 range on Metacritic, it deserves to.

It’s a double-edged sword working on something so popular. On one hand it’s nice to read the buzz about your game on the internet, people looking forward to new tracks being announced, and seeing how much some people can’t wait for it’s release. On the other hand, there’s the ‘fanboys’. I probably shouldn’t go into it too much, but our game tends to get a bit of rough treatment by commenters on various game websites. Our competition, Harmonix makes great games and has a very loyal following.  Some people have invested heavily into their product, both finanically and emotionally. It’s a shame this clouds objectivity of what we’re offering at times.

It’s widely publicized that our guys at Neversoft used to play the first two Harmonix-developed Guitar Hero games at company parties. In fact I think one of the first times I had beers with the guys I work with now, was over a game of Guitar Hero in our warehouse. We have massive respect for what those guys did with those games, they’re a quality developer. The first game prompted me to get my first console since emigrating to the US (I left my old ones back in England). I remember lugging that PS2 and the guitar bundle a few blocks back to my apartment from the local Best Buy, in the days before I got a car.

Most of my game playing time in this country has been on Guitar Hero. I’d played a decent amount of Tony Hawk before working on those games, but only casually on a couple of games in that series. GH though is a totally different story, one of my favourite games of all time for sure. I remember excitedly bringing my PS2 and the game in my luggage to Simon’s place in Colorado, for his birthday weekend in 2006. Went down a storm. I’d never have thought in a million years that I’d end up working on it.

Dream come true.

I’ve never heard of Crave, nor that they ever published my game. A bit of googling later, and indeed it looks like they paid $120k for rights to the game. I’m not sure what to make of Crave, with such titles as The Bible Game under their belt, I’m dubious as to whether they can be considered a quality publisher.

It looks like they only ever re-released it on Gamecube, I can’t find any for the Xbox or PS2. The copy I ended up purchasing from eBay was the Crave one, for $10. I’ll be curious to see what the manual looks like. But I guess until I get a Wii (again), I won’t know what the actual game differences are, if any… There was a bunch of movies and legal screens which had Acclaim logos in. But I’d be really surprised though if they managed to get hold of the old code and data and replace that stuff.

One thing is for sure, I didn’t see a penny of royalties!

Finally, it’s officially announced.

I didn’t really get any sort of hand in Guitar Hero III. Probably a few lines of shared engine code, and the odd bugfix shared from a game I was working on at the time: Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground.

The Aerosmith game though, I’ve done a little bit of work on. So even though like GH3, I’ll be appearing in the credits… This time I can actually feel like I deserve a mention.

It’s nice to be able to talk about this game a bit now. We had the band at our building a few times late last year. It was real cool to be able to hear them doing their mocap (they played the music when doing the capture), whilst making myself a cuppa during the day. Nothing quite beats hearing Aerosmith tracks played live whilst drinking some Tetley. Tyler even paged the entire company when he saw the game in person, to tell us what a good job we’ve been doing. Top guy!

Game does indeed look very good. But obviously I can’t really say any more than that.