Hi, I'm a software engineer. I got into programming probably like most people my age 24 seeing a video game and wanting to recreate it.

I've been a Software Engineer for 4.5 years and currently a Sr. Consultant working on anything JQuery, NHibernate, C#, ASP.net related with an MVC architecture.

I've learned XNA, and I've put together a few small simple-minded puzzle games from start to finish (not polished by no means) in XNA 3.1, 2.0 and Silverlight all the way back to Silverlight 2.0

I have never touched any of the Unity, U3E, Crytek engines, but I'm a good solid developer, and I'd like to [s]start [/s] FINISH making my first Xbox live indie game and throw it on the Xbox Marketplace for both WP7 and Xbox360 and branch out from there.

I have already read the requirements, become an AppHub premium member, and I'm currently an MS Partner. I'm currently interested in taking my idea and giving it a complete agile approach, and a full development life cycle and making it a complete polished game that people will download and play (download and played not guaranteed).

Games I have in mind are quick casual puzzle games mostly for WP7/Android/iPhone/Xbox360 then I can tread in deeper water once I'm comfortable and have my first published title.

I'd like to know if there is any books, software out there that could help me on my journey.

I'm looking for storyboard, design tools (books or software)

best practices for managing projects and meeting deadlines

bug/enhancement tracker software (specific for game development if available, if not I can just use BugTracker).

Thank you,

C0d3n4fun

Title is misleading, IMO. I was thinking "how can a developer want to make a game that is already published? If it's already published, it must have been already made."

No. You are just looking for advice how to start your own project.

Any bug tracking software will do. Any project management software will do the job just fine. Since it looks like you have spent a few years as a professional software developer/consultant, I am sure you have a few tools in mind. Use whichever tools you are most comfortable with that get the jobs done.

Game development projects are just like any other software development projects. There are iterations, meetings, discussions, goals, milestones, and miscommunications. It looks like you are already familiar with this.

First, are you willing to hire or work in a team for your project or solo? Some people prefer solo, some others are too lazy to do the grunt work but want to be credited as the game designer and project lead, some others are good team players who could actually contribute measurable efforts in code and assets, not just ideas and words.

Second, you really need to make sure that the points get across. Not just from you to the rest of the teams, but also the other way around, and from team members to other team members. If you want to do this solo, you don't need storyboard and design documents. Really, the purpose of those documents is to communicate ideas. If you are the only guy in the team, you already get the ideas. In addition, puzzle games don't have story lines. Puzzle games that have story lines are just plain stupid.

Making your game availabe on WP7/Android/iPhone/Xbox360 is a very ambitious goal. Do you realize that you are targeting four different platforms here? Pick one. Pick a developer (whether that's yourself or somebody else) who can work on that platform. Just get your game done on that platform. Once it becomes promising that it can actually be successful, then port it over to the rest of the platforms.

In addition, puzzle games don't have story lines. Puzzle games that have story lines are just plain stupid.

Portal.

If done right, a story line can add a lot to a puzzle game and greatly widen its potential target audience.

Making your game availabe on WP7/Android/iPhone/Xbox360 is a very ambitious goal. Do you realize that you are targeting four different platforms here? Pick one. Pick a developer (whether that's yourself or somebody else) who can work on that platform. Just get your game done on that platform. Once it becomes promising that it can actually be successful, then port it over to the rest of the platforms.

Why would I pick just one? If I start out with a shared XNA 4 project I can target Xbox360/WP7 together. My friend has already worked on and published both iPhone and Android. Bam, problem solved! Now it's just enhancement/bug/project tracking and agile development.

[quote name='alnite' timestamp='1303579839' post='4802002']
Making your game availabe on WP7/Android/iPhone/Xbox360 is a very ambitious goal. Do you realize that you are targeting four different platforms here? Pick one. Pick a developer (whether that's yourself or somebody else) who can work on that platform. Just get your game done on that platform. Once it becomes promising that it can actually be successful, then port it over to the rest of the platforms.

Why would I pick just one? If I start out with a shared XNA 4 project I can target Xbox360/WP7 together. My friend has already worked on and published both iPhone and Android. Bam, problem solved! Now it's just enhancement/bug/project tracking and agile development.
[/quote]
Like the man said... write for one, port later.

[quote name='c0d3n4fun' timestamp='1303695034' post='4802504']
[quote name='alnite' timestamp='1303579839' post='4802002']
Making your game availabe on WP7/Android/iPhone/Xbox360 is a very ambitious goal. Do you realize that you are targeting four different platforms here? Pick one. Pick a developer (whether that's yourself or somebody else) who can work on that platform. Just get your game done on that platform. Once it becomes promising that it can actually be successful, then port it over to the rest of the platforms.

Why would I pick just one? If I start out with a shared XNA 4 project I can target Xbox360/WP7 together. My friend has already worked on and published both iPhone and Android. Bam, problem solved! Now it's just enhancement/bug/project tracking and agile development.
[/quote]
Like the man said... write for one, port later.
[/quote]

Allthough keep the porting in mind when you write your game (Don't scatter rendering and input code all over the place for example)

Are you sure that XNA + Xbox 360 is your ideal target platform and audience?

I ask because it seems like a lot of extra hoops to jump through when you could use, say, Java and the jMonkeyEngine (it's really very nice) or LWJGL + Skim (if you just need 2D). You'd immediately get your game on Windows, OS X, and Linux without needing to port it, you can probably get it to run right in a web browser as an applet (do not underestimate the effect this has on how many people will try your game!), and it'd run very well on all three platforms. You don't have to worry about passing any tests--you can make the game you want. You can just self-publish: put together a simple website and set up a PayPal account. If you're really ambitious and think you have a fantastic idea and the ability to carry through with it, you can open up sales before the game's complete--look at the Minecraft development cycle to see how this might be done. You'd need to do a bit of advertising yourself, announcing your game at major gaming forums (like /r/gaming on reddit), but if it's good enough it'll get attention.

[quote name='alnite' timestamp='1303579839' post='4802002']
Making your game availabe on WP7/Android/iPhone/Xbox360 is a very ambitious goal. Do you realize that you are targeting four different platforms here? Pick one. Pick a developer (whether that's yourself or somebody else) who can work on that platform. Just get your game done on that platform. Once it becomes promising that it can actually be successful, then port it over to the rest of the platforms.

Why would I pick just one? If I start out with a shared XNA 4 project I can target Xbox360/WP7 together. My friend has already worked on and published both iPhone and Android. Bam, problem solved! Now it's just enhancement/bug/project tracking and agile development.
[/quote]
The fact that xbox360 and WP7 use .NET, dont think that you can just write once and have an app that can run on both. They are still two diff hardwares with different speed, methods of input, and features.

I said to focus on one is to make it easier on development. What if you want certain features to be changed? Update that ugly font you never liked? Or those fonts look great on xbox because of the HD res but too tiny on the phone? What are you going to do? You dont have to propagate your changes across all platforms and retest them again.

Testing for more than one platform is really demanding. Just because XNA allows you to target more than one platform doesn't mean you should. If you can and have the resources; great! Otherwise, stick to one and port when it's financially feasible.