I’ve posted Windows and XBox360 versions of Legend of the Greasepole 2007 to the Queen’s EngSoc website!

The new version is built with XNA and includes the following new features:

• Controller support for either the mouse or the XBox360 Controller attached to the PC
• 3D sound 
• Modestly enhanced graphics (although we realized it was ultimately a choice between a total revamp or maintaining the “retro” look, and we opted for the nostalgic solution)
• An installer that can detect and install all prerequisites, and integrate with Windows Vista’s Game Explorer
• A new version that runs on the XBox360! (!!)
• “Achievements” which can be unlocked by stalling the Frosh in creative ways.

The Windows version requires a graphics card capable of supporting Pixel Shader version 2.0.  Almost any computer bought within the last couple of years should do.  If your card doesn’t have this support, I’ve also left the Classic Version of Legend of the Greasepole available for download, with a new installer that runs more quickly and also can detect and install the needed prerequisite for Classic Edition (the DirectX runtime).

The XBox360 version is built with XNA and, as such, you currently require a subscription to the XNA Creators Club in order to play it.  If you want to get it up and running on your XBox360, please let me know!

Introducing Legend of the Greasepole Achievements!

For the uninitiated, retail XBox360 games each are gifted with 1,000 “achievement points,” which the game’s designers can divvy up and dish out to players when they accomplish tasks within the game.

Legend of the Greasepole is peppered with “easter eggs” and innovative ways to stall the Frosh that the curious can discover by messing about.  Previously, cleverness would get the crowd roaring and accelerate your earning an Iron Ring.  Adding a more formal Achievement system seemed like an ideal way to further reward a player’s experimentation and creativity, which in fairness is really what The Pole Game (and the actual greasepole, for that matter) is meant to be about.

Our design goal was to create an fun experience rather than a brutally challenging one, including as many references to the memorable traditions of Queen’s Engineering and the Greasepole event as we could possibly cram in.  Hopefully the Achievements will help you find some of them!

XNA doesn’t let you tap into the “official” achievement system, so I had to roll my own.  With thanks to Craig Calvert and McKay Savage, we’ve come up with a first set of achievements and allocated 900 of the 1,000 points. 

If you unlock all the current achievements, we definitely want to hear from you.  (Four of them are secret, the rest are visible from within the game’s main menu.)  If you have ideas for how we should allocate the remaining achievement points, we’d love to hear those too.

Please let me know how you get on with the game, and if you experience any technical difficulties, also please don’t hesitate to let me know, and I’ll do what I can to resolve them.

I have to tip my cap again to the dozens and dozens of Queen’s students who were involved in the game’s production from 1997 through 1999.  It was an enormous amount of fun making this game, and a wash of memories of the very best kind porting it to XNA for re-release.