October 2008 Alpha Demo of Duality: ZF, an Xbox 360 game by Xona Games.

Release Date: November 19, 2008, in Xbox LIVE Community Games (XBLCG), to be found in the New Xbox Experience (XNE) released on the same date.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h46y0N9nUec

---

http://www.xboxhornet.wordpress.com - news, reviews and interviews from XBLCG & XBLA

www.twitter.com/xboxhornet

Wow, this is our game... Duality: ZF.  Thanks for posting it!

---

M. Doucette / Xona Games
...our upcoming dual play Xbox 360 2D shooter: Duality ZF

looks pretty cool.  you control both ships with what?  each stick?  in that kind of bullet he ll only a japanese person would want to play that methinks.

^whats the pricing structure going to be on these games anyway?  come on, let the cat out of the bag if you have the cat and the catbag.

---

Things Are Explained In Great Detail

I have asked Matt about price and right now they are trying to minimize the code, then they will know the price.

---

http://www.xboxhornet.wordpress.com - news, reviews and interviews from XBLCG & XBLA

www.twitter.com/xboxhornet

Community games are either 200, 400 or 800 points. The Developer gets to choose.

If your game is over 50Mb then the developer can only choose 400 or 800

All games have a timed (the amount of time is not specified) trial mode which will have no access to XBL. Purchased games however can be full XBL games. Rich presence, invites are supported. GamerPoints/Achievements and Leaderboards are not.

---

ZMan

XNA Game Studio MVP
http://www.thezbuffer.com

Zman, will you be able to recommend Community games to friend the same as you can with XBLA games.

 

Thanks

---

http://www.xboxhornet.wordpress.com - news, reviews and interviews from XBLCG & XBLA

www.twitter.com/xboxhornet

Looks like a great game cant wait to play it on Nov 19.

---

dual
Xbox Ambassador
-DUAL GAMESHARK
I AM CANADIAN

 GloryHornetEmmo wrote:

Zman, will you be able to recommend Community games to friend the same as you can with XBLA games.

I honestly don't know. Is that part of the new Web UI on the NXE stuff? Do you have a link to how you do that for XBLA games as thats new to me. Then I will go find out.

I know that the CG will have their own xbox.com pages so you can buy on the web and do the 'mark to download' for auto downloads.

---

ZMan

XNA Game Studio MVP
http://www.thezbuffer.com

 The ZManiac wrote:

 GloryHornetEmmo wrote:

Zman, will you be able to recommend Community games to friend the same as you can with XBLA games.

I honestly don't know. Is that part of the new Web UI on the NXE stuff? Do you have a link to how you do that for XBLA games as thats new to me. Then I will go find out.

I know that the CG will have their own xbox.com pages so you can buy on the web and do the 'mark to download' for auto downloads.

To recommend a game to a friend you goto the arcade game, then once selected at the bottem is "tell a friend" You then can recommend it to someone. I sent you one so you can see what the message looks like.

---

dual
Xbox Ambassador
-DUAL GAMESHARK
I AM CANADIAN

I was wondering if they are going to do the same thing on Community Games. Cheers

---

http://www.xboxhornet.wordpress.com - news, reviews and interviews from XBLCG & XBLA

www.twitter.com/xboxhornet

I have emailed the XNA team... I'll let you know when they reply (or maybe they will reply directly in here)

---

ZMan

XNA Game Studio MVP
http://www.thezbuffer.com

The November 19th, 2008 launch date has not been met.  DUALITY: ZF is not finished.  The current launch date is set for the end of November, 2008.

DUAL PLAY lets you control both fighters with the left and right thumbsticks.  The d-Pad also controls the "left" fighter.

DUAL PLAY is optional.  Use it only if you want.  Solo play is default.

DUAL PLAY is for beginners and experts alike.  Beginners should dual play in the easy modes.  Our weakest beta tester, who never plays video games, beat level one with dual play.

DUAL PLAY is not difficult to grasp in gameplay.  All our beta testers managed it within a few game plays.  Most Xbox gamers are already used to controlling each thumb independently fo separate purposes.

DUALITY: ZF is not an expert-only bullet *** (danmaku, bullet curtain) shoot'em up.  Anyone can play it.  A four year old beat level one in the easiest mode, including the intimidating boss you see in the YouTube videos.

DUALITY: ZF grows to match the skill of every player on the planet with unlimited unlockable difficulty modes.  Elite players will have a "bullet ***" style experience, but this is out of the ordinary.  We are excited to see gameplay captures of these most elite players.

DUALITY: ZF allows eight independently controlled fighters on the screen at once.  This is possible via four players each playing dual play.  The impact of eight times the firepower blew us away, and forced us to offer additional unlockable difficulty modes to challenge such extreme gameplay.

The DUALITY: ZF scoring system awards points proportional to the enemy strength and attack.  The same scoring formula used for all difficulty modes.  If the enemy is twice as hard to kill, you get twice the points.  The scoring system does not "care" about the difficulty mode, only how tough the enemies are.  It was important to make scores from all difficulty modes compatible, and we acheived this.

DUALITY: ZF will sell for 200 Microsoft points, unless we cannot meet the (difficult) 50MB size limit and are forced to sell for 400 points.  We will do everything we can to meet that limit.  Please understand the game is still in development.

Thank you all for your interest.  We hope to offer one of the more exciting and fun shooters on the Xbox 360, not just counting Community Games.

---

M. Doucette / Xona Games
...our upcoming dual play Xbox 360 2D shooter: Duality ZF

Thanks for the info, I am really looking forward to buying this game.

---

http://www.xboxhornet.wordpress.com - news, reviews and interviews from XBLCG & XBLA

www.twitter.com/xboxhornet

Pricing update on Duality: ZF...

 Xonatron wrote:

DUALITY: ZF will sell for 200 Microsoft points, unless we cannot meet the (difficult) 50MB size limit and are forced to sell for 400 points.  We will do everything we can to meet that limit.  Please understand the game is still in development.

"DUALITY: ZF will sell for 400 Microsoft Points (MP).  Duality: ZF has turned into a 6 month, $20,000 development effort.  It has approached what was originally planned to be the 400 MP Dualilty: ZF sequel.  With our extended efforts, we have skipped by our theoretical simplistic 200 MP version of Duality: ZF, and have headed directly to our feature-rich 400 MP version.  We feel this move is justified, and will be understood by gamers once they play the finished game.  Releasing a simple 200 MP version would have been fun, but would have deminished our first impression on the gaming community.  These type of decisions are not easy to make.  We hope gamers understand." -- http://xona.com/dualityzf/

---

M. Doucette / Xona Games
...our upcoming dual play Xbox 360 2D shooter: Duality ZF

I'm looking forward to trying it, when is it getting released?

---

http://www.xboxhornet.wordpress.com - news, reviews and interviews from XBLCG & XBLA

www.twitter.com/xboxhornet

Looks promising. Not sure I like the graphics much, but the gameplay looks pretty polished in the months old "alpha video". So if the final product has grown and is much bigger than that, it certainly has my interest.

can't wait to trial it - looks promising

If it ends up like the alpha video I  might buy it first - Hope it gets a leaderboard of some kind,  looks like it needs one - perfect contest material - good work -

How many people worked on this game ? What kind of CPU(s) did you develop this game with ?

The alpha video shows a crazy difficulty setting, and you will be able to experience that if you so desire.  There should be a difficulty level for all levels of experience.  Good news: I am programming a leaderboard! :)  We also hope to have a contest soon after the game is released. :)  Two people have worked on the game: My brother and I.  We're importing Imphenzia's music, so he could be considered as a 3rd guy, but his music was not created specifically for Duality: ZF (in fact, most of it was made before we started making the game).  He may make music specifically for our games in the future.  We are developing this on two DELL XPS 600 machines (Dual-core Pentium D's); nothing fancy.

---

Jason Doucette / Xona Games
Duality: ZF

Really sounds like a can't miss game - I'll start drumming up support for it - What your doing with the difficulty settings is genius - Can't wait to play this game

So your bro is Xonatron - you guys are from Nova Scotia hmmn, tell me was that show "The Trailer Park Boys"a big deal up there? People were freaking out about it all the way down in NY

 Geichz wrote:

So your bro is Xonatron - you guys are from Nova Scotia hmmn, tell me was that show "The Trailer Park Boys"a big deal up there? People were freaking out about it all the way down in NY

You got it right, I'm Jason's brother.  It is awesome to be the team to finally bring an old school shoot'em up to the Xbox 360.  I would have never believed we would be doing this a year ago.

As for difficutly, a four year old can make it half way through Duality: ZF on the easiest mode, and it still has modes that will challenge the best players in the world.  I cannot wait for our challenge to inspire everyone to push their limits on our game.  The gameplay is going to be fantastic.

Patrick Roach (plays Randy) off trailer park boys use to sell us water (Sparkling Springs)!  The show was quite a hit around here, and their fame was quite new to them.  It was years ago that I last saw him.

---

M. Doucette / Xona Games
...our upcoming dual play Xbox 360 2D shooter: Duality ZF

The official release date is February 28, 2009.  In a post further up this same thread, I explain our decision to bypass a more simplistic version of our game which has extended the release date.  Good news, as Jason already mentioned, is that one of the additional features is an online global scoreboard similiar to leaderboards, only technically not the same so we cannot use that name.

---

M. Doucette / Xona Games
...our upcoming dual play Xbox 360 2D shooter: Duality ZF

A global scoreboard will set this game apart from the crowd.

---

http://www.xboxhornet.wordpress.com - news, reviews and interviews from XBLCG & XBLA

www.twitter.com/xboxhornet

Still anxiously awaiting this game - best of luck polishing it up!

 

 

---

Shoot the core!!!

Just a quick note to say the release date is pushed back as far as April, and this is no April Fool's joke.  The game has become a lot better, and a lot bigger.  It now has six game modes.  So six games instead of one.  And, we have some new screenshots:

New Duality: ZF Screenshots
http://xona.com/2009/03/31.html

---

M. Doucette / Xona Games
...our upcoming dual play Xbox 360 2D shooter: Duality ZF

Thats looking real sweet... make sure you have an old man mode where there's not so many bullets...

---

ZMan

XNA Game Studio MVP
http://www.thezbuffer.com

Thanks, ZMan!  There will be. :)  We've been working on the difficulty settings a LOT...

---

Jason Doucette / Xona Games
Duality: ZF

Another sneak peak video:

Duality: ZF (March 2009 Tech Demo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClxTi__1F0s

A month old.  Already outdated.  Note some graphic effects were disabled.

---

M. Doucette / Xona Games
...our upcoming dual play Xbox 360 2D shooter: Duality ZF

Wow, the game has improved a lot visually. I love the new explosions. I'm not a big fan of vertical/horizontal scrollshooters but I'll pick this one up when it comes out. However: I love the more dirty look of the game in the video, the screenshots feel a bit too clean. It'd be great if you could add some kind of distortion filter/shader that spices up the overall look. Maybe just make it a bit grainy. Another thing I'd like to unlock would be a black & white mode where the shots and explosions are still colored. Should be a pretty interesting effect.