Newsletter Week 4: Nailed down the basic design

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Team Crescendo Encore made big progress in Week 4.

We finalized the basic design of the game. Violin, Clarinet, French Horn and Timpani are nailed down as the final four hardware instruments. This design decision making process was well documented, and we received very positive feedback from SmileGate. We also decided the design goal of our game for this semester. It covers instrument interaction, the feeling of playing music, music arrangement and User Interface.
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Newsletter Week 3: Building an XNA prototype

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The team is now having a nice entertainment center feeling place for having playtests later on thanks to the efforts made by the team members and faculty. A 55-inch TV and three consoles along with a decent sofa are set up, so it is easier than ever before to do relevant console game research at this beginning stage of project development.Crescendo Encore finished the project branding by the middle of the week, which includes logo, poster, half sheet and web banner for showcasing on ETC’s website. An up-to-date project website is also on, and it will be kept updated.
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Newsletter Week 2: How to develop for consoles?

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Last week, we had been doing a decent amount of research about how to get into developing games for consoles. Based on the information we got from both console holders and industry professionals’ first hand experience, we found out that Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) would be the feasible way for Crescendo Encore to approach the ideal goal SmileGate set for the project, that is to have a DoReMi Pets type game be playable on console. In week 2, SmileGate decided to have Team Crescendo Encore develop a music/rhythm game for XBLIG targeting family and kids.
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Newsletter Week 1: Get started

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Project Crescendo Encore is a SmileGate sponsored ETC project located at the ETC Silicon Valley campus. We are very glad to name ourselves after the previous ETC team who successfully created the project Crescendo in 2011 Fall semester. Crescendo Encore currently consists of five students:

Qiaosi Chen – Programmer
Hyemi Do – 2D/UI artist
Prashanth KP – Programmer
Paulwei Wang – Co-producer, Hardware engineer
Chong Zhang – Co-producer
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