Long Time... No Game

It's been a while.  Can't say I'm any closer to releasing a game, but I have become a better code monkey after two years at an IT desk job.  Microsoft has abandoned XNA in the time I've been away from it.  Monogame has [sort of] risen from its ashes and Unity is all the rage.  Independent game developers abound on every platform from the PC to the VITA.  Self publishing is a hot word with the coming of the new consoles this fall.  I don't think there's been a better time to be a hobbyist dev.

My wife and I also have a brand spanking new human child, so that takes a small bite out of my free time.  Still, I like to poke around in game development frameworks.  I picked up the old 2d XNA engine I started coding back in the 3.1 days.  After a couple of hours of mucking around, I've added 25% more dimensions.  Yes a simple 2.5 engine with the ability to zoom and rotate.  My dream was to create a more simplistic version of the SRPGs with which I used to spend so much time: Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, etc.  To that end, I implemented a couple new types of tiles for the engine.  I can now work with hexagons and isometric squares.

The basic tile engine displaying a hexagonal grid of water.