However, now that I work for the Microsoft Surface team, I'm surrounded by game designing enthusiasts! One of them runs the local game designers/developers meetup group! She's amazing. She has one social meetup per month, and one workshop meetup. I find myself among people who design games in XNA, in WPF, on the Surface (wouldn't I love to make a 3D model of a press you could play with on a Surface!!!), on Xbox, on Windows, on Windows Phone, etc.
It's been a very encouraging environment. One guy who's developing my all-time favorite game for the Surface (can't say which one) said he just tinkers when he has 20 minutes, without hoping for any outcome. That's quite a mind-shift for someone like me. I'm gonna try it. I had a couple hours tonight. I sat down without any expectations and just dinked around.
I've decided to create the UI in the new Metro style. I can't find a link to the Metro design principles. Mainly, you want to help your user focus on content rather than get them distracted by decoration. Plus, you should only make UI elements appear to your users when they're needed. There are a few other principles, like using natural and intuitive gestures and not trying to contstrain yourself by mimicking realism when it would be more convenient for the user to be true to the technology, etc. One of my team mates is creating a booklet illustrating the whole Metro idea. (Man, I'm lucky.)
I've posted an app that's just the menu. Emeralda v2 - Metro menu idea. My next task will be to wrap it in the cool code I created while going through Michael Snow's book that allows you to make the Silverlight control fill your screen, create a game loop, etc.
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