Updates

Ping Pong RPG for Xbox

Matt Christian — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:45:12 GMT

Lately I've been working on bringing my game Pong RPG to the Xbox. I've slightly changed the title to Ping Pong RPG to make it less like the Atari version and more like my own. The most exciting part though is the new code! Here are some of the details of the new code...

In the PC version of Pong RPG, every image/sprite had it's own file. This means every time I loaded a menu I had to load each menu item, the background, and any other pieces that weren't part of the already loaded images. To make matters worse, since all my menu items are custom text images, I needed a way to show the user was 'hovering over' (remember, on PC they have a mouse to use) the image. This means not only did every menu item have it's own file, but the outlined, 'hovered' version also had it's own file that needed to be loaded. This obviously led to unintentional lag and memory usage. To fix this issue, I've started creating Sprite Sheets that have all the different textures needed for a screen in 1-3 larger files. My sprite objects then have Source rectangles that pull the correct image from the sprite sheet. I haven't worked on the menu items that have hovered versions, but I'm considering simply making a background image to go behind the menu item to signify it's hovered. Also since it's on Xbox, there will be a little 'A' button image next to the highlighted item.

But wait, it gets worse. The code written for the PC version of Pong had hundreds upon hundreds of lines of code per class. For Pong RPG PC, I created functions that essentially create a sprite for me, taking the parameters Name, Scale, Position, Rotation, FILE, etc... What ended up happening was I needed to write a line or two of code PER image I wanted to load. Remember, I had tons of images including menu items and their hovered counterparts. This led to very, very long load statements. In Pong RPG for Xbox I've simplified the code somewhat by introduing 'LoadFiles'. A LoadFile is a simple text file filled with statements used to load sprite and image data. Here is a sample:

'Comment Line - Not Read
SpriteSheet, Sprites\Common\MainMenu
Sprite, MainMenu, CreditsButton, CENTER, CENTER, 0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.1, true, 0, 0, 100, 100

Obviously this is somewhat cryptic to those who don't know the format, but essentially it defines all the parts of the sprite; texture file, sprite name, screenX, screenY, rotation, scaleX, scaleY, layer, visible, sourceX, sourceY, sourceWidth, sourceHeight. Now, using a text file may be somewhat of a performance hit but I think it really simplifies the code and makes it much easier to read. Towards the end of Pong RPG PC development was becoming unbearable due to the size of the files, this alleviates my issue.

A final little side note, since I'm running the game on a 1280x720 resolution rather than a 1024x768, all my images are in 'HD' and look pretty cool when plastered upon my plasma TV.

All in all the conversion of Pong RPG PC to Xbox is going pretty well. A lot of the work is technical and the end user won't ever see and even though the development time may increased slightly due to my work on the updates, the code is much more managable and easier for future work. I'd like to work on another series of XNA tutorials detailing some of the implementation strategies I've done but I'll have to see how much time I have.

Updates Abound

Matt Christian — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:19:55 GMT

I have not had a second to update this blog! Shame on me...

What's new with me you ask? Most recently I've moved into an apartment! I'm still getting used to it and since I don't have internet access I'm quite limited with what I do in my spare time. Lately I've taken to modding Left 4 Dead by creating my own levels. It's pretty easy and I'm hoping to put a few tutorials up once I understand the Hammer development tool a bit more.

That's all for now, catch ya later.

Project Turf

Matt Christian — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:44:33 GMT

Awhile back, after the release of Pong I started work on a new engine to fix all the issues I didn't like with Pong. Every sprite in Pong was hard coded and was unbearably large because of that (some sprites had 20+ lines dedicated to them just to place and check for user input). I started work on an engine I called 'Turf' because I had no idea what kind of game I wanted to make at the time so I developed simple parts of it such as rendering and saved it until I had some time to fully develop it. I started creating a simple 2D sidescroller in it but never got very far due to the demands of school.

Now that school is over, I needed something to work on instead of waste time playing games all night after coming home from my day job. I've created a team of 10 people working on different aspects of a new platformer for Xbox 360. The engine itself still needs work, but I'm extremely impressed with the amount of work coming out of our team. We've been fully together about a week now and so far we've got the basic story planned, partial game design written, the portion of the engine I've developed, a piece of audio to listen to, and a fancy new dynamic menu editor to generate in game menus.

I'll create a simple blog later tonight as our 'PR' page and link it from here. Until our artist gets cracking though, it's going to be text updates.

One Week Healthy

Matt Christian — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:16:24 GMT

It's been one week since I've started really focusing on what I've been eating and my lifestyle. My interest was piqued two weeks ago when the health center part of the company I work at mentioned a summer 'Healthy Lifestyle' program where you would follow a table of things to do every day for a month (with 3 calendars for 3 months) and get points for each item you do on the list each day, at the end the most points would win prizes. The items on this calendar range from getting 30 minutes of exercize MWF (walking, playing with your kids, etc...), eating 3 servings of fruit on Tuesday, eating 3 servings of veggies on Thurs, eating a serving of dark chocolate later in the month, and even drinking a small glass of wine!

Now I know I have a bad habit of starting a healthy choice lifestyle and quitting a week or two in after seeing no results so I decided I'd do the lifestyle calendar but wouldn't sign up for the contest to win stuff because I want to prove to myself I can do it, not that I'm doing it for a prize. After all, you need to work on becoming healthy for yourself and not someone else.

So far I've followed the calendar every day by eating lots of fruits and vegetables and walking 3 days a week. Since one of my major goals has been to lose weight, I knew I had to change something in my diet. I started eating a salad with every meal and sometimes as the main meal (most lunches are now a salad variant). But it's not only about salads, it's about portion control (I know, everyone says that right?!). I've stopped taking seconds and when I load up with something like veggies I think in my head 'How much is that? Do I have too much?'. This way I can load up my plate to a point, clean the whole plate, and without second portions I'm not getting way too many calories.

For example, last night we had a dinner of BBQ'd grilled chicken legs, asparagus, and sliced french bread. While preparing it I told my dad I wanted no BBQ sauce on the chicken which ended up getting a slight coat of sauce but after that he didn't BBQ it again when he did the others. I was already preventing unneccesary calories before I even was at the table! When it was chow time I grabbed 2 chicken legs, a single slice of bread, and a big helping of asparagus (which was cooked with olive oil and sesame seeds, not butter!). I broke down a bit and after finished my plate grabbed one more chicken leg (which I attempted taking the skin off) and another helping of asparagus but no bread! We've had this meal times and times before and I used to have eaten something in the range of 5-6 fully BBQ'd legs, a similar pile of asparagus, and 3-4 pieces of bread.

They say having people in your home who help you achieve your goals makes you more likely to succeed. Yes, the impact of my eating has hit my family who have also been eating much better (not having potatoes at EVERY meal!). While this is helpful, there are going to be times when peer pressure hits you, or those support systems aren't very supportive. As a prime example, last Friday (when I first started eating healthy) we went out for a fish fry. The waitress walked up to me and said "What would you like?" I replied, "The normal sized baked fish with cottage cheese, and could I get just cottage cheese on the side?" She said, "Sure, what do you want for potatoe?" I hadn't said it correctly, "No, I don't want any potatoes, just cottage cheese and fish and maybe a slice of bread." She just stared at me blankly as if I had just came from another planet. After another few explanations of 'no potatoes', she replied "Well I'll see if they can do that". How would that be hard for the kitchen staff? Make the fish, and a side of cottage cheese, and put them on the same plate. Through this interaction with the waitress my mom said, "Just get a baked potatoe!" My support system had crumbled and I needed to stay strong. As the waitress walked away my aunt looks at my mom and says, "What did he want?" My mom looks back and says, "Oh he didn't want any potatoes because he's on a diet" (The end was said very annoyingly) My aunt just laughed and rolled her eyes. Great support system, eh?

Another example, Monday was a diet killer night. Italian sausage sandwiches. If you don't know how my mom makes them, you don't know a great pile of calories. French bread sliced open and toasted with a large italian sausage patty covered in pizza sauce, and piled with melted cheese. (I'm getting hungry thinking about it!) Unbeknownst to me, most of the calories came from the sausage patty but I still tried to prevent unneccesary calories before eating. I asked for much less cheese and the addition of cooked bell peppers on top. Not only was the sandwich delicious, I saved myself from going over my daily calorie limit (see next paragraph). The sandwich I had that night was a smaller 'half'. My mom makes 4 halves, and I used to easily eat 2 halves. I finished the 1 half and that was that!

My iPhone is a saint in achieving my goals. I downloaded a free app called 'Lose It!', a calorie counting software which had me input my current state and my goal and tells me when I'll reach that goal and gives me a daily calorie total. Now I've tried calorie counting websites before and they're not bad, but how often are you within reach of a computer while you're eating (granted adding my food to my phone during dinner isn't great table manners)? So far I've kept under my daily value each day which is 2,525 for losing 1 pound a week at my current size.

Another note that everyone mentions is liquid calories. In the last week I've had nothing but water and a few cups of juice or low-calorie beverage. Not bad considering when I started at work (3 weeks ago) I was starting a cycle of almost 2 soda's a day (sometimes diet, sometimes regular). In theory, I'm saving approximately 290 calories per bottle (that's of Mountain Dew) of regular soda, which in certain days would put me over my daily limit (remember italian sausage night?). Lets say I craved Mountain Dew one week and had 2-20 oz bottles each day at work (5 work days). That's 2900 calories in a week, which is about 2 bottles away from a full pound of body weight.

There's much more I could go into about liquid calories, but you're smart and can use Google to find out the benefits of water over other drinks. So how much did I lose so far? Well the scales have fluctuated (as they should) but I weigh myself every morning when I wake up, and this morning I was 232 lbs (weight loss of 3). Now this could be a fluctuation since it's not very large, but I've weighed myself every morning for the whole week and not once have I been over my starting weight (morning after pasta night I had rocketed back up to 235, that was YESTERDAY morning, I've dropped down 3 lbs since yesterday!? Pasta threw a wrench in my morning weigh-in). So there's a definite loss happening, and I can almost feel my body becoming tighter (it's only possible to get a double chin if I cram my chin against my chest). More importantly, I've felt better!

What have I learned? Strict. You need to be strict with yourself. While at college I would go to the gym twice a week, eat almost more every day, and then would go get chinese buffet on Saturday as my 'non-diet' food to celebrate my gym-going. How does that even make sense?! It's about being able to pick and choose between a new lifestyle and an old lifestyle and sticking to your choices.

XNA Game Studio 3.1 Released!

Matt Christian — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:12:21 GMT

XNA 3.1 has been released bringing Avatar support and many other features. Check it out:

http://creators.xna.com/en-us/news/xnagamestudio3.1

Also of large note, with that release Microsoft is changing Xbox Community Games to Xbox Indie Games.

I'm not a fan of the name change.

New Keyboard

Matt Christian — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:29:01 GMT

I decided last night that after 5 years of the same keyboard it was time for a new one. I purchased Microsoft's Natural Ergonomic 4000 (yes, my keyboard has a 4000 on it's name, like 'SuperJuicer 9000'). The keyboard is very nice and has some nice features but the biggest problem is two-fold. 1) I've never used an ergonomic board before. 2) I taught myself to type (rather incorrectly at that) so now that my keyboard has a giant split in it, I need to learn to type properly. I'm training myself at work on a standard board, but it's going to take awhile to get used to. Currently it's torture trying to type like this, this post took me the better part of 20 minutes to type!

Windows 7

Matt Christian — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:15:56 GMT

For the last couple weeks I’ve been running the Windows 7 beta and really love it. The last OS I installed was XP back when that was new so I moved from XP to 7 skipping Vista (not by choice, by happening). It’s really slick and I love the Aero theme it has. Now I just need to grab the Windows 7 RC when it comes out publicly in a few weeks (rumor says May 5).

TCCC 6

Matt Christian — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 04:00:28 GMT

I just finished my talk in TCCC 6 and feel it went relatively well (I'm new at all this speaking). I'm in D'Arcy's talk right now about Silverlight so won't type too much more. Thanks to everyone for coming to my presentation. A lot of you sounded really interested in the basics of XNA, maybe I can get some talks on basic XNA set up sometime. I should have the presentation materials on my site within the next week!

3D Math In Games (Presentation) Posted

Matt Christian — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:13:30 GMT

I’ve posted my 3D Math in Games presentation I gave last Thursday at the Twin Cities XNA User Group on my website here.

The code and examples should be up in a few days after some edits and some time spent adding them to the site. Also, I should have a clarification on one of the questions in the talk about using normal vectors up on my blogs in a few days also.

Long Time Coming

Matt Christian — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:00:03 GMT

HELLO! Oh man I've missed you guys. I haven't posted in forever and I'm very sorry for it! I'm trying to get this damned Windows Live Writer working with GWB and absolutely cannot get it to work (have been trying since 12/4!). I've found other GWB posters that have written about it but I think Live Writer came out with a new format and they haven't updated something. Either that or I have something wrong, if anyone can help PLEASE let me know.

In recent news I've gotten an Xbox! Which means XNA development for the Xbox and not only the PC. Right now I'm working on a few simple demos for the next piece of news...

..Which is that I'll be speaking on Feb 19 at the Twin Cities XNA User Group about 3D Math as it relates to game programming. If you're in the area you should definitely stop by. I'm creating loads of small demos that should work on both PC and Xbox 360 that I'll be showing there demonstrating things like Vectors, Matrices, and Quaternions. The slides and code will be on here and on my site soon after the talk so keep an eye out.

Live Writer, if I be nice to you will you work?