XNA
There are 158 entries for the tag
XNA
Microsoft is running another Dream Build Play contest and once again I’m entering. (You can enter too by registering here –> https://www.dreambuildplay.... I’ve entered every year since the inaugural launch in 2007. Every year I had a fantastic game idea. Every year I worked really hard on it. Every year I never finished and never submitted. So why am I doing this yet again? Because I want to be part of something. I miss the old XNA community of yore and with lack of announcements...
Been a busy week for me, wish it was full of XNA stuff and that is why I’m busy (and that the notes are late…again) but not the case. I’m just going to have to figure out a better way of integrating the XNA Notes into some of the stuff going on lately or maybe change my life situation so these things aren’t going on. I’m working on figuring it out both ways. But you don’t come here to read about my personal stuff, you come to see what the XNA community has been up to! So without further ado, here’s...
This has been a fantastic week of XNA activity and news. Standing ovation the the XNA Team for the interaction they’ve been having with the community as well as the new features they’ve been rolling out for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers. Simply outstanding and I can’t wait to see what might be coming next. It’s also been a fun week to watch people’s Dream Build Play projects inch ever closer to completion. With the submission deadline coming up in June this is the crunch time for many developers....
It’s not often I let my personal life creep into affecting the things I’m involved in and doing. I usually let my hobbies kind of get me through the tough parts. And while I’ve been having fun distracting myself with playing games and coding this week, I’ll admit my eye wasn’t on the community like it normally is. I apologize for the late posting of the notes and for how light and sparse they are. I’m sure there was more going on in the XNA community (and if you were missed in this weeks notes, shoot...
This week has been an interesting one. Lots of ups and downs in the XNA Community and lots of things that we’re not sure yet if it’s an up or down. One of the biggest changes that happened was that the Top Downloads list on Xbox.com and on the Xbox dashboard is now calculated differently for Xbox LIVE Indie Games. It’s still not clear what impact this is going to have (although I know it feels pretty clear to some of you in the community!) but this lead to some interesting things. One, we got to...
This has been kind of a crappy week for me. Kids are all puking like crazy so I’m up most nights taking care of them. Fun times being a day! (I have 4 kids in case you didn’t know!). And while my kids have been puking, the community has been busy puking too. Puking up a ton of awesomeness! Yeah…probably not the best analogy but I’m tired. I did want to take the time to point out one thing that resonated loudly with me this week. You’ll see some interviews with Kris Steele by Steven Hurdle. In that...
MIX 11 happened this past week and I’m still trying to find and catch up on all the announcements changes that came from that. It looks like we can now use XNA on the web via Silverlight (and am I reading that we can do 3d?). We can now use Silverlight in our XNA projects with Windows Phone 7 (yay for having an easy way to make UI’s in XNA now!). And I’m still searching around to see if there were any other big news. The Silverlight + XNA news is pretty big because that opens up a lot of new game...
What a crazy week! Big game releases from the XNA Community, podcasts, reviews, interviews, new educational content being posted and all sorts of upcoming titles that I’m excited about. If there was ever a week that I missed stuff, this was the week. Seemed like every time I glanced at twitter or checked my RSS feeds there was some interesting and new XNA thing going on. No need for me to try and convince you, just like at the size of this weeks XNA Notes! Time Critical XNA News: Making Windows Phone...
Today is April Fool's day...and apparently I fooled quite a few people with my post earlier today! Sorry if you were outraged, concerned (or maybe you were happy and elated?) but I am not losing my MVP status. I'm still an XNA MVP and hope to remain one for as long as XNA is around. I really love the technology and this community! Something that was NOT an April fool's joke however, there are now two new XNA MVPs (well only two knew that I'm aware of, if there's more, please make yourself known!)....
[What you see below was an April Fool's Joke! I am still an MVP and was already re-awarded for the year back in January! I'm still laughing at how many people this fooled (although I did feel a little bad when I saw all the nice comments being made) It was kind of like faking your own death, I got to read a so many wonderful things about me and it was really quite touching just how many people reached out to me or got really upset or angry about this news. Thanks for the concern, but I am still an...
This week was a busy one for the XNA Community and one that had a series of ups and downs. You might have noticed by now (or maybe you haven’t and I shouldn’t be pointing this out..) that I tend to only point out the ups. That’s very much on purpose and something I thought long and hard about before I started doing XNA Notes. It’s too easy to let the bad stuff spread like a virus and seem overwhelming (something to do with human nature and there’s probably a science and psychology behind it). When...
Even with a lot of the XNA community working on Dream Build Play entries ( I swear I’m going to finish mine this year!) people are still finding time to do side projects and be amazingly active in the XNA and XBLIG community. With my one eye on my code and one eye on the community, here’s what I noticed these over achievers doing this past week! Time Critical XNA News: Xbox LIVE Indie Games sales data will be delayed March 17-20th due to some schedule maintenance http://create.msdn.com/en-u...
I've been wanting to write this post summarizing my thoughts about the MVP summit but have been dragging my feet since it's a very difficult one to write. However seeing Andy (http://forums.create.msdn.... and Catalin (http://www.catalinzima.com... and Chris (http://geekswithblogs.net/... post about it has encouraged me to finally take the plunge. I'm going to have to write carefully though because I'm going to be dancing...
With GDC 2011 wrapping up there were a LOT of great interviews and posts with and about XNA and XBLIG and some of our more notorious developers. Definitely worth spending many, many hours watching, listening and reading all those. Very inspiring! Also, don’t forget to get signed up for Dream Build Play! And just as an early warning reminder do NOT, I repeat do NOT wait to submit your game the last day. There are major issues submitting the last day every year and you do not want all your hard work...
This past week the MVPs (myself included) were on Microsoft campus for the MVP summit. So I apologize in advance if you did something cool or heard of something cool happening with XNA and XBLIGs and it’s not in my notes. I did my best to stay on top of things, but honestly this community is fast and furious with what it’s doing and creating. I really can’t keep up and that’s fantastic! But here’s what I *did* notice while I was there on Microsoft Campus (and I did make sure to point out to the XNA...
This week has been a rough one. I’ve been sick and then in some kind of slump for my afternoon coding sessions. It could be from the cold, could be I’m still tired from writing that Windows Phone 7 game development book (which is out now!) or it could just be I’m tired of winter and want some sunshine. All I know is that even while I’m stick, the XNA world keeps going along at it’s whirlwind pace. Below are the things I caught in between my coughing fits.. Time Critical XNA News: The 2011 MVP summit...
Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m...
Last night my wife’s Nexus One finally bit the dust. You may not know but I’ve been nursing her Nexus One one along for quite a while after her screen shattered. I was able to replace it on my own (go me!) but little quirks have been popping up and the phone was quickly deteriorating. Lately it’s been the power button. Wifey would often have to press the power button several times to get her phone to turn on and last night it just wouldn’t wake up again. I took it apart and tried my best to see if...
If you used to think the XNA community was small and inactive, hopefully these XNA Notes are opening your eyes. And I honestly feel like I’m still only catching the tail end of everything that’s going on. It’s a large and active community and you can be so mired down in one part of it you miss all sorts of cool stuff another part is doing. XNA is many things to a lot of people and that makes for a lot of really awesome things going on. So here’s what I saw going on this last week! Time Critical XNA...
Last night I gave a talk to the Portland Silverlight User Group. http://www.portlandsilverli... And I survived (which you should have probably already figured out since you’re reading this post AND that’s what I titled it…) Really though it was a fantastic time and I had a lot of fun! I was a little nervous getting ready for it, but I’m always a little nervous getting ready for things. I had the game all written, I knew the general flow for what the talk was going to be. I...
Or until my arm falls off at least…. I’ve been meaning to get a new tattoo for quite a while. And I wanted it to be geeky and to represent some memorable milestone in my life. So I was thinking, mulling over some various ideas, sketching some things out. And then it hit me. XNA. Specifically the XNA logo. It’s super geeky (so geeky I’ll probably have to explain to 90% of the people that say it what it even means) and I’m not sure that anything has been so memorable and made such a change in my life...
Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! (clingermangw@hotmail.com). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado,...
The XNA community has been crazy busy again. It always make me fee like such a slacker collecting all of these notes as I see the tremendous output from people all over the world and it’s incredible and humbling. There are some amazingly skilled people working with XNA. On another not, I’m going to take a minute to get on my soapbox and say, if you are developing ANYTHING and are not using some sort of source/revision control, START IMMEDIATELY. This applies to teams of one. Projects for fun. And...
Another week and another whirlwind of wonderful works coming from the XNA Community. I find it crazy just how hard it is to keep up with everything going on and knowing just how big the community has gotten recognizing just how much I’m missing as well. But here are the things I DID manage to catch… XNA Developers @Chounard ponders whether he should port sfxr to XNA http://twitter.com/Chounard... And showing just how awesome the XNA commmunity @Chounard DOES (and in a day!)...
This past week (much like every week in the XNA community) was filled with things happening and people doing cool things (and getting noticed for doing cool things!). You can definitely tell there are some Xbox LIVE Indie game developers starting to make some names for themselves. Can’t wait to name drop them at bars. Me- “Oh you played Game X? Yeah, I know the guy that made that. Pretty cool guy.” Yeah, I’ll be THAT guy. Time Critical XNA News 30 days left to submit XBLIGs made in XNA Game Studio...
Just a quick recap of things I noticed going on in or around the XNA community this past week. I’m sure there’s a lot I missed (it’s a pretty big community with lots of different parts to it) but these where the things I caught that I thought were pretty cool. The XNA Team Michael Klucher gave a list of books every gamer should read. http://twitter.com/#!/mkluc... Shawn Hargreaves posted Nelxon Studio posting about a cheatsheet for converting 3.1 to 4.0 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sha...
Reece turned six this year and for his big birthday bash he wanted to have a super cool, super fun super hero party. So Wifey and I sat down and tried to plan a birthday party for a bunch of super hero six year olds. We had it ALL mapped out and our battle plan ready and then two days before the big event I had a thought. A crazy geek dad thought. I should make a game. A SUPER HERO game. A game that all the kids at the party could play. And not only could they play it, but I should make it so that...
I was sitting watching my son play Transformers:War for Cybertron today (it’s 4x XP points today you know, so he’s got to play 24x7 this weekend…) and I saw an email come in from GoDaddy. I immediately clicked just in case it was one of those titillating GoDaddy girl commercials but instead it was an automatic renewal notice for one of my websites. That’s right XNADevelopment.com was renewed today for another year! It’s really hard to believe that I’ve been writing tutorials and been part of the...
Still not 100% sold on my title so it remains a working title for now, but here’s a series of character sketches I’ve done for a turn based strategy game I’m playing at making. I’ve been sketching these on various pieces of paper throughout the last two weeks and just finished the last of them today (my plan was for 16 different types of units and well, now I have them, so I consider that done!). Pretty rough sketches for now, but I’m pretty happy with the art style overall. I was wrestling for quite...
I’ve always enjoyed using Nick Gravelyn’s exception handling in all of my games. You’re always going to encounter those unhandled exception that your players are going to ferret out and having a method to display them rather than just crashing to the dashboard is definitely more of an elegant solution. But the other day I got to thinking…what if we could do more? What if instead of just displaying the error, we could encourage the players to send us the error. So I started playing with that an expanding...
I’ve created a new sample called “Would you like my Input” for XNADevelopment.com. This sample demonstrates a simple yet effective input wrapper to be used in your game. If your game requires input (and which game doesn’t?) then at some point you’re going to want to create an input wrapper. Hopefully this sample helps demonstrate how to go about that or at least gives you one that you can use in your own game. I always appreciate feedback (even if it’s just a simple Thank you!) so don’t be bashful...
A short while ago I became a REAL game developer with the release of an XBLIG I helped create called “Kissy Poo”. Overall this game has been a huge success. It has far exceeded my original expectations of sales and was just a really fun project to work on. (In case you were wondering I was expecting to sell around 500 copies and we’re right now hanging around 1200 copies sold!). Now though, I want to take some time to reflect a bit and share what went well and what I would have done differently....
There's a new XNA sample I've posted on XNADevelopment.com that demonstrates a method of detecting collisions between 2D rotated rectangles. I'm hoping to someday build a tutorial around this (maybe if I get enough requests for one!) but for now I've just made the source code available. I commented the code fairly thoroughly and made some attempt to write the code as readable as possible. It may be with those efforts that the sample will work well enough for most people without an accompanying tutorial....
I hope you do own an Xbox 360 because I have exciting news to share. You may have heard the rumors. Well, I’m here to tell you they’re absolutely, 100% true! Wait, what rumors where you talking about? No, that’s not true at all, I mean it was only one time…anyway, I was talking about the rumors that I’m officially a GAME DEVELOPER! That’s right. I really have a game for sale on the Xbox 360. It’s not an MMORPG, it’s not some crazy fast paced, action packed FPS. It’s a game I wrote (well, co-wrote...
I try to spend a little time every day brushing up on my developer skills. Some days I have more success than others. I might attempt to brush up on my skills by reading a tech book (currently working through "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Michael C. Feathers, I'm loving that book!), practicing some new language features (I'm still wrapping my head around lambda expressions and LINQ) or just browsing tech blogs and listening to tech podcasts. I do this partly because our industry changes...
I can’t express enough the appreciation I have for everyone out there. (yes, it’s YOU I’m talking about!) The prayers, thoughts and support has been incredible. It meant a lot. So I just wanted to take some time to say thanks for letting me share and thanks for all the incredible feedback Wifey and I have received over the last month. I also just wanted to give everyone an update of what happened and where we are at now (well, wifey is much faster at updates than I am so she’s already done a few...
I wrote a post a bit ago that was kind of a bummer. If you didn’t like that one, I suggest you move alone right now because this one is going to make that one look like rainbows and unicorns. I’ve already mentioned this has been a rough year, but well, I didn’t go into a lot of details. Now I’m going to because lately I’ve been having to pass on a lot of speaking opportunities and I’ve been dropping the ball on a lot of things that I normally help out with (Code Camp and PAXNAUG just to name a few)....
I've been resisting doing this post. Really I have. With how poorly the world is doing (Economic Crisis 2009!) and all the sad sob stories I'm reading everyday, I really didn't want to be adding to the "woe is me!" noise out there already. But yeah, this has been a pretty crappy year so far. And honestly, I haven't had worse. All is not lost however, so just so it's not *ALL* bad, I will say, it's really not as bad as it could be either. (I at least still have some perspective!). I mean really, overall...
I've posted a new tutorial up at XNADevelopment.com. I'll warn you now it's a doozy! If you're up to it, head on over and check out "The State of Things". I think this one has been sitting heavy on my heart for quite a while and when I finally sat down to write it up, everything just started pouring out. This tutorial doesn't just introduce one little way of managing screen state in your game, nope, this tutorial walks you THREE DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS! (and one of them uses event handlers and polymorphism..yikes!)...
Using state to create game menus, display game screens and make your game characters come alive! An Introduction: Just what in the world is state? Game state can be used to mean a variety of things and you'll find it used in many different ways in the game industry. In this case I'm using "game state" to provide a description of an object at a given point in time in a game. Clear as mud to you now? Don't worry, I'll try to describe it in a different way, one as a geek like me you might identify with...
So I've been doing a lot of drawing lately. I've been doing a little bit just about every day. Sometimes with the boys and sometimes just by myself. I'm planning on scanning some of my drawings in and sharing the progress I've been making improving my art, but I haven't gotten around to it yet (hopefully soon!). But with all that time spent drawing with pencil and paper, I haven't been doing a lot to work on improving my digital art. Well today wifey linked me to a great tutorial for creating some...
Wifey took a little min-vacation this weekend (she works, hard, I like to give her as many weekends off as possible) so I've been home alone with all four boys. So, I did what any normal guy does when he's changing diapers, making breakfast, lunch and dinner and breaking up fights for four boys...I started coding a new game. I had been standing looking at my bookshelf, trying to decide which of my new books I should start reading, when my eye fell on an old PC game I had purchased quite a while ago....
Well, wifey called me (and the world) to task, so I figured I should step up. I'll admit, I was being one of the debbie downers reflecting on everything that I didn't get done this past year. So, well here it is, some reflections on things that I did well and accomplished in 2008. It' all about the family and I made sure I focused on that. My wife and I had a great year. I mean, a REALLY REALLY REALLY good year. Our relationship has never felt stronger (and well, I feel we've been pretty strong from...
Do you have some idea for an XNA related tutorial or article that's been bouncing around in that brain of yours? Have you just been putting off making that great step by step guide on how to do some awesome XNA-ey thing? Do you just feel like you'll write something and no one will read it so it's not worth your time? Are you currently breathing? If you've answered yes to any of those questions, well Ziggy is here for you. Ziggyware is currently holding an XNA Article contest. Simply write a tutorial...
Every game needs a screen to define what button does what in the game. It helps for those moments when the player is scratching their head going, now what button did what again?! So when you're creating your game, you're going to want to take a little time to add that screen into your game. Or if you feel like using my code, you could spend an even smaller amount of time! Recognizing that I was going to be making this screen often for all of my sample games I release for my site (I'm working hard...
When you develop your game, you're going to need a screen to explain to the player what button does what. You can create this in your favorite art program...or you could get all programmy on this job and make a dynamic screen to define your button actions. I may have done the latter. I created this "How to Play" screen so that you can quickly and easily define what buttons do things in your game and display that visually to the player with no need of creating new images for each new game you make....
I've released a new sample at XNADevelopment.com today for creating and loading tiled levels into your game quickly and easily. I originally got the idea from a Bubble Bobble clone that was released to the community quite a while ago. In it, they had defined their levels using using just text. I thought it was a great idea so I began working on my own version of that idea. Looks Level to Me demonstrates a simple method of creating a text only level editor. Too often when making games you spend so...
Having an easy way to load tiles is an important part of making 2D games. When it comes down to it, almost every 2D game you can think of is created with tiles. Whether it's tiles of a scrolling background, tiles for platforms, tiles for an overhead RPG or even just tiles for constructing a PacMan type level. Games need tiles and game developer need a quick and easy way to get them into the game. I wrote this little project to help with that. I bypassed a level editor and any type of drag and drop...
With XBox Live Community Games (XBLCG) going live soon, I've been thinking a lot about things that are going to help all of us be successful. One of those things is encouraging hobbyist and independent developers looking to get their game out to the public to consider the quality of the game. Flooding XBLCG with a lot of poorly implemented games missing most of the polish that regular XBox Live Arcade (XBLA) titles have will quickly sink our ship. Microsoft has already made some effort encouraging...
It's been a long time coming and most of the other MVPs have already been there and gone (yeah, you Mr. ZMan with your 5,000 posts...), but today, I finally hit 1,000 posts on the XNA forums! I love helping out new people and putting my time in at the Creator's forum is a great way to do that. It's fun but it's definitely an activity that consumes a lot of my time. But watching the community grow makes it feels totally worth it. I love being part of it all and feel like I'm doing my small piece contributing...
Just in case you didn't know, XBox Live and the Creator's Club website are both down today. You can read the XNA team blog for more details. But all is not lost, you should have plenty to do in your spare time. One thing you could do is head over to XNAResources.com. That's right, they're back! And they're starting a new 2D tutorial series that looks like it's going to be an extremely useful set of tutorials for the community. (Welcome back guys! It feels good to be recommending your site again.)...
I've been playing with a lot of different projects lately trying to work on adding more polish to them. One of the things that I've been trying to do is add in controller images (provided by Microsoft off the Creator's website) when appropriate. So instead of just saying, "Press X to jump!", I stick the X button image into the line of text to pretty it up a little. Well, that was getting old quick because I was having to do so much manual work lining it all up. Basically, I would have to draw the...
This is a little project I put together because I was getting frustrated trying to place controller images inside of my lines of text. It's a pain to try and get everything lined up when you're trying to say "Press A to Start" where "A" is the actual image of the button. So in an effort to ease my pain, I wrote some code to do that all for me. Now when I want to put a button image inside of my text, I can just write it like "Press [A] to Start." and the [A] will get automatically replaced by the...
That's the life of an XNA MVP. When you play with XNA, you're in the power seat. The world is your oyster. When people find out you know how to make games using XNA, doors open. You skip lines. People look at you and think, "Who the heck is that guy? And why did he just walk into the post?"...wait? what? Ok, so maybe day dreaming all of that while walking isn't such a great idea. But after you regain consciousness and the bump on your head heals, you might just find out that one of those things is...
I have completed my first video tutorial! And I have to say, video tutorials are pretty dang hard to do. I did have a lot of fun doing it but I don't see this being a common trend for me. XNADevelopment.com is going to remain a simple step by step text based tutorial site. I just have a lot more fun putting those together and text is a much more forgiving medium than video! You can tell when watching the video that I ran into some sound issues. I didn't find that out until I was completely finished...
Don't TELL me you haven't heard about the Charity Fragathon?! Are you kidding me? It's only going to be the biggest, loudest and rockinest XNA gaming event to benefit a charity ever! This is one of those events that makes me wish I didn't live where I do because I KNOW I'm missing out on the start of something cool. So if you're within driving distance of Bloomington, Minnesota (or you have the resource to fly there), don't be lame, shake off some of that mid-week lethargy and do something fun like...
I wasn't planning on doing it. The XNA 3.0 framework (even in BETA form) just has so many awesome features I want to take advantage of that I couldn't resist. So I whirled through my site in a conversion frenzy and moved every single bit of downloadable source code (about 25 different projects) to the XNA 3.0 BETA framework. Some of the projects lost sound (I was using older XACT projects and I either need to re-create those or use the new Content pipeline features and just drop some sounds in) but...
It's not the final release yet, but it's a step up from a CTP! The XNA 3.0 BETA is now live and available for download. Check out the post from the XNA team on the team blog and then go grab your download! Can't wait to see what the community starts churning out with some of the new features. It's always fun when a new release of the framework comes out (even when it's just a CTP or BETA) because the community always seems to come alive and a lot start pouring out. Have fun and if you've got an interesting...
So I spent another day resting up at home (and icing up). With nothing else to do but just sit, I took some more time to convert a lot of my older projects to the 3.0 CTP (fingers crossed when a 3.0 release comes out, updating them again is extremely smooth). I haven't updated all the accompanying tutorials, but the source code is not 3.0 compatible. Without further ado, here's the next group that have been converted at XNADevelopment.com. Fade In, Fade Out This XNA framework tutorial demonstrates...
I took some time today to convert one of my older game demos to work with the XNA 3.0 CTP. Move the Growing Creature but Do Not Collide is now a 3.0 project. I also made a little video to go along with it. Then, just for fun, I whipped up a little Pong clone called Hit the Ball and Do Not miss. (Also took some time to make a video for that). You can download the source for both projects from their respective pages on XNADevelopment.com. Both were fun samples to make and are great beginner projects...
I took some time today to update the source code for my Cops and Robbers game demo for the XNA 2.0 framework. While I was at it, I ported it to the XBox 360 as well. I had begun to the port to the Zune when I discovered that some of the XNA API calls I was using for the PC and 360 weren't available for the Zune! Mainly no ResolveBackBuffer method for the GraphicsDevice object. Total bummer. I'll have to see if I can figure out another way to do the things I'm doing to achieve the motion blur. The...
I took some time today to update the source code for my little color key collision detection sample, "The Road Not Taken". I haven't gotten the tutorial updated just yet, but the source code has been converted to work with the XNA 3.0 CTP Framework. (hopefully the 3.0 framework comes out soon and I can get it working with that as well). I also took the time to make the sample work on the Zune AND the 360. The 360 project had to be done in the XNA 2.0 framework since the 3.0 CTP doesn't support 360...
I'm laying here on the couch with ice on my crotch feeling like someone kicked me in the nuts. Yep, today was THE day. Today was V day. No longer will I be fathering any new children. For those living in fear of overpopulation, you can let out a sigh of relief. The world is saved from my amazing potency. With four young boys ready to follow in my footsteps of populating the earth in my name, I decided my work was done. (and I think looking at that picture I didn't do so bad). The vasectomy procedure...
So....this past week has been a bit of a mini-vacation from things. Why? Well, I bought the Orange Box and I got addicted to Team Fortress 2. How addicted? Well over a 4 day period, I logged 24 hours into the game. Yeah, an entire day devoted to play a game. I've cut back a little bit, but every time I have a small window of time, I'm tempted. Very tempted. It's not often that I get sucked into a game like this, especially for the PC. There's only been a few. Unreal Tournament 2004 was my first....
The fourth meeting of PAXNAUG was this past Wednesday. I intended to give an introductory overview of developing games for the Zune but things didn't go quite as planned... We did a much better job of advertising for this meeting and the turnout was great. As 6:30 rolled around, people were still trickling in and we all sat around socializing and chowing down on pizza. With all the newcomers we decided to go around and have everyone introduce themselves and just give a little bit of what they were...
We've had our third meeting of PAXNAUG and it went really well. We had an interesting discussion on sprite movement and the presentation and demonstration went swimmingly. We had quite a lot of snacks and refreshments as well. We had the room reserved, the signs posted and even put up reminders on the PAXNAUG site. We did have one slight issue though. Small turnout. It's ok. We know you were busy. But we did miss you just a little. We want to start bringing in speakers from great faraway lands. Other...
If you haven't noticed, I've been playing a LOT with game development. Specifically game development using Microsoft's XNA framework. I love it. It's probably one of my favorite ways to spend my free time. I love to code, I love creating things and making games is just, well, FUN! I'm also fairly active in the XNA community and have been for quite a while. So being actively involved and helping out other struggling game developers, one common theme I hear is, "I can't make my game, I can only do...
So the XNA forums are down for a bit of "reconstruction" I just thought I'd do a post to let people know there's no need to panic. The excellent support and help they get via the forums will be available again momentarily. The real question though is what am I going to do with this reasonably large chunk of free time I'm going to have available now that I don't need to troll the forums every minute of the day? I think I need to start posting some of the projects I've been working on recently. The...
Happy Free Comic Book Day! I meant to write about this earlier but better let than never. I just can't let today go by without reminding everyone about Free Comic Book Today! Yep, that's right, today at participating comic books shops (which is basically all of them in my area) they will be handing out Free Comic Books. The kids and I have a blast on this day. It's becoming a holiday for us that's about as big as Easter (it's already bigger than Halloween for me since I don't really like candy, but...
The MVP Summit has come and gone for 2008 and once again I was just blown away by the experience. This was my second summit and I came back extremely motivated and inspired to make sure I have a third. Just being around the other MVPs and the people at Microsoft makes you feel like you should be better at what you do. Just smart and inspiring guys all around. I personally want to say thanks to the entire XNA development team. You guys are doing a fantastic job and I really felt my time there the...
The first meeting of the Portland Area XNA User Group was a complete success! We had a great turnout for our first meeting with just over ten people showing up (for as inexperience we are at running a user group, we were THRILLED with this turnout). I apparently love the sound of my own voice and managed to talk about XNA for over an hour. I wasn't really planning on talking that long, it kind of just happened. I didn't see anyone sleeping and I got some great feedback afterwards so hopefully I wasn't...
The first meeting of PAXNAUG is tonight! If you need directions or more information about the time, look at the PAXNAUG meeting post. Looks like it's going to be a small turnout, but for as new as we are to running a user group, that's probably a good thing. We have the pizza ordered and we're making a run for the few other remaining supplies we need right now. We didn't get sponsorship for the first one, so this meeting is on us. We figured we'd aggressively hunt sponsors for the higher number meetings....
I just finished up the fourth and final part to the Wizard and posted it to my site at XNADevelopment.com. This final installment in the series covers adding the ability to have the Wizard shoot magic fireballs. So creating projectiles and maintaining them it covered in the tutorial. This has been a fun (but LONG) set of tutorials to write. Let me know what you think of them so I can either continue doing tutorials in this style or adjust them. I'm always happy to hear feedback. Several things I've...
This is the fourth and final part in the Wizard series. We have covered making a sprite move, jump and duck. Now, we're moving onto creating projectiles and making your sprite shoot. Starting the game project: We are going to be building off everything that we did in the third part of the Wizard series "The Wizard - Part 3: Making a Sprite Duck". Instead of creating a new XNA Game project, you can just download the source for that project and begin working from that game project. Adding the images:...
Part 3 of the Wizard has just been posted to XNADevelopment.com. This part in the Wizard series covering sprite movement and actions shows how to add the ability for your Wizard sprite to "duck". This introduces you to the concepts of using a sprite sheet and learning to change "frames" for your sprite in game. I'm making a serious effort to deliver the re-write of the original Wizard code in smaller, cleaner and more digestible chunks. While the original tutorial "worked", I knew the code wasn't...
This is the third in a four part series to show you how to add some movement and action to your sprite. This first part was covered in "The Wizard - Part 1: Moving a Sprite on the Screen". The second part was covered in "The Wizard - Part 2: Making a Sprite Jump". Part three covers adding the ability to make your sprite have a little "ducking" animation. Starting the game project: We are going to be building off everything that we did in the second part of the Wizard series "The Wizard - Part 2:...
I have just posted part two in the Wizard series. This series is covering adding movement and actions to a sprite. You can head on over to XNADevelopment.com to check out The Wizard: Part 2- Making A Sprite Jump. Part two covers adding the code needed to the project to get your sprite jumping around the screen. After working through the tutorial, don't be afraid to modify and play with the code. That's one of the best ways to learn. If you get things messed up too badly, you can always delete the...
This is the second in a four part series to show you how to add some movement and action to your sprite. This first part was covered in "The Wizard - Part 1: Moving a Sprite on the Screen". Part two covers adding the ability to make your sprite Jump. Starting the game project: We are going to be building off everything that we did in the first part of this series "The Wizard - Part 1: Moving a Sprite on the Screen". Instead of creating a new XNA Game project, you can just download the source for...
First, I just want to say thanks for all the great feedback I've gotten in comments and email. I don't make any money from doing these tutorials, I don't want donations and I'm not a fan of ads so your comments are what keep me going. Silly I know, but just a little "Thanks!" really does make all the work that goes into the site and these tutorials worth it. So "Thanks!" for the comments and emails. Keep them coming! I love hearing back from people using the tutorials and benefiting from them. I...
This is the first in a four part series to show you how to add some movement and action to your sprite. This first part will go over the basics of getting keyboard input from the player and using it to make the Sprite move around the screen. Creating the new game project: We are going to be using the "Sprite" class we created in the tutorial "Creating a 2D Sprite". Instead of creating a new XNA Game project, you can just download the source for that project and begin working from that game project....
I have completely re-written and posted the tutorial covering scrolling a 2D background on my site . This tutorial has been upgraded with improved code and art assets and is now completely re-written for the XNA 2.0 framework. I have also take the time to create a more advanced version of the source code. I tend to target beginners with my site so I don't always make my code as "robust" as it could be. Often, it teaches a concept, but it's not easy to reuse in another project. The advanced version...
Scrolling a 2D Background Scrolling background images horizontally across the screen If you're working on 2D games, at some point you're going to want to know how to create a scrolling background. This tutorial will cover setting up a horizontally scrolling background that auto-scrolls behind your character. Let's go ahead and get started. Creating the new game project: We are going to be using the "Sprite" class we created in the tutorial "Creating a 2D Sprite". Instead of creating a new XNA Game...
I have completely re-written the tutorial covering creating a 2D sprite and posted it to my site at XNADevelopment.com. I'm much happier with it this time around. This tutorial covers displaying your first sprite on the screen and then positioning the sprite. The tutorial then takes you a step further and helps you get accustomed to object oriented development and walks you through creating a "Sprite" class for creating and drawing your sprites on the screen. Teaching you a fundamental step you will...
I have re-written the tutorial covering Adding an Image to the game project for the XNA 2.0 framework and posted it to XNADevelopment.com. This tutorial covers adding images to the new "Content" folder available in 2.0 projects. Head on over and check out the tutorial, Adding an Image to the Game Project. As always, comments are appreciated. Technorati Tags: XNA...
Creating a new XNA Windows Game Project has been re-written for the XNA 2.0 framework and posted to my site at XNADevelopment.com. I created this tutorial to make it easier to write future tutorials since I can just point people to this tutorial when I'm talking about creating a new Windows game. The tutorial covers creating your first Windows game and getting that beautiful cornflower blue to show. Head on over and check out the tutorial, Creating a new XNA Windows Game Project. Please feel free...
The complete re-write for this tutorial for the XNA 2.0 framework has been posted to my site at XNADevelopment.com. In this tutorial I cover all that you need to know to get started with the XNA framework and on your way to making your game. I know I get a bit wordy, so I added a short little bulleted list to the tutorial, just for people that hate to read. (you know who you are!) So head on over and check out the tutorial, Getting Started with XNA development. As always, feel free to leave me any...
Creating a 2D sprite and getting it displayed on the screen is a very quick and painless process using the XNA framework, so let's get started! Creating the new game project: First, let's start by opening XNA Game Studio Express and creating a new Windows Game project. If you are having trouble remembering how to create a new XNA Windows Game project just follow the steps in this tutorial here and come back to the this tutorial after you've refreshed your memory. Adding the images: Now, let's add...
So you have heard about this awesome new game thing from Microsoft and you are all excited because your mind is brimming with ideas for really cool games, but just one problem, you are just not really sure how to get started. Well, let's see what we can do about getting you pointed in the right direction. For those of you who are not fans of reading (come on guys, how far are you going to get in life honestly if you don't learn to love to read?), here's the summarized quickie list of what you need...
Adding an Image to the Game Project An XNA tutorial covering how to add an image to a game project Before you can start drawing backgrounds, characters, power ups and all the other little goodies you plan on having in your game to the screen, you will need to add these images to your game project. The image types you can add that are supported by the Content Pipeline are .bmp, .jpg, .png and a few texture file formats. Primarily, I would recommend to stick with .png files to take advantage of the...
Creating a new Windows XNA Game Project An XNA tutorial covering how to start a new game by creating a new Windows Game project Creating a new game project To create a game with the XNA framework, we first need to create a new Windows Game Project. Creating a new game project is how all new games will start out. The first step in creating a new game project is launching XNA Game Studio Express. Once XNA Game Studio Express has loaded, navigate to the menu and click on "File" and then select "New...
Jeff Jenkins has graciously (and apparently posthumously since I had added his site to my links graveyard a while back) released a second version of his XNA 360 Controller button graphics for use in your XNA created games. What's that you say, why did I say "second", well that's because many, many moons ago he released his first XNA Button pack! The only complaint that I have with these button packs is that, well, he's a much better artist than I am, so when I stick them into my games it just reminds...
If you've already said yes, good for you! If you haven't, then you must live more than 1,000 miles away (any closer and I can't imagine you not taking a quick road trip). But just on the off chance you're not even sure what a PAXNAUG is, just head on over to the newly launched Portland Area XNA User Group site and see for yourself. Our first meeting is going to be coming up towards the end of March. Don't forget to reply to the meeting announcement post on the PAXNAUG site letting us know you're...
For those of you that know me offline, you already know most of this story. For those of you that don't, let me catch you up. For the past several months (basically since November 2007), I have been pulling double duty as Daddy and Mommy and living a life filled with more than a tad of stress and worry. You see my wife was pregnant with our fourth boy and was put on bed rest around that time. That's typically done with pregnant women when there's a risk and danger of the baby being delivered too...
I just got my e-mail this morning that I have been renewed as a Microsoft XNA MVP for 2008 for my work this past year. So what did I do to deserve this? Well. A lot. This past year has been a busy one for me just in general and I didn't get nearly as much done as I had planned on doing for the XNA community. But here is what I did do. If you've ever wondered just what DOES an MVP do? What is it that earns them a nomination or gets them renewed? Here's my list. I can't guarantee that by duplicating...
Just over six months ago (at the end of June 2007), I started on a path to becoming a better developer. This was a movement started by the impressive, charismatic and sexy blogger Justice Gray (the check is in the mail right?). He hand picked me to be in on the first generation of developers dedicated to focusing the next six months of their lives to becoming a better developer. I immediately hopped on board (by "immediately" I mean after several nagging emails from Justice to get started) this movement...
The first ever Twin Cities XNA User Group meeting is tonight THURSDAY). Started by my buddy Chris Williams this is an event that if you CAN make it to, you MUST make it to. The event is tonight, THURSDAY THURSDAY THURSDAY, Nov. 15th and starts at 6:00 PM. If you're within driving distance of Golden Valley, MN make sure you block out your schedule for this momentous occasion. Flying in as the first speaker is the one and the only Zman. The man is brilliant. I recommend you go just to listen and bask...
You should definitely check out the upcoming XNA events being held there. I unfortunately will not be attending due to this small bit of water separating myself from my fame and riches, but there will be several notable speakers and XNA community leaders there to help guide the lucky ones on their way. More than enough knowledge to be gleaned from the experts at this event to get you started on the right track and get you going on your own XNA XBLA title like The Dishwasher: The Dead Samurai. Head...
An XNA tutorial on using a Color Key for Path Collisions Telling a sprite where it can and cannot travel in a game is always a very crucial aspect of game development. If a character can walk through walls and move anywhere on the board, a lot of the challenge of a game disappears. There are several methods for creating paths in a game, some use tile based systems, some use bounding boxes and rectangles. The method we are going to go over today uses a Color key to define the allowed path. What is...
I've posted a new tutorial at XNADevelopment.com. This one covers doing path collision using a color key. This was a really fun project to do this weekend. Really learned a lot so I thought I would share. I have also added a couple simpler tutorials for both my benefit and yours. I was finding myself repeating certain steps over and over in each tutorial. Particularly walking a reader through creating a new game project and adding images to game project. So in an effort to stop repeating myself,...
An XNA tutorial covering how to add an image to a game project Before you can start drawing backgrounds, characters, power ups and all the other little goodies you plan on having in your game to the screen, you will need to add these images to your game project. The image types you can add that are supported by the Content Pipeline are .bmp, .jpg, .png and a few texture file formats. Primarily, I would recommend to stick with .png files to take advantage of the transparency those files provide. The...
An XNA tutorial covering how to start a new game by creating a new Windows Game project Creating a new game project To create a game with the XNA framework, we first need to create a new Windows Game Project. Creating a new game project is how all new games will start out. The first step in creating a new game project is launching XNA Game Studio Express. Once XNA Game Studio Express has loaded, navigate to the menu and click on "File" and then select "New Project" from the menu drop down. This will...
I have been working the past several weeks on giving XNADevelopment.com some updates to its styles. I think that I'm finally done tinkering for now. Nothing major was done. It is still the same super simplistic site with little to no bells or whistles. I love it. If you are curious what has changed, I've muted the colors a bit. I think it makes for easier reading. You'll have to let me know if you disagree. I've also tried to make links stand out a bit more too. The largest change was suggested by...
Yeah, that's right. Someone actually had the guts to do it. They took words that I had written and put them in their magazine. Those brave, brave fools. Don't they know what they have done? Pandora's box has been opened and the vileness in my mind has been unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. May God have mercy on your souls. If you think you're brave enough (and actually have a hankering for reading), then go ahead and take a peek. The Sept/Oct 2007 issue of CoDe magazine has an article that I...
I took the previous weekend and wrote a little game demo that showcases a motion blur technique that Shawn Hargreaves had written about in his blog. This game was a blast to make and came together pretty quickly. The background music was generously provided by one Mr. Nool and I hope to see more free content of this kind from him. He does some quality work! I think one of my favorite things about this game was making the title screen. I really hadn't put this much work into a title screen before...
One year ago today I came home from Microsoft Gamefest excited and jazzed about XNA and rushed out and purchased the XNADevelopment.com domain. Today is my sites one year birthday and what an amazing year it has been. I've been involved in official launches, been interviewed by community sites, become a Microsoft MVP for XNA, spoken at my local Code Camp and watched 4 game hobbyists get the opportunity to have their games published on XBox Live Arcade. The time has just flown by and every new twist...
George is relatively new to the development scene. He took a short course in BASIC on Apple IIgs in High School and didn't re-visit the computer world again until his freshman year of college in 1996. A lot had changed. George managed to catch up (some) and graduated with a Math/Computer Science major in 2000 from Grove City College. He's been employed as a software developer ever since and continues to refine his development skills and play catch up with all these "old school" developers. Currently,...
"What was I thinking when I wrote that?" If you are a developer who has ever had to re-look at code you wrote in the past (sometimes even just a few minutes in the past), you're bound to have had those thoughts. The code you look at is utter gibberish. Garbage, confusing as heck, unnecessarily complicated and makes you scratch your head just wondering what in the world was going on in your head when your spewed forth that vile code. Every time I come across some code like that, I give a little chuckle...
Seriously. Reading the entire way through a tech book is hard. I'm currently working on reading Code Complete as part of meeting one of my goals for "Becoming a Better Developer". This has become the one goal that I am having a serious struggle to finish this month. It's one of the hardest things I have done recently. I'm talking deadline is in a few days and you just realized that extra little feature you added during the final stages of the project when you knew you shouldn't but figured it wouldn't...
I had been trying to recreate yet another crazy error that our loco tester had found and I was kind of running through some different ideas to do for a team presentation for the group in my mind as I was tracking it down. I was getting frustrated because I could make the error happen, but it was only occurring on about the 65th record I was iterating through in a loop. That's when it hit me, debugging was something we all could use some help on. It's something that we all have to do just about e
Well, I gave my first team presentation today as part of my "Being a Better Developer" goals. Today's topic was "A Refresher Course on Debugging" and you can read the article I wrote for the topic if you follow that link. The article was based on (i.e. copied from) one of the best debugging articles I have ever read. You can read the original and much more in depth article on debugging here (warning, it has a game development focus, but is still applicable to most developers). The presentation itself...
A Conversation with Scott Hanselman was a game concept that was born from a little conversation that occurred at the MVP Summit with the "giant among geeks" Scott Hanselman (go check out Scott, his blog and his podcasts if you're not familiar with him. They are well worth your time). Now Scott wasn't aware of it, but I was designing this game in my head while we were talking. Coming back from the summit, the idea had lain dormant in my mind until a recent podcast by Scott sparked it again. The spark...
I was listening to Scott Hansleman's 70th podcast the other day and it brought back a memory from the MVP summit. It was at one of the Microsoft parties and towards the end of the night (did I mention the drinks were free?), I bumped into Scott Hanselman and had a little conversation with him. I've seen Scott around, being from the same area we attend some of the same geek events like the Portland Code Camp, but this was my first time I ever engaged him in a one on one conversation. It was a blast!...
Today marks the start of my journey to becoming a better developer. I am telling you all about it so that I can be held accountable for things I am about to say. I did not want to over think this but I did want to do things that challenged me as a developer on a variety of level. This is the current list of 6 months goals. I will not remove anything from this list, but I may add to it as I begin this journey to improve as a developer. I will read 1 technical book every month for the next 6 months....
I have put the source code up from my Portland Code Camp 3.0 presentation. For this talk, I created a Donkey.bas clone during my session (well, we almost completed it...) The game itself is super simple, but it demonstrates quite a few 2D game development concepts without a lot of the usual design and development clutter. I plan on writing a bit more about the talk itself and the rest of the Portland Code Camp, so I'll save that for a later post. For now, I'll just say that I think it went ok and...
Back in 1981, there was a game co-written by Bill Gates and released for the early versions of the PC-Dos operating system, called Donkey.bas. Drive Fast and Dodge the Oncoming obstacles is an XNA clone done in honor of that game. This game was used in my Portland Code Camp 3.0 presentation as a demonstration of just how quickly you can construct a 2D game using the XNA game development framework. I have enhanced the game to be a full "single-switch" game so that the player can actually move through...
Portland Code Camp 3.0 is nearly upon us and I hope you are as excited as I am (well, I might be excited and just a little nervous too, but you don't need to be nervous, Code Camp is a great experience, we will get to why I'm nervous in just a bit). Running May 19th to the 20th, Portland Code Camp looks like it's going to be another great experience this year. If you are a developer in the Portland, Oregon area, you NEED to attend this event. It is a free event, so just get registered and drive yourself...
I've always hated these type of blog posts. The ones that say, "Sorry I haven't blogged for a while, I've been busy". Tends to make me think, "You've been away? I hadn't even noticed..." and now I find myself wanting to announce to the world (a world who didn't notice, well I guess a few people did...oh and hi Mom!) something similar. Well, similar except that I'm not sorry I was away, I'm just letting everyone know that I am back. Yep, I've officially decided today is the day I start my momentum...
The new refresh of the XNA Game Development framework is out today. Get it here. (beat you Gambit ;) ) Technorati Tags: XNA
Well, I have not had a lot of time to work on my entry since the first rough draft of the design document was made, but I have made some progress. Basically, I've begun putting together the initial prototype for the game just to see if the gameplay itself is any fun. This is a question I figured might be better to answer now than later. Unfortunately, we still can't answer that question because the gameplay still is not there. What I do have is some of the game elements displaying. I have some randomly...
I have put a new sample game with source code up at XNADevelopment.com. This sample is a clone of the very popular cell phone game "Snake". It is one of those recommended starter games for new developers to get under their belt as they continue to take baby steps and spread their wings as game developers. Move The Growing Creature But Do Not Collide was a blast to make and to keep it interesting for me, I did not develop it using the traditional grid based movement approach most Snake game clones...
Move the Growing Creature But Do Not collide is a classic "first game" clone. The logic for the game is fairly straightforward and the gameplay itself is very simple. Simply move the creature around the board and try not to hit any of the walls or it's ever growing tail. This game is typically made using "grid style" movement. What that means is that the board is split up into a series of squares and the creature moves from square to square within the grid. This makes it very easy to move and check...
Microsoft's Dream Build Play contest is in full swing. Having thrown my hat into the ring earlier, I figured now might be a good time to actually start doing some work on my entry. The competition is going to be fierce with some extremely skilled competitors, so since I calculate my chance of winning a prize to be fairly low I figure I will try and capture the hearts of the community instead. How do I hope to win your hearts? Quite simple, I plan on blogging my progress in this contest from beginning...
I will be out of the "intertubes" for about the next week. Microsoft's MVP summit is running this week and they STILL haven't realized their mistake and stripped me of my MVP title yet, so I will be there. I'm really looking forward to all of the sessions (and hopefully I get at least some information that my NDA with Microsoft won't prevent me from talking about) since a ton of my sessions will be about the XNA we all know and love. (well, everyone except for some very special readers (you know...
This new tutorial at XNADevelopment covers the basics of putting together a Health bar for your game. It walks you through the basics of setting up a new game project, adding an image, tracking the current health level and displaying that appropriately in the game. I plan to add a "One Step Further" section to the tutorial, but I am still working on the art assets for that project so there is only the tutorial and it's source for now. I tried to write the code as clear and as concise as possible,...
This tutorial will cover the basics of creating a Health bar. A health bar is that visual representaion of just how close to death your game character is. This tutorial will show a method of creating that health bar for your own games. Creating the new game project: To start, first we need to create a new Windows Game Project. This can be done by launching XNA Game Studio Express and then selecting File -> New Project from the menu. In the New Project window, select the "Windows Game" template...
I have finally found the time to finish a new tutorial for XNADevelopment.com. In this tutorial I cover creating an RTS style selection box using a single image. This was a fun little project and I've only done one of many ways this effect can be achieved. I tried to make the code very simple and readable so that most beginners should be able to tackle this exercise. I've also included a "One Step Further" project, where I took the SelectionBox source code and enhanced it so that you can select "units"...
In this tutorial, we will show how to create a selection box. A selection box is the dotted line rectangle that you see in most real time strategy (RTS) games that is used to select your units. This tutorial will cover how to go about creating a dynamically sized rectangular selection box that could be useful in creating your own RTS game. Creating the new game project: To start, first create a new Windows Game Project. This can be done by launching XNA Game Studio Express and then selecting File...
Microsoft is ramping up to launch the contest to end all contests in the next week. The Dream/Build/Play contest has the potential to change a hobbyist developer's life forever. While the contest PALES in comparison to the fine game development contests run by Geeks with Blogs (when are we starting the next one Jeff and John?), it's sure to make you dream big as you imagine a game that you wrote being picked up officially on XBox Live Arcade. I'm officially throwing my hat in the ring on this one....
Note: This post was completely stolen from BloggusMaximus because I'm too lazy to rewrite it myself. For those of you who don't like to read announcements: xna3way.com A few months ago, 3 of us got together and decided to form a team of game developers. Each of us bringing our own specific talents to create something greater than the sum of its parts. We're like a superteam of game developer friends... the superfriends of XNA, if you will. The really great part is that we've been working on some...
The Best XNA Move in the Universe has been posted. I haven't even watched it yet, but I know it's good. I mean, it's directed by Rory. Go take a look (I hope it's good.....) Technorati Tags: XNA...
I finally posted a little tutorial covering how to fade an image in and out of a scene in XNA. I had written this code a couple of weeks ago after a question in the MSDN XNA Forums made me think about how to achieve an effect like that. The tutorial covers step by step instructions from setting up the game project, adding an image to the project, writing the logic for fading the image in and out and how to apply that effect when drawing the image. It also introduces one of my new favorite MathHelper...
With little, to no fan-fare. XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 is now available for download from Microsoft. Eagerly anticipated by the entire XNA community that has been playing with Beta 1 and Beta 2 for months this download was announced by many eager beavers of the community before the post went up from Microsoft. Many people are even now playing games they made on their XBox 360s! So far, I haven't encountered any conversion issues for my existing games and tutorials, but I've only tested a couple...
XNATutorial, one of the top community sites for XNA has been conducting a series of interviews with other community leaders. The first of these interviews was with Mark Coffman, the founder of XBox360Homebrew.com. It's a great interview and really helps flush out one of the leading community figures for XNA. Joran, of XNATutorial, seems to be planning on a series of these interviews and I'm looking forward to learning more about Joran as well as the other community figures. If you've never been to...
The XNA Team has just announced that they are going to throw a little shindig up at Microsoft to celebrated the official launch of XNA Game Studio Express and the Creator's club. Sounds like it should be a great time. I'm crossing my fingers that my car can make that drive! If you're in the Seattle/Redmond area (or are willing to make the trip) go on over and check it out. Should be a fun geeky time. December 11th just can't come soon enough! Technorati Tags: XNA...
XNA has made game development easy, but to use the XNA framework you still have to be able to develop with C#. You don't have to be an expert, but you do need to understand the basics of Object Oriented development and the general syntax for the C# language. That's great for existing developers, but there are a lot of non-developers who are interested in XNA, but need to start at the beginning and first learn how to develop with C# before they can learn how to develop a game with XNA. I'm trying...
PC Gamer and GameInformer magazines have mentioned my site XNADevelopment.com in the articles they wrote covering Microsoft's XNA framework. While my name wasn't mentioned, it was still pretty fun seeing my site in print in those gaming magazines. I'm pretty sure that GameInformer just did a search for "xna" and grabbed the first 10 community sites it got back in the results, but PC Gamer actually mentioned my site like they had been there. So there I have it, my 15 minutes of fame. Without ever...
I have put a new game "Falling Blocks You Move to make Lines" on my site. The game was originally written with Beta 1, but I have finally converted it to be Beta 2 compatible and made the source code available for all on my site. "Falling Blocks You Move to make Lines" is a Tetris clone (did the name give it away?). Tetris has always been one of those games that is generally considered to be one of the first "baby steps" every new game developer should take. XNA has made taking that first step extremely...
My fingers are trembling and sore, my shoulders are aching and I'm not sure how many times I listened to the same playlist through on my music player. But I did it, my site XNADevelopment has been updated so that all of the tutorials and all of the code is now Beta 2 compliant. *sigh* What a relief. I'm so glad that it's finally done and now I can just move forward working on new projects. I'm pretty busy right now working on a few un-mentionable side projects doing XNA development, but I do hope...
ALL TUTORIALS ARE NOW BETA 2 COMPATIBLE!! XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2 was released on November 1, 2006 (get it here). Every single one of the projects and tutorials on this site have been converted to valid Beta2 projects. XNA Game Studio Express was first released in beta version on August 30, 2006 and is currently in Beta 2 with the official release targeted for early December 2006. With XNA Game Studio Express, developers can create games using the XNA Framework. While developers have always...
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Creating a 2D sprite using the XNA framework is a simple project based off of the Microsoft “Creating your first XNA Game” tutorial. By the end of this tutorial you should be familiar with and be able to implement and extend the following concepts: Drawing a sprite Moving a sprite Boundary collision detection Keyboard input Simple frame animation To start, open up Visual C# 2005 Express edition and create a new project. Select Windows Game as the template and give your project a name, then click...
Creating a 2D Sprite Creating a 2D sprite using the XNA framework is a simple project based off of the Microsoft "Creating your first XNA Game" tutorial. By the end of this tutorial you should be familiar with and be able to implement and extend the following concepts: - Drawing a sprite - Moving a sprite - Boundary collision detection - Keyboard input - Simple frame animation To start, open up Visual C# 2005 Express edition and create a new project. Select Windows Game as the template and give your...
Yes, as Chris pointed out in such a perfectly succinct manner last night, XNA Beta 2 has indeed arrived. There are a ton of new enhancements, but as is the case with all beta projects, there have been a ton of very significant changes as well. If you had a Beta 1 project, you will NOT be able to open it in Beta 2 and will have to make new projects and just import your old Beta 1 code. You can read about some of the major changes here on the XNA Team blog. I've put my warning up on my XNA site that...
Well, I was pretty excited when I saw the previews for NBC's new show Heroes and watching the first episode last night did not leave me disappointed. I'm just crossing my fingers that NBC doesn't pull it's typical shenanigans and cancel the show before it has a chance to develop it's loyal following. Heroes follows the lives of various individuals as they begin to discover they have super powers. It has a MutantX feel, with better acting and not quite so cheesy. I'm pretty curious at this point what's...
I've posted a new tutorial over at XNA Development covering character movement in 2D games. This tutorial covers the basics of making a character move around, jump, duck and shoot. It also demonstrates using a tile sheet for your texture, simple animation, tracking character state and basic OO techniques. This little demo game was a blast to make (I am particularly pleased with the way the Wizard turned out), I always make my own graphics and I happen to really like this one). XNA game development...
I've made a new game developed using XNA. I wrote this game for my son who just entered the 1st grade and loves playing with numbers (geek in the making I believe....) The game is called "Jellies A Plenty" and consists of a little Jelly guy hopping around a board answering simple math questions. Getting an answer right, rewards him with a Jelly Bean, answering a question wrong releases the Shark creature. Seems to be a hit with my son and making it was relatively simple. Only two days of actual development...
New tutorial on scrolling a 2D background using XNA on my site XNADevelopment. It covers creating the project, adding images to the project and scrolling those images horizontally in a continuous loop. I've posted the tutorial and the source code if you're interested. So far, I'm SUPER impressed with XNA development and just how easy it has been. The support from the XNA developers in the Microsoft forums has been outstanding as well. These guys are really going over and above helping out all of...
Well, last night after we officially launched my wife's store, I was still pretty jazzed up from the Mountain Dew AMP drinks so I took some cool off laps with XNA. In about 15 minutes I had a little demo project up and running with an auto-scrolling horizontal background. I've posted a tutorial and the source code if you're interested. So far, I'm SUPER impressed with XNA development and just how easy it has been. The support from the XNA developers in the Microsoft forums has been outstanding as...
My wife is a scrapbooker. Maybe your wife, girlfriends, significant other is too. I'm sorry, I understand, I'm there too. We hear a lot about WoW widows and such, but we husbands of the scrapbookers, we have it just as rough. Garages, spare rooms, closets filled with paper scrapbooking materials. Papers, ribbons, 60 different types of scissors, embellishments, buttons, etc. Then comes the digital scrapbooking and you have Photoshop, drawing tablets, memory, external hard drives... Recently, I was...
Well, it isn't much, but holy cow was it easy to put together. Here it is in all it's glory, my first XNA tutorial and game
I got my first XNA game and tutorial done. I am just in shock at the amount of overhead Microsoft has hidden from the game developer. I was able to get a sprite up and moving around the screen in about 10 minutes following their tutorial. Need keyboard support? No problem. Yeah, I'm really excited, I can't wait to discover more of the little goodies that XNA gives you. Off to do some more investigation into bounding box collisions. Technorati Tags: XNA...
I just got the beta for XNA Game Development studio downloaded. You can get your free copy here. I'm so excited, it's going to be VERY hard to concentrate on work today. I will be sharing my experiences as I learn to develop using the XNA framework I will be sure to post any new game development tutorials here and at my site XNA Development. Goodness gracious this day is going to drag on forever. I just want to make a game using XNA! Technorati Tags: XNA...
Yep. I sure did. I also find it funny that's been the number on question that I've been asked since I got back. No one seems to want to hear about any of the cool technologies I saw, the interesting people I met or the diseases I picked up at the Gamefest orgy. No one. So, since swag is the number one topic of interest, it is swag you shall hear about. For me, my number one piece of swag comes in the form of trash. I however, will be hanging on to this piece of trash for life. My conference badge...
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