Game Development

Take Over The World With XNA Indie Games

Chris Williams — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:08:22 GMT

A while back, I submitted an XNA talk to the South By SouthWest Music/Film/Interactive Conference (also known as SXSW) and it's currently up for voting in the Interactive category.

I'd really appreciate some votes in order for my talk to get selected. You can click this link or the image to the left to go to the site and vote for my talk.

You will need to register on the SXSW site to place a vote, but there's no charge for that and it's quick and easy.

Be sure to leave a comment with your vote so I know where to send the cookies later. :)

Take Over The World With XNA Indie Games

Microsoft's XNA blows open the barn doors to make creating indie games possible on their next generation console (XBOX 360) and a variety of other platforms. Come learn the WHAT, HOW and WHY of making games with XNA in this exciting and entertaining session.

From the SXSW FAQ...

Q: If I submitted a proposal to the PanelPicker, should I encourage my friends to vote for my submission?

A: Absolutely. Rallying your friends and associates to vote for your panel proposal demonstrates energy, motivation and organizational ability. And, all of these skills are important when it comes to organizing a successful panel for SXSW.

RPG in a week? well, no...

Chris Williams — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:52:45 GMT

I'm starting a new RPG project, using XNA and targetting the XBOX 360. I'll be doing the project in C# although I'm leveraging a lot of the code and work I did in VB.NET & Heroic Adventure.

I got some interesting ideas from the RPG in a week page (here: www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2259.asp) though I won't be doing mine anywhere near that fast.

I spent a few hours over the weekend doing some basic design and coding the inital data structures. So far things are going pretty smooth. Some of the things you can expect to see are:

randomly generated dungeons & static dungeons
overland map
towns & villagers / NPCs
quests - some fixed, some generated (by class and/or race, etc)
choice of point driven or "dice" based character development
multiple character class / race combinations to choose from
skill and attribute based advancement - no "levels"
menu system & support for chatpad hotkey commands
magic system - spells and item crafting / alteration
melee and ranged combat
artifact / generated special items
actual graphics, not just ascii characters :)

I'm still on the fence about the combat & skill resolution mechanic. Obviously some form of random number generation will be used, though I'm not sold on a D20 mechanic any more. I've been playing a few different systems lately, including D&D 4e (which IS d20) and a FUDGE based system. (described here: http://members.dsl-only.net/~bing/frp/fudge/) I've got plenty of time before i need to worry about that though.

I may also implement a basic scripting system to handle quests and other content, though this wouldn't necessarily be exposed to players (at least on the 360) but it would make development (especially collaborative development) easier/faster. Although, I kinda like the XML way that the RPG Starter Kit uses... also good for sharing the content creation.

I don't have a name for it yet, that will come later, although I have a few names in mind.

Does this mean Heroic Adventure! is dead? Not exactly, since a lot of it will live on in this new game, but there won't be much new development for it any time soon unless others pick it up on Codeplex.

Math Whiz wanted

Chris Williams — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:41:36 GMT

Are you a math whiz?

Maybe you love Math so much you majored in it in college, or maybe you just really "get" it... Maybe you aren't a math whiz but you know someone who is.

Either way, the Twin Cities XNA User Group could use your help. We'd like someone to come in and give a talk (about an hour, maybe more) on 3D Math as it relates to graphics and game development.

If interested, please contact me.

XNA 3.0 Beta is out

Chris Williams — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:36:40 GMT

http://creators.xna.com/en-us/3.0beta_mainpage

http://creators.xna.com/en-us/3.0beta_mainpage

Have Fun. Raise Money. Help Kids. I give you the Charity Fragathon

Chris Williams — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:06:33 GMT

so a few of you (including my parents) have been wondering what this "big idea" of mine was. It's not another game store, although don't rule that out permanently. It's not a video game studio, although again... never say never.

No, this is something truly magnificent.

I give you the Charity Fragathon. www.charityfragathon.com

The Twin Cities XNA User Group is throwing their first ever charity event! Admission to this event is $10 (ten bucks!!) and that covers entry into what just might be the biggest Halo 3 tournament you've ever seen. We'll also have a room set aside for Rock Band 2 and of course XNA games for anyone who wants to check out the new Xbox Live Community Games.

Is that it? Nope, not even close. In addition to all this gaming goodness, we're going to give away some awesome prizes for the tournament winners and random stuff throughout the night. We'll also be providing pizza, sodas and BAWLS Energy Drink courtesy of our sponsors.

So this is for charity? Yep, we're raising money for Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. Magenic (one of our sponsors) has graciously committed to MATCH 100% of the first $3000 we raise, so we're going to hit them for every cent! The only way we can do that is with YOUR donations. If you can't make it, but still want to give... we can totally hook you up.

Caligari trueSpace 7.6 for FREE?!?

Chris Williams — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:57:52 GMT

If you're a 3D kinda guy, which I'm not (well, I'm getting there, but it's a slow journey) then you might be interested in this.

Apparently, Caligari is giving away their trueSpace 7.6 product for free for a limited time.

Here's the marketing fluff:

What you may not expect is that we are making trueSpace7.6 available to everyone at no charge, in a giant step forward to bring high-end 3D authoring tools to all who want them!

trueSpace7.6 is far more than a SketchUp-style 3D architectural modeling tool. Instead, it provides a complete 3D authoring environment for any type of 3D content creation, whether that's images, animations, objects for games, or content or worlds for online interactive shared spaces.

trueSpace7.6's modeling tools feature a variety of surface representations including full polygonal editing, subdivision surface modeling, NURBS, metaballs, and implicit surfaces. Those are supported by400+ modeling tools like real-time Boolean operations with full construction history so you can move subtracted parts of your design at any time during your work, or even change a subtraction to an intersection.

trueSpace 7.6 also provides advanced surfacing tools like layered materials, texture maps, normal maps, procedural materials, UVE projections, real-time DX9 pixel shaders that include shaders to simulate subsurface scattering, reflection, refraction, smoke, fire, water, anisotropicshader, metallic paint, glass ¨C and those are just the real-time shaders!

The animation capabilities are even more impressive.trueSpace7.6 supports key-frame and motion capture animation on fully hierarchical objects. Key-frame animations can be seamlessly blended with procedural animations and physical simulations, all of which can fully interact with each other. This means you can have a walking character animated by key-frames getting hit by a procedurally animated car and fly away in response to the collision thanks to physical simulation.

Real-time renderings by Marcel Barthel.

In trueSpace7.6 you can also create fully articulated characters and interact with them using full body IK with editable direct manipulation widgets for joints (including physical stiffness), and apply physics oranimated morphs for facial expressions.

If you want to create a photorealisticimagesor a video, then the built-in Lightworks high quality offline renderer will give you spectacular rendering results including soft shadows, raytracing, global illumination in form of hybrid radiosity, image based lighting, caustics, tone mapping, HDRI, anisotropic reflectance,multi-pass rendering to Photoshop layers, motion blur, depth of field, lens flares etc.

trueSpace's award-winning direct manipulation interface with its easy-to-use 2D controls and 3D widgets has always been highly praised by users and press alike.For version 7.6 we have streamlined many workflows in extensive collaboration with our Beta testers. The UI is context-based and fully configurable, including toolbars, panels, widgets, layouts and projects. With universal drag-and-drop you can simply drop your model from the 3D workspace directly into an e-mail, written document, etc, and vice versa, clicking on the object in an e-mail will automatically open it in trueSpace.

There are also a series of advanced editors. In addition to the 3D workspace and modeling editors, there are a universal 2D node link editor, a script editor,a non-linear animation editor, a material editor, a UV editor, and more. Plug-ins are now accessible from the real-time 3D workspace and we expect to release truly amazing plug-ins for trueSpace7.6 in the near future, as well as stimulate 3^rd party creation of independent products both free and commercial thanks to the availability of an SDK.

Finally, trueSpace7.6 is the only 3D authoring tool on the market which will allow you do all of the above in real-time shared 3D collaborative spaces where members of the design or animation team can maintain real-time interaction from anywhere in the world.

and here's the important part:

To download trueSpace7.6, visit the link below:
http://cart1.caligari.com/web/Truespacemainreg.aspx

Also, to aid in your learning process we have made all of our video courses, previously $79 each, available at no charge, and you can download those courses here.

Make Money On XNA Games!!

Chris Williams — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:22:20 GMT

Big announcement today:

http://creators.xna.com/en-us/XboxLIVECommunityGames

Schizoid - First XNA Title for XBOX Live Arcade

Chris Williams — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:51:01 GMT

http://www.torpexgames.com

Microsoft and Torpex Games announced today the release of Schizoid for Xbox LIVE Arcade.

Billed as "the most co-op game ever", Schizoid creates a new category of action gaming where teamwork equals survival and players must protect each other from waves of glowing enemies.

Available for download now, Schizoid is the first-ever Xbox LIVE Arcade title built using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio.

Microsoft's Schizoid page: click me

I am really really excited about this. It's great seeing XNA games showing up on Xbox Live Arcade.

Developer Groups in the Twin Cities

Chris Williams — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:57:46 GMT

This month is kind of a big deal (to me) here in the Twin Cities. We're launching not one, but TWO developer related groups.

The first one is my own project, the Twin Cities Developers Guild. (www.twincitiesdevelopersguild.com) Our kickoff meeting is on Tuesday, July 8 at 6pm (with our Kickoff Cookout starting at 5pm) at New Horizons of Minnesota (in Edina) and features Jason Bock (Magenic) speaking on "Writing Better Code."

Later in the week, on Thursday, July 10 at 5:30pm, the Twin Cities Languages User Group (www.twincitieslanguagesusergroup.com) is having their first meeting too. This one is at Magenic (in Golden Valley) The featured speaker for this event is Charles Nutter (Sun Microsystems) who will be speaking on JRuby.

If you're in the Twin Cities (or relatively close) you don't want to miss these events. If you are planning on attending either or both events, please take a moment and RSVP via the appropriate website. Thank you.

Also, later this month, there won't be a Twin Cities XNA User Group (www.twincitiesxnausergroup.com) meeting because we're having a joint cookout with the local IGDA chapter. Details to follow.

Happy 4th of July to everyone. Whether you celebrate Independence Day or not, there's still a 4th of July on most of your calendars, so I hope it's a good one. I plan to celebrate my freedom by having a few beers and making stuff explode. Good times.

Spaghetti Code Podcast w/ Jeff Brand

Chris Williams — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:48:05 GMT

A couple weeks ago, Jeff Brand and I sat down and talked about XNA on his Spaghetti Code podcast. We had a good time, as usual, and discussed various aspects of the XNA experience, and what's new in the XNA 3.0 CTP.

Here's the link: XNA Podcast