Game Development

Stones, Day 4

Jason Olson — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:01:00 GMT

Well, day four of Stones. I didn't get too much work done last night because I went out and had an excellent dinner with my wife and my father (who was in town on a business trip). Oh, and I also was working out some plans with some friends on an ultra-secret project :). I can't say anything yet, but hopefully once things settled down and we're a way into the project, we'll reveal it publicly. Until then, mum's the word :).

Soooooo, here is Stones on Day 4: ... (Read More)

Stones, Day 2

Jason Olson — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 02:06:00 GMT

Well, today was my second day in XNA land working on Stones (my Bejeweled clone and my first XNA game (and also a subtle play off of Jason Mauer's Bouncing Balls demo)). Once this game is finished, I'll be using it as a vehicle to do a series of game development screencasts on XNA (most likely it will also be in tutorial form that will be included with the video in the download).

I'm still just psyched how good XNA is. Maybe once I come down from "Cloud 9," I'll be able to come up with some constructive criticism. But until then, I'm going to just enjoy the ride. So, here's what Stones looks like today after Day 2: ... (Read More)

The XNA Sojourn Begins

Jason Olson — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 02:52:00 GMT

Hey folks. After a good amount of time away, I have decided to come back to game development land. This time, I will continue work on my game Spaceballs (a Geometry Wars clone), only using XNA this time around. I can't believe I'm going to admit this, but to give myself time to do this, I have even canceled my World of Warcraft account (again). I just have way too much stuff on my plate, and if I want to get back into game development, something has to go (thanks go to Chris and George for encouraging me to do so simply by reading their posts).

So, I've started "porting" Spaceballs to XNA. Maybe not so much porting, as re-writing (as I want the game architecture to reflect the new XNA environment and framework). My first impressions of XNA? ... (Read More)

XNA Game Studio Express and writing your own games for the 360

Jason Olson — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 01:16:00 GMT

I know Dave, Tom, and Boyd had stated that they were pleasantly surprised that the announcements coming out at GameFest tomorrow hadn't been leaked. Well, close but no cigar (if this is indeed the announcement they were talking about). Of course, considering that it is already "tomorrow" on the east coast (and many of you won't read this post until "tomorrow" anyway), it's probably close enough :).

So, check out that link above :).

As a hobbyist developer myself, I have to admit that I did entertain thoughts in the back of my mind that it perhaps wasn't going to get any easier for us. Well, I'm happy to say that it looks like that thought was totally false. Not only was that thought wrong, it was WAY wrong. Microsoft (according to the Joystiq article) will release a free version of XNA Game Studio inline with their current Express products. So, for those of you enjoying writing games with totally free tools like Visual C# Express, you will be able to apparently continue doing so when XNA is released. ... (Read More)

Microsoft Robotics Studio, Holy Cow

Jason Olson — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:57:00 GMT

Holy Moly! Could Microsoft release fewer cool products for a while please? :). There has been so many exciting technologies coming out lately that it seems like there is hardly enough time to investigate them all. The latest edition to this group of great technologies? Microsoft Robotics Studio.

There are a few things that excite me about this specific technology (from what limited investigation I have done on it during my lunch break today):

1) It is enabled for both Visual Studio _and_ the Express products (you can even use it from IronPython).

2) Robotic simulation. If you don't have the hardware to play around with it, Microsoft Robotics Studio includes robot simulation using DirectX that you can use to programatically build a robot and show how your "software" would work with the robot. I'm slightly jealous because this was one of the ideas I had behind my next game (take this Studio and make a "battle game" around it, and that was Tanks).

So, I obviously need to play around with this some more. Perhaps I'll still build Tanks now that a good amount of the "leg work" has been done for me through Microsoft Robotics Studio. I'm wondering since Robotics Studio has its own runtime and such, if I can embed that runtime within a game so that I can build a game around it. Heck, that sounds like a fun project as a matter of fact. Perhaps I've found my next endeavor after Spaceballs is finished.

Enjoy!

[Crosspost from Managed World]

OgreDotNet

Jason Olson — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 13:16:00 GMT

OgreDotNet was recently pointed out to me by a friend and co-worker. I don't know have I missed it in the past, but I see it's there now which is the important part :). With the lack of mature, open-source 3d graphics engines for managed code out there right now*, I'm glad to see this come to fruition.

Since Ogre3d is already object-oriented, you can't tell from the code of OgreDotNet that it is simply a set of bindings down into the C++ libraries of Ogre3d :). Not only that, but it appears the forum is fairly active and alive (and that's the OgreDotNet forum I'm talking about (since the regular ol' Ogre forum is _very_ much alive)).

In the future (aka after I finish Spaceballs and perhaps another game or two), I will probably end up using this for my first 3d game I do (and possibly all the other 3d games I do after that). I really want to just break down and start playing around with it now, but I'm sure my competition in this contest would like for me to do exactly that. SOOOO, perhaps once Spaceballs is finished I can start playing around OgreDotNet.

Until then, make sure you check it out :).

http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/OgreDotNet

* Axiom priorly being sucked up into RealmForge (I know the source forge project has started up again, but it _just_ started up again seriously, in my opinion), RealmForge now being "deprecated" of sorts, and the other options like Irrlicht.NET and Haddd not being as mature and supported as Ogre (again, just my opinion)

[Crosspost from Managed World]

DirectPhysics?

Jason Olson — Tue, 02 May 2006 09:15:00 GMT

[Crosspost from Managed World]

You know, it's interesting what kind of stuff you can find on the Microsoft Careers site (thanks for the link Joystiq). Direct Physics? Now that sounds interesting. If current market trends are any indication (like Ageia's PhysX Processor), this could be an interesting piece of news. Of course, with the fact that DirectPlay, DirectInput, DirectDraw, and others have all been deprecated or removed, it's interesting to think that Microsoft might be revamping DirectX by bringing in other technologies to it.

With all the clues making it seem like Direct3D was the only viable DirectX-based technology left in the fray, I can't help but have my interest piqued by this job posting. And of course, with all the XNA Framework going on, I'm curious how this might fit into that as well.

Regardless, I have a feeling that no matter what happens, we are going to hear exciting game development news out of the big M in the coming year or two.

Rocket Commander Video Tutorials

Jason Olson — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 07:18:00 GMT

[Crosspost from Managed World]

Benjamin Nitschke made an announcement today that the English versions of the video tutorials for Rocket Commander have now been released on the Coding4Fun website over at MSDN. The website says each video tutorial is 40 minutes. There are ten tutorials, so we are looking at possibly 400 minutes of video tutorials on game programming if the numbers are correct :). So, well, take a day off of work (or two) and enjoy the tutorials :).

I've been waiting for this since the original versions were released on the German Coding4Fun website. I had sent an email to Benjamin and he told me that there were English versions being done so it's been a waiting game for me.

Great job, Benjamin!! I look forward to watching these and seeing it all done. Keep up the great work :).

C# on XBox 360? Maybe!

Jason Olson — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 23:26:00 GMT

[Crosspost from Managed World]

It seems as though numerous "hints" have been dropped as to the possibility of running Managed Apps on the XBox 360. Some of the latest news is that Tom Miller has actually moved over to the XNA and XBox team. On top of that, there was this latest post from David Weller. One of the quotes:

Speaking of XNA....we have some wicked cool stuff to announce and demonstrate at the GDC. We even have a prototype of a CLR-based graphics app running on a 360 dev kit! Drool-tastic :P

Now that's interesting! How much more information do we need before we can start "putting together the puzzle pieces" in order to form the full picture?

Feel free to "rumour-mill" away :).

Rocket Commander

Jason Olson — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 02:55:00 GMT

[Crosspost from Managed World]

I forgot to mention this when I came across it on Benjamin's blog. Rocket Commander now has the binary _and_ the source code released for it. You can find it here. Enjoy, my fellow hobbyist pseudo game developers :).