From Kyle's article: "... Imagine a game like Pong, except with a rotating triangular ball. This ball needs to have perfect collision detection with the paddles, which means if any part of the triangle intersects with the paddle, there is a collision. You can’t just do simple radial collision detection, nor can you do rectangle collision detection, because the triangle might not actually be colliding for some collisions detected in those cases. However, performing the triangle-to-paddle collision detection can be expensive to do every frame (I know, not that expensive – but imagine 200 balls with 30 players around a big field with balls also colliding with each other, or something like that). So what are you to do? ...".
Read on!
Showing posts with label Game Development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Game Development. Show all posts
Monday, May 07, 2007
NEW ARTICLE: "QUADTREE"
Kyle Shouviller has written a nice article on quadtrees with also comes with source code included.
"PROFESSIONAL XNA GAME PROGRAMMING" BOOK: UPDATED SOURCE CODE
Ziggy has posted a message from Chris Webb -Executive Editor at Wrox- who announces that the source code of the book "Professional XNA Game Programming" has been recently updated.
From the message: "... Yesterday I received updated code from Ben for Professional XNA Game Programming, and it is now live on the book’s page at wrox.com. This new code replaces all of the code previously available on the book’s download site, so all readers should update as soon as possible.
The update includes bug fixes, all samples now compile on both XNA Versions and on Windows (XP and Vista) and Xbox 360. In addition, Ben also included new support for some older ATI video cards because he’s cool like that ...".
What are you waiting for? Just go and download the updated files!Friday, May 04, 2007
MICROSOFT GAME STUDIOS OPENS DOORS IN EUROPE
Microsoft has announced the opening of a European base of operations for Microsoft Game Studios.
From the OXM's article: "... MGS Europe will be headed up by Phil Spencer, general manager, Microsoft Game Studios, who will report to Shane Kim, Microsoft Game Studios' corporate vice president ..."
Cheers!"TRANSITIONS PART ONE: THE IMPORTANCE OF CURVES"
As promised, Shawn is starting to blog on transitions with "... The Importance of Curves".
From the post: "... Whenever you are dealing with transitions that take some fixed amount of time to complete, it can be useful to normalize their position along this timeline into a control value in the range 0 to 1. This makes the transition state easier to manipulate ... More importantly, you can apply curves to make the animation speed up or slow down in interesting ways. Normalized control values are useful for this because it is easy to apply curves that will affect their shape without changing the overall range of the motion ...".
Read on!Thursday, May 03, 2007
EXTENDING THE CONTENTMANAGER FOR MODELS
There's a new article on Cornflower Blue's blog that demonstrates how to extend the content manager so as to handle the setup of models being imported.
From Eli's post: "... I don't know about everyone else, but usually the first thing I do after loading models is loop over their effects and set up their lighting. (Check Shawn's blog to read more about the standard lighting rig and per pixel lighting. ) The other day I thought of a neat way to tuck this code away a little, so I thought I'd share.
A subclass of ContentManager could easily handle the model setup code for us automatically. It could check what kind of content it's being asked to load, and if the content type is a Model, it can set up the model automatically ...".
Read on!SHOCKWAVE DISTORTION EFFECT
Jamezilla has submitted a new tutorial to Ziggyware which shows how to implement a shockwave distortion effect in HLSL.
From the tutorial: "... The render routine will draw the scene to a RenderTarget2D, then draw the render target to backbuffer normally, then draw the render target to backbuffer again with the shockwave shader ...".
MOVING SPRITES OVER BEZIER CURVES
Cube2D has submitted a new tutorial to Ziggyware which shows how to move sprites over bezier curves.
From the tutorial: "... Just about every beginners tutorial for XNA starts off with the same things, making a sprite move along the screen. I'm going to show you how to do the same thing, but over a curved line, more specifically over a Bezier Curve. Curvy behaviour its a pretty neat thing to do for some games. You could set up a Physics engine to solve all movement in you game (a relatively complex thing to do) but for some games this would be unnecessary. For example, if your making a side scrolling shooter with aeroplanes you could very easily make your missiles drop from your aircraft, curve backwards a bit and then speed forward ...".
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
BENNY'S BOOK IS ON FIRE!
Yeap, indeed.
Read the post on Machaira's Space blog: "... Looks like Ben Nitschke's XNA book, Professional XNA Game Programming For Xbox 360 and Windows, is doing pretty well. I got a call from Chris Webb at Wrox (since I was the tech editor on the book) letting me know that it's in the top 600 of all books on Amazon.com (it's at 520 at the time I'm writing this) and in the top 20 of Computer books (16 at this time). Looking at the computer related books ahead of it and considering where it's at having only been available for a couple of weeks, I have a feeling it's going to move quickly up that chart ...".
Congrats, man!MCCODER'S "LITTLE COLLISION MANAGER"
MCCoder has published the source code for his "Stand alone little collision manager".
From the post: "... I had previously been doing all my collision stuff during my physics steps, which led to pretty fantasic failure cases. I was checking to make sure the objects were heading in the same direction before I’d say there was a collision, but this often led to objects coming to a rest while penetrating another object (say two objects interpenetrated and bounced off each other, but not with enough force to actually seperate them) ...".
Read on.RICK HOSKINSON'S LAMPGAME UPDATE
Rick has posted an update of his "LampGame".
TECH SAMMURAI'S POST-PROCESSING SYSTEM PREVIEW
Tech Sammurai has published a preview of the source code of his post-procesing system.
From the post: "... Anyway, since I’m starting the development process over, I can’t just upload the entire engine for you all to try. Again, I’m really sorry. However, the PostProcessor will stay pretty much the same in terms of how it is called, so I decided to show you just how easy it will be to add Post Processing to your game ...".
Watch this space!BORTREIST'S GUI
Bortreist has started blogging on the progress on his GUI system, called "SimpleGUI".
From the posts: "... Below is a shot of a SimpleGUI Window hosting a SimpleGrid control and four ButtonLegendLabels (I need to come up with a new name for that one) ...".
FRUSTRUM CULLING IN XNA
Inverse has posted an article at Ziggyware showing how to cull objects relative to a camera's frustrum.
From the article: "... To cull an object, you have to compute the object's bounding volume. Since we are keeping this article simple we will use bounding spheres. Bounding spheres are both economical and very fast.
Iterating thru the meshes in a model, we can merge the bounding spheres to produce a composite that bounds the entire model ...".
Monday, April 30, 2007
CODING4FUN: INTRO TO XNA PART 3
Andy -TheZMan- has published the third part of his "Introduction to XNA" series, this time focusing on audio effects plus text rendering.
From the article: "... Before you go any further I need to explain how XNA works on the Xbox 360. Microsoft created a version of the .Net compact framework that runs on the Xbox 360, as well as Xbox versions of the XNA assemblies. To get these assemblies onto your Xbox 360 and enable deployment of XNA framework requires that you join the Creators Club which has a cost associated. The changes you will make for this article will work on the PC too, but you will not be able to play on the Xbox 360 without this. Microsoft have provided a video to help you get this installed: Getting Started with the XNA Creators Club ...".
This article is available on the Coding4Fun site.Saturday, April 28, 2007
HOW TO COMPRESS AUDIO USING XACT
One of the questions we developers usually ask is "what can I do to reduce the size of my executable and content files?". The answer for audio content has been provided by Mitch, who has published the process you must follow so as to compress audio using the XACT tool.
From the post: "... there is some support for compressing your audio files in the current product, using the XACT tool; it's just not easy to discover. XACT supports ADPCM compression on Windows and XMA compression on the Xbox 360. You can get about 4:1 compression with ADPCM and even better with XMA. So while perhaps not as high as some other encodings, such as WMA, it does offer quite a substantial savings ...".
Let's compress some audio files!Friday, April 27, 2007
ALL SAY HELLO TO "SPRITEFONT" ...
By this time, we're all aware that with the just-released update for the XNA Framework a lot of goodies were given away, like a built-in implementation to handle fonts rendering.
Shawn tell us what the font system is capable of for bitmap fonts, plus unveils a handy tool that helps you create a bitmap-font base which you can then enhace with your favorite graphic tool, like Photoshop, Gimp and such.
From the post: "... TrueType fonts are convenient, but you may sometimes find yourself wanting a more distinctive look for your text. You can create custom typefaces by arranging a set of character images into a single bitmap, separating the areas between each letter with a pure magenta marker color ...".
Read on!2007 INTEL® GAME DEMO CONTEST
Do you believe in second chances? What could you do if your game didn't make it in the Dream.Build.Play contest? Maybe (1) you decide to hold to your more-than-8-hour daytime job -plus you quit your dreams of cash, more cash and glory- or (2) the "Intel® Game Demo Contest 2007" could be your next solution.
However, you'll have to consider that the contest calls for entries elegible for the following two categories:
- Best Threaded Game: for the demo that best shows off the computational power of a multi-core processor, and
- Best Game on the Go: for the demo that best shows advances in laptop gaming.
Life is not that easy, isn't it? Well, before say "naaahh, it's not for me ...", check the prizes and the official rules.
From the rules: "... Contest begins March 5th, 2007. Registration Forms must be received by July 1st, 3:00pm PST 2007. Community judging to determine finalists will begin July 1st, 3:00pm PST 2007 and run until August 1st, 3:00pm PST 2007. Executables of finalists must be received by August 15th, 3:00pm PST 2007. Winners will be announced at Austin Game Developer Conference on September 5th, 2007, and published on the contest website the same day ...".
Let's code!Thursday, April 26, 2007
NEW CONTENT FOR "XNA'ERS"
Ok, so you downloaded the refresh update for XNA GSE v1.0, read the readme page and updated the framework on your system, but have you happened to check the new content available at http://creators.xna.com?
I knew it! Don't be a lazybones, pay a visit to the XNA Creators Club Online site and:
- Download the new starter kit: finally! The long-awaited "Racing Game" (formerly called "XNA Racer"),
- Download the new samples: 3D audio, bloom, 2D particles, and many more.
- Read the new articles: data structure and the shader series,
- Watch the new video tutorials: advance audio series, and,
- Download the new utilities: the "Bitmap Font Maker" utility and controller graphics.
Wow!
[Are you an "XNA'ER"? Sounds cool, doesn't it?]Wednesday, April 25, 2007
A SIMPLE POST-PROCESSING BLOOM/BLUR EFFECT
Jamezila from skasoftware.com has submitted a handy tutorial on post processing bloom/blur effects to Ziggyware, which includes source code and a zip file to downlaod.
ADDING "HYSTERESIS" TO YOUR DECISION MAKING CODE
Shawn has posted and interesting tutorial on how to handle discrete decision making from the changes in the values of continuos analog input: just by adding "hysteresis".
From Shawn's post: "... The problem is, game simulations tend to produce a lot of small and basically random fluctuations from one frame to the next. When these values are used to control a discrete decision, and when the input value is close to the decision threshold, the results can look pretty silly ...".
There's an interesting discussion going on there, so I suggest you read the post.
Bye!
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