TRANSITIONS - PART 2

Shawn has published the second installment on his series of articles regarding "trabsitions", this time focusing on the physics part.

From the post: "... you may not know exactly when you want things to start or stop moving. When the factors controlling your transitions get more complicated, it can be easier to switch to a physics based approach ...".

Read on!

STREAM CONTENT PROCESSOR

Created by X has published a content processor for XNA that allows you to read content files as streams.

From the post: "... The StreamContentProcessor allows you to use simple stream based importer and/or processors, so you can read your content files as a stream using content.Load("AssetName") ...".

Downloading it now ...

"GETTING STARTED WITH XNA" - THE SERIES

Remember this post? Brecht is back with more tutos:

• Getting started with XNA - Primitives: the basics part 2,
• Getting started with XNA - Primitives: Introducing the Index Buffer, and
• Getting started with XNA - Drawing 2D Textures.

Read on!

GAME DESIGN PROBLEM

After conquering "deferred shading", Jason Maskell is crying loud for help ... Ok, maybe I'm exagerating ... :)

As Jason approaches the phase of implementing a physics handler, he encounters a design crossroad. So he would like to hear what others with experience in the field have to add so as to help him decide what to do.

From the post: "... I’ve got to come up with some elegant system to retain my 2d movement vector on the flat grid, but also have an equivalent 3d worldspace vector at the same time. It’s an interesting problem but I think I’ve got it. It’s starting to feel grossly complicated though ...".

Have ideas? Post them here.

A NICE GUI/HUD

Josh, from "Grass Root Games", has posted a nice screenshot of the GUI we will find inside the 2D shoot'em up game "Last Alarm".

From the post: "... You’d think it only takes a couple of hours to lay your interface out in photoshop so it should only take a couple of hours to code…but you’d be wrong, dead wrong ...".

Does anybody know whether this game is being created with XNA GSE? The GUI looks really good ...

[Aha! It is, according to this post TorqueX has been used.]

LINEAR COLLISIONS WITH XNA - PART II

McCoder has released the source code of the linear collision tests referred on my previous post.

From the post: "... There’s a ton of hack lying around in the code for my collision test app, but I figured my collision response code was probably clean enough to be useful to someone so I figured I’d post it up for everyone to check it ...".

Happy coding!

LINEAR COLLISIONS WITH XNA

McCoder shows a video with the latest results obtained on a XNA-based linear-collisions system:

From the post: "... I worked out some better collision response code and finally got some accurate and stable results. My primary goal was to get momentum transfer working correctly based on the object’s mass ...".

Later.

CONQUERING DEFERRED SHADING

Jason Maskell comments about his experiences with deferred shading techniques.

From Jason's post: "... I’ve thought that I’ll probably have to write a material editor sort of thing where my artist can play around with the materials settings until he finds out the right settings to stick in the lookup texture. For instance, he will be putting an index value in the alpha of the texture, which will then lookup into another texture to get 4 values instead of one ...".

Do I see some soft lighting in that screenshot?

VIDEO: VJ TOUCHSCREEN SOFTWARE CREATED WITH XNA

Ok guys. What I'm going to blog about right now is a very interesting way of using the XNA API for other serious purposes than what it was meant for: videogames -which in turn also shows off the potential of the API, when you use it in a smart way.

Adrew Griffiths and a friend of him were asked to write the software for an interactive VJ editing system for the Ford stand at the Geneva motorshow. And guess what? Yes, you're right! They decided to use XNA for the implementation.

Not a believer, ugh? Then just watch the following video and be prepared to get spellbound:

What did I tell you? So now you're interested ... well, you can find more info about the project here.

Cheers!

VIDEO: FLOCKING ON XNA

Here's an interesting video showing off some flocking behavior of a group of boids, all done with XNA!

You can get to the author's site by following this link.

GETTING STARTED WITH XNA: PRIMITIVES

Brecht Kets has published a series of articles about primitives with XNA.

From the articles: "... A triangle is defined by 3 points, which is defined by a Vector3, containing the X, Y and Z coordinate (3D space), and maybe some additional information, such as color. Such a point is called a vertex. XNA has some vertex structures embedded, and one of them is perfect for this example: VertexPositionColor. So let us add this to our class ...".

You can find part I and part II on his blog.

"VISUAL3D.NET - XNA FOR THE MASSES, PART I"

Dan Maltes comments on Realmware's Visual3D.Net framework.

From the post: "... is a combination Game/Simulation engine and Game/Simulation building tool-set all built into one. This means it has much of what you need built right into it, saving you a tremendous amount of time and letting you, and your team, focus on the imaginative and creative part of your application. For instance, assigning keys and mouse clicks to control objects in your 3D world; normally you would have to write a whole bunch of code and event handling on your own to accomplish this. Visual3D has that built-in, so all you have to do is decide what keystroke or mouse-click does what. That is just the tip of the iceberg of what Visual3D has built into it ...".

Stay tuned.

"BULLET HELL TACTICS" AVAILABLE FOR OPEN TESTING

Kobingo has released a demo version of his game "Bullet Hell Tactics" for public testing.

From the announcement: "... This will be the one and only public testversion before the final demo is released. Before downloading, please read the requirements. If you are having problems running the game read the troubleshooting instructions. Please also read about how to play the game ...".

You can donwload the files here.

MORE ON QUADTREES

Kyle strikes again on quadtrees, this time focusing on code design.

From kyle's article: "... Before I explain the classes, a picture of how the node tree is constructed in a Quadtree as objects are added and move through the tree (individual frames on click-through) ...".

Read on!

CRIMSON UPDATE: VASCULITIS

NekoCake's engine has been updated and a demo is included.

From the post: "... for anyone who is interested, heres a short demo. It only works with an xbox controler at the moment. left stick moves you around, B jumps and A kills you. If anyone can run it and tell me how it runs on there pc id be gratefull! ...".

So, let's tell this guy how it runs ...

PREVIEWING "AIR LEGENDS" NEXT RELEASE

Sharky comments on the new features that we'll be getting with the next release of his game "Air Legends".

From Lawrence's post: "... I’ve added a much requested Special Manoevre (aka. evade) feature! I’m stoked about this. It really makes the gameplay a lot more dynamic. Essentially, using the Special Manoever button you can trigger the plane to pull the manoevre. Currently there are two manoevres ...".

Cannot wait!

BLUEPRINTEDITOR'S DOCKING NIGHTMARES

Mike comments on the experiences he is facing along the process of building a UI for his XNA-based world editor: "Blueprint".

From Mike's post: "... As XNA runs using a DirectX graphics device its very picky about loosing its rendering state. So if a user undocks the window and moves it about and then redocks it, it doesnt like it due to the loss of rendering state. For now the XNA window has been fixed so that it cant be undocked ...".

Later.

NEED SHADERS?

In modern game development you'll most likely need to take advantage of your gfx card by using shader effects and in turn moving away from fixed-function pipeline techniques.

Thus, the need for hiring shader artists and or become one yourself -so as to create custom-made effects for your particular game or engine- just grows.

So, what to do? You can either do a google search -say, looking for free fx resources- buy some books that come packed with shader content -like the "ShaderX" series, hire a shader artist, and or build your own shaders by yourself from scratch or by modifying a pre-existing template (like the ones that come packed with the nVidia SDK 9.x/10).

Well, there's a new additional solution: "Shaders for Games" ... a site that should have been called "Shaders For Sale", instead ... check it out since these guys offer interesting HLSL shader packs at affordable prices.

The SM3 water fx screenshot looks great ...

UPDATE ON CRIMSON ENGINE

Codenamed "Vasculities", there's a new update of NekoCake's engine: "Crimson".

From the post: "... So far, ive completely rebuilt the screen system. Ive looked through Microsoft’s game state management sample and i loved the way they implemented some things (especially the transitions!). After playing with it a bit, it was clear id have to do a bit of retooling on my screen system, which ended up with me ripping out the whole screen system and starting from scratch ...".

Stay tuned!

THRUST INPUT SYSTEM

John comments on the new input core of his engine: "Thrust".

From the post: "... Thrust, unlike Xna5D, has recieved its own project folder for 360 compatible work and I am happy to report that the new input core is running on both Windows and the 360. So how does this new Input services work? I have decided to go much the same route as the new GUIManager by templating the main class, Ebi. When you create a new Ebi (Event Based Input) object, you pass along the type of an object that inherits from ControllerBase. This allows the Ebi object to instance your controller's code and use it ...".

Nice!