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!

SOME PROBLEMS WITH MY DESKTOP

Yes, my desktop went no-no last weekend, ... again. Since I have no yet found a restoring system that works well on a WinXP Pro x64 OS -I mean a complete one, not the application that comes packed with the OS, I'm manually reinstalling almost everything, or at least the things that I need most.

Well, other than that, sorry for being late with the news post.

One good note: along with other books, I've receive Benny's. So I will start reading it as soon as I can and maybe post a full review (why not?).

Cheers!

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?

BEWARE WHERE YOU INVEST YOUR MONEY

This has nothing to do with XNA, game programming, comic books, nor animation, so its miscellaneous stuff. However, I believe is an interesting read for those who plan to invest their money on capital markets, in particular, in penny stocks.

Kiplinger.com has published an article called "The Truth Behind Penny Stock Spam". What's relevant about the article? That it shows the awful truth behind easy money.

In short, I guess you already knew it but if you want to invest money in capital markets, don't let yourself being attracted by spammers, or companies which you barely know or don't know at all.

Always try to analyze the fundamentals of the prospect companies by yourself (in case the proper info is available), read serious analysts' assessments, study the track record of the company, what it offers, if its a known company or not, who are its directors/owners, where it is located, since when, and so on. Otherwise, you face the risk of losing your money in the split of a second!

I'm not saying that you must play always safe, because as you may know the greater the risk the greater the potential reward ... or losses ... but if you want/need to get some "quick" profit just play smartly and the safest as possible, as I assume you do with any other type of investment, in order to avoid the risk of hugh losses because you actually invested in a "ghost" company.

Take the company mentioned in Kiplinger's article, for instance, if you analyze the quote charts, you'll see that it opened in more than USD 7.oo/share when it was first traded in the penny market and then it just followed a slow downward and almost steady path to the current value of USD 0.04 a share. And yes, you're reading right. From riches to rigs ...

Spooky!

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.

WHERE DID SPIDEY'S "SPIDER-SENSE" GO? - PART II

Hi everyone. I had earlier promissed a sort of "in-depth" review on the third spidey's movie, so here it goes:

1. What happened with the so-well-known "spider-sense"?

As I said in my previous post, Venom has the ability to be around Spiderman without being detected because the black suit managed to learn how to surpass spidey's senses when Peter was the host. But that was after Peter was the host.

Let's start with the meteor crash. Pete and MJ were just looking the stars and when the meteor crashed closed to them, the spider-sense was what? Temporally out-of-order? Then the black matter approaches and yet again, still out-of-order?

Another one, when Harry Osborn strikes on Peter -when the latter was driving his motorcycle, just nothing, nope, zero ... Spider-sense was on vacation ... All through the movie the spider-sense was missing -of course, this is ok when fighting Venom, I repeat.

2. From light to dark.

The movies have been clearly follow a path to the dark side: the first one was ok, Spiderman was fun, say jokes during battle, usual stuff. The Second one was a bit darker, but still ok. The third one was the darkest, what in fact was already expected due to the presence of the black matter/custom, so maybe one may have thought it would be very easy to switch from one state of mood to the next one and transmit those states, changes and sentiments to the viewers.

Well, imvho, the scenes/script fails to transmit the mood, and make the audience go "wow", "ahh", "snif!", "yeah" -what in the previous 2 movies was more or less accomplished; in fact when the movie finished, nobody clapped -everyone left the room mumbling, and believe me when I say that the theater was really crowded, on a Tuesday's evening!

3. Still great villans?

One may argue whether -in the first two movies- Peter, MJ, Harry, Flash and others -even spidey- were all well presented to the viewers or not. But one great aspect of those movies were the villains: the Green Gobbling and Doctor Octopus, both excellent performed.

Now, let's face it, the sandman was never a great archenemy of Spiderman, in the sense that it wasn't the most clever one, nor a "real" bad @$$, but to be fair, the actor played the role nicely.

However, the origin of the sand man and the story around him and Pete's uncle was a mess. If you want step on to the middle of an atomic experiment, just climb a small unguarded fence, go to an unprotected container, and jump/drop. Wasn't contamination an issue? Not to these guys, since there was no roof on the silicon/sand container. It was funny then to hear one of the scientist say something like: "there was a change in the mass of the sand" when the sandman dropped in there. What about rain, particles in the open air, and such. Unbelievable!

Now, enters Venom. That should have been the real nightmare to both, Spiderman and Peter Parker, not Harry, but then again Venom played just a sort of minor villain role who also dropped dead(?). C'mon!

4. Every foe knows who is behind the mask of Spiderman.

Why don't you just publish in the Daily Bugle: "Peter Parker is Spiderman!", "Spiderman unmasked", or "Want to know who is Spiderman? Call 1-800-GOTCHA". It also happened in the second movie: a lot of people "happened" to see his whole face w/o the mask. Please, just stop doing that.

5. Almost everyone dies.

Every foe, or semi-foe, just dies. Perhaps this is a consequence of (4) above. But not the sandman!

"I forgive you", those were the words of Peter Parker after the final battle and the light explanation of the sandman. Only that foe and the spectators knew the existence of the sick daughter, who barely appeared in the film. And Spiderman w/o knowing any of this, stole Daredevil's lines.

Yes! Those were the words from DD to Wilson Fisk when the former finally decided to put and end to Kinping's reign. Something quite different to what was seen on DD's movie.

6. Harry and his butler.

I didn't knew that Alfred was on the movie. Honestly! "Sir, I loved your father ..." When? Where you in the first movie? "... And the wound/blade bla bla bla ....", that was enough to make "two-face" hurry to become a good guy again ... [face of lost guy] ... Errr ... O - k? [/face of lost guy]

7. Scenes Edition Hiccups.

This may be consider as a minor issue in comparison with the story, but in some places, transitions between scenes were a bit "jumpy" as if they were suddenly cutted, even you notice it because the sound was also drown.

And nope, it wasn't a problem with the theater projector. The movie lasted what it should ... so maybe the editor should have read Shawn's blogposts about the importance of transitions ...

8. What's with Peter Parker's character?

This is the one I must mostly complain about. Just read on to know why ... Peter was a bit shy, but never "that" naive.

In fact when he became Spiderman a big change happened. He also become a sort of player ... Gwen, MJ, Felicia Hardy, ...

But the interesting part is that no matter what he was always a common dude with common problems, a bit of financial/professional sort of bad luck, women, guys who didn't like him, JJ, Doctor Connors, classes, and such.

There was the drama, indeed, but he always was a funny guy, specially when using spidey's custome, who always tries to fool the bad guys with jokes and funny comments and things like that, also as a way to release some preassure during the battle.

Now read this: as I said the theater was crowded, a couple of rows behind my fiancee and I there was a couple and she suddenly said and I quote: "this guy is a stupid!". That's not the image in the comic books nor the one that should be projected.

And what was that "red kriptonite" behavior with scenes where Pete behave à la "SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER"? And then that "unspicy" dance with Gwen in front of MJ. Who are you? "The Mask"?

They writters/director want to make PP life funny so hard that they are making him look riddiculous or pittyful -when he slaps MJ in the face. Want to introduce fun? Just make spiderman mock the villains during the batlles ...

And I won't argue here why Gwen Stacey appeared in this movie -when she should have appeared in the first one- nor the story with MJ. But as a whole, the script was about to cross the edge to the fields of cheap soap opera plots. And to be fair, this was stressed when MJ abbandoned JJ's son during the wedding -on the second movie.

In conclusion:

If you are a comics fan who read and collects lots of regulars, graphic novels, and such -meaning you know a lot of superheroes stories, and you haven't yet watched the movie, my advice is: just forget everything you know in order to enjoy the movie. Otherwise, you'll keep saying "what ... ?!" in many scenes. Believe me ...

Given the technical advances in the Industry, specially on the gfx side, what makes a difference between a regular, good, great and excellent movie, is not the amount of gfx you include -of course, the more improved in quality and realistic, the better- but the script, as always ... the same for (almost any kind of) videogames.

Cheers!

[Jfyi, in case you didn't know it, JJ's son was for a certain period a werewolf due to a rock he picked as a souvenir during one of his trips to the moon, but that's another story ...]