Saturday, October 31, 2009

Been writing the next tutorial

Welcome back!

I have been working on the next tutorial for the Tile Map Editor program. I've got quite a bit accomplished and I do hope to have it on the web site soon for download. I may add in the ability to add another layer to the map. The reason is that much of the code I've added to the editor was pretty much copied and pasted from other classes that you have seen the code to before.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Friday, October 30, 2009

Was working on the map editor

Welcome back!

I did some work on the map editor this evening. I have the map editor being able to load in a map from disk now. There was a lot of code to do this so I think I will write a tutorial on what I have done so far and then go from there.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Was working on editor

Welcome back!

I was working on the editor last night. I've been working on being able to read in a map to the editor and I will also be working on adding layers to the map. I encourage you to either keep visiting this blog for the latest news on the game or you can visit the news page of my site.

It was also brought to my attention that the link to tutorial 31 on my site was broken. I have updated the site and the link goes to the proper tutorial.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Thursday, October 29, 2009

New RPG Tutorial!

Welcome back!

I finished writing the new tutorial on reading a tile map into the game. You can find the link to the tutorial on the RPG Tutorials page of my web site.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Been working on the new tutorial

Welcome back!

I was able to get all of the coding that I wanted to get done and on reading a map into the game. The tutorial is not quite complete yet but it will be a short tutorial. I do hope to have to tutorial up very soon. So keep visiting the blog or my web site for the latest news.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

New RPG Tutorial!

Welcome back!

I'm sorry it has taken so long but I have uploaded a new tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 called Eyes of the Dragon. In this tutorial I have the ability to create and write a single layer tile map. I'm already onto reading in a single layer map into the game. You can find a link to the tutorial on the RPG Tutorials page of my web site. There is a screen shot of the editor on the Screenshots page.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Will keep you updated

Welcome back!

At the moment I am in the middle of a family crisis. I'm not sure how much work I will be able to get done on the game. I will also be going away for a little while and since the monitor on my laptop died I will not be able to do any coding or writing while I am gone. I will keep you up to date on what is going on.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Been working on the editor

Welcome back!

I have been working on the tile map editor today and I've started writing the next tutorial on it. I have been able to get the editor to write out the tile map, with a single layer at the moment. I will soon be adding in the ability to create other layers, save layers and read in layers. In the tutorial after this one I will be adding into the game being able to read in a map from disk but not with the Content Pipeline. I want to be fully finished the editor before I add in that ability. So check back soon as I do hope to have the tutorial up on my site shortly.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Had a busy day

Welcome back!

Today has been very busy for me. I didn't really get to the writing I wanted to. I will have time tomorrow and I will also add in the code to write a single layer map to the editor.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Some coding done but no writing

Welcome back!

Well, I got a fair bit accomplished today on the Tile Map Editor. You can now draw a single layer map with the editor. At the moment the cursor control the scrolling of the map. In a future tutorial I will add in being able to scroll the map by having the mouse cursor at the edges of the map.

Tile Map Editor


Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Monday, October 19, 2009

Added a new tutorial on the tile map editor

Welcome back!

I just finished uploading the newest tutorial on the tile map editor to my web site. In this tutorial I made a change to the editor because I made a bad design decision when I created the editor. The tutorial is a little on the long side and I'm sorry about that. In the next tutorial I will get to actually editing maps with the editor and I will also try and add in writing them out as well if it will not make the tutorial too long. If I get to writing them out in the following tutorial I will get to reading them in to the game. Later I will get to creating Content Pipeline importers, processors and writers for the maps. You can find links to the tutorial on the RPG Tutorials page of my web site.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Saturday, October 17, 2009

28th tutorial is online!

Welcome back!

I have uploaded the 28th tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 to my web site. Like I mentioned yesterday I have been working on a tile map editor for Eyes of the Dragon as being able to load in a map at run time is an important aspect of a role playing game. You can find the link to the tutorial on the RPG Tutorials page of my web site.

This is a screenshot of what the editor looks like at the moment.

Tile Map Editor


Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Friday, October 16, 2009

Been working on the next tutorial.

Welcome back!

I have been coding today as well as writing about that code. So far the editor is coming along nice. I have been able to read in a tile set and have the current tile display in the PictureBox. That might not sound like a lot but it was a fair amount of code. The explanation of it has taken quite a while though as it is pretty complex.

What I will work on next is implementing a tile engine into the tile display. That shouldn't be near as hard as what I have been doing today.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Thursday, October 15, 2009

New RPG tutorial is on my web site!

Welcome back!

I have just uploaded a new tutorial on my web site on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 called Eyes of the Dragon. In this tutorial I got started on adding a tile map editor to help with the game. I added the map editor to the solution so when you want to work on the map you can just right click the tile map editor project and select Set As Startup and you will be able run the project directly from the same solution. In this tutorial I just got the form created and a control on the form that can be rendered using XNA. You can find the link to the tutorial on the RPG Tutorials page of my web site.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Had other work I had to do today

I was wanting to get to Eyes of the Dragon today but I had other work that I had to do today and I always have much to do on Wednesday afternoons. I will try and get what I want done on the Tile Map Editor tomorrow and hopefully have the tutorial up on it as well.
Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Tile Map Editor

Welcome back!

An important part of a role playing game is being able to create maps for the player to explore. At the moment the map is being generated by the program. It would be better if there was a way we could read in a map at run time. I have started the process of creating a tile map editor for Eyes of the Dragon. I will be writing tutorials on how to create the editor. I am hoping that I will have the first tutorial on creating the Tile Map Editor on my website tomorrow evening.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

New RPG Tutorial!

Welcome back!

I have uploaded a new tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 to my web site. In this tutorial I have added the Tile Set Generator project to Eyes of the Dragon and I did a little bit of refactoring. You can find the links to the tutorial on the RPG Tutorials page of my web site. I am hoping to do some more work on Eyes of the Dragon this afternoon when I get home.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Monday, October 12, 2009

New Tile Engine tutorial!

Welcome back!

I have written a new tutorial in my tile engine series. This is a short tutorial but it increases the efficiency of the tile engine. You can find the link to the tutorial on my XNA Tutorials page.

I will be working on Eyes of the Dragon this afternoon. I hope to have a new tutorial up on Eyes of the Dragon soon.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Took the day off coding

Welcome back!

Since it is Sunday and in Canada this is Thanksgiving weekend I have taken the day off of coding and writing. I will be doing come coding tomorrow though. I will post links to the source code of the Tile Set Generator program on my web site so you can download it and look at it. I am thinking of writing a tutorial on it. It is just there are a lot of controls on the form and I'm not sure how to go about the placing of the controls and such. The code is pretty straight forward and I don't think there is anything really all that complicated.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Saturday, October 10, 2009

200th post and 25th tutorial is ready!

Welcome back!

This is officially the 200th post I've made to this blog. I have added in the newest tutorial, number 25, on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 to my web site. I didn't get to the Tile Set Generator in this tutorial. I will write up a quick tutorial on doing that though in the near future. In this tutorial I finished up adding a sprite to the game for the player to control.

I have also added in a debugging feature to the game. This is completely optional and you do not have to do this. I have a message box that will pop up and ask if you want to run the game in full screen mode. If you choose yes the game will run in full screen mode. If you choose no the game will run in windowed mode. This is a useful debugging tool as if you are running the game in full screen mode and the game crashes sometimes you can not get back to the debugger to see where it was that your game crashed.

You will find the links to the tutorial on the RPG Tutorials page of my web site.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Will be working on next tutorial today

Welcome back!

I am going to try and finish up the tutorials on adding a sprite to the game today. Most of the code is already done. It will just be a matter of writing it up. In this tutorial I will include the creation of the Tile Set Generator and how the program works. I hope to have the newest tutorial ready in the next couple of days if not today.

One of the next things I will be working on is tile map format and a tile map editor. The tile map format is important to the game. This might be a strange restriction but I will probably limit the map layers to being the same size. I will also work on adding in portals that will transfer the player to different maps so that the map isn't incredibly huge. Doing this will make rendering the maps a little more efficient.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Friday, October 9, 2009

24th tutorial is not online!

Welcome back!

I have finished and uploaded the 24th XNA Role Playing Game tutorial to my web site! This is the second part on adding a sprite for the player to control to the screen. I also had a request to add in the ability for when the player presses Escape on the action screen to display a pop up screen to ask if they really want to quit. It wasn't a hard thing to do so I added that in as well. I hope to have the third part on adding a sprite to the game on the site very soon October 12th, GMT, at the latest.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Thursday, October 8, 2009

New RPG Tutorial!

Welcome back!

I have uploaded the newest tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 called Eyes of the Dragon to my web site. In this tutorial I added in an animated sprite to the game. At the moment the sprite doesn't move with the map. If you scroll the map the sprite disappears off the screen. In next tutorial, which I already have most of the code for, I will cover moving the sprite on the screen and changing the animation when the sprite changes directions. I hope to have the next tutorial available on the 10th of October, GMT.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Thought I would post a screen shot

Welcome back!

I just thought that I would post a screen shot of the sprite on the game screen. Like I had posted in the last entry since I had done so much coding I decided to break it up a little and do things bit by bit. I will definitely have a tutorial up later on the 8th of October, which I guess is today now. This tutorial will go over creating the animation classes and rendering the sprite to the screen. This will not cover getting the sprite to move however. That will be in the tutorial after this one.


Animated Sprite


Tile engine with animated sprite

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Progress on current tutorials

Welcome back!

I have been doing quite a lot of coding on this tutorial and I'm afraid that it will be rather long. I'm thinking of splitting it up but everything is kind of integrated now and I'm not quite sure where to start. I created two classes, similar to the ones Nick uses is his tile engine tutorial series as I do like the method he uses, for sprite animations. There are a few differences however as I added in my own coding style to these. I got the sprite on the screen animating with out much difficulty. The problem was I was trying to simplify adding in the logic to having the map scroll with the sprite. Again, I like what Nick did in his tile engine series in using the matrix to transform the map instead of having to use the camera object to draw items on the map. You could just give them the position and set the transformation matrix. So it ended up that I had made quite a lot of changes to the game in order to do all of this and there is really still a fair amount that I want to do.

What I think I will end up doing is going back to the last version of Eyes of the Dragon and just focus on one item at a time, in interest of keeping the tutorials short and not throwing a lot at you at once.

One of my readers has been having some problems typing the code from the tutorials into his program and has been finding some minor errors that escaped my attention. I would really like to thank him for bringing them to my attention. I've been keeping track of any that he has found and making the proper changes to the tutorials and uploading them to my web site.

So, since I was away for most of the day today it looks like it won't be until tomorrow that I will have the next tutorial on the site for download.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

What am I working on?

Welcome back!

I'm in the process of adding in a sprite for the player character to control. I made a slight alteration to the sprite that I put up yesterday. I put the character walking down in the first two frames, the second two are down, the third left and the fourth right.

I am using a method similar to the one that Nick Gravelyn used in his tile engine series for animating sprites. There will be differences of course. Instead of using a Dictionary and strings for the keys I will be using a List with an enum. I feel that this is simpler and easier to implement.

I hope to have the tutorial finished tomorrow but I can't guarantee that as there is a lot I have to do tomorrow.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Monday, October 5, 2009

Will be working on the rpg tutorial

Welcome back!

I will be working on the next tutorial for Eyes of the Dragon, the role playing game that I am working on with XNA. Like I said I am trying to add a sprite for the player to control. I downloaded the sprites that Nick Gravelyn used in his tile engine series. They are from the site evilmana.com for the game Last Guardian. I have finished modifying the one that I will be using for the tutorial. Just thought I would post what it looks like with the modifications I made.

Modified sprite from evilmana.com

It looks like it will fit well with the updated tile set I will be using. I hope to have the next tutorial finished by tomorrow evening or Wednesday evening by the latest.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Sunday, October 4, 2009

New XNA tutorials!

Welcome back!

I have just add three tutorials to my web site on creating a tile engine with XNA. These are general XNA tutorials and should work with both XNA 3.0 and XNA 3.1. They aren't very long but I they introduce the concepts of creating a tile engine. The first one concentrates on the tiling process. It takes an array of integers and 4 tiles and renders them on the screen. The second deals with scrolling the map in cardinal directions. What I mean by cardinal directions is the map will only scroll left, right, up and down. It will not scroll on diagonals. The third one implements a 2D camera system and allows the map to scroll at a constant speed in all eight directions, cardinal directions and the diagonals. I hope to have a fourth ready in the next couple of days as well as another on my role playing game series, Eyes of the Dragon. You can find the links to the tutorials on the XNA Tutorials page. (You will have to scroll down to the bottom. I will be adding pages specifically for tutorial series soon.)

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Changes to the tile set

I made a change to the tile set. I really didn't have to but while I was looking for sprites to use with the game I couldn't find any 32 bit sprites to go with the tiles that I created. I know it is a minor thing but I thought I would try and at least have things that match. I downloaded the sprites from evilmana.com, the ones that Nick Gravelyn used in his tile engine tutorials. I will be making some changes to them. I also made another small change to the game. I increased the HUD to be 64 pixels high and the size of the tiles to be 64 pixels by 64 pixels. When I write up the next tutorial I will be adding that in. In any case this is what the map looks like now.


Updated Tile Engine



Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

22nd tutorial on creating an RPG!

Welcome back!

Well, I just finished uploading the newest tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 to my web site. I also fixed a few typos in in tutorials 4 and 6. In 4 I had spelled Components wrong in one of the using statements. In 6 I forgot to up the constructor of the ActionScreen class. When I created the new tile engine it required four parameters, the last two being the height and width of the map. I made that change. I will also let you know that the project.html page has been renamed to rpgtutorials.html. I just wanted to give the page a more descriptive name.

You can find the links to the tutorial on this page:
http://xna.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials.html

Good luck with your game programming adventures.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Friday, October 2, 2009

Tutorial is finished

The good news is I got the tutorial finished. I don't think that I will be able to have it up on my site this evening. It will definitely be up tomorrow though. I also know what I am going to work on next. I will be adding in a sprite that the player can control. Since I'm not a great artist I will have to go with what I can find on the web. So I encourage you to check back tomorrow for the newest tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Been writing the next tutorial

Welcome back!

I finished the coding that I wanted to do for the next tutorial and I have been busy writing it. I would like to have it finished this evening and up on my web site. There really isn't a lot of writing left to do so I'm hoping that it won't take too much longer. I will keep you posted on when the next tutorial is up and on my web site.

I'm also going to try and have a couple general XNA tutorials on my web site soon as well. Again, I will keep you posted on the details.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Got some coding done

Welcome back!

I was working on some coding that I thought needed to be done. This was in the hope of making it easy for you to take the tile engine out of the game and drop it into another one. I got most of what I was hoping to do accomplished. I'm hoping to write up the tutorial on it tomorrow.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code