Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Moving my blog...

Welcome back!

I now have a new domain name and new hosting for my tutorial site, XNA Game Programming Advenutres. As part of the changes, I now have a new blog that is hosted directly on my site. This blog isn't specifically about creating a role playing game, this blog will be dedicated to all the XNA things that I'm working on. You can find the new blog at http://xnagpa.net/blog/.

Something else that I'm working on is adding a forum to XNA Game Programming Adventures. I have the forum online but at the moment there isn't very much too it. I do plan on adding my tutorials to the forum as well as in PDF format. You can find the forum at http://xnagpa.net/forum/.

I do plan on adding more and more to my site and try and build an XNA community with tutorials, help with XNA programming, C# programming because the two are so closely linked. I even have a place where those using my site can post their own tutorials if they would like to.

One last thing that I would like to mention is that I have released the first version of Xin, my XNA Input Manager. I made Xin a game component so all you need to do is to create an instance of Xin and add it to the list of components for your game. Xin will be available for use anywhere within game as long as there is a using statement for the namespace and a reference to the Xin project in the project. You can find the home page for Xin at http://xnagpa.net/xin.html

At the moment Xin works with both Windows and the Xbox 360 and for both XNA Game Studio 3.0 and XNA Game Studio 3.1 as well. There is a version of Xin for the Zune and Zune HD in the works but they will need to be tested as I have neither, they are being worked on by a partner. When XNA 4.0 is released, or even the first beta of XNA 4.0, I plan on creating versions of Xin for that as well.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Monday, March 29, 2010

Updates

Welcome back!

Wow, it has been a really busy month for me. I haven't had much time to devote to tutorials but I have been working with XNA. I finished an entry to a game programming challenge at Game Institute and it did win but noone else was able to finish their game in time. I have also been working with Xin, my XNA Input Manager class. It is pretty much finished. I'm just working on the documentation that goes with Xin and creating a demo program to go with Xin as well.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Thursday, February 11, 2010

New XNA Role Playing Game tutorial!

I have just added the next tutorial in my XNA role playing game tutorial series to my web site! In this tutorial I continued on with the player being able to pick up items off the map. I created a new screen to display the contents of a chest. At the moment there is only gold in the chest but soon there will be the ability to be items as well. You can find the link to the tutorial on the XNA RPG Tutorials page of my web site.

I hope to have another tutorial in my XNA role playing game series finished in the very near future!

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Was pretty busy today

Welcome back!

I spent most of this evening working on the new tutorial in my XNA role playing game tutorial series. I was able to get all that I wanted to accomplish with code done tonight. I should have the writing finished tomorrow for sure. What I have now is that when the player touches a chest a pop up appears letting the player know that they have found treasure and it lets them know that they have found a random amount of gold. Placing actual items into the chests will be a little harder to accomplish. I will have to add a few classes to the game to handle inventory. I will also have to create the actual items that will go into the game. This is a rather complex process but I will take it one step at a time. In case you are interested, this is a screen shot of what I have working now.



Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

2 new XNA tutorials!

Welcome back!

Well, I added the two new XNA tutorials to my web site on the 9th. I say the 9th because by the time I'm done writing this entry it will probably be the 10th for me. I mentioned on my site, and probably here, that I had two tutorials on creating a screen management system with XNA to add to my screen manager tutorial series. In the first tutorial I added in support for an Xbox 360 controller, in the second tutorial I showed how to create a pop up screen. You can find the links to the tutorials on the XNA Tutorials page of my web site.

I plan to work on the next tutorial in my role playing game tutorial series and have that available soon as well. Good luck with your XNA game programming adventures.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Saturday, February 6, 2010

More about Xin

Welcome back!

I was working a little with Xin and I have found it to be very helpful. Once I finish writing up some documentation for Xin I will be releasing it for anybody who would like to use it. I'm thinking of going with a create commons licence for using Xin. That Xin is free to use for commerical and non-commercial use but a mention in your game or documentation would be required.

I have been under the weather the past few days so I haven't really done much real programming. Everything that I did was Xin was mostly just fixing a few minor errors here and there. I won't be working on Eyes of the Dragon tomorrow, as it is Sunday and I don't like to work on Sunday. I do hope to have the next tutorial available by Tuesday though. That would be the 9th, GMT-5.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Friday, February 5, 2010

Updated my site a little

Welcome back!

I did a little work on my web site, XNA Game Programming Adventures, today. I made archive pages of the blog entries for December last year and January this year. There are links to the archives on the main blog page http://xna.jtmbooks.com/xnagpablog.html. I'm looking into using Google's Adsense to be able able to search my site so people can try and find things that have been archived.

I have also done a little work with X-In 611. That is what I think I'm officially going to name my input handling class library. I know I haven't invented the wheel here but I've been testing X-In 611 with demo games that I've written and I am so impressed with it so far. It wouldn't be useful for a game that does all of its input in the main class but if you are making a complex game that handles input in different classes, like the menu components that I've used in the RPG, it makes life so much easier. I've also started working with being able to control the motors in the Xbox 360 controller to make make the game pad vibrate. I did a simple test in a demo that I made and it is worked pretty good. I will let you know when X-In 611 is going to be released as I'm sure it would be useful to you if you are making an RPG of your own.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Thursday, February 4, 2010

New XNA Role Playing Game tutorial!

Welcome back!

I have added the next tutorial in my XNA role playing game tutorials to my web site. In this tutorial I got started on adding items to the map for the player to pick up. I plan on having the next part of the tutorial up on my site shortly. You can find the link to the latest tutorial on the RPG Tutorials page of my web site.

I would also like to tell you about a project that I have recently started with XNA. I have found while developing games that I do a lot of the same methods when it comes to input. I decided to make a game library to handle all of the input needs of my games. I have dubbed the library Xin, which stands for XNA Input. This small library will handle all input for both Windows and Xbox 360 games. In Windows there is support for the mouse, keyboard and the Xbox 360 controller. Since the Xbox 360 does not support a mouse that feature is disabled for the Xbox 360. I'm making this project available to any developer who may be interested in it. It is still in the early stages but when it gets closer to completetion I will let you know more about it.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Next tutorial will be delayed a little

Welcome back!

Unfortunately the next tutorial in the XNA RPG series will be delayed just a little. I have a few things that I will need to attend to over the next few days. I have much of the code done, and some of the writing, but there is still a fair bit to do for both. I hope to have this done by the the end of the weekend though, if at all possible.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Working on the next XNA RPG tutorial

Welcome back!

I have been working on the latest tutorial in my XNA RPG tutorial series. I'm working on adding in items for the player to pick up. This will be a multi-part tutorial because there is a lot to go into it. I have the items rendering, and a much better image for the chest to draw. I'm working on handling the collision of the player's sprite and the items. I will be adding a screen that the game will go to when the player touches an item. I thought that would be the best way to handle picking up items.

I'm also working on updating my web site where I'm hosting these tutorials. I've created an archive of old new items, though I don't have all of the news items that I removed from the news page. I'm working on creating archives for old blog posts from the XNA GPA Blog page.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Monday, February 1, 2010

Didn't move today

Welcome back!

I decided to put off moving for another month. I will be moving to a new server in the near future though. I will let you know when I make the move. I am hoping to have the last parts of my screen manager with XNA tutorial available on my web site tomorrow. I'm also going to write a tutorial about creating an input manager with XNA for your games. What I plan to do with that is to make a game library out of it that you will be able to just add it to your game. I'm not familiar with the Zune yet, as I don't have one, so I won't be including support for that in the XNA input manager. I will have it so that it will work for both the Xbox 360 games and with Windows games.

I will also try and have the next XNA RPG tutorial ready soon. I believe I mentioned that I'm planning on adding in picking up items off the map. Items will be placed in a chest and the chest will be able to hold multiple items and gold. You will be able to have the amount of gold fixed or you can specify a random range for the gold. You will also be able to specify that the chest will have no gold or the chest will have no items at all. I will eventually be making an XML document that you will be able to read in, using the XNA Content Pipeline, the items and stuff in the chest. I have plans for a variety of items for the game as well.

If you have been following I told you I'm participating in a game programming challenge at Game Institute. For the challenge I'm making a fake 3D RPG type game with XNA. For this game I'm using XNA 3.1. What I mean by fake 3D is that unlike 3D games today I will not be using any 3D models found in typical games or other 3D things. It will all be simulated. Just wanted to give you a peek at what I've been up to for that.



Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Plans for next RPG tutorial

Welcome back!

What I'm planning for the next tutorial is having the player be able to pick up items from the map. To make things a little easier I will have it so that all items are inside of chests. I have an idea to put more than just one item in a chest as well as having a fix or random amount of gold in the chest as well. I will probably start with the gold because I will be adding items in later when I get to inventory for the player.

I plan to add in more elements of a role playing game system in upcoming tutorials. Things like combat, leveling up, spells/special skills.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Friday, January 29, 2010

I'm moving! Well, sort of.

Welcome back!

My web site is hosted on a Windows server and I will be moving from that server to a Linux server. The reason is that I want to use some PHP things, PHP is a server-side language for web development, and my hosting service does not offer PHP with their Windows servers. When I set up the site I was planning on doing a litle developing with ASP.NET but I've found that to be a bit of a pain. I'm planning on having them switch servers on February 1st and they told me there may be connection problems while the site is being transfered. Just giving you all a little heads up so if you are trying to visit my site and can't reach it you know why.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Thursday, January 28, 2010

New XNA Role Playing Game tutorial!

Welcome back!

I have added a new tutorial for my XNA role playing game tutorials to my web site. This tutorial does a few minor fixes. One thing that I wanted to fix for a while now is that there are copies of the same method in different classes of the game. I changed it so that there is only one static method to prefrom the same task. 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
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

What is coming up?

Welcome back!

I've been making a few changes to the images but this is not something you will necessarily have to do for your game. I've learned a lot of graphic design over the past while and I will give you the option of using the new graphics or designing your own or whatever it is you would like to do. In terms of functionality there are a few things that need to be added in. At the moment combat doesn't happen. That is one thing that needs to be worked on. Another thing that needs to be worked out is items the player can use. That is perhaps one of the harder parts of a RPG but it is important nonetheless. Will have to eventually add in shops for the player to interact with as well as improving the player character system.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

What's up with Jamie?

Welcome back!

Jamie has been pretty busy . I've been trying to get two tutorials on the XNA screenmanagement tutorials series up on my site. I've also been doing a little work on an entry to a programming challenge at Game Institute. This game is different than anything I've tried before. It is a game that looks a little like it is 3D but it is actually all done using 2D image, no 3D models or anything. The theme of this challenge is to make a 2D game that incorporates 3D game play elements. If you've ever seen the old Eye of the Beholder games by SSI you will have an idea of what I'm trying to accomplish. I've just got some simple rendering done that was hard coded meaning I drew the images with no data.

Thought you might be interested so here's a little screen shot of the game being rendered. I used the Genetica Viewer from Spiral Graphics and the GIMP for images.



Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Monday, January 25, 2010

Jamie is back!

Welcome back!

I'm happy to say that I'm back writing my tutorials again. I did have some major issues that I needed to sort out and I am still starting an indie game company but I truly missed writing the tutorials. I'm sorry that I left you hanging and didn't finish the game. I'm going to try my best to rememdy that situation though. I wrote a new tutorial on Eyes of the Dragon, my XNA Role Playing Game. In this tutorial I added in support for the Xbox 360 controller to the game. Everything you can do with the keyboard you can also do with the controller. You can select items using the direction pad and the B button. You can start conversations using the A button. You can also move the player character using the left thumb stick. If you would like to read the tutorial you can find the link to it on the RPG Tutotrials page of my web site.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures

Saturday, January 2, 2010

About these tutorials

Welcome back!

I'm sorry but I will not be finishing this tutorial series. I just do not have the time needed to finish these tutorials. The reason is that I've begun work on being an indepedent game developer creating games for the Xbox 360, Windows and later on down the road the Zune. I will be writing tutorials now and again but I can't devote the time required to program a complete RPG and write the tutorials on that program.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code
XNA Game Programming Adventures