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