New tutorial is up on my web site!

Welcome back!

I have just uploaded the newest tutorial on my series of creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0. In this tutorial I focused on cleaning up the project and working on functionality of the game. You can find links to the tutorials on my web site at XNA 3.0 RPG Tutorials.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Making a HUD for the action screen

Welcome back!

The action screen is great and all because it has the tile map and you can scroll the map smoothly. Most RPGS have a HUD. What I mean by HUD is there is infomation about the character, stats, etc. Quite often there are also interface buttons and such as well. I will be working on a HUD for Eyes of the Dragon. First, I will have to create a class for the player character. This class will hold things like the charater's hit points, mana, attributes, etc. This is an important part of a good RPG so I will be designing it carefully. I'm not sure when the tutorial will be ready but I will try and one up on the site soon.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

14th PDF Tutorial on Eyes of the Dragon

Welcome back!

Just finished writing the latest tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 called Eyes of the Dragon, tutorial 14! It is a little short but it was something that needed to be done. In this tutorial I updated the tile engine to draw multiple layers with transparency. I updated the tile set, removing the last tile and replacing it with with a tile with lots of transperancy. It is a tile with three rocks on it. There is a screen shot of the tile engine display in this post. I had to change the tile set from being a JPEG to PNG to allow for transparency.

You can find the latest tutorial in PDF and ZIP file at the link below:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut14.pdf
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut14.zip

The latest version of Eyes of the Dragon is available at this link:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/New2DRPG.zip

Screen Shot of Tile Engine
With Second Layer

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Taking a vacation...

Welcome back!

Well, I will be taking a short vacation. I'll be leaving Saturday and coming back on Wednesday. Not sure if I will be able to much work on this project but I do hope to at least try and get some things done. I will try and keep you up to date on things while I'm away. I should be able to make a few quick posts now and again. I should have a tutorial on creating a role playing game in XNA up on the web site tomorrow though. At least that is the plan. I'm not sure this one will do specifically on XNA though. I think it will have more to do with the player character system, which is just as vital to a role playing game as good graphics are.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

New tutorial available on my web site!

Welcome back!

Well, there is a new tutorial on creating a role playing game using XNA on my web site. You can find all of the role playing game tutorials here:

XNA 3.0 Role Playing Game Tutorials

I'm working hard on the textbox control too. I'm making a sort of virtual keyboard for it, as well as allowing to accept keyboard input, so it can be used with a game pad for the XBOX 360. Any way, I will keep you up to date on the project, so keep on coming back and I will try and have all sorts of good stuff!

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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Update

Welcome back!

I have been getting many visits, both here and my website on this project. In interest of getting the game going faster, I'm going to switch from a skill based character system to a class based character system. I think many people like a class based character role playing game more than a skill based role playing game. The attributes of the character will stay the same. I will also try and add support for a party later.

If you didn't know, there is now a version 3.1 of XNA. I haven't had a chance to download it yet, as I am still at my father's house after the death of my mother on June 13th, 2009. I may stick with XNA 3.0 though, I don't think anything that I want to do will not be available in XNA 3.1. Anyway, right now there are a lot of guests here so I can't really add anything more. I will keep you updated as to what I am doing and I will have updates on my website as well.

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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

XNA Role Playing Game project update

Welcome back!

The character generator will be a little simple. Because of the way I decided to make the characters, using a skill based system instead of a class based system, there are really only three things for the player to choose from. The gender of the character, the name of the character and what difficulty level the player wants to play at. So, I'm going to make a menu like system for creating the character. I will eventually have make a text box control to allow the player to enter a name. For now I think I will just let the player chose a name from a random list of names, probably ten male and ten female. 

I'm hoping to have the tutorial ready for Monday May 25th, GMT. I don't have much to do this weekend so it might be done sooner.

Keep coming back, I will be making updates regularly.

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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

XNA GUI controls...

Hi again,

I don't know if you read the post about creating a button control in XNA but there was a problem with the control. A few pixels at the bottom of the text were cut off. I managed to fix that problem. I'm just mentioning that because I want to make a few more GUI controls to make a character generator for the role playing game. I'm going to make a picture of what the interface will look like and post it on the blog. I'm also going to also make a player character class.

I'm also thinking of finding a way to just use the keyboard instead of the mouse and get an XBOX 360 controller to add support for the controller to the game.

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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

The next XNA RPG Tutorial is ready...

Welcome back!

I have finished the role playing game tutorial like I promised. I have uploaded it to my website in PDF format. It is a little long, 13 pages, but I covered quite a lot in it. 

You can find the tutorial at this link:

Role Playing Game in XNA 3.0 tutorial 1

You can find the project at this link:

Role Plaing Game in XNA 3.0 project

You can fint the images I used at this link:

Role Playing Game in XNA 3.0 images from feebleminds

You can find very good free images, for non-commerical use at feebleminds:

http://feebleminds-gifs.com/free-pictures.html

Come back again soon, I should have more good stuff up soon.

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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Making the menu system for the RPG in XNA

Welcome back!

As it turns out I have a lot of time to dedicate to the RPG in XNA today. I'm hoping to have a simple navigation system up and running, it is already very close to working. 

Creating a user interface in XNA, I find, is a little tricky because you have to create the controls like buttons, text boxes, etc. Even the simplest role playing game requires a user interface, such as creating a character, buying and selling items and managing the character's items.

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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Hi again, a screen shot of the menu...

I did a little work on the menu this afternoon and thought I would post a screen shot. The image isn't mine, I got it from http://feebleminds-gifs.com/free-pictures.html. They have an excellent collection of art free to use for non-commercial use and possibly commercial use if you get the artist's permission. What I more wanted to show you was the text of the menu. When the up or down arrow keys are pressed the red hi-light bar scrolls up and down. I will try and have a PDF on how to create the menu on my website shortly. This is going to be the starting point of the project.

Come back soon, I hope to have more up and going.

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Proud member of Dream.In.Code