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
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

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
-----------------------------
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
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

20th tutorial available on my web site!

Welcome back!

I have just finished uploading the 20th tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 to my web site. You can find links to this tutorial, and all tutorials on creating a role playing game called Eyes of the Dragon on this my site http://xna.jtmbooks.com.

I have already started coding the next part and I hope to have the tutorial up very soon.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Uploaded tutorial #18!

Welcome back!

I just finished uploading the 18th tutorial in my series on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 called Eyes of the Dragon. In this tutorial I made a couple of changes to the game. I changed the HUD to a small texture at the bottom of the screen and I changed the PlayerCharacter class to be responsible for drawing itself. I made it a DrawableGameComponent. You can find the tutorial as .zip and .pdf format at these links:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut18.pdf
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut18.zip

The latest version of the source code for Eyes of the Dragon is at:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/New2DRPG.zip

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Quick post of screen shot

Welcome back!

I did a fair amount of work on Eyes of the Dragon on the 30th. I just thought that I would post a quick screen shot of the visual results. Like I was saying the other day it was suggested to me to create a floating bar for the player's hit points and spell points by one of my readers and I went with it.

New Thumbnail of Tile Engine

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

17th tutorial is on my web site

Welcome back!

I have uploaded the new tutorial on Eyes of the Dragon to my web site. You can find the PDF and the ZIP files at these links.
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut17.pdf
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut17.zip

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

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Finished writing the tutorial, no XNA though

I have just finished writing the latest tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0, Eyes of the Dragon. I did not get to the XNA part of it though. There was a lot of C# coding done though as well as adding in some game elements like starting with the player character system. A lot goes into a game other than just graphics and stuff. The tutorial was already 14 pages long. So I thought any more would be a little excessive at the moment. I am in the process of updating my web pages and packaging the project and creating the PDF for the tutorial. I hope it will not take too long. I will make another post when I have everything available on the web site. In the next tutorial, which shouldn't take all that long, I will be modifying the game to display the player character's statistics and add in a couple interesting things for displaying the statistics. So, I encourage you to check back soon.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Writing the tutorial is taking longer than I tought

Welcome back!

I have been writing the next turoial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 called Eyes of the Dragon. The writing is taking a little longer than I thought it would. It is to help those who are new to C# and the concepts of object-oriented programming, especially the idea of polymorphism. Polymorphism is perhaps the hardest topic to understand in object-oriented programming. I will be writing a separate tutorial on the concepts of object-oriented programming: Encapsulation, Inheritance and Polymorphism.

The writing is taking so much time that I haven't gotten to adding the XNA features I wanted to yet. Those, I don't think, will be as hard as what I have been working on so far. I do hope to have the tutorial up on the web site very soon.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Most of the coding is done, working on the tutorial

Welcome back!

I got most of the coding done and working. There are two or three things that I want to add to the latest tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0. I have started writing the tutorial on the coding I've done as well. So far the writing is going rather well. I've done quite a bit of coding so there is a lot to write this time. I will try and post some screen shots from Eyes of the Dragon, the game I'm basing these tutorials on soon.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Started coding today

Welcome back!

I started doing some coding on Eyes of the Dragon this evening. I am in the process of creating a set of classes for the player character. I am planning on using inheritance for the different character classes: Fighter, Priest, Wizard and Theif. To do this I will be creating a base abstract class and then inheriting the other character classes from this class. If you are unfamiliar with abstract classes they are classes that you can not create objects with directly, you must inherit other classes from them. It is much like I did with the GameScreen class. You inherited the various screens from this class instead of using the GameScreen class.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

New tutorial is online!

Welcome back!

I have just uploaded the new tutorial on Eyes of the Dragon to my web site! Like I mentioned previously, this new tutorial has the tile engine using a view port instead of the entire screen. You can find the latest tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0, in PDF and ZIP format at these links:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut15.pdf
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut15.zip

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

You can find the latest news on Eyes of the Dragon here on my blog or on the news page for these tutorials:
http://xna.jtmbooks.com/news.html

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Tutorial is finished but not uploaded

Welcome back!

I finished writing the 15th tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0 called Eyes of the Dragon but I will not be able to upload it tonight. I will have it available on my web site very soon though. Like I said yesterday, I changed the tile engine to use a view port instead of the entire screen and I limited the tile engine to just drawing the visible portion of the map. I ask you to be patient as this is a very hard time for me.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Home, at last!

Welcome back!

I finally made it home. It has been a pretty long day so far. I will still be away for most of tomorrow as well. I am going to do a little programming on Eyes of the Dragon in just a moment. I am going to make a change to the tile engine. Instead of using the screen for rendering I'm going to make a viewport. Making a viewport will allow me to have the HUD that I was talking about. A HUD is an important part of a role playing game. Instead of drawing to the screen, I will be drawing to a viewport. XNA makes this easy. Well, I will try and have a write up on doing this posted to the web site sometime today. It won't be a long tutorial but it is an important thing to do and doing it sooner rather than later is a good idea.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
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
-----------------------------
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
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

New RPG Tutorial is available on my web site!

Welcome back!

I just finished writing and uploading the newest tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0, Eyes of the Dragon, to my web site. You can find it on my web site at this link:
XNA 3.0 Role Playing Game Tutorials - PDFs and Project

Like I mentioned yesterday, this tutorial is about adding a textbox to the game. I posted a screen shot on this yesterday so I won't be adding one today.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Enjoying my vaction but doing a little work on Eyes of the Dragon

Welcome back!

So far I'm having a pretty good vacation with my dad. I did a little programming on Eyes of the Dragon and I'm working on writing the tutorial for what I did.

There are many times that you need a pop up window in a role playing game to ask the player a yes or no question. Well, I made a small pop up screen to do just that. I can't unfortunately post a screen shot at the moment because I can't connect my lap top to the Internet here. I will be putting the tutorial up on the web site when I get back home.

I'm thinking of adding a few new things to either this blog or the web site that hosts the tutorials. Look for some changes in either shortly.

Jamie McMahon
-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code