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

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

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
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

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

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
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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

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
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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

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
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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
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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
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Almost finished Space Raptor!

Welcome back!

I've almost finished my game Space Raptor, my entery into the game programming challenge at The Game Institute. There are just a few little tweeks that I would like to make to polish it up a little and have some interesting effects. I was just thinking I would post a few screen shots. I have of course scaled them down and reduced quality in effort to keep the files small so they will not eat up bandwidth. You will see that I have used a lot of the same techniques that I've used in Eyes of the Dragon, the role playing game that I am writing the tutorials on.

Introduction Screen

Start Menu

Action Screen

Action Screen with Pop Up

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

13th PDF tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0

Welcome back!

I managed to finish writing the latest tutorial on creating an RPG with XNA 3.0, update my web site and upload it to my web site. You can find all the XNA 3.0 role playing tutorials and the latest source code at this link:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/project.html

If you just want the latest tutorial on creating a RPG with XNA 3.0 you can find the PDF and the zip files at the link below:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut13.pdf
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/xnarpgtut13.zip

The graphics for the tutorials can be found at this link:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/Graphics.zip

The latest source code for the XNA 3.0 Role Playing Game tutorials is at this link:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/New2DRPG.zip

If you have any questions about these tutorials or would like to make a suggestion on what you would like me to work on you can use the contact form on the tutorial web site:
http://www.jtmbooks.com/rpgtutorials/contact.html

Or you can leave a comment here on the blog or you can email me at:
simplyjamie613 at gmail dot com

Voting on what genre of game you would like to see a tutorial series on ends at midnight July 31st. So far turn base strategy games and real time strategy games seem to be the most popular. Be sure to cast your vote!

Jamie McMahon
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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
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

New RPG Tutorial is available on my web site!

Welcome back!

I just wanted to let you all know there is another tutorial available on my web site for creating a role playing game in XNA 3.0. In this RPG tutorial I have made the character generator a lot nicer and a bit better to use. There are two screen shots of what I have added to the game below. You can find the tutorial and the latest version of the project on my web site:

Eyes of the Dragon - XNA 3.0 Role Playing Game Tutorials - Project Page

You can go directly to the PDF at this link:
XNA 3.0 RPG Tutorial 10

I have zipped the PDF as well. You can find it at this link:
XNA 3.0 RPG Tutorial 10 (Zippped)

Character Generator Screen Shot

Character Generator Screen Shot - With Name Pop Up

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

New RPG Tutorial is available on my web site!

Welcome back!

Just letting you all know that there is another tutorial on my web site about creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0. In this tutorial I've added in a pop up menu to the game. Very often you will need to ask questions of the player. Pop up menus are good ways to do this. I made a drawable game component for the pop up menu. Unlike other components, instead of hiding the previous screen, I just set the Enabled property of the previous screen to false. What this does, is draw the previous screen but does not update it.

You can find the tutorials on this page:
XNA 3.0 RPG Tutorials PDFs and ZIPs

I will try and have a new tutorial up soon. It may be a few days because summer is here and I'm trying to enjoy it. I'm also trying to finish my entry in the game programming challenge at:
Game Institute. I have posted a couple screen shots from that game as well. I've combined them into one image and scaled them to help make this page load faster. I'm thinking of writing a tutorial series on creating this game for the XNA 3.0 section.

Eyes of the Dragon Start Page with Pop Up Menu

Screen Shots from Space Raptor, my entry into the
game programming challenge at Game Institute.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Added something new to tutorial the web site

Welcome back!

Last night I added some new to the web site on the tutorials for creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0. I added the ability to download each of the PDF tutorials in ZIP format. I didn't get the newest tutorial on line. I'm hoping to get it up very soon though. Keep on checking back and I will try and have new stuff on the site and the blog soon.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

My bags are packed and I'm ready to go

Welcome back!

Well, I'm all packed and ready to go. I won't be leaving until around three PM, (GMT-5:00) and I'm not sure when I'll get in this evening. I will hopefully have the time to update my web site and post a new tutorial on creating a role playing game with XNA 3.0. Creating an RPG is a lot of work but I love doing it. What is better is I love writing the tutorials on how you can do it.

Any how, I will be home this evening and I will try and get the next tutorial up on the Internet for download.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code

New look for the RPG tutorial web site

Welcome back!

I haven't had time so far today to do much on the project. Last night I did make some changes to the web site that hosts the tutorials for creating a role playing game in XNA 3.0. I'm trying for something, clean, simple, easy to navigate and hopefully attractive. You can visit the web site at this link:

XNA 3.0 RPG Tutorials

I'm thinking about also getting the site it's own domain name and server. Time will tell if I will be able to do that.

I hope you will keep on coming back because I will be adding new stuff to here and the web site as often as I can.

Jamie McMahon
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Proud member of Dream.In.Code