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«Chronicles of an Independent Video Game Company» » Blog Archive » XNA

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:46:12 GMT

XNA Game development and design

XNA Game Studio 3.0 is Here

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:33:13 GMT

XNA Game Studio 3.0 expands on all the offerings of earlier iterations to include additional functionality to appeal to game developers of every level and enable them to create games to distribute through Xbox LIVE Community Games on the Xbox 360 as part of the New Xbox Experience.

Microsoft Releases XNA Game Studio 3.0

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:27:15 GMT

It is finally that time, Microsoft have released the next edition of XNA Game Studio.

XNA Game Engine Tutorial Series #4 - DrawOrder

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:46:21 GMT

Sean James continues his series on game engine development with XNA in part four of the series, "Implementing DrawOrder in Components".

XNA Basic Effect Shader Source Code Available

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:23:51 GMT

For those of you into XNA and .NET game programming, you may find this interesting: the shader source code for the BasicEffect is now available!

Bouncing Ball Movement in a 2D Level

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:19:08 GMT

Making an enemy that bounces like a ball around a 2D level, not just bounces at the screen boundries.

Introducing the New Community Manager

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 23:27:24 GMT

For years now we have had the privilege of having the support of David Weller as our Community Manager for all things Managed DirectX and then XNA, but as David had to leave us to pursue other ventures we have been left without a conduit into the Microsoft World. Today the XNA Blog has Introduced the New Community Manager for the XNA Systems.

Kollectiv has Been Released

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:55:35 GMT

Kollectiv - A puzzle game written in C# using microsofts XNA Framework. This is an addicting cross between tetris and bejeweled and is playable via mouse, keyboard or gamepad (only on the XBOX 360).

XNA, Meet WPF

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:31:02 GMT

The new D3DImage in WPF opens up worlds for WPF. Direct3D content rendered with WPF...it doesn't get any better! The downside is it seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that Microsoft was only targeting unmanaged Direct3D. Yes there is Managed DirectX, but it seems as if MDX is no longer being maintained and it's not so obvious how to get a D3D surface pointer from the API. It really seems MDX has been left in the dust in favor for XNA, which is a very intuitive D3D wrapper. XNA further exacerbates the issue with XNA and WPF.

Sprite Sheets in XNA: Auto-Movement

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:48:12 GMT

If you begin from my previous article then you should already have a decent template for what we're about to create, which is auto-movement! We've all played games such as Final Fantasy or Pokemon that have sprites that walk around say, in a circle, or back and forth along a path. Of course, they don't just glide around, they walk like you do when you move. Therefore, in order to create a non-playable character (NPC) that uses the same animation method we do, lets add the ability to create an auto-moving character.

Sprite Sheets in XNA: Keyboard Movement

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:29:55 GMT

Previously we explored the basics of animating a sprite sheet in XNA, but we only allowed the Sprite Sheet to do literally that, animate. Here we will begin to put our new skills into use by allowing our user to move our sprites in one of four directions (North, South, East, West).

Sprite Sheets in Xna: The Basics

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:19:34 GMT

When designing 2D games, many of has have the annoying habit of being born out of the Flash age. We want to be able to have a drawing of something and animate, just like we did in Flash! However, this is obviously not possible in XNA since XNA is not a enriched content creation platform but instead a library for the creation of games. There is, however, an alternative that we might find more familiar, and these are Sprite Sheets.

Rotating A Sprite Towards An Object In XNA

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:34:41 GMT

Often when creating games in 2D you need a sprite to rotate towards another object, whether that be a turret rotating towards an enemy or making something follow your mouse. Regardless of the use of this rotation the principle is the same. In this tutorial I use the basic concept of making something follow the mouse, but the game logic provided should enable you to rotate any sprite towards just about any object on the game screen.

Tile Based Placement in XNA

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:32:41 GMT

Having just begun programming for XNA I thought I'd begin to share what I've been learning. One thing I definitely aim to do which I find lacking in many tutorials is explain the logic behind what I'm doing so it can be easily ported into other languages (such as Flash). For this tutorial I'm going to cover quite an easy feature, which is locking the placement of a sprite to a 'tile-based' system. This is essentially the mechanism found in most tower defense games for tower placement.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP - VS 08 / .NET 3.5 Support

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:52:00 GMT

New CTP of XNA Game Studio support now VS 08 and .NET 3.5

Compressing your audio in XNA

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:05:45 GMT

An easy to use guide for a setting everyone can use until comression of audio becomes a real feature in XNA.

Using Visual Studio Code Snippets for XNA Development

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:32:27 GMT

On the XNA IRC Channel this morning someone asked a question on how to use the Visual Studio Code snippets. I have been using these snippets for a long time, not normally for XNA but for other applications. But when the question popped up I thought I would put something together for the XNA Development world, in some cases the snippets functions could assist us with code that we seem to type all of the time.

XNA games coming to the Zune, Xbox Live Arcade

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:59:13 GMT

This morning at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft announced the next step in its Xbox Live and XNA initiative: the Zune will become the third pillar supporting XNA software, with over 1,000 games ready for the device by year end. XNA software developed for the Xbox Live Arcade is now going to be opened to the public. Microsoft showed off an XNA game running on a Zune during a keynote speech presented by vice president John Schappert. A top-scrolling space shooter was shown running on a PC, an Xbox 360, and, lastly, a Zune. In addition, Zune games will be multiplayer: users will be able to play against each other online. Games for the platform will be arriving this year alongside the launch of Xbox Live Community Games. The new XNA-oriented service, Xbox Live Community Games, allows select user-created software to be distributed through Xbox Live, effectively opening user-created games to the masses. Titles will be selected through a democratized game distribution system pulling on the Creator's Club user base. Members will be able to screen and vote on games, with those reaching a certain level of approval cleared and released to the public. A handful of these games are now available as trials on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Creator's Club members are paying subscribers who have access to the XNA development platform. Much like the gamercard, a "creator card" will show what games specific creators have built. XNA is a suite of development software which Microsoft introduced in 2006. The suite allows developers to create projects that can easily be translated between the support platforms. Previously only the PC and the Xbox 360 were supported, but the Zune represents Microsoft's first significant step into the mobile gaming market.

Xbox LIVE Community Games

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 08:04:45 GMT

Xbox LIVE Community Games The XNA team is delighted to announce the Xbox LIVE community games, scheduled for launch in the holiday 2008 season, with a beta coming in spring 2008. This offering gives the opportunity to share, peer review, download and play games created by the community, for the community. Read the FAQ for more details, or discuss in the special forum thread. FAQ Link Forum Thread Discussion Link

How to build a 3D game using XNA

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:16:03 GMT

Dan Waters has just published a 14 part video cast series on how to build a 3D game, complete with audio, input, and character animation. 2 Hours and 25 Minutes of total content!

XNA_BUG : February 2008 XNA Contest

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:00:14 GMT

The XNA Belgian User Group organizes the February 2008 XNA Contest This contest is open for developers and designers, working on XNA Games. The development and demo can be done on a PC platform or XBOX 360. The participants can form teams of 2 people working together. Participants have to be 16 years old at the days of the finals, but not older than 36 years (born between February 23, 1972 and February 23, 1992) AND live in Belgium. The contest is based on a 'starter kit', consisting of a 'nearly finished' game, build on top of XNA. The purpose of the contest is to extend this starter kit in the best and most creative way. The starter kit will be made available from February 1 on http://www.xnabug.net/starterkits.htm Submissions will be judged on creativity, innovation and 'playability' of the demo. To judge the submissions, participating teams need to: - Enroll for the contest by mailing an enrollment form to [BRECHT at XNABUG dot NET]. The enrollment form is available here. The enrollment form has to be received by February 18 midnight. - Prepare 2 'posters' explaining the submission. The posters have to be printed on A3 paper size. These posters will be used during round one on during the finals, February 23. Based on the posters and questions and answers, the jury will select the teams which will present and demo their submission. - Prepare a presentation/demo of 10 minutes and 5 minutes of questions and answers. This demo and presentation will be done February 23 in front of the jury and the audience. It will be executed on the equipment of the participating team. The facility to project on a large screen will be provided by the organization. Judging criteria: The submissions, posters and presentations/demo's will be judged by a multidisciplinary team of gaming specialists., active in training, development, design and press. The judging criteria will be: |innovation|, |creativity| and |play, demo|. What can you win: The winning team will receive an XBOX 360 elite for every participant (up to 2). Every team presenting / demo during the finals will receive an XNA Creators Club account and more. The finals will take place in the auditoria of Groep T, Campus Vesalius, Vesaliusstraat 13, 3000 Leuven (INFO). For more information: http://www.xnabug.net http://www.microsoft.com/xna

Domination

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:59:43 GMT

John Sedlak has been working on a small game for the Dream Build Play Warm Up Challenge, now that the entries for the comp have finished he has posted the game he has been working on.

Very Silly Games

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:33:11 GMT

Rob Miles has put together a new Web Site called VerySillyGames, with this site he plans to put together a collection of Very Silly Games that you can download that will include the full Source code.

Novaleaf talk about Performance Tuning XNA Applications

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:30:04 GMT

Novaleaf talk about Performance Tuning XNA Applications

Self-Paced Online Blender Course

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:47:46 GMT

Blender is a great 3D modler and can export models in a format that works with XNA GS so having a free tutorial on the tool is incredibly nice.