One Missed Email

Cavemen Vs Aliens is Out

2010-02-03T10:11:00.001-08:00

Cavemen Vs Aliens is a game I worked on while helping 'We Are Colin', and it is out for every one to play, click the link below to check it out =)

Check it out

Zombie Game - New Video

2010-01-18T04:28:00.001-08:00

Here is a new video of the Zombie Game.

Please note that this is still in development and changes will happen.

Enjoy!

Update and a Zombie Game

2009-12-31T11:21:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I hit a slight problem with development of ZSF, when my PC died and I lost every thing, with all of my back ups being stored on a HDD which I have left at a mates house =(

So as I can not carry on development of ZSF for a few weeks, I started a small project few days ago and I feel it is at a stage to show.

Enjoy =)

Zombie Space Frogs Update

2009-10-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I have started to clean and optimize the code, as well as fix some bugs that have raised their ugly heads in the Space Frogs game.

I hope to been done with the new code this weekend and may post a new video of the game soon ... but Burial Legend is out and the demo rocked, so we will see.

Don't forget to check the new We Are Colin website.

Cheers!

Update - We Are Colin

2009-10-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hello every one. I am still working hard but I am currently helping some mates with their games studio, doing some Games Design and QA for them.

Check out the website:

http://www.wearecolin.com/

Cheers

XNA in your web browser??

2009-10-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

Its been out for a month or two now, so this may be old new to some of you. SilverSprite is a libray that allows you to make 2D game in XNA and with minimum code changes, have them work in a Web Browser using Silverlight.

I have been playing around with it for a hour and think it is worth checking out.

http://silversprite.codeplex.com/

Cheers =)

XNA GAME

2009-09-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hi, for the few people who check this blog here is a video of what has been taken up some of my time.

I am working on two XNA games at the moment; I am currently (and focusing on) adding content to the “Zombie Space Frogs” game (See video) and testing each puzzle added. I have also started a prototype for a new game and I hope to post a video of that soon

Update

2009-09-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

Hi sorry there has been little to no updates. But I have been concentrating on getting a job the last few weeks.

As much as I like writing these tutorials I also want to get back in to the games industry since gaining my degree =)

I am still writing code and designing game in my spare time, and I have some great ideas for some new tutorials, so please be patient ;)

I have also started a new blog called Most Excellent Games, that is not dedicated to tutorials (but I will post them on there and on this blog). It is a more relaxed blog and I hope this will allow me to post more content. You can find it here:

http://mostexcellentgames.blogspot.com/

Cheers

End of Communication! ;)

Sorry for the delay

2009-07-20T06:02:00.001-07:00

Ok sorry for the delay on the C++ tutorial, every thing hit the fan last week, forcing me away from the PC for most of the week.

Any way here is the 1st part of the tutorial:

I do intend on finishing this today or tomorrow.

I have changed the pdf to a newer version, still not finished but most of it is there =)

Cheers =)

When Angels Cry.........

2009-07-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

I am sure most people who read this blog (if any one but me reads this blog) knows what Dead Fantasy is, but if you don't it is about people from the DOA/Ninja Gaiden games fighting people from the Final Fantasy games..... its fan service from start to end, but fun none the less =)

Any ways, here is the latest part:

Video Games | Monty Oum | Dead Fantasy III

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Basic Space Shooter XNA Links

2009-06-26T05:09:00.000-07:00

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Solution

The complete game should take 20 minutes to hour to program, I split it up in different parts so that it is easier to read (yes I know its formatted oddly, did nor realize blogger does not like code until I had started, so I have added a download link (Solution) so you can see an example of the working code).

Basic Space Shooter XNA (Part: 4)

2009-06-26T04:35:00.000-07:00

Player Sprite

Bullet Sprite

Enemy Sprite

Now let’s finish this game, we will be adding 4 things to the game in this part:

Resetting the game if the player is hit.
Collision between the player and the enemies.
Adding the ability to shoot to the enemies.
Collision between the player and the enemy’s bullets.

Let’s add a method to reset the game:

private void ResetGame()

{

playerBulletList = new List<GameObject>();

enemyList = new List<GameObject>();

player.rect = new Rectangle(32, 268, 64, 64);
}

We set the two lists to new lists so that all the data is deleted and we reset the player to the start position.

Now we need to add collision between player and enemy, this is easy all we need to do is add a check in the enemy update loop, so right after check to see if the enemy is active add :

if (enemyList[i].rect.Intersects(player.rect))

{

ResetGame();

break;

}

We called the ResetGame() method and then break out of the loop.

If you build and run this now, every time you are hit my the enemy the game should reset =)

Now we want the enemy to shoot we will make this random, so we need to add a Random variable and a new list to hold the enemy bullet list to the top of the class:

List<GameObject> enemyBulletList = new List<GameObject>();

Random random = new Random();

In the RestGame() method add:

enemyBulletList = new List<GameObject>();

This will delete any bullets when the game is reset.

Now to get the enemy shooting, this is easy all we need to do is add a if statement to the enemy update loop after we have check to see if it is active:

if (random.Next(0, 100) >= 98)

{

GameObject tempObj = new GameObject();

tempObj.sprite = bulletSprite;

tempObj.rect = new Rectangle(enemyList[i].rect.X + 24, enemyList[i].rect.Y + 24, 16, 16);

tempObj.speed = -5;

tempObj.active = true;

enemyBulletList.Add(tempObj);

}

We need to update the enemy bullets and check to see if they hit the player, we loop though the bullets just like we did for the player bullets but we also add collision check against the player.

for (int i = 0; i <
enemyBulletList.Count; i++)

{

if (enemyBulletList[i].rect.X + 16 <= 0)

{

enemyBulletList[i].active = false;

}

if (enemyBulletList[i].active)

{

enemyBulletList[i].rect.X += enemyBulletList[i].speed;

//===============================================================

//Check to see if the bullet hits the player //===============================================================

if (enemyBulletList[i].rect.Intersects(player.rect))

{

ResetGame();

}

//===============================================================

}

else

{

enemyBulletList.RemoveAt(i);

i--;

}

}

Last but least we need to draw the bullets:

for (int i = 0; i<
enemyBulletList.Count; i++)

{

if (enemyBulletList[i].active)

{

spriteBatch.Draw(enemyBulletList[i].sprite, enemyBulletList[i].rect, Color.White);

}

}

Build and run and you should now have a small game =)

If you click here you can get a working example in XNA 3.0 =)

Basic Space Shooter XNA (Part: 3)

2009-06-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Player Sprite

Bullet Sprite

Enemy Sprite

Ok now have the player shooting we need something to shoot, so let add some enemies. Let’s add a list for the enemies, some ints to control the enemy spawn rate and a texture2D to hold the enemy sprite.

List<GameObject> enemyList = new List<GameObject>();

int spawnElapsedTime = 0;

int spawnRate = 1000;

Texture2D enemySprite;

Load the enemy sprite:

enemySprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Enemy");

Update the enemy spawn counter and check to see if we need to spawn an enemy:

spawnElapsedTime += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds;

if (spawnElapsedTime >= spawnRate)

{

spawnElapsedTime = 0;

GameObject tempObj = new GameObject();

tempObj.sprite = enemySprite;

tempObj.rect = new Rectangle(graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth + 64, player.rect.Y, 64, 64);

tempObj.speed = -3;

tempObj.active = true;

enemyList.Add(tempObj);

}

We are going to spawn the enemies in front of the player just off screen. They have the speed of -3 so when we add this speed to the enemy X position they move left, towards the player.

Now we need to update and draw the enemies:

Update:

for (int i = 0; i <enemyList.Count; i++)

{

if (enemyList[i].rect.X + 64 <= 0)

{

enemyList[i].active = false;

}

if (enemyList[i].active)

{

enemyList[i].rect.X += enemyList[i].speed;

//===============================================================

// Check for collision with a player bullets

//===============================================================

for (int y = 0; y < playerBulletList.Count; y++)

{

if (playerBulletList[y].active)

{

if (enemyList[i].rect.Intersects(playerBulletList[y].rect))

{

enemyList[i].active = false;

playerBulletList[y].active = false;

}

}

}

}

else

{

enemyList.RemoveAt(i); //Remove enemy if not active

i--;

}

}

//===============================================================

Draw:

for (int i = 0; i < enemyList.Count; i++)

{

if (enemyList[i].active)

{

spriteBatch.Draw(enemyList[i].sprite, enemyList[i].rect, Color.White);

}

}

Build and run and you should now be able to shoot the enemies =D

Basic Space Shooter XNA (Part: 2)

2009-06-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Player Sprite

Bullet Sprite

Shooting =D, let’s set up the variables that we are going to need:

int playerElapsedTime = 0;

int playerFireRate = 250;

List<GameObject> playerBulletList = new List<GameObject>();

Texture2D bulletSprite;

‘playerElapsedTime’ and ‘playerFireRate’ will allow us to control how fast the player can shoot, in this case 1 bullet every 250 milliseconds. We are using a list to hold any bullet the player may shoot.

First load the bullet in the LoadContent method:

bulletSprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Bullet");

In the Update Method we need to keep track of how much time has passed:

playerElapsedTime += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds;

How let’s check to see if the player has pressed space and see if they can shoot:

if(Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Space))

{

if (playerElapsedTime > playerFireRate)

{

playerElapsedTime = 0;

GameObject tempObj = new GameObject();

tempObj.sprite = bulletSprite;

tempObj.rect = new Rectangle(player.rect.X + 64, player.rect.Y + 24, 16, 16);

tempObj.speed = 5;

tempObj.active = true;

playerBulletList.Add(tempObj);

}

}

We use the players X position + 64, so that the bullet is created in front of the player’s ship and we add 24 to the player Y position because the sprite I am using for the bullet is 16x16 and this will put it in the middle (64/2) – (16/2) = 24.

Now let’s update the bullets add this to the update method:

for (int i = 0; i < playerBulletList.Count; i++)

{

if (playerBulletList[i].rect.X + 16 >= graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth)

{

playerBulletList[i].active = false;

}

if (playerBulletList[i].active)

{

playerBulletList[i].rect.X += playerBulletList[i].speed;

}

else

{

playerBulletList.RemoveAt(i);

i--;

}

}

Let’s draw the bullets, add this after we have drawn the player:

for (int i = 0; i <playerBulletList.Count; i++)

{

if (playerBulletList[i].active)

{

spriteBatch.Draw(playerBulletList[i].sprite, playerBulletList[i].rect, Color.White);

}

}

We check to see if the bullet is active as there is no point in updating and draw and non-active bullet.

We now have PEGI

2009-06-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

As I am sure most people already know, the Digital Britain report is out and has caused some controversy over the purposed internet tax. We also found out if games in the UK are going to carry the PEGI or BBFC ratings system, and it now looks like we will be having the PEGI rating system.

It will be interesting to see, if little Jimmy’s mum still buys him “Gears of War”, now that we have the big red 18 logo of the PEGI system, rather that the big red 18 logo of the BBFC.

Will this solve the problem of parents not understanding, that just because it's called a game does not mean it's for children, I won’t hold my breath. But I do think it is a step in the right direction as it makes it much simpler to explain the content of a game to a non-gamer (e.g. “see the big number in the corner of the box?”…… “Yes, that’s an age rating not a difficulty rating”).

The idea of using the PEGI system was suggested by Tanya Byron in the “Safer Children in a Digital World” report.

Basic Space Shooter XNA (Part:1) (Rewrite)

2009-06-05T04:26:00.000-07:00

Player Sprite

I am going to assume you know how to load textures and draw them to screen using XNA. I will be adding a small class called GameObject to the top of the main file that will hold the Rectangle that we will use for position and collision, a Texture2D to hold the sprite, a bool to hold if the object is active or not, and a int to hold the speed of the object.

class GameObject

{

public Rectangle rect;

public Texture2D sprite;

public bool active;

public int speed;

}

Now that we have the GameObject class set up lets create a player object, so add:

GameObject player = new GameObject();

in LoadContent lets load the player sprite and set up the rest of the player variables (I am using a 64x64 sprite for the player):

player.sprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Player");

player.rect = new Rectangle(32, 268, 64, 64);

player.active = true;

player.speed = 3;

Now that we have a player object let draw it add this to the draw method:

spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);

spriteBatch.Draw(player.sprite, player.rect, Color.White);

spriteBatch.End();

If every thing is correct you should now have a sprite loaded and displayed on screen.

Now for movement code, we are only going to let the player move up and down the screen (so every one can use this code I am using keyboard input) add this to the Update method:

if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Up))

{

player.rect.Y -= player.speed;

}

else if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Down))

{

player.rect.Y += player.speed;

}

The player can currently move off the screen to fix this will check the player position to see if it goes past 0 (the top if the screen) or if the bottom of the player rectangle goes past the bottom of the screen, and then move the player back on screen.

if (player.rect.Y <= 0)

{

player.rect.Y = 0;

}

else if (player.rect.Bottom >= graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight)

{

player.rect.Y = graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight - 64;

}

Build and run and you should now be able to move up and down the screen =D