XNA GPA Blog

What I mean is that I'm moving servers. At the moment this site is hosted on a server that uses Windows and I'm moving to a server that uses Linux. The reason is there are a few things that I would like to do with the site that require PHP, a server-side language, and my host doesn't offer PHP on the Windows server. I'm just letting you all know because they have informed me there could be problems reaching the site while it is being moved. I will be moving on February 1st of this year.

I have been working on an entry to a game programming challenge at Game Institute the last little while. This game is an emulated 3D game. It looks like a 3D game but it is rendered entirely using 2D images. It is an RPG style game that will incorporate some 3D movement and game play. If you ever saw the old Wolfenstein 3D or Doom games, the game is similar but not quite like that.

I have a few ideas on tutorials to come. Both for the role playing game series and for general XNA tutorials. One tutorial series I'm planning is on creating a break out style game with things like power ups. I was thinking of a tutorial on Pong and that could very well happen as well. I'm also planning on a tutorial series on creating the game Asteroids will all of the polish that goes into creating a complete game. Asteroids was one of the first XNA games that I made fully, with XNA 2.0. The way I write games sure has changed since then. For the tutorial series on creating a role playing game with XNA I've been making some changes to the images. I've been working on improving my graphics skills but you do not truly need to change the images if you don't want. They are really just place holders that you can substitute your own graphics for.

I did want to mention something though. When you are creating art assets for your game you should never use the JPEG format for your images. You are always better off to use a format that does not modify your assets. I only use PNG files now, though you could use BMP files and have the parts you want to be transparent in magenta, which is transparent by default in XNA. The hex color code for magenta is FF00FF.

This weekend I will be attending Glolbal Game Jam 2010. This is an event where people all over the world will come together and try to build games in 48 hours. The event starts at 5:00pm in your time zone on Friday January 29th and ends at 5:00pm on Sunday January 31st.

I will also be adding two new tutorials to the web site shortly. I wrote two tutorials on the screen manager series that I started. In one I added in support for the Xbox 360 controller and in the second I showed how to work with pop up screens.

Sorry to say that I have been dealing with a lot of personal issues of late and haven't had the drive to really work on any tutorials or programming in general. With that said, I think I'm ready to get back in the saddle and start working on my tutorials again, including the RPG tutorials. I had planned to not finish the series because I've begun work as and indie developer but I believe that writing the code and the tutorials for Eyes of the Dragon will help me out with other projects.

Also, I know there are many who would love for me to finish this so I've promised myself that I would not let you down. To get started, I'm going to add support for an Xbox 360 controller to the menus. Don't worry if you don't have one because you will still be able to use the keyboard. I'm just going to give you the option of using both. I will also be working on adding Xbox 360 controller support to the rest of the game eventually.