My review of "Microsoft XNA Unleashed" by Chad Carter. XNA is Microsoft's game development platform for Windows and Xbox 360. This book provides a great introduction to game development with XNA, covering key concepts like componentization and game components/services. It also touches upon physics and AI. While the book is light on visuals and the AI chapter could be more substantial, it's a good starting point for C# programmers wanting to explore game development using XNA. It's less suited for experienced graphics programmers or those unfamiliar with C#. The release of XNA v2 might make some parts of the book outdated.
I'm starting to port the Parallax Engine to XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2 due to major changes from Beta 1, notably the removal of Game Designers. While I liked the rapid configuration they offered, their removal seems necessary for Xbox 360 support.
I had a problem getting TypeConverters to work with generic lists in XNA and WinForms. The designer wouldn't generate the code I wanted for properties. I needed a simple way to serialize objects, so I tried a minimalist approach. Overriding CanConvertTo and ConvertTo methods in my TypeConverter was enough for the designer to serialize the objects correctly, generating much cleaner and simpler code.
I came across ARogan's F14 XNA game which features 3 levels of parallax scrolling. I'm thinking it would be a great opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of my XNA Parallax Engine. Ideally, someone ports the game to use my engine, but if not, I'll do it myself since the F14 game's source code is available. This will be a good test of my engine's flexibility and I'm eager to see how easy the porting process is and how well it performs. I'll keep you updated on my progress.
In this post, I describe a solution to a problem I encountered while working with XNA Beta1 and Vector2 structs. Because Vector2 didn't have an associated TypeConverter, the designer lacked support. Applying a TypeConverter to the property worked in the designer, but Visual Studio 2005 ignored it during serialization, resorting to resource files, which was messy. My workaround involves dynamically adding a TypeConverter to the Vector2 type itself using TypeDescriptor.AddAttributes, which is invoked during the class's construction. By registering the Vector2Converter with the Vector2 type early on, both the designer and code serialization work harmoniously.
Check out my new video demo showcasing the simplicity of creating scrolling parallax layers in XNA. In under 3 minutes, I demonstrate how to build a parallax engine with layers, a camera, and scrollers, all without writing any code! The video covers basic scrolling and adding effects like oscillators. Watch it on YouTube, Google Video, or download the WMV. Feedback is welcome here or on the CodePlex forums.
I've just released the first alpha version of my XNA Parallax Engine! You can download it from CodePlex. It's still early stages and needs a lot of work, including examples, documentation, artwork, and more. If you're interested in contributing, please get in touch!
I've just pushed an update to my XNA Parallax Engine project, which now includes its first demo. This initial demo showcases a basic single scrolling background—simple, yet functional, requiring minimal code for setup. I'm currently refining the layer collection initialization process. The updated source code is available on Codeplex for those interested in exploring it further.
I've started a project on Codeplex and I'm very impressed with how easy Team Foundation Server is to use compared to Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest. It integrates seamlessly with VS2005. I'm still getting used to it, but running into some integration issues between VS C# Express (required for XNA) and Team Foundation Server. I'm currently using VS2005 Team Edition, VS Express, and the command line (tf) in my workflow.
I've started an open-source parallax scrolling component project on CodePlex to help game developers create repeating scrolling backgrounds for their XNA games. It's still in early stages, but currently includes a 2D camera, layer oscillators, scrolling, and clipping functionality. Check out the XNAParalax Component project on CodePlex and provide feedback!
I was developing a component in XNA and needed a way to edit Vector2 properties directly within the Game Designer. Since Vector2 is a struct and doesn't inherently support this, I created a custom TypeConverter. The provided code allows you to modify Vector2 values in the designer using comma notation (e.g., 50, 100). Feel free to adapt it for other types like Vector3.
I bought a used Xbox 360 controller to test game development using XNA for PC and the upcoming Xbox 360. The XNA programming model works well, and I can access controller inputs like trigger pressure. I couldn't install the official Xbox 360 controller driver for Windows XP, but the XBCD drivers worked seamlessly. Find them at xbcd360guide.50webs.com (use at your own risk, the site looks a bit sketchy).
I just got the XNA Beta and had to tweak the template code a bit to get it running on my older machine (Athlon with a Geforce 2MX). I was getting a Device Creation Exception, and it turned out my graphics card doesn't support multisampling on the backbuffer. Adding "this.graphics.AllowMultiSampling = false;" to the InitializeComponent method fixed it. Hopefully, this helps someone else too! (P.S. Hardware donations are welcome! 😉)
I previously doubted the possibility of C# on Xbox 360 and a hobbyist homebrew version. I was wrong! Microsoft announced the release of Visual Studio 2005 Express for Xbox 360 content creation on August 30, 2006. The $99/year dev kit allows non-commercial game development and sharing among hobbyists (no network support yet). I'm excited to get an Xbox 360, Xbox Live account, and the developer account! Check out these resources: XNA Team Blog, Microsoft XNA homepage, XNA FAQ, Game Studio, News Report, another Blog Post.
I'm excited about the newly announced XNA Framework from Microsoft! It's supposed to make game development for Windows and Xbox 360 easier by unifying the class libraries. Imagine the code and asset reuse possibilities! They even showed off some demos at GDC running managed code on the Xbox 360. Sadly, I doubt they'll let homebrew developers like me use it, which is a bummer. Think of the cool Xbox Live content we could make!
