May 12, 2009
Looks like some people have been watching the new Star Trek film just a few times….
Posted on DeJohn’s blog is a screenshot of the new "Loading" image for your Avatar in XNA GS 3.1. I must say it looks cool and cannot wait, I think the first thing to try is to also crate your own loading annimation.
I’m all for just changing it to a Red colour, got to Love those Kilngon transporters.
Quote
http://blogs.msdn.com/dejohn/archive/2009/05/11/what-to-do-while-an-avatar-loads.aspx
April 30, 2009
January 12, 2009
Well I’ve been busy of the last week and even more so today. I’ve finally setup my new blog (the old one will remain for now as I’ve stated) and got a little intro up there already. Not to get too excited yet though, I’m still working on chapter 1 for the 3D modeling tutorial, but it’s coming along nicely. I’m always very critical when it comes to the beginning of such things as if you don’t set the stage properly and get everyone to understand the terminology to be used, you can get in to all sorts of troubles later on.
Still if you want to know how I’ve got here, it’s an interesting read. yuck. 
On another note, further to my introduction to Dark Omen Games, I’ve dropped a little note on the new website for our merry little band, absolutely no mentions of Kate Winslet’s acceptance speech at all, hmmm.
So if your still interested to follow my ramblings in this world and a little 3D tutorial nonsense, find me over here at http://faux-motion.blogspot.com/
For a little something to slip in to while I get the first post read, head over to Stromcode, Rick Strom has a few Blender tutorials there which are pretty good IMHO, a bit more of a do as I say tutorial rather than a learn how to do, but it’s good to walkthrough nonetheless.
Another honorable mention (thanks to Charles “RandomChaos” Humphrey again), is that there is a special XNA Exporter for Blender, which can be found on the Triple B Games site, this python script sorts out your Blender export and even adds collision boundaries for your models, saving you time calculating them in game (if that’s what you need), always worth a look.
That’s it from me here for now, so see you over at Faux motion in the future, don’t forget to update your blogroll.
This is Darkside signing out (of spaces for now)
January 2, 2009
2008 was not a good year for me. Work ramped up to 1000% and my family got a surprising present before the year had even begun. This did not bode well for my progress as a game developer so I became what is referred to as a slacker 
.
I could moan, whimper and hide under a rock or I could move on. I choose the latter and so on with 2009. (got to stop writing 2008, have had to correct myself several times now)
Now I’ve not been totally remiss last year, I have kept up to date with all the recent developments in XNA and beyond, I have also been designing heavily and helping out others with their designs (although not much coding work), I just didn’t post about it much. A few of the major points were:
) and have already contributed a little bit with new game designs and ear bending’s), even added some more resources to the group. I hope to continue this more and more as the year goes on. (BTW, Charles has a fantastic series going on about HLSL, so worth a peek over there!, he has also revived his old Blog for some C++ stuff, I don’t know where he finds the time)
Well the 2 goals I’ve set for myself are to make a major dent in the development of an improved Hack-1 project which when finished will probably be published under the Dark Omen Game banner. I’ll blog as much as I can about that, taking a lead of my new Dark Omen buddies and see if I can pull a video or two together during the progress.
Secondarily, I’m going to comprise a new 3D modeling tutorial. this seems to be an area lacking in the XNA community (or most other places unless you watch all the big heavy 3D sites). The tutorials will not be in just one product either, it will feature 3DS Max for sure and will likely include Blender and maybe Truespace or the XSI mod tool. this is a heavy demand on me so please be patient.
In the 3D Modeling series I’ll cover:
This is by no means a fixed schedule and you will notice there’s no dates there, reason being I’m still learning myself. So like I did when I started this blog, you’ll be learning as I do (a few steps behind so I can make all those beginner mistakes and fix them).
I am no stranger to 3D modeling but I do have to get myself back up to date, you may think showing multiple tools at the same time is going to be tricky, but it’s not that bad really, they all use very similar terminology and the thing you really need to get under your belt when modeling are the techniques rather than the tools. Sure there are some application specific things but the basics (and even some of the advanced stuff) is fairly common in all tools.
now with all this going on there is one last thing I will be doing before all this starts. The blog is going to move (or at least most of the new stuff), this old blog with remain and I will still update it from time to time (and even reference some of my old stuff) but for my main blogging I’ll be using the new one (or maybe 2 depending on the speed of Hack-1 stuff).
Reason I’m doing this is because I finally became sick as hell 
of all the junk appearing on the spaces site, I’ve got to constantly monitor the site and the comments that appear. It’s supposed to be managed and controlled to stop spammers but more and more I come back to check on it (either before making a post or just from looking at my homepage) to find umpteen amounts of sales or spam comments or stuff just randomly appearing on my posts. No matter what you do it always comes back, so I’ve had enough.
My next post on this blog will be the new address when I’ve chosen a new one (I’ve had a few good suggestions so far but not tried them yet)
Don’t forget to go and visit Charles either on his XNA-UK blog or his old BlogSpot one. 
So Merry Christmas (for those of you who haven’t touched a computer since leaving work for the break) and a Happy new Year to you all, here’s hoping I hear more from you and that I get on with something (other than work and family, time for more time for me!)
P.S. Just in case my work reads this, I’m not putting off work, I’m just going to work even harder on myself. Just not doing less (well hopefully you get the picture)
On another note, i must admit I also have to try and spend more time on my charitable work as I also look after a blog site for my sons charity, the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association. It’s only been going a Year but it’s doing well with a few contributors now and I still need to add more myself whilst looking after it. If you’re curious what PWS is, then have a look on the site or the Charities main page here. (Don’t even bother if your a Spammer, I’m watching out for you!!! 
)
September 13, 2008
Last year, I mentioned about EA releasing the fabulous (of it’s time) game that started a whole raft of other like minded games (that sounded better in my head 🙂 ), it was Command and Conquer.
Now here he are and they have decided that since Red Alert 3 is coming along nicely, they’d like to remind you what the hell the series was about and to this end they have now released Red Alert 1 for FREE.
Also if your really good and pre order Red Alert 3, they will also furnish you with a full series copy of Red Alert 2
Red Alert 1 in case you don’t remember brought in the wonderful idea, that with this big expanse of water around most battle fields, it might be nice to use that to bombard the enemy from afar, laughing away at the ground based troops who could on hide and cower and unable to reach them (at least until your subs could pop up and blow them to smithereens) or to be able to sneak troops aground the enemy’s flank by water and drop them straight into your base if you weren’t careful. Usually promoting such phrases as “Where’s my construction site gone!”.
Although unlike last time there are no novelty gifts available, pah.
With Red Alert 3 looking like a nice new puppy waiting for you to buy it by looking so lovely in the shop window, and it it looking damn fine at the moment (I really like the Empire of the rising sun, the new 3’d playable enemy), make me think back to my old faithful friend with fond memories and eager to walk into the shop and pick up that new dog.
Here’s hoping that house training wont be so messy this time.
An annoying thing has been plaguing my site recently, unfriendly people are starting to make me administer my blog with a lot more vigour, they having been commenting on random posts (usually old’ish ones) with shameless advertising. Or worse, in a language other than on my site, which when I look into it, turns out to be more advertising, or worse (I have enough Viagra thank you and don’t need yet another supplier. that amount being none, thank you very much)
If you have not heard already, next week see’s the final Beta for XNA Game Studio 3.0 (not long to the full version now). This release is pretty much feature complete, although publishing to the XBOX is still not available, most likely because they need to update the BOX side it’ self and like the last version update, this usually breaks compatibility. With DreamBuildPlay nearly finished, I can well understand the need to wait (Since it is all being showcased on XNA 2).
Maybe next year and the net contest, we ay see categories for games and not just one overall winner, would be good to have classes for PC, XBOX and Zune as separate categories. maybe even one category for and all in one (a game that can be deployed to all 3 platforms, albeit a bit tricky)
Make me want to finally find some time and get back to programming goodness (if only work would ease off), in Case your wondering I’m writing this blog now from Chennai in India, where my work delights on sending me quiet frequently to keep our outsourced development arm moving (well moving in approximately the right direction at least). I Don’t mind it and it is a great experience to some here but I do miss the wife and kids. (and not having any personal life working all hours here :-(|)
I recommend as well popping over to Sharky’s Blog, as he’s gone and got himself an interview with a Mag – published here. Well worth a read as it reminds me of my own background (which is surprisingly similar, especially how I got into XNA). Also good to see all the hard work he is putting into Sharky’s Air Legends which is also his Dream Build Play entry this year.
TTFN
January 18, 2008
Time being what it is, I seem to have less and less to play with. One of the biggest casualties has been my Game Development progress, including this blog. That is not to say I’ve stopped completely (9i’v still got my hands in and do my best to keep up to date with everything going on, especially with the XNA 2 release and the new developments with WiiWare) but time is just diverted to other things such as below.
Little Baby Nathan Samuel found his way into the world on DEC 28th despite all the odds stacked against him, lovely as he is. (and in case your wondering, that now makes 4, including 1 accident and 1 miracle, as in shouldn’t have been medically possible after 3 years, damn human body :-))
Work is the other Factor which has been hell of late, deadlines approaching and such. At least Charles over at RandomChaos has been holding up the Lanky Brit front and has been releasing some great content, we chat regularly and I am truly amazed by what he has achieved in a short span of time. his blog recently moved on to the every successful XNAUK user group site, lots going on there as well.
The Main XNAUK User group site, well worth a look.
As for the future, I’m focusing on what I can, scratching up designs for games (pad and pen easier to come by and doesn’t annoy the wife) and checking out the background devising for the games while keeping up to date with all new things. (my blog list is far tooo long).
For the last if anyone is wondering what the heck my new logo is, then visit this link and shout out "Microsoft, Change the world or go home". New/old way of thinking of how to get a job not only done but done well and in a way that is productive. Either that or do it right or get lost!, has several meanings.
September 3, 2007
Nope I’m not drunk and your not dreaming.
The game that started a lot of peoples like for fast paced Strategy fondness and quite a few late nights (for me) playing against your friend (amassing a lot of tanks and laughing gleefully as they run straight over your fiends enemy base, ROFL) is now available for free.
EA are distributing the original ISO’s for both the GDC and NOD campaigns (hopefully without the copy protection, else that would be just daft), which you can burn to CD and relive all the delights of a time gone by.
SO enjoy and head over to EA’s page and play and play and then play some more.
Meet you on the match server!!!!, mwuhahhahahaha
Oh and on another note you can now also purchase your own Kane bobble-head doll to punch or hug depending on which camp you feel at home in. Hmmm.
And another even more freaky occurrence, Kane has made an appearance on YouTube of all places from http://www.kanelives.org/. Now that is just spooky.
December 29, 2006
Seems I’m getting notice more and more these day’s, always good.
I got a mention in an interview with Microsoft Dave Mitchell about my involvement in the XBOX360Homebrew contest. (Will get round to updating HACK-1 in time)
XNATutorial blog gave me a mention in the monthly updates (nice!)
And now a new site has sprung up called NewsXNA, looks good so far, although only containing links to other resource site but shows a lot of promise.
Suggest you add it to your favorite links and head over there once in a while.
Merry Xmas and a Happy new year to you all
Darkside
P.S
As a bit of a teaser I should hopefully blogging up a more detailed Camera Guide (not tutorial, just reference) and some info on terrain creation and management.
Sorry nothing on Shaders yet, just bussyyy, for some reason
December 13, 2006
Postmortem from my entry in the XBOX360Homebrew contest
Looking back
In the beginning there are darkness…, damn stop , too far back
Looking back to before the start of this competition, I had spent some months just getting into Game Development. I had always loved games, way back in school I was writing games back then, on the school BBC computer (actually I did some stuff on my old VIC20 and Amstrad 1640, but they never got as far as being called games, well more like text adventures), I wrote an adventure came using CEEFAX pages for a end of year project, similar to the old flip page adventure books.
Unfortunately from then on LIFE got in the way and I had to work, from here I delved into electronics, getting a very analytical background and then onto almost everything Microsoft, Servers Workstations, Networks, you name it I did it. I even became a professional DB developer, I was an all round infrastructure person, a Jack of all Trades.
I delved back into programming a few years back and started thinking about games again.
(As a side thought, I must get round to putting all my research links for beginners onto my Blog site, been thinking about it again for a while but the competition got in the way!)
Started working on some Managed DirectX projects when XNA got announced and I jumped straight in without really thinking about it, A game development framework that was easy to use was just sooo tempting, A good idea it turns out.
I delved into some of the handy tutorials that popped out from some brand new XNA communities run by some of the friendliest people I’ve talked to.
Along came the CONTEST!!, at this point a lot of the stuff I had been doing was either all idea’s (some very complex and beyond my current abilities) or just design, with the contest in my grasp, I finally had the push to get something done, hence Hack-1 was brought screaming into the light, it was originally a sub game of one of my larger projects.
The Process
I began drawing up plans, sketching screens and bashing around basic gameplay everything seemed fine.
Got to work with the code and XNA provided such an easy path to get the framework up and running.
Finding Art
As most can see form the result, ART is not my strong point, not even a wisp of graphical design, I spent a few days trawling lots of free graphical resources, hammering Google and putting together a basic list of assets for the project.
In the Beginning
I got the basic game window up and started putting things on the screen, found what I thought were the best way’s to display things in-game, then took a step back. I then came across several articles which described a better way to do animation.
Now in hindsight this probably limited me, if you have planned you design out already, keep with it unless something is drastically wrong or not working. I hit my first ditch in my game project refactoring around the new idea and lost a fair amount of time which I probably didn’t need to complete my project.
On with the Show
Well things progressed, I had all the major parts of the game there, Collision, Game action points on screen and things were working, until…
What happens when you don’t think of an editor
Now this was my biggest failing of the entire project (besides Battlestar Galactica and Stargate!!!), in all my design I had overlooked an editor and not just the editor but also a way to design levels in-game, how to save level designs and how to load the levels from the saves.
This cost me a lot of stop time in my project and I chose XML as a preferred save type, even though reading and wring XML files outside of databases was not something I had done before or had much confidence in but it seemed the best idea at the time. Having XML meant that levels could be designed without the game, it allowed modding of the game with custom maps and a lot of other things which were NOT IN SCOPE of the competition project.
I entered what I usually call SOLUTION mode, I started to design not just a game but an entire lifecycle for the project but with out a sustainable base!.
Now there goes 2 weeks
Well in between the editor design and save design I hit my other major failing, I stopped. maybe like Alex said in his Wildboarders rundown, I worked too hard and was loosing faith, or I just took my eye off the ball but for what ever reason, Work stopped.
I watched TV, I played other games – (If you like spacey Sims, SO I recommend DarkStar one for anyone else who does, the graphics are not the greatest and the constant loading of assets in game is annoying but the game gets very fun and doesn’t get boring).
Stay on Target
I came back to the light and started afresh, another of the lessons which just re-enforces Alex’s comment, Take time out’s, sit back and remember why you started your project in the first place.
I took stock of what I had and started to manage myself, I set out a proper plan, set checkpoints for work and scheduled things. This is a must for any project, I recently blogged about this in my main blog and hope to continue it in the future.
Project management in a development of any size is crucial, doesn’t have to be much but you need to take stock of what you’ve done, where you are and where and what you need to do to keep moving forward.
Quick rescope
The project downsized and became more manageable, from this point on the pace quickened, then BETA 2 came out.
in a way the pause in my work did save me some overall time and the upgrade only cost me 1 day, things were cleaner, quicker and I started to gain confidence in what I was doing.
Get Confident
If your unsure of a way to do something, research first, make a plan of action and then execute, sandbox stuff outside you project if need be to test things and move on.
In the last two weeks I got cleaner more efficient and coded better.
Get help if you need it
in my mass coding, I kept check with CODEPLEX and the XNA Forums for anything which could help with my game, I came across Shakaware’s Main Menu Component. I was getting to the point where I needed to pack my gameplay into a game framework, Menu, Loading screens and such. This came up at the best point in the project and saved me a lot of time, it needed upgrading to Beta 2 but was fairly easy.
Finally
I spent a few nights looking for audio, making documentation and play testing the game and finally packaging the game up.
I was going to put it into an installer but I didn’t have time, the last week was my most intensive period, mainly because of polish, even though My game doesn’t look fancy, I felt it needed a bit of a facelift and several things got an upgrade, even the border around the map was thrown in on the dying hours of the previous night.
Levels were created 3 hours from release.
End Conclusions
I’ve made several points on my main failing points through this, a very uphill learning process.
The entire process for me is good though and I enjoined it tremendously
Looking Forward
Apart from visiting the above points, I plan to come back to Hack-1, the project wont die (as it will still be in my big game design).
As the game is in competition mode, the code in the game is not great, actually it’s pretty crap but most competition code is, defiantly not something you want to show the world or hoist up as a good tutorial!. lol
I will start afresh and probably start with one of the other faces I decided on for the game which is more 3D, the original mode will work back in although tarted up with better graphics and SHADERS!.
…
So it’s back to reading and refreshing and drawing (even bought some drawing books to start with, always best to start on paper!)
Thanks
Thanks to everyone for support in this competition and a big thanks to the writers of the XNA components I used in the project.
I will be compiling the results of the two polls I posted Here and Here, then get the juiciest bits from all the postmortem’s into another beginner guide hints and tips. I came across lots in the past and one put together from such a mass amount of experience will also aid other newbies like myself.
Look forward to more coming out of the XNA factory and when I eventually buy an XBOX, I’ll enjoy more out of the creators club.
TTFN
Darkside
December 4, 2006
If you read the previous posts on my blog, you should notice I focus mainly on concepts for game development and utter nonsense, if you want tutorials and coding examples – hay I got links to those, I’m only beginning.
Today’s ramble is on a good old favorite of mine, Project Management.
From Big projects to even the smallest, setting guidelines and timeframe’s for work to do is very important, just as important is keeping to them (something I usually fall short of when the next Battlestar Galactica episode comes out, ahh there it is!)
It is important to lay out everything you want to do, sort it into some reasonable order and then fix some checkpoints on a weekly (or shorter) basis where you will reflect on where you are in the plan and where you actually are.
For example, in my competition project, I set out a 6 week schedule, starting with design and basic components into the game for the first week. Second week comprised of basic gameplay, basic collision detection and input, third week had Editor, loading and saving functionality and advanced gameplay and so on.
Now by the first week I was upto date with only 1 outstanding task which was 50% complete and I had actually gotten a start on some of week two’s items, good so far. Week 2 struggled a bit and realised that the editor in week 3 was needed sooner (see my previous post!). Quick pit-stop and restructure plan.
Then crisis (also see earlier blogs) time disappeared into a sink hole and I lost two weeks, so quick scrabble through plan, cut – paste – shuffle and reduce scope.
Now at least I know what to expect at the end of the line.
Now with experience, I would have probably re-ordered some of the things around a bit. All part of the learning process – Know your Game!. NOT keeping an eye on new series starting would have helped more.
At the end of this rant, I hope (but probably not) you should get a feel of how important Project Management is for even the smallest project. Plan Big, checkpoint often and don’t be afraid to re-shuffle it around. Always be careful of scope.
On another note, a wonderful new Blog site has appeared recently on the horizon "Manders vs Machine" – by Mike Anders (part of the MS PIX Direct3D team).
The blog is really refreshing and Mike has recently found XNA and started putting some interesting stuff up, things like making a Mandelbrot set in graphical form, things to watch out for when outputting to Televisions (Screen safe area’s) and a little hint on making a Matrix Visualizer for Studio and express.
All very interesting stuff, I’d recommend a look – http://blogs.msdn.com/manders/default.aspx
The Beginnings of Game Development 