Quick note – We have moved

Seems when I migrated all the post off this blog I actually forgot to actually post about it.

If you would like to see more about XNA / Windows Phone / Windows and much more, check out my consolidated Game/App development blog at:

darkgenesis.zenithmoon.com

 

How cruel the gods can be.

It seems 2010 is going to be a bad start for me as the end of 2009.

In the latter part of 2009, my 3D blog (http://faux-motion.blogspot.com/) and my programming blog here were both plagued by a wholly mind crushing work schedule.  No time to breathe and even my 2 games projects ground to a undeniable halt.

Christmas ended up being busy for other reasons but now with the arrival of 2010, my expectations and new schedule of research, dev and tutorials seem doomed with the latest revelations:

Mass Effect 2 (BioWare) – January 26
It arrived a little late, but the PC edition of space RPG Mass Effect improved many elements over its initial Xbox 360 release. This time around, BioWare plans to release the versions alongside each other. The game will import character and decision data over from the original game, so make sure you’ve got your save files lying around.

BioShock 2 (2K Marin) – February 9
The sequel to 2007’s acclaimed BioShock is being developed by a newly-built studio, but its creative leadership contains key figures from the original 2K Boston team, as well as some talented additions. The group has a lot to live up to, but early glimpses (of which there have been relatively few, thankfully) are promising.

You would think these game Companies would be a bit more sympathetic to us game developers, but no.  They keep bringing out these smashing titles just to break us.

Oh well, I’ll just have to sort something else out 😦

(Also doesn’t help I picked up Fable 2 / Dragon Ages and Borderlands (which is great harmless fun) over Christmas)

Happy new year to all and hoping I will be out from under this rock soon.

On another note, I will probably be moving this blog over to XNA-UK, since I cannot stand the complete lack of spaces comment moderation.  I personally like comments on blogs as it gives you a good feel for how well things are recieved but I’ve had to disable them here as I was getting too much spam.  So instead (after some ear pulling from Nemo Krad (Charles Humphries), I’ll be looking to move soon. 

Will keep you posted.

 

Nebulon Now Available!

 

 

I am happy to announce that Nebulon has passed the peer review process for XBOX LIVE Community Games and is now available for purchase in the territories where XBLCG is available.

The game costs 200 Microsoft Points, and is a lot of fun. (As the Peer Reviewers have told us) This has been a great learning experience for Dark Omen Games, and we are happy to see that Nebulon is the first game from DOG to make it to XBLCG.

DaphydTheBard did a great job with the game, as the peer reviewers have told us, and we hope that you will check out the game and support us to continue developing for what will soon be called XBOX LIVE Indies.

Buy and Download the game from XBOX LIVE Marketplace.

“This game was classified by the community with the following category scores – Violence=0/3, Sex=0/3, Mature Content=0/3. Old School Arcade Action for the 21st Century! Featuring adaptive gameplay, a host of awesome weaponry, stunning effects and a thumping soundtrack to match. Get those trigger fingers ready – this is Retro as it was meant to be played…”

 

Support Ziggyware

Ziggyware.com is one of the best sites for XNA resources and has been around since the beginning.  It including Articles, Tutorials, News and even an Image of The Day section where you can look at what other people are doing.

But that’s not all. One of the things that sets Ziggyware apart from others is that about two or three times each year, it holds a “XNA Articles Competition”. The result of this competition usually takes form in lots of top-quality tutorials and articles about stuff you can do with XNA. Ziggyware wants to repay the talented people that make these tutorials, so he gives them prizes. Because of this, from time to time, there’s a call for donations, and now is such a time.

If you like to use the articles on Ziggyware, and if you want to help the site grow, prosper and continue to provide a constant stream of good XNA articles, you now have the chance to do so, by going on Ziggy’s site, and seeing how you can help.

I’m currently a bit out of action at the mo which is hampering my efforts to get anything done but It seems even my good friend Charles from Dark Omen games has been plundering on without my help now and created some interesting Blender results with his own hands and imagination, check it out here on his blog, there is another video on the same concept which just freaks me out.

 

Nebulon In Play Test

 

So,as I have mentioned before, I am part of a group called Dark Omen Games, and we have finally got around to getting a Creators Club Premium membership so we can start to release our games on the Xbox Live Creators Games.

As my post title suggests, the first game we are putting up is Nebulon, the brain child of Dave Bonner.

Nebulon is a 2D top down shooter, you fly your ship around looking for alien “photons” to warp in so you can shoot them. You have to be quick though, they like to gang up and if to many get together there is the chance of a wormhole opening up and something nasty coming out..

Here are a few screen shots:

As you can see it can get pretty funky.

Here is a clip (pre play test drop):

 

If you have a Creators Club Premium account, please get on a give it a play test, we really would love to hear your feed back on it so we have a solid, robust game going into peer review.

You can leave your comments here, on the play test forum for Nebulon or on our blog.

So get your trigger fingers at the ready and start blasting some photons!

 

In the Search for a 3D modelling tool for XNA

 

One of the issues I (and from the look on the XNA blogs around) have always had problems getting into 3D modelling, usual problems being:

• Lack of cash (all the big houses cost a small fortune)
• Lack of skill (steep learning curve)
• No design ability at all 🙂

Now while I can not do much about the last one and the second can at least be offset with training (but which impacts the time I have to build my killer game).

Now I could just drag in an artist (which depending on your friends circle can also cost cash) or grab free models of the community sites (such as Turbosquid, but the good one’s cost cash again).

So leaving money behind I can embark on the search for a free 3d Modelling tool, so looking around we have:

• Blender (free, powerful, tricky interface and not very intuitive.  Exports are tricky to use in XNA)
• Softimage XSI (Again free, has XNA integration, some training but still a bit clunky to use and importing seems hit and miss)
• Google Sketchup (free and an importer has just been written for XNA, although I’ve not played with it Much)
• Truespace 3d

Hold on, Truespace, Doesn’t that cost $600, why is that in the list.

Well, no longer does Truespace cost you any cash whatsoever now that Microsoft has acquired Calgari.

Since Microsoft Bought it in order to offer a competitive product to Goolge’s sketchup, they have now released it for free, there’s also some nice training material and other free stuff.

See here

It also supports the following formats

Wavefront
.obj

Stereo Lithography
.stl

Autocad
.dxf

X format
.X

Illustrator and Postscript
.ai
.ps
.eps

BVH motion capture
.bvh

3D Studio files:
.3ds
.prj
.asc

.lwb, .lwo
.geo
.iob
.sob

So as you can see it supports the .X format for exporting to XNA, but it also supports the 3d Studio format, so if you find any good 3d studio community models, you no longer need full 3d Studio to use them (there’s $3000 saved already), what’s also strange is that it also supports Autocad, so if you happen to work in a CAD office you can also reuse your work?

And if your interested you can also import your creations to Virtual Earth, which is what it was intended for but hay, XNA can benefit as well!.

 

XNA GSE V3 is out!!

I always promised I wouldn’t do this but here I am.

XNA Game Studio V3 CTP is now out and available.

Grab it here from the Microsoft Download site

BUT!!!!!.  <- there’s usually a but with something this big

Buyer beware on this one and dont forget the small print.  Using this CTP will not allow you to deploy to XBOX and PC deployments will only work under the CTP binaries.

Quote from the Download site

---

This release represents the Community Technology Preview of Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0, which enables hobbyists, academics, and independent game developers to easily create video games for Windows and the Microsoft Zune digital media player using optimized cross-platform gaming libraries based on .NET.

Targeting the Xbox 360 console is not supported in this CTP release. It will be supported in the final release version.

This CTP release of the 3.0 version contains support for the Visual Studio 2008 family of products and for developing games that run on the Microsoft Zune digital media player. In addition, there are enhancements to the XNA Framework API for media support and sound effects.

---

Get more info From

1. XNA Game Studio 3.0 Readme
2. XNA Creators Club

Me personally though am going to try it for the lovely 2008 support.

Enjoy!

 

I always love a good Competition

Competitions are always a good thing as they make people strive to compete and bring out their best work (or not in my case, hack-1 was never finished enough for my likes when i published it for the XBOX360Homebrew Contest).

Time being what it is these days there’s no way I can drag myself through another competition, but thankfully there are people who can, in this case Ziggy has started up yet another Tutorial contest over on his Ziggyware site.

 

This has always been hugely popular in the past and provided many excellent tutorials, feel free to also browse through the results of the other contest, lots of good stuff for everyone from beginner to experienced XNA developers.

P.S I’m still going to be routing for Catalin Zima, mainly because his work is great and he has won the last few comps ;-), Sorry to disappoint anyone else, you just have to step up your game!! (that means YOU!!!)

More from George

On the flip side George Clingerman has been reinventing himself of late (lie Madonna but with a little less makeup) and hes been rewriting a lot of his old tutorials, the latest series to get the revitalisation treatment is his Wizard tutorial series.

	Wizard Says Hi!	Wizard gets asked to take a bath
	Wizard hides from bath	Wizard shoots at person asking him to take a bath

This tutorial takes a walk through the 2D park and is currently focusing on character development (displaying a sprite and giving it actions and things to do), the series looks as promising as ever and knowing George, should have a few nice extra surprises along the way.  So keep a lookout on Georges Developments over @ XNADevelopment.com (now that he seems to be taking a rest from being constantly on for forums to do some actual Work!!)

 

Cast your Vote

In case (like ME!!) you missed the whole forum side of the XBOX360 Homebrew competition, the voting has started over here

Completely missed that one, get downloading the games, read the blogs and get voting

 

Good luck everyone!

Darkside