Nazeeh’s Little Corner on the Web

As promised in my previous post, today I’ll try to take a stab at designing my own game. I told you  how important the game design process is and how you should know all that there is to know about your game before writing any code. Well, turns out that it’s not a very easy thing to do! I spent a few days brainstorming in my head and trying to come up with what I wanted to do. Finally, I got a good grasp on the major game mechanics I wanted to do and started to dig deeper and find more ideas. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Read more...

This is the first post in my “Building a game” series! The aim of this series is to walk through building a game from scratch and try to include as much of the thought process involved as possible. So how about you grab yourself something to drink and let’s sit and chat about game design! Read more...

Some of you may be asking… where did I go? Why no new posts? Or…maybe you’re not asking that, but I’ll go with my first thought! I am still here totally alive and kicking. Got back to work from the holidays and been kind of busy ever since. That doesn’t mean that I forgot about my blog though. Now that we’ve been through enough basics to qualify us to write a game, I’ve been thinking of one to blog about. Here’s what I am thinking about… Read more...

This is a quick post for something that I just had to share with everyone. I can’t believe I haven’t come across this BRILLIANT utility until now! Trust me, I look for stuff like that all the time yet still managed to miss it. Allow me to introduce to you: WinTabber! So…what is this thing? Read more...

Starting off 2008 with some collision detection! Now that we’ve slowly learned how to work with XNA framework, we’re getting very close to knowing most of what we need to build an actual playable - and maybe even a fun - game. Let’s get right to it then: What is collision detection? Read more...

Just wanted to make a quick post wishing everyone Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a great time celeberating! More tutorials coming your way soon :) In the meantime, enjoy the holidays! Read more...

Now that we have learned how to render basic 2D textures and can actually start making a game, we probably should talk about how Input works in a game. Unless your game is one where the player has to sit there and just stare at it (at which point you’re probably attempting a hypnosis game for some disturbing reason… do let me know if you got a working version though), you want to have them actually control something in it. So how does Input work in XNA Game Framework? Turns out that it’s pretty simple actually. Let’s talk Input! Read more...

For this post, I decided to spend some time answering some frequently asked questions that some of you may or may not be thinking of right now. I remember at this stage of my learning, I started to wonder about how to do certain things. So let’s dive right in! Read more...

I am very excited to share the news about XNA Game Studio 2.0 having been released! You can grab your copy from here. Ok, fine, my post is a few days late (XNA Game Studio 2.0 was released last Thursday 13th Dec), but I have an excuse! I got on an airplane heading back home to Egypt to visit my family. I am in Egypt now and just barely got over the jet lag and the inital storm of “hey! nice to see you!!”. So what’s new?? Read more...

In my last post, we talked about textures in general and how to use them. This post will talk about a fun and important aspect of using textures in 2D games: Animation. Say you have a 2D game and you have Wizard character that the player controls and it can cast a spell. It would be boring if the wizard did not have any cool animation to indicate that he is casting a spell. This is where animation comes handy! We can use animation to make a 2D image appear to be alive and have motion. Read more...