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...
The subject of today’s topic is one that is quite interesting to me and something you will probably spend sometime playing around with. I want to talk about Textures, specifically Texture2D class in the framework. If we’re going to talk about Textures, then we will have to talk about SpriteBatch as well since that’s the class we use to draw textures on the screen. Read more...
In my last post, we created a very simple “Hello World” game in XNA. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it served the purpose of introducing XNA project template and getting us familiar with what’s in the code. But let’s face it, it wasn’t a game… not even close to being one. Putting text on the screen that doesn’t move is quite boring. Time to spice things up a bit and get to learn about user input while we’re at it. Read more...
In the last post I made, we saw how to create a XNA game project and run it. It didn’t do anything fancy at all, just a blue screen. Now let’s take it further and explain the code that is generated by the project template and extend it to display a nice “Hello World” text on the screen. Baby steps everyone, baby steps! Read more...
So this is a bug that I ran into while playing Assassin’s Creed last night. It happens towards the end of the game which makes it even more annoying. You’ll know when you find it, since you’ll start falling through the world and then spawn with a clone of Altaiir next to you. You can’t really do much from that point on since the entire level will be broken. Read more...