Thanks to the 4th of July, I've got a 4 day weekend and I'm determined to make a good amount of headway on "Deep Blue". I'm currently finishing up the main menu screen and dealing with resolution variations for different TV's .
I'm pretty much cycling through the following steps: program something, play/debug, then review for clean up.
Some of this C# must be sinking in because the amount of "what the heck was I thinking!" during the review process has gotten much less frequent.
Soon I'll turn back to design, user interface specifically, and story. I'm not looking for an epic backstory here, just a little something that makes a little sense for what you're doing underwater.
But for now...off to July 4th barb-b-que and fireworks.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Still poking along at about 1/4 speed
Work had me pretty tied up last week but this weekend I've managed to get a little done on the main menu screen. Special thanks to Matt Schmulen for his assistance on casting, and then for getting things really rolling on the main menu.
I also have the oxygen tank pickup in the game but I need to place a timer on the respawn of it. Right now it spawns another one the instant the first one leaves the screen for any reason.
I'll post an updated video once I get a few more art updates in place.
I also have the oxygen tank pickup in the game but I need to place a timer on the respawn of it. Right now it spawns another one the instant the first one leaves the screen for any reason.
I'll post an updated video once I get a few more art updates in place.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Inspired By
I've posted a folder filled with art and styles that inspired "Deep Blue". Mainly from the old TV show "Sea Quest" and the deep ocean look of "the Abyss".
Other reference included a number of images from underwater animal life and sunken ship wrecks.
Other reference included a number of images from underwater animal life and sunken ship wrecks.
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| inspired by |
Reading....analyzing....reading....analyzing
Slacking around? Off the job? No way. Even though I haven't had the change to post updates recently I'm still pretty heavily focused on "Deep Blue". Right now I'm doing a lot more reading on C# and studying a lot of code provided on the Creators Club site.
The funny thing is, it seems everyone has pretty much their own way of doing things. In all the samples I've looked at I have yet to see two people handle the structuring of the code the same. The good news is, I've managed to not break anything in all the refactoring going on. The bad news is, it doesn't look terribly different than a couple of weeks ago.
But since this is a learning exercise I'm not bound by any timeline and it is helping me get a much clearer picture of C# and XNA.
The funny thing is, it seems everyone has pretty much their own way of doing things. In all the samples I've looked at I have yet to see two people handle the structuring of the code the same. The good news is, I've managed to not break anything in all the refactoring going on. The bad news is, it doesn't look terribly different than a couple of weeks ago.
But since this is a learning exercise I'm not bound by any timeline and it is helping me get a much clearer picture of C# and XNA.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Conversion to XNA 3.0
Well I jumped in a little earlier than I originally planned to and converted "Deep Blue" from XNA 2.0 to XNA 3.0 and to my surprise, and relief, it was pretty painless. The only fall out seems to be a couple of warning messages during deployment which I'll track down pretty soon.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Deep Blue on the 360
I signed up for the XNA Creators Club 2009 game contest, if for nothing else than to get the free 12-month trial XNA membership. Deep Blue would most likely not be something I would enter into a contest like this but getting the trial membership enables me to once again run Deep Blue on our 360.
I was relatively surprised that deploying to the 360 went so smoothly. There were a couple of things that popped up as different than designed. The first of which was the color. It was much more saturated on the HD TV. Most of the time that would be a good thing, but I think it went a little overboard on the explosions. I'll end up darkening and desaturating the explosion sprite a little.
The other surprise was that all the graphics seemed to be stretched. If I remember correctly, that would make sense for the background and title screen, but not so much for the ship sprites. So I'll have to take another look at that and see what's going on.
I was relatively surprised that deploying to the 360 went so smoothly. There were a couple of things that popped up as different than designed. The first of which was the color. It was much more saturated on the HD TV. Most of the time that would be a good thing, but I think it went a little overboard on the explosions. I'll end up darkening and desaturating the explosion sprite a little.
The other surprise was that all the graphics seemed to be stretched. If I remember correctly, that would make sense for the background and title screen, but not so much for the ship sprites. So I'll have to take another look at that and see what's going on.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Fun with particles
Moving along again. I've got bad guy ships exploding, a simple scoring system rolling and I just finished up a very helpful tutorial from the XNA site, by jFoss on creating a particle system. It was a lengthy tutorial, but well worth it. I think I managed to absorb about 75%-80% of it.
Tomorrow night may be time to turn a little focus back to the art side so I can get better looking enemies and particles in there.
The particle system tutorial is a part of the extra credit tutorials on the 2d game lessons.
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted/bg2d/ExtraCredit
Tomorrow night may be time to turn a little focus back to the art side so I can get better looking enemies and particles in there.
The particle system tutorial is a part of the extra credit tutorials on the 2d game lessons.
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted/bg2d/ExtraCredit
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