GameDevKicks.com - Stories tagged with Ziggyware

Progressive Awards and Linking Awards to Gamer Tags

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:30:16 GMT

Daniel Hanson focuses on expanding the article: Implementing your own in-game award system in XNA by Nick Gravelyn by adding Progressive Awards and Linking Awards to Gamer Tags.

Advanced Content Management Systems in XNA

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:59:39 GMT

In this article Aranda Morrison describes how and why he has created a custom ContentManager. He will also explain how you can use the end result and some of the areas that could be improved on.

Geographic Application Framework in XNA

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:23:38 GMT

In this article Omri Fima shows how to create a generic geographic framework for XNA, and implements a simple Virtual Earth client for Windows based XNA games.

XNA Game - Pac Man Clone

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:29:13 GMT

Dr_Asik has created a Pac Man clone in XNA. This game comes with full source code and should be fun to toy around with. Ziggy even has a discussion on the forums for you to discuss about this.

XNA - Creating In-Game Awards in XNA

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:42:18 GMT

Nick Gravelyn has a new article on creating an in-game award system for your XNA Community Games. This article covers how to create popup award notifications and how to store and load the awards the player has earned.

XNA - Simple Image Template

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:36:47 GMT

Jesse Chounard wrote a nice tutorial on a simple way to create a template from a texture that you can use for particle effects. This effect was used this for the main menu screen in his XNA Xbox Live Community Game: Being.

Implementing a Flexible Input System in XNA

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:23:20 GMT

Peter "craaash" Schraut has a new article focusing on Implementing a Flexible Input System in XNA. In this article Peter implements an easy to use input system that binds logical names to physical input device controls allowing you to add simultaneous support for Keyboard, digital buttons and ThumbSticks in your game with no extra coding effort.

Terrain with Geometry Clipmaps in XNA

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:22:48 GMT

In this tutorial Alexander Grafenstein shows you how to create a basic terrain system that has a far viewing distance and is very efficient. The technique was developed by Lossasso and Hoppe and is called Geometry Clipmaps.

Multi-threading for your XNA Game

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:08:35 GMT

In this article Catalin Zima shows how to use Multi-threading in your XNA game implementing simple physics, complete with a great amount of information detailing the process.

Advanced Point Sprite Particle Systems

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:54:56 GMT

The goal of this tutorial is to demonstrate how to create interesting and powerful visual effects using only the simple "point sprite" vertex type. Article by Gary Hibbard.

Object-Oriented Programming for XNA

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:53:27 GMT

By the end of this article you will create the bare bones of what could be a great shooter game. Article is by Kobo.

Transferring Data Between Two Episodic Games

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:59:00 GMT

By design XNA does not allow games to access the save content of other games. This presents a problem to the developer of episodic games since they cannot load a player's character from a previous game in the series. This article will discuss one possibility of overcoming this problem. The tutorial was created in Visual Studio 2008 with XNA GS 3.0 and targeted for the Windows platform, but it should easily transfer to the Xbox 360 as it does not use any Windows specific components. The following concepts will be touched upon: * Basic Cryptography * Serialization

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Rendering in XNA

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:44:00 GMT

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Rendering in XNA by Mahdi Khodadadi Fard. This tutorial covers implementing HDR in a step by step fashion and includes a sample showing the technique in use.

Photoshop Blend Modes with HLSL

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:32:24 GMT

Photoshop and other image editing programs offer artists a lot of power with layer blending modes. These allow an artist to perform a color operation when one layer is blended on top of another. For example, multiply will make the bottom layer darker based on the top layer, and is great for blending color fills on top of line art (the lines stay black while the inside gets filled). Many of these effects can be achieved using the blending operations available in HLSL. Better yet, you barely need to know any HLSL to create them - some don't even require a special shader to work.

Simulating Planetary 2D Gravity

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:49:20 GMT

If you've ever wanted to or planned on making a 2D space game, then this tutorial might be of interest to you. By the time you are finished reading it, you will know how to simulate planetary gravity. In other words, you will be simulating the gravity field that surrounds planets, such as Earth, which pulls objects towards it. You will also learn basic scene management, generics (templates), events, and circle-circle collision detection and response.

Using a Pool Memory Structure to Boost Performance

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:49:41 GMT

Matt Bettcher has a new article hosted on Ziggyware focusing on Using a Pool Memory Structure to Boost Performance in your XNA games. This technique is used to prevent excessive garbage collection that can bog your game down.

Language Localization using Method Extensions

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:54:23 GMT

MrLeebo has a new article online focusing on Language Localization using Method Extensions in XNA. This article covers how you could implement multiple languages in your games using a simple framework designed to be extendable and robust.

Biology Battle PC Pre-Release - XNA Game

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:46:08 GMT

Biology Battle has been released for the PC, and Ziggy from Ziggyware has the info. This game features awesome graphics and wicked shoot-em-up action. This game is coming this November, upon the release of the XNA Community Games, you will be able to get Biology Battle on Xbox LIVE.

XNA Sun Shader Effect

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:31:44 GMT

Nicolas Menzel has written a nice article focusing on how to render an awesome Sun Shader Effect in XNA.

Play MIDI Files in XNA using XACT

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:42:43 GMT

Ziggyware has posted a project by Victor Dettlaff, the programmer for Laguna/Krazy Games and projects. This project is a new sample showing how to play midi with XACT Sounds, working as "soundfonts". In this example project, plays Moonlight Sonata while only breaking 1 mb because of XACT compression.

Ziggyware Fall 2008 XNA Article Contest - Win an Xbox 360 Elite

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:51:36 GMT

Ziggy has started another contest, and this time you could win a Xbox 360 Elite! The contest ends at the end of November 2008. All you have to do is write an XNA related tutorial for XNA developers, how easy is that! For more info & rules, please follow the link.

Building XNA 2.0 Games - An Inside Look and Interview

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:32:25 GMT

James Silva and John Sedlak have put together an awesome book focusing on creating a game similar to the highly anticipated DishWasher: Dead Samurai. John Sedlak has spared some time to do a short interview and share his experience with creating the book with Ziggy from Ziggyware.

XNA - Building XNA 2.0 Games: A Practical Guide for Independent Game D

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:44:50 GMT

James Silva, author of the infamous XNA Game: Dishwasher: Dead Samurai has partnered with John Sedlak to create a cutting edge book focusing on the creation of the Dishwasher game. In this book James talks about how you too could create your own 2D side-scroller hack em up with emphasis on game design, game play elements, audio, special effects and networking.

User Contributed Update to the Ziggyware Vector Sprite Editor Tool

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:15:58 GMT

Joshua has made several posts on Ziggyware.com recently regarding the Vector Sprite Editor tool and have since made a few changes to the tool. His adjustments are still a little rough around the edges, but hopefully they will add some desirable functionality to other users of the tool.

Ziggyware XNA Community Games Rating System

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:29:59 GMT

Ziggy has put up a preliminary community games rating page. This new page of Ziggyware allows you to specify how much you like each game on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 10 is the best). It is still a work in progress, but does look pretty spiffy so far.