GameDevKicks.com - published xna stories

A Simple Three-Level Parallax Star Field using XNA

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:07:13 GMT

How to create a randomized, scrolling, parallax star field for your XNA game.

Immediate GUIs in XNA: Setup and a button

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:15:05 GMT

Immediate GUI's are a pretty new concept to creating and drawing GUIs. One of the big differences between an Immediate (IM) GUI and a normal GUI is that an IMGUI is non persistent. Every frame a manager determines which screens/buttons/widgets have to be drawn and only these are drawn. There are no Button objects, Form objects or objects at all. GUI items are immediately drawn by calling a method. Most of these methods are prefixed by 'Do' to show the immediate nature of the button. Because of this, IMGUIs have a very low memory profile. Today we are going to write a simple IMGUI for XNA

Tutorial: Using the XNA Content Pipeline for localization: Part 2

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:39:29 GMT

In this part we are going to extend our localization pipeline to load other content as normal (Content.Load<Texture2D>(@"Folder\Name");). And if you've created a localized version this will be loaded instead of the original file. We also refactor our previous code a bit, and add some nice helper methods.

Tutorial: Using the XNA content pipeline for localization, part 1

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:31:24 GMT

In part one we create a new content pipeline extension and a new content manager without much effort. And we start to replace our strings with calls to our new content manager (that replaces the default one). In the end you will be able to load a string using Content.Load<String>("Package.Key"); The correct string will be loaded from our xnb files (imported using a custom xml importer) in the language set in the content manager.

Will Steam Publish XNA Games?

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:31:24 GMT

After all this tablet hype started, I began to get excited about the possibilities of new markets emerging for touch enabled windows games. As Steam is currently one of the most robust and popular game distribution networks on windows, I was curious to know whether a game written with XNA could be published via Steam.

Kollectiv 360 Released on Xbox Live Indie Games!

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:32:35 GMT

Kollectiv 360 is a fast paced puzzle based action game that combines elements from other popular puzzle and strategy games to come up with a brand new, unique and addicting gameplay style and objective. Players will delight in the mutiple levels of difficulty and various gameplay modes. Plan your moves accordingly and try to aim for the awesome bonus of the Kollectiv! Download it now for only 80 MS Points!

Sound in XNA 3.1, Part I

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:20:04 GMT

A guide to getting started with XACT in XNA 3.1.

Scurvy.Test v1.2 Released

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:06:35 GMT

Quick on the heals of yesterday's post, I've released v1.2 of Scurvy.Test. This is the first official release of the framework and improvements over the initial announcement are mainly centered around the status reporting of test pass/failure. I also upgraded the solution to vs 2k8 and xnags 3.1.

Resource Pool in F#

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:32:50 GMT

Erik Schulz, who has written a bunch of articles on how to make XNA games with F#, has ported the Resource Pool class I wrote about in F#. Cool!

XNA Resource Pool Class

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:26:32 GMT

This is a simple resource pool that you can use to mitigate memory allocation issues in the XNA framework.

Ten Tips for Promoting Your XBLIG

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:22:02 GMT

A whole bunch of tips to help you get more eyes on your game.

Pulsing Icons to Spruce Up your XNA Menus

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:23:34 GMT

Tutorial to add a cool pulsating image effect to your XNA menus.

XNA - Skinned Model Extensions Tutorial

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:57:36 GMT

A new Skinned Model Extensions Tutorial has been added to the XNA Creators Club that shows you how to extend the original Skinned Model example.

test

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:10:01 GMT

test story

The XNA to indie transition.

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:36:14 GMT

A take on the new XNA price points.

XNA & Game A.I

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:50:40 GMT

Conkerjo has a new article up focusing on artificial intelligence using XNA. In this article Conkerjo discusses an A.I. system that controls movement and behaviors of entities allowing you to create simple intelligence in your games.

DPSF (Dynamic Particle System Framework) for XNA

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:45:30 GMT

Just letting everyone know that DPSF (Dynamic Particle System Framework) for XNA version 1.3.1.0 is available at http://dpsf.danskingdom.com. DPSF is free and allows you to create your own custom particle effects for use in your XNA applications/games. It is a very powerful particle system framework, and works on the XBox 360 as well as on Windows.

Fast 3D A* pathfinding using Binary Heaps in C#/XNA

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:07:00 GMT

This article is a total revision of a previous A* tutorial and now adds full 3D functionality. It also uses some handy speed up tricks to get everything done faster and includes a Binary (Min) Heap. So read the article for those speed tips, you might be able to use them somewhere else, and download the source code.

2D Camera

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:35:43 GMT

This Article is about how to write a Camera for a 2D Game.

Ziggyware Summer 2009 XNA Article Contest

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:39:24 GMT

It's time for the Ziggyware Summer 2009 XNA Article Contest. This go around I am giving away an XBox 360 with 120 GB HDD, XNA Logo Black Zunes, SunBurn Lighting and Material Engine licenses and a lot more.

Game State Management and glitch free loading

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:34:33 GMT

Shawn Hargreaves discusses how to expand upon the Game State Management sample and implement faster run-time performance by pre-loading all of the assets required to draw the screens.

Why developing for XNA?

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:15:35 GMT

The current sales figures might be disheartening, but there's a couple of good reasons why developing for XNA isn't such a bad idea.

Rendering Animated Avatars with XNA

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:33:14 GMT

have written a short tutorial describing the basics of Avatar rendering in XNA using the Microsoft samples as a reference.

XNA Game - Soft Blocks

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:12:28 GMT

Creative Cog Games has a new XNA game in beta: Balloon Blocks, a soft body physics based match-3 game that aims to use soft-body physics to create unique and intuitive game play and simple, inviting graphics to make the game appealing to gamers of all stripes.

Splitting Octal Tree (OCTree) with Sliding Sphere Collision

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:53:54 GMT

XNA Splitting Octree Sample With 3D Collision Response using Sliding Sphere collision. This sample calculates splitting octal trees for improved collision query times. Direct vertex buffer access is used to get around the need for the XNA content pipeline. This sample features spherical collision with an arbitrary world of polygons and is very fast an stable.