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SoCoder -> Blogs Home -> Blogs |
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Jayenkai
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OK, XNA.. Let's give you a go! |
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So, today I downloaded XNA, and laughed as it struggled, for OVER AN HOUR, to install on the Celeron. By the time it'd finished, I'd gone out for the day. When I got back, I had just enough time to make a nice simple "Keydown(n)" function, and get it to work with the keyboard. By all accounts, it should also work with the X360's pad, but since I don't have a nice simple Wired-pad, I can't plug one in to test the thing. Bah. More costly costs to make my games! The Evils of Microsoft!!!! Still, that's one simplified function down. Tomorrow, I'll try to make another, and by the end of the month, Microsoft won't be able to tell wtf any of my code's supposed to be doing 
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| Thursday, 15 January 2009, 09:03 | |
Jayenkai
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Now then, Mr XNA.. Lets get you behaving more like a language, shall we? After KeyDown comes DrawSprite..   Yeah, that's more like it!! A nice simple set of commands to make drawing all nice and simple. Next up, smashing it into bits, and then "fixing" it up again, so that a game works!! 
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| Thursday, 15 January 2009, 14:54 | |
steve_ancell
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You're having fun then Jay ?. 
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| Thursday, 15 January 2009, 15:05 | |
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Jayenkai
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If you find it fun to wrestle with Vista, to try to persuade it to do what YOU want, as opposed to doing what IT wants, then yes.. I'm having about that much fun...
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| Friday, 16 January 2009, 07:35 | |
Phoenix
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If you try to turn XNA into Blitz then you're bound to hit problems, anyway. But it seems to be working, so why complain... Admit though that Visual C# would make the Blitz IDE implode any day of the week
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| Friday, 16 January 2009, 08:12 | |
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steve_ancell
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The thing I don't like about XNA is doing 2D collisions. The bit where you have to compare two arrays isn't too bad, but allowing for rotation (transformed) textures, is a pain in the chad. That could be a great idea for a community project. A bunch of custom functions to make XNA more palletable. |
| Friday, 16 January 2009, 08:29 | |
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Jayenkai
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Sod that, I typically just use circular approximations, lately.. You get sprites flying about fast enough, and it doesn't really matter! And, No.. The IDE's just plain ticking me off..
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| Friday, 16 January 2009, 08:32 | |
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steve_ancell
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I would have been more user friendly if MicroSoft had applied rotation to the image handle itself, like it's done in BlitzBASIC. That way, we wouldn't need to worry about rotation.
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| Friday, 16 January 2009, 08:34 | |
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steve_ancell
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Actually... When I get some time away from "Project Mutant Monty", I might have a go at constructing an all-in-one, ImagesCollide function.
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| Saturday, 17 January 2009, 01:56 | |
JL235
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I did that recently with my middlewear. I have an 'Intersection' abstract class that supplies generic algorithms for dealing with three types of intersection: shape to shape, shape to image and image to image. The Shape is a Java2D class so all the Shape to Shape checking code is supplied for me. Subclasses of Shapes include Rectangles, Lines, Polygons, Points, Ellipses and more. Subclasses of the intersection adds more specifics (like a RectangleIntersection class only represents itself as a rectangle) and adds any possible optimisations. For example the PointIntersection checks if it's colliding against another PointIntersection. If so then it skips the Shape to Shape algorithm and just checks if the x and y of both PointIntersections is the same. Using it is as easy as: That Ship will now always be handled as a circle in all cases of collision detection, regardless of what it is colliding against. |
| Sunday, 18 January 2009, 01:51 | |
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Jayenkai
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One of these days, Microsoft will learn why their OS is such a random mess of scattered files, sprawling around your Hard Drive, causing all kinds of horrible nastyness. Until that time, I guess I'll just have to deal with all of their crap. For instance, take my nicely organised setup of Centipong files. Code, EXE, Everything else in a folder. Nice and neat. If I need to change a file, (lets say I want to slightly alter a sound effect) I head into the directory, change it, and it's changed.. Now, consider that I've hardly started the XNA version, and take a look at how neatly Microsoft have organised my files. If I want to slightly tweak a sound effect, I need to.. 1. FIND the sound effect, (not an easy job!), tweak it, save it. 2. Open the XACT audio project manager 3. Delete the old copy of the wave because it's bloody insistent that I've not changed it. 4. Add it back to the Wave manager 5. Add it back to the separate Sound library (don't ask!) 6. Save the project 7. Build the project. *sigh* Microsoft, you're all a bunch of idiots. Oh, and you'll probably notice that the \win folder (..\CentipongWin\Content\Audio\Win) has the audio files in it, but the \xbox one doesn't.. I don't have a clue how to get it to save xbox ones...  |!!ARGH| ARGH |ARGH!!|
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| Sunday, 18 January 2009, 03:51 | |
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Afr0 |
You probably need to build the XBox version (properly?). I don't remember how to do this, because I never needed to do it myself, but I think it comes down to Project Configuration. Google 'XNA + XBox + Project + Build'. Edit: Linky
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| Sunday, 18 January 2009, 03:57 | |
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Jayenkai
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I haven't bothered to try it yet, I spent a bit of time making some music.. : Download Kinda sucks so far, but I'm "Main PC"less right now, so I have to make do with sucky "desktop" speakers! Not to mention the Celeron struggling with Fruityloops! Bah, humbug!
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| Sunday, 18 January 2009, 05:59 | |
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Afr0 |
Wow. You should really get a contract with a label for releasing your music Jay! That was fucking sweet!
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| Sunday, 18 January 2009, 08:06 | |
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steve_ancell
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Jay, I will have a listen to your soundtrack when my internet allows me to. It's taking about 50 million years to access anything, coz at the moment, Virgin Media are not going all the way 
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| Sunday, 18 January 2009, 11:42 | |
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Phoenix
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I never liked XNA's so called "content pipeline" either. It should let me put my stuff where I want to put my stuff, and not convert it into some obscure .xnb format. One - among several - of the reasons I was never satisfied with XNA.
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| Sunday, 18 January 2009, 15:45 | |
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steve_ancell
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Phoenix  I never liked XNA's so called "content pipeline" either. It should let me put my stuff where I want to put my stuff, and not convert it into some obscure .xnb format. One - among several - of the reasons I was never satisfied with XNA. I have a gut feeling that the current XNA way of Xbox indie devlopment is only the tip of the iceberg. If it creates a big enough user base, then I wouldn't be supprised if they bring out a more friendly language package. The Game Creators (DBPro) team, have already started to dig their heels into Microsoft Studio Express 2008 with their Dark GDK. So, you never know... Maybe we could be in luck 
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| Monday, 19 January 2009, 07:15 | |
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Phoenix
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then I wouldn't be supprised if they bring out a more friendly language package The thing is that, according to Microsoft, the current way of doing it is much more friendly. |
| Monday, 19 January 2009, 17:46 | |
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JL235
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On the flip side, my brother has only ever used C++ and SDL (and not much of it too). He was able to port a small game he'd made to C# with XNA within a day. He said he was really happy with the results and that it was easy for him to add a few extra effects. So there are some positive stories about this! |
| Monday, 19 January 2009, 18:04 | |
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steve_ancell
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Come to think of it though, C# may be weird at first sight, but i'ts not impossible to learn I suppose. It doesn't seem much different to Java.
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| Monday, 19 January 2009, 22:17 | |
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JL235
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There are quite a lot of differences, mainly stemming from a difference in ideology. Java aims to be perfectly safe and strict where as C# (especially now) aims to be the do-all be-all language. For example C# now has dynamic variables, type inference and strict typing for when dealing with a variable type. With functions there is both function overloading and optional parameters. In contrast Java only allows strict typing and function overloading. To me all these C# features seem a little contradictory. |
| Tuesday, 20 January 2009, 00:16 | |
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Phoenix
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They added optional parameters now? That was not part of it in .NET 2.0, at least.To me all these C# features seem a little contradictory. Many of the features may seem redundant, but some of the other ones are useful (to me, at least). Like the auto-implemented properties. C# may be weird at first sightC# is excellent. I (at least) am only dissatisfied with XNA, and not the language. |
| Tuesday, 20 January 2009, 01:11 | |
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JL235
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Optional parameters are coming in C# 4. They are added to help solve some of the problems when working with COM. Some of the examples I've seen justify it. However it is adding a new feature in order to solve old problems, rather then just fixing the problem. However I do fully agree C# is an excellent language, partly because of the excellent Visual Studio. |
| Saturday, 01 August 2009, 14:57 | |
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LostUser |
I've never used XNA, don't you need an XBox to test it?
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| Saturday, 01 August 2009, 15:23 | |
Scherererer
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XNA works on both XBox and PC, which is part of what makes it so powerful.
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