Article: Programming your first XNA 4.0 game for PC, Xbox 360 & Windows Phone 7: Pong
by Thomas "Mister Helmut" Altenburger
I’d like to introduce the XNA framework to you with this very simple and straightforward tutorial. We will see what XNA is and how its basic features works to continue with the programming of your first game, a simple Pong clone for Windows. At last, we’ll try to convert it to the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7. This tutorial assumes that the readers have a basic C#/.Net understanding. I hope that it will help you to understand the basics of the framework and that it will motivate you to go further in. The article should be suitable to complete beginners in game programming.
About this tutorial: I wrote this tutorial back in the days of XNA 2.0 beta and used it as an introductory course I taught to master degree students. Since then, it evolved to support XNA 4.0 beta with added Window Phone 7 development.
English not being my native language, please forgive and/or report any English oddities.
This tutorial targets XNA 4.0 beta. It will be updated when the final version will be released. It uses some new features of XNA 4.0 so it will not run out-of-the-box on previous XNA version (mainly due to the usage of Viewport.Bounds and changed SpriteBatch.Draw arguments order).
Nick Gravelyn’s Alien Aggressors Tutorial
Nick Gravelyn (no introduction needed) has been kind enough to send us his Alien Aggressors tutorial (for XNA Game Studio 2.0) and allow us to share it with the world.
You can get the tutorial here: AlienAggressors.pdf
And you might also need the AlienAggressorsContent.zip pack of content to be used with the tutorial.
P.S. This article first appeared on Ziggyware (now defunct) a while ago.
Article: Texture Modification using Render Targets, with some Stencil Buffer Action
by Dave Carlile
Sometimes you need to modify a texture while your game is running, and there are a number of ways to do this. One of the first things newer game programmers often try to do is use Texture2D.GetData to copy the texture data from the GPU to an array on the CPU, modify the bytes, and then send it back to the GPU with Texture2D.SetData.
This is a bad idea on many, levels. Beyond issues with pipeline stalls, GetData and SetData can be slow, especially when working with a large texture. Any time you’re tempted grab data from the GPU for use on the CPU you should very carefully consider all of your options. There are often other solutions that let you keep the data entirely on the GPU and accomplish the same thing.
This tutorial will use an example that could be solved with GetData and SetData, and show you another alternative using render targets and the stencil buffer that will let you perform the same function entirely on the GPU.
Brute Force 2D Shadows
Because he is a much less busy man (it would seem), Charles Humprey made his own implementation for shader-based dynamic 2D shadows and posted it for everyone to see. You can read about it here.
Article : Battlestar Galactica Text Effects in XNA
by UberGeekGames
If you’ve watched the excellent sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica (the 2004+ series, not the original!), you may have noticed that during scene transitions, they use a cool effect that draws text in strips. For example, when the story jumps from a Cylon Baseship back to Galactica, it might cut to an outside view of BSG and have text in the lower left corner of the screen noting the time and place. The text fades in strips, which I thought was a pretty cool effect. I decided to replicate that in XNA.
First, let’s look at the end result:
Article: I Can Has Platformer? (Part 3)
by Casey Young
Welcome back to the third part of my series on how to create a simple platformer game. In this article I take you on a little journey in making our hero animated.
HOWTO: Resolution Independent Rendering in 2D
David Amador shares his code to work with a fixed resolution on Windows without having to manage the placement of your renderables yourself. Sez David:
Independent Resolution Rendering?? What’s this all about?
Basically a way of not caring what you resolution is. Ever had Gui elements misplaced because you changed the resolution? Or getting out of the screen?
If you are doing a game on Xna just for Xbox360 you can basically use a 1280×720 base resolution and the Xbox will scale the game for you making the proper Letterbox.
But what about on Windows? Or if you use a different resolution on the Xbox? You have to manage that yourself.
I’ve made a small example on how to achieve this.
Jemgine Editor Alpha
Mr "I don't provide screenshots" Blecki has announced an updated build of his Jemgine map editor.
Some key points he makes.
- A 2d platformer engine with 'advanced physics'.
- A feature-rich editor (That one up there!)
- A single-player 'test game' to use as a base and guide for the engine.
- My eternal love and support.
More details here
Silver Sprite 3.0 Alpha 2
Bill "Silent Assasin" Reiss has brought word of an Alpha 2 build of SilverSprite 3.0. You can grab the source and start playing with it right away
http://silversprite.codeplex.com/
SilverSprite enables you to get your XNA game working inside Silverlight with minimal fuss. It's worth checking out and if you're interested in Windows Phone 7 development, then this is an ideal starting point.
Here's a recent blog post discussing the Alpha in a little more detail. Read More
Article: Draw me a line (Zune HD)
by Sgt. Conker
This article will show you how to create a dotted line based on touch input from the Zune HD.
This can be very useful for indicating to the user a path a game entity is going to take.
If you've ever played Flight Control for the iPhone you'll know exactly what I mean.
