Archive for the ‘Game Development’ Category

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

SURPRISE, I’m back!  I’ll keep this real brief though.  Just as soon as I’m satisfied, I’ll be releasing a new version of “Air Legends” with some cool new things.  Take a look at this screenshot, and you might guess what… 

Sharky's Air Legends - seeing double?

A clue?  Count the planes…

 

So here’s what I’m talking about…. 

  • Still single player or 2 player Split-screen, but those extra planes are AI planes.  Made possible now because of my next point…
  • I’ve improved the AI enormously. It is no longer the fake, more or less random & suicidal AI it was before.  It is fairly simplistic & home-brewed but very effective.
    The new AI…
    • only shoots when it makes sense to!
    • actually hunts you down and kills you
    • lead their shots – deadly.
    • have some simple self preservation techniques.
    • recognizes friend from foe and attacks other enemy AI’s.
  • What this all means is I can now make the single player experience much more fun.  To date it’s been pretty much proof-of-concept and some cannon fodder practice for those just wanting to sample the game with.
  • When you have two players & both select the same aircraft you get CO-OP play!

Why not release it right now?

I have some tweaks to do before I’ll be satisfied. e.g…

  • The AI is a little TOO effective right now.  Some tweaking required.
  • The AI doesn’t have the smarts yet to hold fire when a team mate gets in the way.
  • I’ll be able to ramp up the number of aircraft to more than just 4, but I have to optimize a few things such as…
    • more planes means more particles (bullets, explosions, smoke etc…).  I plan to scale the quantities of particles back based on how many planes are buzzing round.
  • Scores.  These changes mean I’ll need to revise the scoring to be Team scores – will retain stats per player if I can.
  • Lobby changes.  I want to make the team sizes selectable at the lobby screen. So you can choose 1 vs 4, 2 vs 2 etc…
  • Bound to be some bugs along the way.

So what about an XBOX 360 version?

I’m excited to announce I finally own an XBOX 360, so “Air Legends” WILL be coming to the console just as soon as I can manage it!

  • I still have to buy my Creators Club Membership before I can start realizing the dream.
  • Some unexpected car bills, and flooded house have delayed my start a little.  Of course donations are most welcome…  ;o)

 

That’s it for now folks.  Stay tuned…

 

 

Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 286 user reviews.

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

In response to some feedback, I’ve made a couple of minor changes and released the new version here.

The changes are… 

  • changed the Maneuver Xbox 360 control back to how it was before.  It’s now the “Left Shoulder” button again.  Which means the Change View button is now the “X” button.
  • made the bullets a little smaller. Too chunky before.

 

Go grab the new version from the Latest Build page here.

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 278 user reviews.

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

One word – Busy… busy, busy, busy. Ok, so I cheated on the word count, but that’s how life’s been lately.  So much has happened since my last post. In work, play & personal life.  I’ll cut to the chase though.  Here’s my latest and greatest release of “Air Legends”.  You can download it from here.

 

Sharky's Air Legends - find the enemy
Sharky's Air Legends - New version,  new view

There are major changes in the version. 

  • Firstly it’s all converted to XNA 2.0 now, so you’ll need the XNA 2.0 runtime installed (or XNA Game Studio 2.0).
  • Added basic Scoring, and stats.  Currently shows Score + accuracy for each player/cpu.
  • Added a change View feature (to help you find the enemy). This changes to a view that focuses on you, but keeps
      the other player in view.
  • Gave the aircraft different performance characteristics.  The Spitfire has a slightly better rate of turn
      but the BF109 is a little faster. It’s subtle, but should add to the variety.
  • Added an Uninstall shortcut to the Start menu folder.
  • Fixed cloud culling, so clouds no longer instantly vanish while still in view (as they were prone to do before).
  • Improved cloud, smoke and explosion rendering to use proper Billboard styles (always facing the camera).

 

Go grab the new version from the Latest Build page here.  As always, it’s free!

 

In for the kill
Head-on pass
12 o'clock high
contact!

Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 227 user reviews.

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

It sure has been a while, but at long last I’m happy to announce my latest “Air Legends” release. Downloadable here.

 

Sharky's Air Legends - New version,  new scene

There are major changes in the version. 

  • Most notably I’ve fitted proper menus for everything.  This was no small task, I might add – quite a bit of code refactoring was needed on my part.  Microsoft’s Creators club “GameStateManagement sample” is awesome and forms the basis of all of my screens now.
  • I’ve improved my Skybox, and made the sky textures all seamless.
  • Added a brand new “Morning” scene to play in.
  • Added gun overheating.  Sound to come.
  • Replaced numerous uses of photoshopped textures for text, with new SpriteFont textures.
  • New and improved Lobby screen.
  • Help (aka. Controls) screen is now accessible while in gameplay from the pause menu.
  • Changed keyboard controls a little.
    • F1 & F2 are now used for dropping in and out instead of 1 & 2.
    • Shifted Player 2 keys along one to avoid confusion with Enter key for menu selection.
    • So Player 2 now uses ] for shoot, [ for throttle, P for Skywrite & O for Maneuver.
  • Improved the installer.
    • Now based on WiX v3 (Windows Installer XML).
    • Automatically uninstalls older versions already installed.
    • Checks .NET v2.0 is installed. Just a check at this stage.

 

Go grab the new version from the Latest Build page here. It’s free, so no excuses.

 

Morning madness
More mayhem
New lobby screen
New lobby screen
Pause and drop-out menus
Quit prompt

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 205 user reviews.

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Check this out.  A great buddy & workmate Jeff, of SharePod fame, has been getting into XNA lately.

His new blog is the *imaginatively* named “XNA Game Development“!

His first game in-progress is very cool.  Check out his FPS styled, and code-named “Platform Jumper

Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 157 user reviews.

Monday, September 17th, 2007

Hi folks.

I’ve been enjoying some productive coding sessions on “Air Legends” lately.  No one big feature in particular, but a lot of little tidy ups and improvements. So far, the next release will have:

  • All models now produced and exported straight out of the new Softimage|XSI Mod Tool. No other tools necessary!  :P
  • improved the Skybox.  Horrid seems are gone.  I’ve pulled out some photoshop magic to make the  Textures tile nicely, and the box (well cylinder) now has a ceiling, so I don’t have to avoid certain camera angles like before.
  • Guns can now overheat, so controlled bursts recommended.   No more bleeding ears from trigger happy kids.  ;)
  • Thanks to the skybox improvements, your aircraft should no longer leave the screen occasionally.  Well maybe very briefly during some maneuvers, but good enough for now.
  • …more to come… maybe Menus, 3D sound…

On another note, CrazySheep has asked me about how to create a Windows Installer.  Good idea, so I plan to blog a wee article/tutorial + sample about my “Air Legends” installer.  (If I blog about it now, I’ll be forced to actually do it!).

Before I do that I plan to update my installer from WiX v2 to WiX v3, and do a couple of improvements on the way.

Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 293 user reviews.

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

Firstly, Hi y’all.

I’ve been completely silent on the XNA scene for a while now. Those of you that know me will understand why. Nothing mysterious, just personal relationship crap I’m dealing with right now.

Anyway, I’m slowly starting to work on my game again, and was welcomed back with this very nice surprise.

There’s a very cool new version of the XSI Mod Tool out! This is either brand new, or the news slipped under my radar somehow.

Here’s the juicy goodness…

  • has built in support for publishing straight into your Game Studio Express projects! No more mucking around with problematic exports, IT JUST WORKS! :)
  • based on v6 of the full XSI product, where before it was v4 based.
  • Still FREE, but feels a lot less limited than before. Heaps of export/import options. Exported geometry is limited to 64000 triangles.

Check out the new Mod Tool here

p.s. also, take a fresh look at how my day job project is going. ActionThis

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 155 user reviews.

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

I’ve just been replying to a comment about my game on Gameprojects.com, but I got thinking I should really blog this one.

Synthcat suggested I do some Additive blending for the bullets (trails?).

I’ve tinkered with Additive blending but haven’t had much success with it yet. I had a go at making my clouds, smoke and explosions use Additive blending but I just couldn’t get them to look acceptable.

I followed Eli Tayrien’s (XNA team) great article about Additive blending.

As Eli mentions, the art assets themselves (textures) need special skill to look right with additive. I haven’t figured out quite how I should be producing them. Even my colorful explosions ended up looking like a white glare. Likewise for my smoke, which should darken rather than lighten as it gets thicker.

So far, I haven’t had much luck in finding a good explanation on how to produce good art for Additive blending.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 299 user reviews.

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007

As promised, I’ve just uploaded the latest work-in-progress, so feel free to try it out. Get it here.

The main addition in this release is the Special Maneuver feature I talked about earlier.

When the Special Maneuver control is pressed, the  plane will perform a move appropriate to the direction it was flying.  Currently these moves are either a vertical loop (climbing or diving), or a horizontal bank & turn.  Very handy for avoiding mid-air collisions, or when trying to shake the foe off your six!  It’s a lot of fun when you get the hang of it.  The game play is a lot more dynamic, and 3D feeling now.  Especially fun with the 2 player multiplayer (the computer opponent has a very small brain).

 

Special Maneuver

special maneuvers
special maneuvers

I’m very happy with the new feature.  As often seems to be the case, it was a lot more complicated to implement than I ever imagined.  It exposed a lot of my “smoke ‘n mirrors” techniques, so I had to revisit quite a bit of the core code.  For the better I think, and I certainly learnt a lot.

The biggest problem is now in my skybox implementation.  So as to not expose its flaws too much,  the planes can occasionally leave the visible screen, but will bounce back eventually.  I’ll be working on resolving that next, but I thought it was worth releasing anyway.

Hope you enjoy it.  Your feedback is always welcome.  I highly recommend XBOX 360 (for Windows) controllers to play this  However keyboard is still supported, albeit a bit cramped with 2 players.

Get the new version from the Latest Build page here.

Update: Note that this release requires the latest version of the XNA framework recently released. (v1.0 “Refresh”). You can get that here

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 249 user reviews.

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

As a personal blog, my posts tend to focus on personal things, hobbies etc…  I could blog a whole lot more, but I do tend to wait till there’s something people might be interested in actually reading! 

Reading this blog, you’d probably think all I do is XNA game development,  occasional tutorials on the subject, and most notably journal my work-in-progress on the “Sharky’s Air Legends” game.

I do in fact have a day job.  Something has to pay the bills after all. And as we all know day jobs tend to take the majority of our precious time.

So breaking with tradition, I’m now going to introduce you to something very VERY cool that I’ve been developing in my day job.

At Intergen, I’m proud to be team-leading the software development of a great new product called “ActionThis“.

ActionThis - get stuff done.  go home early.

It’s is a Web 2.0 application that simplifies working as a team. I’m sure you’re all familiar with this problem: “you go along to meetings, agree a bunch of action items, then nothing gets doneâ€?. We’re going to fix that, and then some more! Where Project Management is all about planing & tracking, we’re adding execution & recovery to the mix.

Exciting times, and we’re going to be launching world-wide later this year.  I’m not allowed to talk much about this right now, but you can signup for the newsletter and get on the beta.

Now I started by saying that said that this isn’t strictly XNA game dev related. But hell, I can’t think of a single reason why this wouldn’t suit teams of indy game developers working on the next great XNA game.

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 278 user reviews.