September 30th, 2007 by Sharky
It sure has been a while, but at long last I’m happy to announce my latest “Air Legends” release. Downloadable here.
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.
Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 based on 244 user reviews.
October 1st, 2007 at 5:11 am
Hi mate,
i am about to order some 360 controllers, you sweet talker! What is the problem with the wireless? I fancy playing your game with the boys on the TV…
October 1st, 2007 at 9:09 am
Hey Lawrence, congrats on the new version!
This game deserves to be on the XNA Live Arcade, imvho. It has been here since the beta days and frankly, I love to see its progress … keep up this great work, man!
October 1st, 2007 at 10:36 am
Thanks Ultrahead.
Feels like I’m close to being about to work on serious gameplay “features” again.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Hiya! Nice to see another kiwi working in XNA!
Air Legends is downloading while I write this, I can’t wait to try it!
I was wondering if you ever solved your difficulties you mentioned on the XNA forums with XSI exporting to .x and XNA. I’ve just spent a week teaching myself XSI only to get to the export stage and find as you did that it isn’t up to par.
Any hints would be appreciated.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Hey Nih.
Good to see ya.
The new version of the XSI Mod Tool (see this post) solves all my problems now.
Though, I don’t actually export to .x format for XNA. I don’t need to. Nor do I need FBX anymore. The new version of XSI integrates with Game Studio Express letting you “publish” your models to your project (well, more or less). These come out as .XSI files and they’ve provided dlls for using them in XNA’s ContentPipeline.
Simply add these dll’s to your Project’s > Properties > Content Pipeline references.
One of them is needed at runtime, so you reference that in your project refs too.
I recommend you view the Help from XSI’s “XNA Game Studio” menu. Pretty good for getting started.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Nice! That’s exactly what I was after for. Thank you very much!