Xblog.org

>> Home

Locations of visitors to this page

27 January 2008

WideScreen Joy!

It's been pointed out to me one more than one occasion that I am a little on the slow side, So imagine my joy when I spotted that Bert was designed to be wide screen.

Stay with me here wide screen is just a non square aspect ratio view, more accurately width longer than height. The screen output for Bert was 320x200 and that gives us 320/200=1.6, so if I keep this aspect ration I can have Bert in it's original layout and the XNA framework already has a simple scaling system built-in.

At the moment I'm working in 640x400 but with the code I just added I can restrict the screen res to wide screen only and there is no extra code to scale the output to compensate.

Labels: , ,

posted by Dave Henry at 15:49   0 Comments   Links to this post

23 January 2008

Now in a minute in a valley over by yer...

In Welsh:-
O BRA! It's F*ckin' funny in it like! ---> TAFF WARS
In English:-
O My! This is rather amusing. ---> TAFF WARS

Labels:

posted by Dave Henry at 21:02   0 Comments   Links to this post

22 January 2008

I was so embarised I just had to do something....

Wife and I spent a rather pleasant evening with Pyro & Rae last Friday, and I got a chance not only to play with his new XPS system but also to try running Bert on it I was mind full of the fact that from an external point of view it looks like I have done more than nothing but most of the work up to now has been code conversion.

Anyway we started by running the Prerequisites Installer I mentioned in my last post, it said that Pyro was good to go, run Bert, CRASH! Not good, so we installed the XNA 2.0 Redistributable and then ran Bert again, CRASH! Still not good, so I asked if he had DX9 installed on his new system(Vista Pre-installed) "No, I have DX10" he said proudly, so I installed DX9c ran Bert and it worked!, Sweet :-)

Unfortunately this screenshot pretty much sums up what he saw in it's entirety...When both Rae and Wife looked they giggled, the woman sign for "is THAT it?" they may as well have just pointed and laughed. To say I was a little hurt is an understatement so the very next day I added...The Main Menu, which now means I can get to the Main Level Via...The Briefing Screen, it sits there waiting for the player to press Space Bar, which now loads...The main Level. Or if you select the pacifier to get to the...Tutorial Lobby.

I feel better now :-)

Labels: , , ,

posted by Dave Henry at 18:53   0 Comments   Links to this post

16 January 2008

"What do I need to play XNA Games?"

I keep forgetting to post this...

A very nice chap known as William Li has written a little utility to detect and install the requirements of XNA, download Requirements Checker/Installer and run it. I've run it in Vista and it worked, well it said I had everything I needed, and it correctly identified my graphics card as an ATI-X1950 Pro with Pixel Shader 3.0, It runs as an installer Extracting the exe then running it, I'm almost certain it then deletes the exe when you exit so no mess.

Labels: ,

posted by Dave Henry at 20:41   0 Comments   Links to this post

13 January 2008

Delegates and Events in C# / .NET

I have been spending a little time working on the process method and filling in the methods it calls, converting the code is getting easier the more I do it the hard part was remembering what the statment syntax was doing and converting it to an equivilent C# one, like if (bob){} where bob is an int can't be done you get a "can't convert int to bool error it it becoomes if(bob>0){} and if(!bob){} becomes if(bob==0){} simple stuff but there's allot if it.

Also I have figured out how I'm doing the sound stuff, I have created a new class as part of the SystemX namespace called SoundEventArgs then added an event using the standard Event Handler type :-

public event EventHandler<SoundEventArgs> RaisePlaySoundEvent;

In the SamplePlay(int p) method I create an instance of SoundEventArgs and set its cueName to the name of a sample I want to play and create a temporary copy of the event, check that there is a subscriber and finally call the event:-

EventHandler<SoundEventArgs> handler = RaisePlaySoundEvent;
if (handler != null)
handler(this, e);

Then in the main GameplayScreens constructor just after I create the new instance of the BertGame class and subscribe to the published Event:-

GameData = new BertGame();
GameData.RaisePlaySoundEvent += CueSound;

The CueSound method simply Plays the the requested wave file:-

void CueSound(object Sender, SoundEventArgs e)
{
BertSoundBank.PlayCue(e.CueName);
}

Now when a process call uses the SamplePlay method an event is fired and the main engine handles the playing of the sample, simple as.

The next biggie I'm going to have to look at is how best to implement the in-game menu that will let the player do things with objects in the game mainly because I have a nasty suspicion that this will make me reevaluate the current menu setup :-(

And another thing I know I've still got alot to put into the update method of Bert but it's running too fast if it keeps this up I'll be adding a sleep statment.

Labels: , ,

posted by Dave Henry at 12:43   0 Comments   Links to this post

02 January 2008

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope you got everything you wanted for Xmas, I got a load of stuff done on Bert, I'm now looking at the FX-processer and that leads to a load of data structures that haven't been added as yet. There are one or two complications with the way that I have restructured the game loop to fit XNA better in that all the Graphic and Sound functions are no longer in the FX-processer so I'm now reading up on event handlers and the XNA component model to help fix a few problems like how I can trigger the briefing screens and sound-FX. The Map-Editor is on hold for a bit until I need another break from the FX-processer because I need to work out how to do text input in XNA, my current solution is a little flaky.

I bought a few games and a new printer on new years eve, though I haven't played them much, Halo2 is showing it's age and Kayne & Lynch - Dead Men is cool. Still trying to work out how to set up my Windoze Live account so it records my in game stuff.

And WHY is there noway to specify that I don't want to use my 360 controller in "Games for Windoze"?!?

Labels: , , , ,

posted by Dave Henry at 08:39   0 Comments   Links to this post