Xblog

09 June 2008

Map-Ed v0.0.1.16569

I've been hard at work trying to get a new job and working on the Map Editor of Bert, screen shot right.

The thing that has proven to be tricky is that the Bert Higgins uses over 1900 blocks at 16x16 and over 1500 Sprites at 24x24 this makes for rather a large overhead in the map editor writing this as a windows forms application with the standard objects is impossible because the application slows down too much with all those objects, so I wrote a new component to view them based on this article by Marc Clifton.

As a whole I'm using the work done in Nick Gravelyn's series "The Tile Engine Tutorials" as a bases for my editor, the problem with this is that the way I'm storing my map data and nick's method differ massively and he is using individual sprites for his tutorial(I'm only up to part 4), there are also other things that I'm doing differently to nick and features that were outside the bounds of his tutorials, like I want to have an auto wall feature so you select your wall tile and just draw with it the connecting sprites are inserted where two or more blocks are next to each other, and I'm using a group system to insert objects larger than a single tile, and the random select to reduce the repeating effect, I'm also trying to come up with a way to add in the auto edging for grass meets water or dirt meets concrete.

All in all The Map Editor is shaping up to be far more complex than the game, but I should end up with something that can be used for far more than just Bert.

Until next time...

Labels: Game Dev, Home, MapEd, Screenshot, XNA

posted by Dave Henry at 10:08 0 Comments Links to this post

30 March 2008

Dodge v1.01

Added a new version of Dodge

Changes for this release:-

Esc Now quits anywhere.
Fixed error in new level, teleports now carry over + 1.
Tidied game logic.
Added game instructions.
Added some sound.
Added Hi score table.
Tidied up the HUD.

New Screen Shots

Labels: Dodge, Game Dev, Screenshot, XNA

posted by Dave Henry at 03:27 0 Comments Links to this post

22 March 2008

I've got something to show you...

Last night Pyro, Rae, Webber, Manda, Wife & I all went to town for the second meeting for the society of "People that don't hit Dave when he says something stupid". last nights events were food followed by comedy. We all seemed to enjoy Mr Lee Evans trying out some new stuff which was an education.

I also made mention of a little something I had written this week to Webber and made the mistake of saying I'd upload it today. The little something is a game I first wrote back in '92 in pascal for DOS, it's a simple game called Dodge and the idea is that your this little pink dude who has to avoid getting trampled by the other things in the level by getting them to walk over the mines. As an alpha I know there is loads to fix but the meat of the game is here.

I think I needed to get this out as quick as I could because I was starting to lose heart with writing and having nothing to show for it.

And here are some screen shots for you.

Labels: Dodge, Game Dev, Screenshot, XNA

posted by Dave Henry at 23:56 0 Comments Links to this post

03 February 2008

New Page!

As you might have spotted I've added a new page to the side bar menu. The Bert higgins:Redux Page is where I'll try to keep a current feature list for each of the applications, at the moment there is the Game and the Map editor. The game has screenshots from v0.0.1 and less on the feature list but the MapEd also on V0.0.1 was easeir to pin down the features but there are less in the way of Screenshots.

Labels: Bert Higgins Redux, MapEd, Screenshot

posted by Dave Henry at 14:01 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...