Project : threesquad
This was mostly painful because I hate hacking around with linuxy opensource tools with specific outdated version requirements. I ranted about it here.
Release Notes:
* Migrate from XNA 4.0 CTP to XNA 4.0 Beta. (broke skinnedeffect?)
* Drew model of female in Paint.Net
* Outlined as 3dshape, added basic depth in SketchUp
* Imported to Blender as dae. Exported as fxp (PAINFUL!!!!)
* Scaled down 0.0005times (why?) and rotated to be vertical.
How difficult do you think it is to get a 3d Model from a very common simple modeling program into a simple well documented game platform? Hard, very hard.
Google’s Sketchup is a new friendly approach to creating models and I quite enjoy it. However my options for exporting are limited until I pay 500 for a Pro edition. Hoping there was a way around this on the internet (I can’t be the only one) I have found some dae to fbx converters and other walkthroughs on how to do the process.
My UI is shaping up with clickable 2D floating areas. It was a bit of a challenge to project their space to screen space based on rotations and camera swapping.
Another challenge was to get my UI to render on top of everything. I ended up disabling the default depthstencilstate. Also it was kinda messed up to render a plane which was a quad, not triangles. Reviewing some basic directX principles with vertices and indices was a good exercise.
Release Notes v0.34
* Controls overlay added
* Clickable rotating rectangle zones
* PlaneGeometry rendering on top of objects
* Basic navigation actions added and hooked to controls overlay.
This version has quite a few important elements in it for my end goal of being a multiplayer game.
Firstly I textured a geometric primitive with a squiggle. I hope to make more dynamic things in the world this way since I am not prepared to do much with the 3D models other than slide them around.
But specific to the windows phone 7 platform, I set up my persistent storage saving and loading. Also specific to the wp7, specifically network protocols, I am using basic PHP queries to upload a file and download a file which is the current plan to allow for each turn to be synchronized among all players.
I found the storage to be somewhat easy to use but I really dont like web queries and also getting a PHP script to save a file was a bit of a hassle and I ended up ditching my current webhost because I ran into frustrating walls.
The other major game design feature added was the concept of a turn and the action phase.
Under the hood I am using C# events using text overlays as listeners to the gamestate events.
Release Notes v0.33
* Textured cubes with squiggle,
* Save+Load to Persistent Storage,
* Upload+Download to PHP website,
* Director statemachine for Planning and Action Phase
* Overlay Hide+Show with C# Events
Getting the windows phone development tools was super easy. This is the first time I’ve programmed in an emulator and the wp7 emulator is spiffy. It even has an internet explorer and other phone controls which tells me that there is a sizeable amount of OS that I am developing on top of.
More progress to follow.
I found a pretty good demo on the MSDN site for the MIX10 conference. I ripped out its skinned model with animation because it is better than anything I have. Using a custom pipeline code is a bit new to me but I successfully copy-pasted the parts from the demo that I needed
Link: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/minigame/reachgraphicsdemo
Release Notes v0.21
* Loading skinned 3d Model
* Loading animations
* Playing animations at variable speed
I am trying to get real 3D shapes, familiarizing myself with Blender and other free options for model creation. I made an ugly mess of a model but it demonstrates the pipeline. I am also applying a texture to it. I also use a little interpolation for camera smoothing to flex the power of math.
The other important part in this revision is the loading of a data file for the level instead of randomly generating it. I drew a 3 in my datafile and am loading it as text through the pipeline.
Release Notes v0.2
* 3D model import with texture
* Second camera added, with toggle
* Camera smoothing
* Collision detection bug fixes
* Load level from file
From other experience making games I wanted to bring over some physics. Specifically acceleration and collision. Also I added some more logic to AI.
The math involved with basic collision is tricky but I got it working after a few geometry refreshers.
Release Notes v0.1
* Entities are clickable (turn black and stop),
* Collision detection for cylinders and rectangular prisms
* AI bouncing and turning
* Camera tracks entity
I am starting a team-based top view game called ThreeSquad. Currently I am working on getting basic shapes to render and a camera. Also I have some simple AI and navigation with text rendering and clickable
Release Notes v0.0
* Set up RenderTarget with Camera and Lighting
* Create debugtext framework
* Create input framework
* Create navigation framework
* Create ai framework
* Import 3d axis model
* Create geometric primitives (cubes)