Zay’z – [ Den 'O' Slack ]

If anyone ever wants to play some Marvel Ultimate Alliance on Xbox Live (Xbox 360), give me a message sometime!

AWannaBe

What it is code turkeys!

So I’ve been playing around with the XNA 3.0 Framework and what I’ve learned from James Silva’s book Building XNA 2.0 Game: A Practical Guide for Independent Game Development for a few days now and have come across some interesting “break through” or ten, or what I should state amounts to a break through for me.

NOTE: For those that don’t James Silva was the winner of the 2007 Dream, Build and Play contest.

I thought I’d share some of what I’ve “learned” in the hopes that it may be beneficial to those also searching for the same type of information.

So most people “know” that the best way to develop a game is to have a set of  robust tools so that you can more easily create and implement your game assets.

Well those that have played around with XNA know that in order to create a set of tools like a map editor, character editor, etc you typically have to run through the game engine and that has a certain set of limitations and drawbacks.

There is however an alternative… a way to get closer to that ever elusive UnrealEd style editor that you all might conjure up in your heads when you first hear the words level editor uttered in rapid succession.

There are a set of tutorials over at the XNA Creators Club site that talk about doing just such a thing (well the beginning ideas of such a thing).

• WinForms Series 1: Graphics Device
• WinForms Series 2: Content Loading

[These examples given are for 3D but could be applied to 2D as well.]

The “thing” being running the game engine (of sorts) within a Windows form so that you can have a more robust Windows style editor which is event based. (Games are typically based on a time model and not an event model.)

I however came across an interesting article by one Pedro Guida titled XNA & Beyond: The Path to VS 2008. In the article he talks about how to get the game engine to draw inside of panel control!

It’s pretty slick, I modified his code slightly so that makes more sense to me (which is difficult most times) but basically you can add the following to any old Windows Form class (which has a Panel Control attached to it named PrimaryPanel):

   1: public IntPtr PanelHandle

   2:         {

   3:             get

   4:             {

   5:                 return this.PrimaryPanel.IsHandleCreated ? this.PrimaryPanel.Handle : IntPtr.Zero;

   6:             }

   7:         }

Then in your game class add the following:

Then in your game engine class (derived from Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game) just place the following:

   1: protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)

   2: {

   3:     base.Draw(gameTime);

   4:     this.GraphicsDevice.Present(this.myForm.PanelHandle);

   5: }

   6:  

   7: void myForm_HandleDestroyed(object sender, EventArgs e)

   8: {

   9:     this.Exit();

  10: }

  11:  

  12: void gameWindowForm_Shown(object sender, EventArgs e)

  13: {

  14:     ((Form)sender).Hide();

  15: }

  16:  

  17: protected override void Initialize()

  18: {

  19:     base.Initialize();

  20:  

  21:     Form gameWindowForm = (Form)MyForm.FromHandle(this.Window.Handle);

  22:  

  23:     gameWindowForm.Shown+=new EventHandler(gameWindowForm_Shown);

  24:  

  25:     myForm = new MyForm();

  26:     myForm.HandleDestroyed+=new EventHandler(myForm_HandleDestroyed);

  27:     myForm.Show();

  28: }

Then rebuild and run, POW! You have windows form running your game engine within a Panel Control. Baby steps my friend, baby steps. Now this may not be too practical or performance efficient in some or even most cases but it’s a good starter to understand the potential you can explore using the System.WIndows.Forms and Microsoft.Xna.Framework namespaces.

I know it’s not that visually impressive but for someone poking around XNA this is a pretty sweet thing, like peanut butter and lamb.

I’m seriously you guys.

More to follow.

Flawless Drumming (25g)

Want to finally get your Flawless Drumming achievement in Rock Band 2 for Xbox360? Still trying but to no avail…? Just can’t play expert drums?

Well then just download the NIrvana Track Pack or specifically Polly.

Why?

Because there are just eight notes.

Yes you read that correctly, eight total notes and only four spots where you play.

You can’t five star it on drums this way but you can at least get a simple achievement. You should also be able to accomplish this with Rock Band 1 as well, I have yet to confirm this however.

Rock on!

Also don’t forget about the new downloads that were released today.

The Bunny and I received our new ION Drum Rocker Xbox360 controller for Rock Band 1/2 yesterday.

And yeah it rocks, meaning it’s worth it.

You can’t get it direct right now but you can grab it from music sites… yes music sites, like Music123, zzounds, and SameDayMusic.

We got it from SameDayMusic (ordered on Tuesday) and we got it by Thursday. (2 Day shipping for only $22 [US]).

Good times, good times.

AC/DC : Live

Well it finally happened… AC/DC is coming to town, in “full” album form that is.

And guess what, the tracks are remixed by Mike Fraser for Rock Band. Awesome.

It looks that this release will be even more expensive than the Red Hot Chilli Peppers release of Blood Sugar Sex Magik which is $20 [1,600MSPoints]. The AC/DC “Track Pack” as it’s called will run somewhere around $40 [US]!!!

Which again I’m sure is not squarely on Harmonix but on those that hold the master and or publishing rights to the tracks.

Weak.

The tracks are really solid though:

“Thunderstruck”
“Shoot to Thrill”
“Back in Black”
“Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be”
“Heatseeker”
“Fire Your Guns”
“Jailbreak”
“The Jack”
“Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”
“Moneytalks”
“Hells Bells”
“High Voltage”
“Whole Lotta Rosie”
“You Shook Me All Night Long”
“T.N.T.”
“Let There Be Rock”
“Highway To Hell”
“For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”

Nice.

The entire press release can be read here.

Well it’s that time of the week again, Tuesday… and you know what that means, more downloadable content for all you Rock Band and Rock Band 2 junkies out there.

This week sees the release of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik LP.

The ablum contains the following tracks:

The Power of Equality
If You Have to Ask
Breaking the Girl
Funky Monks
Suck My Kiss
I Could Have Lied
Mellowship Slinky in B Major
The Righteous & The Wicked
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Under the Bridge
Naked in the Rain
Apache Rose Peacock
The Greeting Song
My Lovely Man
Sir Psycho Sexy
They’re Red Hot

*Give It Away, is already included on the Rock Band 2 game disc.

Hold up just one sec though… this one’s gonna run you a cool 1,600 MS Points… yep that’s $19.99 [US] for those not fully in the Matrix yet.

A pretty good album and what will probably be mucho fun in the coming weekends… however, OUCH!!! Before anyone tears into Harmonix on this one, I can almost garuntee you that the cost issue is one of licensing.

Period.

So today sees the release of more “fresh” DLC for Rock Band/2 today, this weeks releases include the previously promoted Rush album Moving Pictures.

Rush – Moving Pictures (Album) – [$10.99 / 880 MS Points]

Tom Sawyer (orig version)
Red Barchetta
YYZ
Limelight (orig version)
The Camera Eye
Witch Hunt
Vital Signs

Individual Track Release(s): – [$1.99 / 160 MS Points Ea.]

Bad Religion – Sorrow
The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary
Hot Hot Heat – Bandages
Kasabian – Shoot the Runner
Sleater-Kinney – You’re No Rock N Roll Fun
Stone Roses – Love Spreads

So if you were to grab all the releases this week it would run you aproximately $23 [US]. Can’t say that I’d be in on that, but to each his own.

Maybe someday we’ll see a Werid Al greatest hits comp for Rock Band… yeah, just Eat It.

So last night I fired up a little bit of Madden 09 goodness just prior to me hitting the lights out, (you do know that Madden is like warm-milk to some).

And suddenly started to understand the newer passing game. Though I still had issues with my pass defense I was doing alright against the run.

And most importantly I was finally starting to register some wins.

Oh and I snagged me some more achievements; Steal Their Thunder, Kick a FG for over 50 yards, 80% completion for a game and Shut out Rival in Franchise.

So that’s 50% of the 1,000 possible gamerscore possible.

Oh and what’s really awesome the Steal Their Thunder achievement… just requires you to press the B [RED] button while in a celebration zone.

Very, very, zen.

Now just have to work on that New York Jets rushing for 300 yards. [sigh]

.oO( Well more like a plan… a wish, perhaps hope… no more like delusion. )

Achievements, Xbox360 style… and lots of them. For my upcoming birthday week I’m going to take some time off (of work) and spend twenty-four to forty-eight hours in an attempt to achieve a cumulative gamerscore of ten thousand or more points.

So far I’ve got a few rough ideas of the games I’m going to do this with.

Not necessarily in the order but the video-a-thon-sketch looks something like the following:

• [PRIMARY TITLES]
• College Hoops 2K6 [1,000]
• NHL 2K6 [1,000]
• NFL 2K6 [1,000]
• NBA 2K6 [1,000]
• Madden 06 [1,000]
• Madden 07 [1,000]
• Madden 08 [1,000]
• NBA Live 06 [1,000]
• NBA Live 07 [1,000]
• NBA Live 08 [1,000]
• Fight Night Round 3 [1,000]
• Peter Jackson’s King Kong [1,000]
• TMNT [1,000]
• NBA Street Homecourt [1,000]
• Jumper: Griffin’s Story [1,000]
• Avatar: The Last Airbender [1,000]
• Prey [1,000]
• Spider Man: Friend or Foe [1,000]

That gives us a sub-total of 18,000 possible gamerscore points, (if we don’t adjust for some already acquired achievements). Subtracting existing achievements of [420] (no seriously), we are then left with a total of [17,580] respectively.

And of course because I won’t get to all of these games or even necessarily the max score I’ll need some alternates. But I have yet to determine what those are.

Man this seems like a complete waste of time…. sober.

;-p]