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.

Well for those of you (like me) who’ve been playing Halo Wars off and on for the past week and I don’t know about you but I get the feeling like it’s a dumbed down version of an RTS. It really makes me long for Starcraft 2 to see how that’s going to be unfortunately that won’t be on any console which makes me a sad panda indeed.

StarCraft 2 : Screenshot

[Oops now only fourteen more gamerscore to go, until I reach the 10,000 mark.]

How the hell did I get such a weird gamerscore? Luxor2 and that’s all I’m going to say about that… never ever play that game. EVER.

So yesterday Harmonix announced the release of Pearl Jam’s Ten album due out this March to coincide with the bands re-release of the album.

And today they released a bunch of “country” songs.

Huh.

Hmm.

Well then.

So the new XBE Avatar feature is pretty sweet.

Pretty sweet, indeed.

It’s here.

So who’s ready for the XBE update this Friday?

I for one have been upping my Netflix Instant Queue by the day… I mean I probably never would have watched Young Einstein again otherwise.

;)

Young Einstein Movie Poster

This weeks Rock Band downloadable content includes one of my all time favorite songs from the decade past.

Blink182’s Dammit.

I guess there’s some other releases as well:

Siouxsie and the Banshees Pack – 440 MSP ($5.49)

• “Hong Kong Garden” – 160 MSP ($1.99)
• “The Killing Jar” – 160 MSP ($1.99)
• “Kiss Them For Me” – 160 MSP ($1.99)

Blink 182 – “Dammit” – 160 MSP ($1.99)
The Psychedelic Furs – “Pretty In Pink” – 160 MSP ($1.99)
Silversun Pickups – “Melatonin” – 160 MSP ($1.99)
Silversun Pickups – “Well Thought Out Twinkles” – 160 MSP ($1.99)

You can see the “official” release notes here.

Well it’s that time again, Rock Band downloads for the week of Oct/21st, no full albums this week but we do get to hear some more Nirvana (finally).

The track pack includes the following:

Breed
Lounge Act
On a Plain
Polly
Something in the Way
Stay Away
Territorial Pissings

It will be $11 [US] for all seven songs.

Official release notes here.