So you got an XBox for Christmas and you want to build games for it!
Or maybe you were looking at this blog thinking: "Why didn't Sam finish up on how to build games for the XBox?" Good question, one I would rather ignore, however, let me explain. My job at Microsoft is to work with students and professors at colleges in SoCal or Southern California to help them understand our technology. It is a great job and i have great managers. Part of my job is to help students get involved with the Imagine Cup contest, and I got very busy with the contest, time flew, and now I need to get caught up on my blog. I hope that if you are a student at a university in California you will feel free to leave a comment for me to send you more information.
I hope you had a nice Christmas, Festivas, winter holidays or just a nice time off. How to get started building games for the XBox, which is what I started to do with the earlier posts.
How do you get started, all of those semi-colons, where do you put the code, etc. Lot's of study and practice, sorry there is no other way. Ok, there is an easy approach, you can read this blog.
To start, you will want to avoid reading the entry on designing games which is really depressing. That link does point out that you need to have a strong design document, great, you just want to build a game and have fun. Good, now think about it, what will your game do? How will it respond to the user input? You need to write out your idea. Don't worry, it is unlikely that anyone will steal your idea. Why? They have their own ideas and the web as well as web games are so cheap to get great tools, everyone who has the motivation will do it themselves.
In this blog I have shown how to create a simple pong game, along with the code, etc.
Back in August I had put up a syllabus up on this blog and I got off subject, work and all of that, but now I am going to dig into this blogging stuff (especially since I decided to not teach Video Game Design at Cal State Fullerton, this will give me more time to work on the online material), so I will fill in the gaps and add a few more items like a discussion about artificial intelligence. If you have not added Visual Studio C# Express 2008 and XNA Game Studio (if you have versions of Visual Studio 2008 professional or VSTS you don't need VS C# Express 2008, but should put it on your machine and get the free C# book that comes with registration).
Week |
What |
Description |
1 |
What tools and why. Creating a web presence. |
Create a game in popfly game creator |
2 |
Using XNA |
Use Code Snippets to build pong Use the instructions on this blog to build Pong Add a barrier between paddles |
3 |
2-D Geometry |
Use the Farseer Physics engine samples on Codeplex release 2: Click here |
4 |
2-D Geometry |
|
5 |
2-D Geometry |
Role Playing Game |
6 |
3-D Geometry |
Generated Geometry Skinned Model Billboards Shatter |
7 |
3-D Geometry |
Collisions Simple Animation |
8 |
3-D Geometry |
Normal Mapping Chase Camera |
9 |
Input devices, in depth |
Input Report: Dance Pad versus Controller |
10 |
Content Pipeline |
Custom Model Importer Authoring Particle Systems Using XML and the Content Pipeline |
11 |
Silverlight |
Investigation into the use of Silverlight with XNA |
12 |
Artificial Intelligence |
Fuzzy logic, making decisions Chase and evade |
13 |
Physics |
Revisit FarSeer Determine cursor and object |
14 |
Storage |
How to store game state |
15 |
Deployment |
Setting your game up for deployment |
16 |
Test your game |
Use built in tools to test your game |