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• Rotation of two objects in relation

  - by DMan

  I've got a two sprites- I'll say I have a swing and a person. The swing 'swings' back and forth as I passed a rotation variable into spriteBatch.Draw(). Now I want my person to 'sit' on the swing, and am not sure of how to approach it. Since I want a relative to the swing sprite, I tried personPos=swingPos, but that obviously doesn't work as the swing's position is always the same (it's anchored to a point and swings from there). How would I make the person sprite follow the swinging part of the swing sprite, if that makes any sense?

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• min max coordinate of cells , given cell length in c#

  - by Raj

  Please see attached picture to better understand my question i have a matrix of cells of [JXI] , cell is square in shape with length "a" my question is .. is there a way to use FOR loop to assign MIN,MAX coordinate to each cell taking origin (0,0) at one corner Thanks "freeimagehosting.net/uploads/3b09575180.jpg" i was trying following code but no success int a ; a = 1; for (int J=1; J<=5; J++) { for (int I = 1; I <= 5; I++) { double Xmin = ((I - 1)*a ); double Ymin = ((J - 1) * a); double Xmax = (I * a ); double Ymax = (J * a); } }

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• Getting UI button's event in Windows Phone 7

  - by kite

  Hello. I'm currently making a game in XNA4 for Windows phone 7, and I'd like to know if it were possible to get the event of the return button, or even the windows button that are basically present on the phone's interface. If so, how can i do that? thanks, KiTe

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• Sprite to Line Collision

  - by Alu

  If I have a sprite, how would I check collision between two points? For example, in a game I am making, I would like to draw multiple lines that my sprite collides against. I'm thinking that this is more flexible than other collision systems if I had a lot of platforms.

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• Surface Detection in 2d Game?

  - by GamiShini

  I'm working on a 2D Platform game, and I was wondering what's the best (performance-wise) way to implement Surface (Collision) Detection. So far I'm thinking of constructing a list of level objects constructed of a list of lines, and I draw tiles along the lines. ( http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/1704/lines.png ). I'm thinking every object holds the ID of the surface that he walks on, in order to easily manipulate his y position while walking up/downhill. Something like this: //Player/MovableObject class MoveLeft() { this.Position.Y = Helper.GetSurfaceById(this.SurfaceId).GetYWhenXIs(this.Position.X) } So the logic I use to detect "droping/walking on surface" is a simple point (player's lower legs)-touches-line (surface) check (with some safety approximation - let`s say 1-2 pixels over the line). Is this approach OK? I`ve been having difficulty trying to find reading material for this problem, so feel free to drop links/advice.

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• Why won't this loop normalize my Vector2 list?

  - by ssb

  See the following code: List<Vector2> axes = new List<Vector2>(); axes.Add(TopRight() - TopLeft()); axes.Add(BottomLeft() - TopLeft()); axes.Add(otherRectangle.TopRight() - otherRectangle.TopLeft()); axes.Add(otherRectangle.BottomLeft() - otherRectangle.TopLeft()); // Try normalizing vectors? foreach (Vector2 axis in axes) { axis.Normalize(); } the Vector2.Normalize() method is a void method that normalizes the vector it's called on. Yet for some reason when I do this loop it doesn't normalize the vectors. Am I just unable to modify a list this way? Some oddities: Iterating with a for loop, i.e. axis[i].Normalize() doesn't work. Iterating with the built-in List<T>.ForEach iterator does not work. Creating a normalizing the vector before adding it to the list rather than iterating over the list does work. Why does iteration not work?

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• Processing velocity-vectors during collision as neatly as possible

  - by DevEight

  Hello. I'm trying to create a good way to handle all possible collisions between two objects. Typically one will be moving and hitting the other, and should then "bounce" away. What I've done so far (I'm creating a typical game where you have a board and bounce a ball at bricks) is to check if the rectangles intersect and if they do, invert the Y-velocity. This is a really ugly and temporary solution that won't work in the long haul and since this is kind of processing is very common in games I'd really like to find a great way of doing this for future projects aswell. Any links or helpful info is appreciated. Below is what my collision-handling function looks like right now. protected void collision() { #region Boundaries if (bal.position.X + bal.velocity.X >= viewportRect.Width || bal.position.X + bal.velocity.X <= 0) { bal.velocity.X *= -1; } if (bal.position.Y + bal.velocity.Y <= 0) { bal.velocity.Y *= -1; } #endregion bal.rect = new Rectangle((int)bal.position.X+(int)bal.velocity.X-bal.sprite.Width/2, (int)bal.position.Y-bal.sprite.Height/2+(int)bal.velocity.Y, bal.sprite.Width, bal.sprite.Height); player.rect = new Rectangle((int)player.position.X-player.sprite.Width/2, (int)player.position.Y-player.sprite.Height/2, player.sprite.Width, player.sprite.Height); if (bal.rect.Intersects(player.rect)) { bal.position.Y = player.position.Y - player.sprite.Height / 2 - bal.sprite.Height / 2; if (player.position.X != player.prevPos.X) { bal.velocity.X -= (player.prevPos.X - player.position.X) / 2; } bal.velocity.Y *= -1; } foreach (Brick b in brickArray.list) { b.rect.X = Convert.ToInt32(b.position.X-b.sprite.Width/2); b.rect.Y = Convert.ToInt32(b.position.Y-b.sprite.Height/2); if (bal.rect.Intersects(b.rect)) { b.recieveHit(); bal.velocity.Y *= -1; } } brickArray.removeDead(); }

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• Displaying "broken" sprites?

  - by Roman

  I'm quite new to the world of 2D-Engines. I figured out how to load images and display those as sprites and stuff, but theres one question that bugs me. For instance, when a "rocket" hits an object it will deal damage to it and leave a crater behind. I'd like to have the crater shown on that object. That would require "skipping" some of the pixels of that image when rendering, doesn't it? My question is, how would you do such a thing? What data strcture would you use to save this? How to display a "broken" sprite?

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• Good ways to map a 2D side shooter (somewhat like liero, or soldat)

  - by Blaze

  I'm wondering what way would be best to render a 2D map for a shooter (these will be static maps) similar to Soldat. Multiple options I've considered are a tile based map (stored in txt files), or just creating different classes for the different terrains I plan to use and creating a data structure to read/store them in a file. (I want to also be able to include things like jumping/running on walls, sliding down walls/slopes ect) I feel like there must be a better way than either of these, but haven't been able to find definitive information :/ Thanks :)

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• Which version of .NET is available for Xbox 360?

  - by Rosarch

  I tried to look this up on MSDN, but couldn't get a straight answer. It says: The .NET Compact Framework for Xbox 360 implements a subset of the .NET Compact Framework, and has been optimized to take advantage of and expose the power of the Xbox 360. What exactly is the subset? Which version of the framework? 3.5? 2.0?

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• LoadContent does not work in my components

  - by drozzy

  For some reason the LoadContent method does not get called in my Components. For example I have Game class in which I do: //Game.cs protected override void LoadContent() { editor = new Editor(...); Components.Add(editor); } //Editor.cs public class Editor : DrawableGameComponent{ Game game; public Editor(Game game, ...):base(game){ this.game = game; } //THIS method never gets called! protected override void LoadContent() { background = game.Content.Load<Texture2D>("background"); base.LoadContent(); } } Any tips? EDIT: When you keep in mind the order of Initialize and LoadContent everything works out fine!

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• Which of these choices is the better design for drawing objects?

  - by Adir

  What would be a better parctice, writing the drawing method inside the GameObject class or in the Game class? GameObject obj = new GameObject(); obj.Draw(); Or GameObject obj = new GameObject(); DrawGameObject(obj);

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• Collision between 2 objects of the same class

  - by user1826033

  Okay, so I have an enemy class(With rotation, position, texture and so on). I spawn a few enemies on the screen, they move around, but they overlap each other. So I tried to do a collision check between two enemies of the same class. But no matter what method I try, it isn't quite working. The best thing I tried was: foreach (Enemy enemy1 in enemies) { enemy1Pos = new Vector2(enemy1.position.X, enemy1.position.Y) foreach (Enemy enemy2 in enemies) { enemy2Pos = new Vector2(enemy2.position.X, enemy2.position.Y) if (Vector2.Distance(enemy2Pos, enemy1Pos) < 200) { enemy1Pos += new Vector2((float)(enemy1.Speed * Math.Cos(enemy1.Rotation)), (float)(enemy1.Speed * Math.Sin(enemy1.Rotation))); } } } This is not to exact code, so it might have some mistakes in it. Anyway when i implemented this solution, the enemies were not overlapping so everything was fine on that part. But, they were always moving to the right side of the screen. I've also looked up flocking etc, but I would like to know, how can I detect collision between 2 objects of the same class?

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• How to save data of two for loops in one array?

  - by Homer_Simpson

  I have two for loops and I wanna save that data in one array. The first for loop will create 5 rectangles in the array. After that, the second for loop will create 5 rectangles and add them to the array. But something doesn't work. I get that "Index was outside the bounds of the array" error message in the last line of the code and I don't know what to change. int framewidth = texture.Width / sourceRects.Length; int frameheight = texture.Height; private void vorrück(Rectangle[] sourceRects, int framewidth, int frameheight) { int doublelenght = sourceRects.Length * 2; for (int i = 0; i < sourceRects.Length; i++) sourceRects[i] = new Rectangle(i * framewidth, 0, framewidth, frameheight); for (int normallenght = sourceRects.Length; normallenght < doublelenght; normallenght++) sourceRects[normallenght] = new Rectangle((sourceRects.Length - 1 - normallenght) * framewidth, 0, framewidth, frameheight); }

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• Tell me what&rsquo;s wrong! &ndash; An XNA sample demonstrating exception handling and reporting in

  - by George Clingerman

  I’ve always enjoyed using Nick Gravelyn’s exception handling in all of my games. You’re always going to encounter those unhandled exception that your players are going to ferret out and having a method to display them rather than just crashing to the dashboard is definitely more of an elegant solution. But the other day I got to thinking…what if we could do more? What if instead of just displaying the error, we could encourage the players to send us the error. So I started playing with that an expanding upon Nick’s sample code to see what I could come up with. I got close to what I envisioned, but unfortunately there were some limitations to just what the XNA API could do. In my head I was picturing the players hitting “Send Message” and a 360 message would just be sent to the XBLIG developer. Unfortunately, you can only send messages in an XNA game to someone you’re currently in a network session with. Since I didn’t want to have a 360 server running all the time, virally connecting to players just to get error messages, I did the next best thing and just open up a 360 message and encourage them to manually enter the gamertag. Maybe someday we’ll be able to do that a little better, but this works for now. In the sample, players can hit the “A” button or key to generate in an exception. If the debugger is not attached, then the Exception message screen will be shown explaining what has happened and giving the player a chance to send a 360 message to the gamertag provided or maybe even just send an email. Nick’s code has been changed just a bit. It now accepts any PlayerIndex (no longer hard coded to just PlayerIndex.One) and it no longer uses a MessageBox to get the users selection. The code has also been modified so that it works both for the 360 and for the PC. Check out “Tell me what’s wrong!” and let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions. I really do appreciate the feedback.

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• How to work around a possible XNA Game Studio or Windows Phone SDK install failure on Windows 8

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I am not sure if you guys know Aaron Stebner. Aaron works at Microsoft, and has pulled thorns from my side many many times already. His blog is at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner and it is a gold mine of tips and tricks to debug and solve many cryptic issues happening during installation and removal of programs. For example, Aaron taught me how to remove programs that do not appear in the Programs and Features list, amongst many other things. The last nugget I used from Aaron’s blog saved my butt just before a presentation where I had to run both Visual Studio 10 with the Windows Phone SDK, and Visual Studio 11 for WinRT development. Of course this had to be on Windows 8. Unfortunately when you install the Windows Phone SDK on Windows 8, you may (or may not, I saw both scenarios) encounter an issue with XNA, and the installation fails. Unfortunately, even if you don’t use XNA in your apps, this will prevent even normal Windows Phone app development. Fortunately, Aaron has a fix for that. I hope that this helps spread the word, and increase Aaron’s blog’s visibility! Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• The right way to add images to Monogame/Windows

  - by ashes999

  I'm starting out with MonoGame. For now, I'm only targeting Windows (desktop -- not Windows 8 specifically). I've used a couple of XNA products in the past (raw XNA, FlatRedBall, SilverSprite), so I may have a misunderstanding about how I should add images to my content. How do I add images to my project? Currently, I created a new Monogame project, added a folder called "Content," and added images under there; the only caveat is that I need to set the Copy to Output Directory action to one of the Copy ones. It seems strange, because my "raw" XNA project just last week had a Content project in it (XNA Framework Content Pipeline, according to VS2010), which compiled my images to XNB (I think). It seems like Monogame doesn't use the same content pipeline, but I'm not sure. Edit: My question is not about "how do I get the XNA content pipeline to work with Monogame." My question is "why would I want to use the XNA content pipeline in Monogame?" Because there are (at least) two solutions (that I see today): Add the images to the Monogame project and set the Copy to Output Directory options to copy. Add a XNA content pipeline project and add my images to that instead; reference it from my MOnogame project. Which solution should I use, and why? I currently have a working version with the first option.

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• Day 1 - Finding Like Minds

  - by dapostolov

  So, is being a Game Developer any different from being an IT Developer? I picture a poorly lit environment where I get to purchase my own desk lamp; I'm thinking one of those huge lava lamps that pump out so much heat you could fry an egg on it. To my right: a "great wall" of empty coke cans dwarf me. Eating my last slice of pizza I look across my desk to see a fellow developer with a smug look on his face;  he's just coded his latest module for the game and it looks like he's in nirvana. My duty, of course, is to remind him to keep focused on the job at hand. So, picking up my trusty elastic and aerodynamically crafted paper bullet I begin a 10 minute war of welts and laughter which is promptly abrupted by our Project Manager demanding more details from our morning Scrum meeting. After providing about 5 minutes of geek speak and several words of comfort to make his eyes glaze over...it hits me, the idea for the module...beckoning my developer friend over, we quickly shoo the Project Manager away and begin our brainstorming frenzy ... now, where'd I put that full can of coke? OK. OK. This isn't probably the most ideal game developer environment, but it definitely sounds fun to me...and from what I gather is nothing like most game development companies. But I'm not doing this blog series to "go pro"; like I stated in my first post I want to make a 2D game from an idea my best friend and I drummed up long, long ago. I'm in this for the passion AND I want to see how easy it is for us .Net Developers to create a game. So where do I start? Where can I find like minded individuals? What technologies are there? What do I need to make a video game? The questions are endless....AND...since I already have an idea ... lets start with ... Technology (yes, I'm a geek, live with it...) Technology OK. Predominantly, games are still made in C++ or even C. I'm not sure how much assembly code is floating around lately, however, that is not my concern. I do know C / C++ from my past, enough to even get me by, but I'm mainly interested in a recent, not-so-new, technology called XNA. What is XNA? XNA allows us .Net Developers to make 2D / 3D games for windows, Xbox*, and Windows Mobile 7*. * = for a nominal fee *cough* The following link is your one stop shop to XNA game development: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted The above site hosts information such as: - getting started - a sample/instructional shooter game in 2D / 3D with code (if I'm taking too long for you in this blog series) - downloads - starter kits... http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/starterkits/ And of course...forums. You can also subscribe and pay for their premium membership which gets you some pretty awesome tutorials, resources, downloads, and premium community support. Some general Wiki information about XNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNA_%28Microsoft%29 Community Support OK. Let's move on to industry and community support. Apart from XNA, there are some really cool sites out there, I just haven't found all of them yet. However, I found a really cool Game Development website called Gamastura. You can click on the following link to get you there: http://www.gamasutra.com/ The site is 100% dedicated to "The Art & Business of Making Games". Armed with blogs, twitter, jobs/resumes and most importantly industry news; one could subscribe to the feed and got lost in the wealth of information it provides. On a side note: I remember Gamasutra being around when my best friend and I wanted to make a video game...meaning, they've been around for a while now. I think the most beneficial aspect of this site is to understand the industry you want to get into. Otherwise, it's just a cool site to keep up to date with the industry in general. Another Community Support option is LinkedIn. Amongst the land of extremely bloated achievements and responsibilities lay 3 groups (that I have found) that deal with game development.: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=59205 - Game Developers http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=824817 - DirectX Game Developer Network http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=756587 - DirectX Developers The Game Developers group in LinkedIn is by far the most active of the three and could possibly provide a wealth of support. What I've done thus far: - I lightly researched the XNA technology - I looked around for some community sites to assist me - I downloaded the XNA Game Studio 3.1 on my PC and installed it on my IDE - I even tried both tutorials! http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted/bgintro/chapter1   Best Regards D.

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• Easiest, most fun way to program 2D games? Flash? XNA? Some other engine?

  - by Maxi

  Hi, this is a post detailing my search for the most enjoyable way for a hobbyist game programmer to sweeten his free time with making a game. My requirements: I looked at Flash first, I made a couple of small games but I'm doubtful of the performance. I would like to make a fairly large strategy game, with several hundred units fighting simultaneously, explosions and animations included. Also zoomable maps. I saw that Adobe has a new 3D API for Flash, but I don't know if that improves 2D performance aswell, I couldn't find anything related to that question on their MAX10 sessions. Would you say that Flash is a good technology for making large 2D games easily? I really like Actionscript, and I love how easy everything is in Flash. There are several engines available which make it even easier. I just do this for fun, and it would be even better if there were proper animation/particle editors available and if the engine I were to use, would be available for multiple platforms. (so more people can play my game once finished). I'd like to have it available on many mobile platforms aswell. (because I love touch input for some reason) I do know the XNA framework pretty well, but there are no good engines available for it, and it will only run on Windows, which is a huge turn off. Even bigger is, that you need to install the XNA redistributable each time you want to give the game to someone. If I use XNA, I would have to make all the tools myself, and I'd probably have to make them with WPF. (I'd love to make tools with Adobe AIR, but unfortunately the API's for image manipulation etc. are far worse in Flash, than they are in XNA/WPF.) Now, I'm aware that I could make my own engine that supports each of those platforms, but quite frankly, that would be too much work plowing through APIs. After all, I want to make a game, not an engine. So the question becomes: Is there maybe a cross platform (free or free to develop?) engine available that I could use for 2D development? I prefer: C#, Actionscript. I don't mind using c++ if the toolset is above average, but I highly doubt that there is something out there like that. Please prove me wrong :) So summary: I'd like to use Flash, but I don't know if it scales well enough. I'm not a scripter, I want some real APIs that I can work with inside a proper IDE. Just for information, I looked at several alternatives, I'm actually looking for a long time already. You'd help me a lot to make a decision finally. Feature-wise the Flatredball engine would be ideal. But I tried their tools, and quite frankly, they are horrible. Absolutely unusable, I'd need to make my own for sure. I didn't look at their API, but if their tools are so bad, I'm not inclined to look further. Unity3D. This one is quite nice, but I really don't need 3D, and it is quite ...a lot of work to learn. I also don't like that it is so expensive to use for different platforms and that I can only code for it through scripting. You have to buy each platform separately. The editor usability is average, the product overall is good enough for most purposes, but learning it myself would be overkill. Shiva 3D. It looks good enough, but again: I don't really need 3D. The editor usability is a little worse than Unity3D in my opinion and it wasn't clear to me how to start programming. I think it requires C++ for coding, so that's a negative too. I want to have fun, and c# is fun ;) SDL. Quite frankly, I'd still need to port to all those different SDL implementations. And I don't like OpenGL style programming, it's just plain ugly. And it needs c++, I know that there might be some wrappers available, but I don't like to use wrappers, because... Irrlicht. A lot of features, but support seems to be low and it is aimed at enthusiasts. C# bindings get dropped repeatedly. I'm not an engine enthusiast, I just want to make a game. I don't see this happening with Irrlicht. Ogre3D. Way too much work, it's just a graphics engine. Also no multiple platform support and c++. Torque2D. Costs something to use, and I didn't hear a lot of good things about support and documentation. Also costs extra for each platform.

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• Bastion - Indie Humble Bundle

  - by user68008

  I have downloaded Bastion for Ubuntu and installed in the home folder normally. When executing "Games Bastion" nothing happens. Running Bastion directly from the installation folder results in the error below Unhandled Exception: System.EntryPointNotFoundException: glProgramParameteri at (wrapper managed-to-native) OpenTK.Graphics.OpenGL.GL/Core:ProgramParameteri (uint,OpenTK.Graphics.OpenGL.AssemblyProgramParameterArb,int) at OpenTK.Graphics.OpenGL.GL.ProgramParameter (Int32 program, AssemblyProgramParameterArb pname, Int32 value) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.EffectPass.ApplyPass () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Effect.DefineTechnique (System.String techniqueName, System.String passName, Int32 vertexIndex, Int32 fragmentIndex) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.SpriteEffect..ctor (Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.SpriteBatch..ctor (Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at GSGE.ExceptionGame.LoadContent () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 <snip> I have tried some solutions on the internet, like adding OpenTK.dll.config the line below: <dllmap os="linux" dll="libXi" target="libXi.so.6"/> This didn't help. Also tried running as sudo and that didn't help. Some posts said that this might be a problem with Ubuntu noveau drivers. But I'm using the NVIDIA proprietary drivers. DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS" OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 9400 GT/PCI/SSE2 OpenGL version string: 3.2.0 NVIDIA 195.36.24 direct rendering: Yes

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• how can i get rotation vector from matrix4x4 in xna?

  - by mr.Smyle

  i want to get rotation vector from matrix to realize some parent-children system for models. Matrix bonePos = link.Bone.Transform * World; Matrix m = Matrix.CreateTranslation(link.Offset) * Matrix.CreateScale(link.gameObj.Scale.X, link.gameObj.Scale.Y, link.gameObj.Scale.Z) * Matrix.CreateFromYawPitchRoll(MathHelper.ToRadians(link.gameObj.Rotation.Y), MathHelper.ToRadians(link.gameObj.Rotation.X), MathHelper.ToRadians(link.gameObj.Rotation.Z)) //need rotation vector from bone matrix here (now it's global model rotation vector) * Matrix.CreateFromYawPitchRoll(MathHelper.ToRadians(Rotation.Y), MathHelper.ToRadians(Rotation.X), MathHelper.ToRadians(Rotation.Z)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(bonePos.Translation); link.gameObj.World = m; where : link - struct with children model settings, like position, rotation etc. And link.Bone - Parent Bone

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• How can I plot a radius of all reachable points with pathfinding for a Mob (XNA)?

  - by PugWrath

  I am designing a tactical turn based game. The maps are 2d, but do have varying level-layers and blocking objects/terrain. I'm looking for an algorithm for pathfinding which will allow me to show an opaque shape representing all of the possible max-distance pixels that a mob can move to, knowing the mob's max pixel distance. Any thoughts on this, or do I just need to write a good pathfinding algorithm and use it to find the cutoff points for any direction in which an obstacle exists?

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• How do I recycle code in Visual Studio with XNA?

  - by Marty Wallace

  I'm relatively new to both C# and Visual Studio, using XNA Game Studio. All I want to do is take some folders from a current project which contain .cs files and utilise those files in a new project, but it's proving to be a little trickier than I am used to with Flash/ActionScript. At the moment it seems like I need to use this process over and over until all the files I want are part of the current project:

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• MVP Summit 2011 summary and thoughts: The &ldquo;I hope I don&rsquo;t cross a line and lose my MVP status&rdquo; post

  - by George Clingerman

  I've been wanting to write this post summarizing my thoughts about the MVP summit but have been dragging my feet since it's a very difficult one to write. However seeing Andy (http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx) and Catalin (http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/) and Chris (http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx) post about it has encouraged me to finally take the plunge. I'm going to have to write carefully though because I'm going to be dancing around a ton of NDA mine fields as well as having to walk the tight-rope of not sending the wrong message or having people read too much into what I'm saying. I want to note that most of what I'm about to say is just based on my observations, they're not thoughts that Microsoft has asked me to pass along and they're not things I heard Microsoft say. It's just me sharing what I think after going to the MVP summit. Let's start off with a short imaginary question and answer session.     Has the App Hub forums and XBLIG management been rather poor by Microsoft? Yes.     Do I think we're going to see changes to that overnight? No.     Will it continue to look bad from the outside? Somewhat. Confusing right? Well that's kind of how things are right now. Lots of confusion. XNA is doing AWESOME. Like, really, really awesome. As a result of that awesomeness, XNA is on three major platforms: Xbox 360, WP7 and PC. This means that internally Microsoft is really excited and invested in the technology. That's fantastic for XNA and really should show you the future the framework has. It's here to stay. So why are Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers feeling so much pain? The ironic thing is that pain is being caused by the success of XNA. When XNA was just a small thing, there was more freedom and more focus. It was just us and them. We were an only child. Now our family has grown and everyone has and wants some time with XNA. This gets XNA pulled in all directions and as it moves onto new platforms, it plays catch up trying to get those platforms up to speed to where Xbox LIVE Indie Games has grown. Forums, documentation, educational content. They all need to be there because Xbox LIVE Indie Games has all of that and more. Along with the catch up in features/documentation/awesomeness there's the catch up that the people on the team have to play. New platforms and new areas of development mean new players and those new guys don't have the history of being around from the beginning. This leads to a lack of understanding at times just how important some things are because they seem so small and insignificant (Rich Text defaulting for new forum profiles would be one things that jumps to mind). If you're not aware that the forums have become more than just a basic Q&A, if you're not aware that they're a central hub to a very active community, then you don't understand why that small change should be prioritized over something else. New people have to get caught up and figure out how to make a framework and central forum site work for everyone it's now serving. So yeah, a lot of our pain this last year has been simply that XNA is doing well and XBLIG is doing well so the focus was shifted to catch other things up. It hurts when a parent seems to not have any time for you and they're spending some much time with your new baby brother. Growing pains. All families and in our case our product family experience it to some degree. I think as WP7 matures we'll see the team figuring out how to give everyone the right amount of attention. While we're talking about some of our growing pains, it is also important to note (although not really an excuse) that the Xbox LIVE Arcade developers complain about many of the same things that we do. If you paid attention to talks and information coming out of GDC 2011, most of the the XBLA guys were saying things that sounded eerily similar to what the XBLIG developers are saying (Scott Nichols from GayGamer.net noticed http://twitter.com/#!/NaviFairyGG/status/43540379206811650). Does this mean we should just accept the status quo since we're being treated exactly the same? No way. However it DOES show that the way we're being treated is no indication of the stability and future of the platform, it's just Microsoft dropping the communication ball on two playing fields. We're not alone and we're not even being treated worse. Not great, but also in a weird way a very good sign. Now on to a few tidbits I think I CAN share from the summit (I'm really crossing my fingers I'm not stepping over some NDA line I shouldn't be). First, I discovered that the XBLIG user base is bigger than I personally had originally estimated. I won't give the exact numbers (although we did beg Microsoft to release some of these numbers so maybe someday?) but it was much larger than my original guestimates and I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe some of you guys had the right number when you were guessing, but I know that mine was much too low. And even MORE importantly the number of users/shoppers is growing at a steady pace as well. Our market is growing! That was fantastic news and really something that I had to share. On to the community manager discussion. It was mentioned. I was mentioned. I blushed. Nothing more to report there than the blush in my cheeks was a light crimson color. If I ever see a job description posted for that position I have a resume waiting in the wings. I can't deny that I think that would be my dream job... ...so after I finished blushing, the MVPs did make it very, very clear that the communication has to improve. Community manager or not the single biggest pain point with the Xbox LIVE Indie Game community has been a lack of communication. I have seen dramatic improvement in the team responding to MVPs and I'm even seeing more communication from them on the forums so I'm hoping that's a long term change. I really think they understood the issue, the problem remains how to open that communication channel in a way that was sustainable. I think they'll get it figured out and hopefully that's sooner rather than later. During the summit, you may have seen me tweeting about how I was "that guy" (http://twitter.com/#!/clingermangw/status/42740432471470081). You also may have noticed that Andy and Catalin both mentioned me in their summit write ups. I may have come on a bit strong while I was there...went a little out of character for myself. I've been agitated for a while with the way things have been and I've been listening to you guys and hearing you guys be agitated. I'm also watching some really awesome indie game developers looking elsewhere and leaving the platform. Some of them we might not have been able to keep even with changes, but others are only leaving because of perceptions and lack of communication from Microsoft. And that pisses me off. And I let Microsoft know that I was pissed off. You made your list and I took that list and verbalized it. I verbalized the hell out of it. [It was actually mentioned that I'm a lot nicer on the forums and in email than I am in person...I felt bad about that, but I couldn't stay silent]. Hopefully it did something guys, I really did try hard to get the message across. Along with my agitation, I also brought some pride. I mentioned several things in person to the team that I was particularly proud of. From people in the community that are doing an awesome job, to the re-launch of XboxIndies that was going on that week and even gamers like Steven Hurdle (http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/) who have purchased one XBLIG every day for over 100 days now. The community is freaking rocking it and I made sure to highlight that. So in conclusion, I'd just like to say hang in there (you know, like that picture of the cat). If you've been worried about investing in Xbox LIVE Indie Games because you think it's on shaky ground. It's not. Dream Build Play being about the Xbox 360 should have helped a little to point that out. The team is really scrambling around trying to figure things out and make improvements all around. There’s quite a few new gals and guys and it's going to take them time to catch up and there are a lot of constantly shifting priorities. We all have one toy, one team and we're fighting for time with it. It's also time for the community to continue spreading our wings and going out on our own more often. The Indie Game Winter Uprising was a fantastic example of that. We took things into our own hands and it got noticed and Microsoft got behind it. They do every time we stand up and do something (look at how many Microsoft employees tweeted, wrote about the re-launch of XboxIndies.com or the support I've gotten from them for my weekly XNA Notes). XNA is here to stay, it's time for us to stop being scared of that and figure out how to make our own games the successes they should be. There's definitely a list of things that need to be fixed, things that should be improved and I think we should definitely keep vocal about that with Microsoft. Keep it short, focused and prioritized. There's also a lot of things we can do ourselves while we're waiting on them to fix and change things. Lots of ways we can compensate for particular weaknesses in the channel. The kind of stuff that we can step up and do ourselves. Do it on our own, you know, the way Indies always do. And I'm really looking forward to watching us do just that.

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• Want to make RTS strategy game, good starting point...?

  - by NOLANDI

  everybody! I find this community because I did research about game developing topics. So I decide to register on this community and ask for your opinion. I am not begineer in computer stuffs, and I know logic of programming language. I have little knowlegde of C, C++, Started to learn C#...but I was always oriented about other areas of IT. Amateur for game making but not in IT general! I am interested to make RTS strategy video game, isometric camera view (like PC GAME COMMANDOS for example)...so I started to read many books about DirectX, XNA, OpenGL, C#, AI programming...so I want to know where is good starting point for making this game genre. I want to use C# for this project, not C++, since I always had trouble with it, because it is too complicated. I see good oportunity for learning C#, since it has more object-oriented concept, with much less code and easy readible code for writing. Beside of that I know that C++ is the more powerful language until today. So I want to use DirectX and C# for my project. But it will required more time for sure, to learn it. I have trouble with finding books for c# & DirectX (I found just one), but in every next book, it is programming in c++! I read many web sites and they mentioned Slim DX, and in generaly, other articles which I read tells that it is possible to make good game with combination c# and directX, but...I don't have enough information about all this stuffs, so I became confused! It is really hard to have wish to learn c++ from scratch, since I started c# and I like it really...I don't try OpenGL, but I am already familiar with DirectX (some beginning stuffs), and I think that it is good and interesting. So, I decide to choose between maybe Unity3d and XNA first. XNA...hm, it sound that it is not bad solution, but I heard that it is already overcome technology, and I think that it is better to wait with XNA, until I try to make something with DirectX and C#, at first. But I dont know it is possible to make strategy game in XNA?! Maybe I am wrong. I also, find Unity 3D game engine and I find that I could programming there in C#, but many all examples are written in Javascript (Digital tutors videos)...But I generaly have wish to learn it too, because it allows to export games to mobile phones, there a lot of documentations, it is free, etc... I want to find best way to learn C# and DirectX, and make this game, but I dont know if it's possible to combine?! But maybe is good to first try Unity and XNA, because I am beginner?! Thank you all! I am willing to hear your expirience.

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