Allan Chaney on March 11th, 2009

I’m finally posting an update video on my efforts with XNA.
This is about a month and a half of work after my last video.  What have I added/changed?  Pretty much everything.
I completely dumped the Tile System that I was using from Nick Gravelyn’s video tutorials series.  I just couldn’t stand the look of the repetitive Tiles.  Perhaps [...]

Continue reading about Volcano Storm Update – Working on GamePlay

Allan Chaney on February 6th, 2009

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to add simple 2D shadows to your 2D game. My original blog post demonstrated that you can create simple 2D Shadows that are realistic, with no additional textures, no new lines of code and no math. I extend that concept by making the shadows dynamic relative to your suns position, adding a Sun Cycle.

Continue reading about Simple 2D Shadows Extended XNA Tutorial

Allan Chaney on January 30th, 2009

In this example, I’ll show you how to add 2D shadows to your game with no new lines of code, no additional textures and no math. It turns out everything you need is already contained in Spritbatch.Draw.

Continue reading about Simple 2D Shadows in XNA

Allan Chaney on January 28th, 2009

Volcano Storm XNA game 012709 from Allan Chaney on Vimeo.
I’ve been struggling with perspective.  My original intention was to mirror my work on Paladin’s Legacy and just create a Top Down game.  The problem I’ve run into is, due to the current state of game graphics, even the simplest graphics don’t look good in pure Top [...]

Continue reading about Top Down vs Isometric or Both

Allan Chaney on January 21st, 2009

Volcano Storm 2009 XNA 3.0 Game from Allan Chaney on Vimeo.

Continue reading about It’s not a game yet. It’s an XNA tech demo learning project.

Allan Chaney on January 21st, 2009

So I finally made a decision regarding graphics applications for XNA game building.  I bought ZBrush. The interface is a little non-standard but what I really liked about it when I first started the trial was that you can start with a 3D object and just start sculpting and changes occur real time on the [...]

Continue reading about Making Trees in ZBrush 3

I really liked this book.  About half of the book will be valuable to a complete beginner.  The second half delves into 3D and starts you down the path of shader development, terrain generation and a third person shooter.  I found the third person shooter part to be a relief since most books deal in [...]

Continue reading about Review Beginning XNA 2.0 Game Programming From Novice to Professional by Alexandre Lobao, Bruno Evangelista and Jose Antonio Leal de Farias

Allan Chaney on January 7th, 2009

Here are my top picks so far for learning C# and XNA.
C#
C# for Sharp Kids  – This starts at zero and teaches you c#
XNA Tutorials – This is a video series by Joran Omark.  It’s excellent.  I mean excellent!!  If the link is broken, let me know in the comments.  I’ll make these available from [...]

Continue reading about Top Picks – C# and XNA Education

Allan Chaney on January 5th, 2009

This was the very first XNA book I bought and I’m glad it was my first.  Based upon the 5-6 XNA books I’ve purchased and read, this book is the most beginner oriented.  Rob Miles does a nice job of trying to hand hold you through basic Object Oriented concepts yet also rapidly getting you [...]

Continue reading about Review Learn Programming Now! XNA Game Studio 2.0 by Rob Miles

Allan Chaney on January 5th, 2009

One of the problems I had early on and still do in many cases is understanding the big picture when it comes to C# development with XNA.  There is just so much abstract stuff going on, it’s hard to visualize what you are doing and where you need to go.  Books don’t make this any [...]

Continue reading about XNA The Big Picture