Game Design

How to go from design to making?

Pablo Nieto — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:51:32 GMT

Hello creators!!

I'm on a new project, a lot of new people also, but we have a lot of ideas and energy to start, the problem is we don't know where to begin.
We have the whole idea of the game, we even have some characters designed, currently we are working on the design doc, and my question comes here. It may look obvious but, onve we have the doc, what should we do?, how can we organize the development teams?, i mean, how do we take the next step?.

I really appreciate your help.

thank you

How to create a structured game

DrEvilKoala — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:14:24 GMT

Hi guys!

I'm totally new to XNA, in fact this is my first post. I watched all the tutorial videos on the community website and scanned through several examples. I first tried my hand at creating a couple of very simple games (one of these was a pong-clone with horrible collision detection and nearly unbeatable AI), and now I want to try to create a simple platformer. The first problem I encountered was the creation of a structured game. As you can imagine, for my first games I just threw all my code in the Game1.cs class. This worked, but it was a total mess. So I'm looking for a way to create a structured game design, with classes to inherit from, proper setup for menu/pause/option-screens, some pre-designed classes to implement sprite animation or collision. Perhaps a simple 2D-engine. To be honest, I'm not a very experienced programmer. I know some Java and Oberon-2 (Yeah, I know...), but that's it. So I basically have no idea how to go about creating a structured game.

I looked into using some professional game engines. TorqueX looked really nice, but then I'd have to spend 150$ on the license, 50$ on a book to get me familiarized with the engine and another 100$ for a CC premium membership. This is a little to much money for a student/hobbyist who's not looking to actually make money with those games right now. I also found a few tutorials for creating a proper 3D engine in C#, but that was a little beyond my grasp of both C# and Computer Graphics.
I also wanted to buy a book or two, but a lot of people told me they were too advanced (Learning XNA 3.0 for example).

So does anyone know a guide/tutorial/book that sets up the basic layout for simple, yet organized games? Just for the record, I'm looking to create simple 2D games mainly. I'm just looking for something to kind of set me off into the world of XNA, without assuming I know too much about C#.

Thanks

P.S. I hope you guys understood what I meant. Everyone at school insists on using Dutch for all the programming terms we use.

Puzzle Implementation Problems

Caomgen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:46:03 GMT

So, in the puzzle-platformer I'm programming, doors are opened when you appease various NPC by bringing them items. At least that's how it's supposed to work.

The NPCs disappear whenever you bring the item they need to them, and a door (or doors) on the level are supposed to open, letting the player get through.

The way I'm doing it is:

    
            for (int i = npcs.count - 1; i >= 0; i--) 
        
            { 
        
                 if(npcs.ElementAt(i).isPacified) 
        
                 { 
        
                      foreach (Door door in doors) 
        
                      { 
        
                           if(door.AssociatedNPC.Equals(npc.ElementAt(i).Name)) 
        
                           { 
        
                                door.OpenDoor(); 
        
                           } 
        
                      } 

                      npcs.RemoveAt(i); 
        
                  } 
        
            }

But...none of the doors open. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I've tried a variety of other methods, but I keep coming back to this one.

music

daGman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:02:57 GMT

where is a good place to find good music for games?

Please Help Me With The book "RPG Programming Using XNA".

Aflakjuju — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:40:07 GMT

Hello, I'm trevor and im looking for some help with Jim Perry's book, RPG Programming Using XNA Game Studio 3.0.
I have no idea why its doing this, so im looking for some help.

EDIT: Here is my new source code:

    
            using System;  
        
            using System.Collections.Generic;  
        
            using System.Linq;  
        
            using System.Text;  
        
            namespace RPG  
        
            {  
        
                public class Stat  
        
                {  
        
                    private StartType _type;  
        
                    private string _name;  
        
                    private string _abbreviation;  
        
                    private string _description;  
        
                    private string _statCalculation;  
        
                    private static readonly char[] _operators = { '+', '-', '*', '/' };  
        
                    public const short MaxStatValue = (short)DieType.d99;  
        
                    public const short HealMaxStatValue = (short)DieType.d999;  
        
                    public const int PoundsPerStatPoint = 3;  
        
                }  
        
                public enum StatType  
        
                {  
        
                    Regular,  
        
                    Calculated  
        
                }  
        
                public Stat()  
        
                {  
        
                }  
        
                public Stat(string name)  
        
                {  
        
                    _name = name;  
        
                }  
        
                public StatType Type  
        
                {  
        
                    get { return _type; }  
        
                    set { _type = value; }  
        
                }  
        
                public string Name  
        
                {  
        
                    get { return _name; }  
        
                    set { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) _name = value; }  
        
                }  
        
                public string Abbreviation  
        
                {  
        
                    get { return _abbriviation; }  
        
                    set { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) _abbriviation = value; }  
        
                }  
        
                public string Description  
        
                {  
        
                    get { return _description; }  
        
                    set { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) _description = value; }  
        
                }                      
        
                public string StatCalculation  
        
                {  
        
                    get { return ConstructStatCalulation(); }  
        
                    set 
        
                    {  
        
                        if (_type == StatType.Calculation)  
        
                        {  
        
                            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))  
        
                            {  
        
                                _statCalculation = value;  
        
                            }  
        
                        }  
        
                        else 
        
                            _statCalculation = value;  
        
                    }  
        
                }  
        
                public enum DieType  
        
                {  
        
                d4 = 4,  
        
                d6 = 6,  
        
                d8 = 8,  
        
                d10 = 10,  
        
                d12 = 12,  
        
                d20 = 20,  
        
                d99 = 99,  
        
                d999 = 999,  
        
                MaxDie = 99,  
        
                HealMaxDie = 999  
        
                }  
        
            }

The error is as follows:(*)

The name "DieType" does not exist in the current context.
---
Expected class, delegate, enum, interface, or struct

public *Stat*()
public *Stat*(string name)
public *StatType* Type
public *string* Name
public *string* Abbreviation
public *string* Description
public string StatCalculation

Please help me out.
Thanks,
Trevor,

Create A Bounding Box

funbob10 — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:18:29 GMT

I am making a 3D game and I have ran into some trouble. my bounding box is working (I think) but ether the bounding box wont go around the box or the box isn't checking for collisions, Please help.

here is the code

    
            public BoundingBox GetBoundingBoxFromModel(Model model) 
        
            { 
        
                BoundingBox boundingBox = new BoundingBox(); 
        
                foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Meshes) 
        
                { 
        
                    VertexPositionNormalTexture[] vertices = 
        
                    new VertexPositionNormalTexture[mesh.VertexBuffer.SizeInBytes / VertexPositionNormalTexture.SizeInBytes]; 
        
                    mesh.VertexBuffer.GetData<VertexPositionNormalTexture>(vertices); 
        
                    Vector3[] vertexs = new Vector3[vertices.Length]; 
        
                    for (int index = 0; index < vertexs.Length; index++) 
        
                    { 
        
                    vertexs[index] = vertices[index].Position; 
        
                    } 
        
                    boundingBox = BoundingBox.CreateMerged(boundingBox, 
        
                    BoundingBox.CreateFromPoints(vertexs)); 
        
                } 
        
                return boundingBox; 
        
            } 
        
            public void UpdateBoundingBox(BoundingBox box, Vector3 position) 
        
            { 
        
                // Get the Center of the Box  
        
                Vector3 center = box.Max - box.Min; 
        
                // Get the Offset from the position (center of model)  
        
                Vector3 offset = position - center; 
        
                // Adjust Box to match model  
        
                box.Max += offset; 
        
                box.Min += offset; 
        
            }

msbuild dependency compile path

fearlessdolphin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:18:09 GMT

The msbuild xnb compiler I have setup recursively goes through an asset folder and compiles xnbs in their respective folders, it even creates subfolders when necessary but when compiling dependencies it creates the xnb in the output path instead of placing them inside the model subfolder. In the end I get a bunch of files in the output root instead being in their respective folders. I have managed to get the content type of an xnb using the contentmanager which works quite nicely so I can store model and the depedency files in the same folder so determining the content type isn't an issue.

What would be even better if I could tell msbuild to create one xnb for all the dependency files. I did some digging in the ContentPipeline.xml which shows and output attribute for every asset but msbuild won't let me modify the output path for builditems.

I have downloaded shawn's talk about Building Worlds in content pipline, just hadn't had the time to go through it, its very late here and its hard to keep my eyes open! I just hope I dont have to write a new content processor just to create one xnb or modify the dependency path!

Numbers on faces(NOOB)

FuzzyDon — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:05:40 GMT

Hi,
Im still new at the coding part of XNA and need some help. Can some one please try explain to me how to generate a number on a face of a tile but here is the catch. The number cannot be the same as other numbers in the same line or be duplicated within a square. Its for a sudoku game?

Entity - Component System : How to synchronize data used by multiple Components ?

MrBubbas — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:37:08 GMT

Hi all,

I'm podering over the design of a Component based Entity System. Suppose the following:

Entity: A class with a list of Components
Component: A class with data describing a certain behaviour.
Subsystem: A class handling a specific type of component, e.g. updating the state of a certain type of Component on each update.

The enitites registers its components to their corresponding subsystem. The subsystems are responsible
for handling the logic for each component type.

As an example, an Entity describing a box would contain the following components:

RenderableComponent (the geometry of the box)
PhysicalComponent (the physical attributes of the box; mass, intertia etc)

And the corresponding Subsystems would be:
RenderSystem (uses the data in the RenderableComponent to draw the box)
PhysicsSystem (uses the data in the PhysicalComponent to simulate the pysical state of the box. )

Now, both of these components will need the position of the box. In my opinion there are three possible solutions
to this:

1) Let the Entity hold the position data.
2) Let each Component hold a complete set of needed data. (in this case both components hold the position.)
3) Create a SpatialComponent holding the position information.

For all these options there is a main problem:
1) Who (what component) is allowed to set the position?
2) Who (what component) is considered to hold the correct position?
3) Who (what component) is considered to hold the correct position so that the SpatialComponent can get it?

In this example it may be a bit obvious that it would be the PhyscialComponent, but in the case where there are other Components also affecting the position.

On each update (after all subsystems have updated their components) there has to be a synchronization call to each Entity where the Components can read data from each other
and update their own internal data state.

So, how to determine what Component holds the correct postion or what Components shall combine to set the correct position???

Any ideas anyone?

Best Regards,
Mr Bubbbas

Leaving everything for the same spritebatch?

Scylla — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:46:37 GMT

Is it a good idea to have a single spritebatch instance draw everything?
I'm literally drawing everything with a single spritebatch (about 50 things at a time).

HELP ME WITH IDEA

Colby Orgeron — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:05:51 GMT

okay so i have a great idea for a game but i cant make it im looking for someone to help me if instrested inite me CS colbyj617 to a party on live

Need help with a Collectible Card Game (CCG)

dongitude — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:15:45 GMT

I'm making a CCG and I'm not sure what would be the smartest design when it comes to the powers on the cards. I have a Player class that has access to all in-game objects. I also have a Card class that is only aware of itself. Cards have powers or effects that can affect other objects but I don't want to have to pass in a ton of objects to each Card. I'd like for the Player class to actually do the 'heavy lifting' and the Card class can remain simple and dumb. If each card had a string consisting of C# code that the Player class could read and execute then that'd be perfect. Or, if each Card could just have a block of code that the Player would execute...

For an example of some cards, a 'Knight' card might do damage to an opponent player. A 'Buff' card might boost the attack power of another card. A 'Crystal Ball' card might allow a player to view another player's hand.

I was thinking, maybe I could use the Command design pattern and have the Card class pass a Command object to the Player and the Player (with its widespread access) could then execute the Command? Or, should I set the Player class as a Singleton so that each card can access the Player's members? Or, should I just pass every in-game object into the Card and have widespread entanglement and ugly-but-working code? Basically, I don't want each Card to have global awareness.

Thanks in advance.

Remember me? Well, I found something.

POKEMONMASTER260 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:07:01 GMT

Okay, some of you might remember that a while back I desperately tried to find a way to use .swf files in XNA games, to no avail. (There was Fluix, but that never worked for me & the support wasn't good.)

...So, a few seconds ago or something, I was a tiny bit curious as to whether or not they've done something about it yet. I'm pretty sure this video was made long after my previous efforts, well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBwDCg62S8Q

Intriguing?

-PM260

Camera and rectangle issues with a platformer game

Kalle Loof — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:48:39 GMT

You may recognize the "character" model from the xna 3d starter tutorial, I haven't gotten very far yet so I'm just using it as a placeholder for now. The game is pretty much 2D, but uses a 3D model for the character, rectangles are used for collision since the terrain is all sprites (I honestly have no idea if a model with oriented bounding boxes can collide with rectangle-based terrain at all, but I digress). I'm new to cameras and 3D in general so matrices and whatnot is still quite confusing, so I've pretty much copy-pasted the camera and model-drawing code for now, and not surprisingly they're giving me some trouble. Drawing the character model at any other Z-coordinate than 0 makes it overly complicated to make the hitbox rectangles stick to the character, so I'd prefer to draw it at 0 if at all possible, however, the current copy-pasted camera isn't exactly agreeable. This is the camera code.

                            cameraProjectionMatrix = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(         
                            MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f),         
                            graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio,         
                            1.0f,         
                            10000.0f);         
                     

The 45° float gives me trouble because the further the character goes away from the middle of the screen, the more angled the character (in this case a ufo, as mentioned earlier) becomes. (Example 1, Example 2). Changing the 45° float to 1° fixes this issue, but forces me to scale the model to a ridiculously low scale (about 0.0001f, if I recall correctly) and also makes the model look quite bad, as the resolution of it is pretty low.As you can see on the screenshots, there's a little box in the upper left corner, that's my rectangle hitbox. As you can also see, it is unfortunately nowhere near the model itself. The main reason for this is (again, I may or may not be right, as I'm pretty new to 3D) that the position of the rectangle is an integer while the position of the model is a Vector3 (that is, floats).This is how the position of the hitbox is decided...

                            characterhitboxposition = new Rectangle((int)Character.position.X, (int)Character.position.Y, 82, 72);         

...and this is how it is updated.

                            characterhitboxposition.X = (int)Character.position.X;         
                        characterhitboxposition.Y = (int)Character.position.Y;         

When the degree float related to the camera that I mentioned earlier is set to 1° the hitbox barely moves at all when I move the model, since the model is so tiny and has to move very slowly to even stay on screen for more than half a second. If the float is 45° it moves noticably faster, but still nowhere near as fast as the model, itself, and well...it's still in the corner.Thanks in advance if anyone knows how to fix these issues.

super noob!

zcool888 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:12:40 GMT

I am VERY sorry to bother, but if someone could tell me how to make an image move in a direction, it would be fantastic.

all I have up till now is:

private void KeyboardInput()
        {
     KeyboardState keybState = Keyboard.GetState();
     if (keybState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up))
         bluepaddle.new Vector2.Y(-1);
     if (keybState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down))
         redpaddle.new Vector2.Y(+1)
        }

which I know is COMPLETELY wrong :(

Game1.cs file got deleted???????????

Scylla — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:45:18 GMT

What the hell!????
I was just using Visual Studio, I saved as normally, and then for some reason a save window popped up.
I pressed 'Save' and it said: "Unable to save. Access Denied."

I then stupidly closed the file in visual studio, looked for it in the directory, and it was gone!!!!!!!!

Is there ANY way to get it back? I still have other files like my class file I used and everything else.
How do I get it back? Really???

Problem with the getting started 2D tutorial

Bradalee21 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:51:58 GMT

Hey,

I've followed the tutorial to the letter and i keep getting this error

"Error 1 The name 'cannon' does not exist in the current context C:\Users\HOME USER\Desktop\XNA\BG_2D_Chapter4\Game1.cs 92 13 BG_2D_Chapter4_Win"

the 92 and 13 refer tot he colums/rows and theres 5 of them in total. So im very confused! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers :D

Compilation of Game Mechanics

reedake2 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:30:11 GMT

I have a small gap in my game that requires some sort of skill based mechanic to fill the hole. I've been thinking lately about other games and what mechanics would work well in mine. What I mean by "mecanics" are things like;

hitting a button at the right time to dodge, or

running and collecting (whatever) for a bonus, or

sliding the blocks into the right places to allow the character to escape,

etc, etc

Oviously these 3 are all very different, and would fall under different categories, some are more thinking orientated, others are more dexterity/reflex oriented. I was thinking it would be awesome to have like a large compilation of different game mechanics that designers could use as a starting point, or inspiration for filling in the gaps in their design.

A list like this could even be used for inspiration for new types of games by combining different mechanics together in new ways. Eg what kind of game could I get if I combined a resource management mechanic with a balancing (staying up-right) mechanic?

Does anyone know of a list like this? If there's nothing available, would anyone be interested in helping me compile one?

Array Not Working

Scylla — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:57:04 GMT

I've got this array:

    
                        int myType = 0; 
        
                        int[,] pos = new int[3, 1]; 
        
                        int numb = 0; 
        
                        int formation = 1; 
        
                        switch (formation) 
        
                        { 
        
                            case 1: 
        
                                myType = 1; 
        
                                pos[0, 0] = 16; 
        
                                pos[0, 1] = -48; 
        
                                pos[1, 0] = 64; 
        
                                pos[1, 1] = -32; 
        
                                pos[2, 0] = 144; 
        
                                pos[2, 1] = -32; 
        
                                pos[3, 0] = 144; 
        
                                pos[3, 1] = -48; 
        
                                numb = 5; 
        
                                break; 
        
                            case 2: 
        
                                myType = 1; 
        
                                numb = 4; 
        
                                break; 
        
                            case 3: 
        
                                myType = 1; 
        
                                numb = 5; 
        
                                break; 
        
                        } 
        
                        for (int i = 0; i < numb; i++) 
        
                        { 
        
                            GameObject ship = new GameObject(Content.Load<Texture2D>("en" + myType.ToString())); 
        
                            ship.X = pos[i, 0]; 
        
                            ship.Y = pos[i, 1]; 
        
                            ships.Add(ship); 
        
                        }

This code (inside a void function) gets run each time I press space.
When I press space my game freezes and Visual Studio goes to the line: pos[0, 1] = -48; and highlights it in yellow, and throws this error:
"Index was outside the bounds of the array."

???

Exporting a 3D Model with animations from 3DS Max to be used in an XNA 3.1 game

MasterGunz67 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:23:54 GMT

Hello, I am having trouble exporting a 3D model with a bone rig and animation to be used in an XNA 3.1 game.

Some of my questions include:
        - Should my model be a single mesh with just a skin modifyer with the bones or separate parts that can move?
        - Are there any special settings to use in the exporter that would have any effect on the models animation?
        - Is each animation exported as a separate file with its own name?
        - How are these animations then called in the game?
                - Do I have to manually manage the keyframes?

I am using 3DS Max 2009 and Visual Studio 2008 with XNA 3.1 installed, exporting using the .fbx format. Any help that you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Moving and jumping at the same time...

s7evin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:12:55 GMT

Hello, I'm new in the game's programming world.

I'm having some problems when I'm trying to jump and move at the same time; when I press keys.up + keys.left + keys.space (jump's key), jump doesn't work; nevertheless, if I press any other one combination of keys where appears kyes.up, jump works perfectly.

Any idea how to fix it? Thanks!

(Sorry for my really bad english. I hope that you can understand what I've wanted to say)

Make a sprite face the mouse

TheHomicidal — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:11:30 GMT

Howdy,
Me and a friend have this idea to make a top-down horror game... thing...

Anyway, I want to make the sprite face the mouse if that makes sense. If it doesn't, like it does in this: Left 4K Dead. I have no idea as to how I'd go about doing that though... Any help would be great.

Thanks,
Homicidal

game window size

daGman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:33:09 GMT

how do i set the size of the game window?

Getting started 2d TUTORIAL

northcutt1023 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:13:27 GMT

I get to the end of chapter 6.6 and i checked for errors and i got 1, syntax error, '(' as expected so i downloaded the XNA source and i got the same error im a total begginer so please help.

if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed)

this.Exit();

GamePadState gamePadState = GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One);

cannon.rotation += gamePadState.ThumbSticks.Left.X * 0.1f;

gamePadState.Buttons.A == ButtonState.Pressed &&

previousGamePadState.Buttons.A == ButtonState.Released;

{

FireCannonBall();

}

if keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space) &&

previousKeyboardState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space))

{

FireCannonBall();

}

#if !XBOX

KeyboardState keyboardState = Keyboard.GetState();

if(keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left))

{cannon.rotation-=0.1f;

}

(the bolds the problem)

High score table

Pugnap00 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:20:22 GMT

Im really sorry if these topic has been beaten to death, but my search of the forums hasent been very successful (so yes, i do use the search lol)

I basically want to be able to store global (or even local - which ever is easier) high scores for my game. Can anyone gives me some good links or info on how to save high scores? Is global high scoring even possible atm?