I have started working with the guys on this "Template", what the plans are at the moment is to build on the sample and add some of the functions that Mojo was talking about.. ie adding a sound framework/Storage and some other smaller functions. Then if the project is accepted and liked by the community we shall continue to work on it, maybe under a codeplex project.

But the system will be designed and shipped in a VSI format so that it can be used as a project like a starterkit.

I have to admit, I'm still a little unclear as to what Mojo is looking for. The only thing the GSMS is missing is sound. It basically gives you a shell that you fill in with game specific code. You're not locked into a certain genre of game and it handles most of the cookie cutter stuff you have to do for any game. There's some things you could add (high score for example) but not all games might have a high score feature so it's not added. Even so, it's trivial to create a new class derived from what's there and show high scores.

A starter kit, IMO, should either be pretty generic, making no assumptions as to what features a game might include, or pretty specific, allow the developer to tweak some code to add gameplay features. The starter kits that are out there now cover both areas with the specific ones being the racer and Marblets kits.

Just my $.02. :)

IF YOU HEARD OF "ROMANCE OF THE 3 KINGDOMS" SERIES, I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THAT START UP KIT. BECAUSE KOEI ONLY MAKES THEM FOR PLAYSTATION  NOT FOR THE XBOX

reddfayce:

IF YOU HEARD OF "ROMANCE OF THE 3 KINGDOMS" SERIES, I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THAT START UP KIT. BECAUSE KOEI ONLY MAKES THEM FOR PLAYSTATION  NOT FOR THE XBOX

Easy on the caps :).

He's not offering to make you a game, but a starter kit for XNA from which you can learn and build games. On top of that, nobody is going to completely redo a complete game that is covered by various copyrights and trademarks, so you are never going to see Romance of the 3 Kingdoms on Xbox until Koei makes it so.

Anyway, I think it might just be nice to make the progressive beginner's starter kit. One that contains a Pong clone, Tetris clone, and perhaps a third simple game. All with simple menus and maybe sounds. Just so that beginners can dive into real basic games and see how an entire game looks together without needing lots and lots of code as in things like Spacewars.

Will try a different approach, Machaira. =) And will make this response as short as possible. Heheh. I don't want to hijack this thread to discuss templates and samples further, but you can e-mail me if you would like some more information as to the subtle differences between _my idea_ of the two if this doesn't clear it up. Glenn seems to have the idea, so already more than enough has probably been said about it. =)

What I'm looking for is something I can start with, and learn with, as I craft my own game. WITHOUT (<--important) having code from a real game getting in the way of my learning and game-crafting process. But WITH (<--important) enough code that I can get something that obviously looks like a game "package" right when I begin my project.

Starter Kits tend to HAVE code from a game mixed in to the point where it's hard for a new game designer to really get started without learning a lot of things about a lot of things before-hand. (In starter kits you tend to learn IN the kit, after learning the WHOLE kit...)
Templates tend to have little-to-nothing in the way of code, but are too empty for a new game designer to get started on a project without extensive learning elsewhere. (In templates you tend to learn elsewhere from books/online/etc...)

The template/starter kit Glenn is working on is a combination of the good things about most current starter kits (something that works right away) and the good things about most current templates (nothing to interfere with the learning and project design) and more of a happy medium between the two. I'm getting more and more familiar with how everything gets put together personally, but the process has been very daunting. And I know a lot of people who just can't seem to get past that initial overwhelming sense of confusion to take the baby steps necessary to really learn about designing a game from the ground up.

A template of this sort will help people like me, and them, to really get started with our projects and idea with the smallest amount of investment before we get visible results we can see and play with. If you don't understand the difference from that explanation, wait until you see the template and it might be self-apparent what the differences would be between the two. =)

Correct , what I am working on is just a begining point that would expand the basic windows or xbox game templates that ship with the XNA Framework. By this I mean that I have migrated the gamestate sample and have converted it into a Starterkit format, this means that you can now select it as a new project type when creating your new project in GSE.

Now with EvilDeD we are working on expanding it so there would be a Sound Layer and a Storage Layer added in. I have also intergrated the transitional effects for the menus that Shawn was talking about in his blog. Now you are able to pick the menu transition you would like for a menu screen when you create it.

Should have more soon.

I like the Jet Set Willy (Platformer) style games, a starter kit for that would be good.

I would like to see a strategy kit that allows you to make something like a RTS or even a turn based strategy game.

2D RPG. Can then be easily extended to a turn based strategy or RTS.

FPS. Can then be easily extended to a 3rd-person shooter.

Starter kits can't (and shouldn't attempt to) write a whole game for someone or cover every genre. They need to be just that - starting points, that we can take and extend and tear to shreds and get cool ideas from and learn from and write something completely (or maybe just slightly) different for ourselves.

2d or 3d fighting game

I would love to see a starter kit that gives an basic 2D kit. Like animation class, controller class (both PC/360), basic maths functions in some kind of helper class. 2D collision. Menu's All that necessary stuff needed in all games.

Anything to make this maze of code as easy to program as gamemaker.  making something with provides all the basic stuff would make it so easier for me and other beginners.

Don't know how hard that will be :D

Hello,

I kinda like the XNA Racing Kit but I also like First Person Shooters. However, I'd like to see a starter kit for either racing or 1st/3rd person shooter that contains:

: Support for Large Outdoor Scenes

: Multiplayer / Network Support Included

: Visual Terrain / Mapping Editor like BattleCraft

: Game Media Packager. Simular to loading all content into a game_media.cab sorta like how Quake uses pak0.pk3 files.

Pretty much everything that isn't included in any of the latest XNA Books. Something worthwhile would be the most useful. There are tons of tutorials that already cover everything in the books but I have yet to find any kits showing the most wanted features.

Just my thoughts,

Chris

I too would like to see some simpler starter-kits. The current ones are good, the racing game especially is amazing, but I find it very challenging to start poking around the code and find anything that is really useful to me, or often that I can even understand! This is due mainly to the sheer complexity of those games, which are like nothing I could ever consider making now and, if I face facts, that I probably will never be able to make alone.

One problem for me is that there are very few intermediate game examples. Looking at the various tutorials and starter kits around (not just the ones from the XNA team), they tend to go from simple Pong-clones in a big switch-statement, then suddenly jump to massive 3D engines, with mind-mindbogglingly complex code. I'm currently trying to transverse the curve from simple 2D games into more complex 2D games, and like other posters, I'm finding a lot of useful small samples and tutorials, but very little that attempts to show how it all fits together.

I would like to see some sort of 2D action/RPG, in the vein of Zelda on the SNES, that would show:

- Game State Management (menu, simple options, paused screen).
- Use of a sprite class, which can load and play various animations, for the player and other characters.
- A small level system, with a couple of different maps, which you can travel between.
- Basic physics, some simple world objects, like crates and a treasure chest.
- Simple enemy AI, chases the player around, attacks etc..
- Some basic audio and maybe a couple of nice graphic effects.

Anyway, I'll stop there, as I think you get the picture. I ended up typing a lot more than I had planned, but I hope my suggestions are useful. I do think for me that just working out how everything fits together is a large stumbling block and that there are not many examples around that show the step between Pong and Space-War, as for a beginner that step is actually an extremely large one. Maybe I've just not found them yet! :)

What about a 2D fighting Game Starter kit

Hello,

I would like a 3D RPG Game or a 2D RPG Game

I would like to see how the XNA team thinks that large, roaming environments should be implemented. Would you split it in zones and use multiple ContentManagers? That might mean you get less sharing of things like textures, but there's no way of unloading a single resource, you can only toss the entire ContentManager.

I'm with most people on this thread in that the starter kits so far are fun games and show off what XNA is capable of (especially XNA Racer), but too elaborate and complicated for someone trying to learn XNA and game programming.  Its like they are complete games with code provided so that you can hack and modify, which is cool, but I wouldn't exactly call that a "starter kit". 

In other words, its like we're trying to build a fun but simple tree fort in the backyard, but we're not sure exactly what tools and materials are needed or how to build it.  The starter kits now are like getting an elaborate pre-built tree fort, with running water and plumbing and electricity and everything, but designed to fit a different tree than the one in your background.  So, if you want to make it work for your tree and the design you want, you have to take it apart, throw some things away, add some in and rebuild it the way you want it on your tree.  It's always good to have a completed example to look at when you are trying to build your own, but a simpler framework would be easier to get started with.  Otherwise, the only people that will fully understand it are the one's that wouldn't need the starter kit in the first place.  (just to be 100% clear, I'm not dogging the starter kits at all...they're awesome!, just looking for something a little more approachable)

So, like Glenn Wilson and MadMojo alluded to, maybe something in-between the default XNA game code and the starter kits would be helpful.  A template, like the one's in Word, makes sense.  Or another option is to make the starter kits in 2 flavors: full game and stripped framework. 

But anyways, to answer the original question...

RTS!

2D RPG

FPS

2D platform game

It's been a busy few weeks, but We have nearly finished what we have planned for the first release. I hope to post about what I have in the next few days, just need to clean up some of the code :).

 

I'm going to throw my vote in with the "simpler" starter kit folks. Thanks to some great "task" oriented tutorials, I can do some neat stuff. Throw up a sprite, make a health bar, background, animation etc. The hurdle I face is integrating the different tasks. If someone could do a simple 2d platformer or rpg with a 3 or 4 page write up that sort of detailed the process, that would be great. There's a lot of source code out there to be used, but its either one task or a done deal.

We (the beginners) could make many of our own leaps if we can get past the first few steps. If I knew the steps to put a character on a background, make him walk around with animation in different directions, step on a bomb and lose health and toss a fireball at a baddie, I could probably continue on from there.

So I guess something that details the order of steps one takes in the beginning would be most helpful. It doesn't even have to be a kit, or have a lot of code. This is probably hand holding, but its what's most confusing to me and hey, you asked :).

Well the first part is over, I have uploaded the project to CodePlex this weekend, Here is some more information on what I am calling a Game Framework.

At the moment is only something simple, it incorporates several of the samples from this site as well as some of the systems that Shawn has talked about in his blogs. If the community view is positive on the project I will continue to work on it and help it grow. Also if anyone else has suggestions on it you can post here, but I would suggest posting on my sites forums as it is not a Microsoft Project.

Read more about it on my Blog Here...

Am I the only one who would love an action adventure starter kit.  Games like zelda, devil may cry and onimusha are the best and hardly any new action adventure games come out anymore : (   So it is up to me!

Sorry about it guys, I missed three files during the checkin, All fixed now.

 

Definitely A First or Third person shooter. Then we could design our own weapons and game types(CTF,Assualt,Slayer).

Hi there,

I'm new and am struggling to learn how to use the XNA framework. There is an overabundance of documentation on 3D but very little on 2D games. The tiling sample is what I'm working with now and to some degree it's helpful. I will eventually figure out how to use if but I'd really like to know *understand* it. :(

I don't know where to begin. The Space Wars starter kit was incredible but really, really hard for someone (completely new to XNA) to understand what was going on. I spent almost 2 hours tonight trying to figure out how to draw a simple line. In GDI+ it wasn't difficult. Here it's a lot more lines of code.

So if there are others like me that are trying to do a classic 2D game I'd like to see some simple samples. There are already a few samples of top-down RPG tiling. It would be great to see a 2D shooter like Gradius, a 2D fighter like Street Fighter, a 2D maze game like Pac Man or Bomberman. How about a 2D brawler like Final Fight?

Would I be right in assuming that all of the 2D games use tiling engines underneath?

I have a lot of questions but I don't want to overwhelm you. :(

I'm not sure that they all use tiling, though many 2D games do. RPGs, RTSs, platformers and the like probably use tiling, while fighters and adventure games probably use unique graphics rather than repeated tiles. This will very depending on the game and it's specific needs of course.