Last night the guild decided to give EoE (Eye of Eternity) a go and on the third attempt we spanked em!

As the guild I'm in progresses through ulduar I've started to record videos of our successes and our failures to have a resource to look back upon and learn from.

I have just uploaded the third release of my still in progress Zider game engine for XNA. You can find the download on the Zider page.

Features or changes for R3

• Updated the xGameConsoleXNA library so commands now have an array of string arguments and a new "usedAsFunction" boolean parameter. usedAsFunction when set to true means that the command is being used as a function and allows the command logic to be aware of that.
• Added Actor support
• Added a SceneManager to the
• Added an abstracted "UserInputService" service (Work in progress)
  
• Full 360 controller support added. So virtually everything can be done using just a gamepad controller.
• Added layering support, so a map can have multiple layers.
• The zider project is no longer a standalong exe, it has been change into a class library.
• Added SMLOP: Heroes which is a game that is being developed by me that uses the zider engine to run it.
• The engine now makes use of the content pipeline for loading game files

I have ported over some more of my old content from the previous incarnations of the createdbyx.com website.

• Bubble Sort - Simple example and info about the bubble sort algorithim.
• Cures Equal Bankrupcy - A short article on the reasons drug companies are incapable of selling cures.
• Banking - The first 2 pages from the book titled "And the truth shall set you free" that describes the current banking system.
  
• Die Book Man Die - Just a rant about books and reading.
• Quote list - Added a quote list to the articles page.
• Setup what map the player will enter into next - A quick warcraft 3 tutorial on setting up what map the player will enter into next.
• Secret Power - A custom Warcraft 3 Map created by me

I have also decided to re upload the numerous incarnations of my old websites. You can find some of them listed here ...

• http://www.createdbyx.com/oldsites/version1/
• http://www.createdbyx.com/oldsites/FF2D/
• http://www.createdbyx.com/oldsites/prevweb/
• http://www.createdbyx.com/oldsites/oldweb/
  

The contact page can now be found by hovering your mouse over the Home link at the top of the site.

Also fixed some minor spelling mistakes and formatting on various pages. A new XNA example project wa added as well called HealthBarProject. HealthBarProject demonstrates one way to display a health bar that floats above a desired object using the Viewport.Project method and 2D sprites rendered with a SpriteBatch object. The health bar also scales itself depending on the distance from the camera's position. View Screenshot

I have fixed the link to the XMLDOCContentProcessor content processor tool. It was giving a strange no access allowed error.

I also posted a new content pipeline tool called StringBuilderContentProcessors.

It seems XNA and GSE (Game Studio Express) does not ship with a simple string importer and/or processors, so you can use text files as a game asset. The TextFileContentProcessor library allows XNA developers to use regular text files as game assets using the xna content pipeline, and returns a StringBuilder object containing the text data.

I called the project TextFileContentProcessors because I intended to include StringCollection and string[] array support in subsequent releases.

I have also added a new game project I am working on called Kabombulator. It's still kind of in the prototyping phase.

Yet another xna based project that I have added to the XNA page is the XNAContentCode pre-build utility.

I am still working on release 3 of my Zider Game Engine. I have not written any code for it lately because I am taking time to think about how to proceed further with it's design and functionality, as well as taking some time to do some code refactoring.

I have just made public a new project that I have started called the Zider game engine. The Zider game engine will be a 2D/3D hybrid game engine focusing on 2D side scrolling, and top down game play styles.

Below lists the current status of the various features that are either currently working or on the drawing table.

Working features

1. Load/Save Maps in xml format
2. Edit map blocks with left and right mouse buttons
3. Can pan the map to expose other parts just by moving mouse near edges of screen or use WSAD keys on keyboard
4. Supports full screen and windowed modes
5. Basic, easy to use GUI system with anchoring support like in windows forms
6. Texture selection, and block selection so user can choose specific blocks to use for drawing with

Features on the drawing table

1. Layering. Currently Zider only supports one map layer.
2. Moving platforms (elevators, falling platforms)
3. Particle system using the Mercury Particle Engine
4. Ability to erase blocks
5. Characters, Actors, Items etc
6. Move over all sprite based drawing to full 3D geometry primitives.
7. Animation systems
8. Implement Farseer Physics Engine for physics, or develop custom phisics implementation. I may have come up with a superfast way of doing 2D Collision detection/response in the works.
9. Possibly an in game console. I already have one written but it's in VB.NET and MDX so it will have to be converted to C#.
10. Purchase a XNA creators club subscription and get code working on 360.
11. Keep all data files in xml format for easy of use and ease to editing. Notepad!

I added 2 more simple XNA example projects to the xna page.

• Top down character movement
  Some code that demonstrates top down character movement. View Screenshot
• Guns a blazin
  A small project that demonstrates top down character movement, with the ability to shoot 2 different weapons.. View Screenshot