Website may be up and down over next few months. I'm currently doing a complete overhaul of everything. Going back to simple individual .htm pages, new overall site theme, sanitizing and cleaning up html of all pages and blog posts, attempting to implement a new tooling and publishing system etc etc.

Lots of new content added

Published 4/8/2007 by createdbyx in Example | Games | News | Reviews | XNA
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I have ported over some more of my old content from the previous incarnations of the createdbyx.com website.
I have also decided to re upload the numerous incarnations of my old websites. You can find some of them listed here ...
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

Site updates

Published 4/3/2007 by createdbyx in Games | Programming | XNA
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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.

Almost broke my site again!

Published 3/31/2007 by createdbyx in News | XNA
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I was trying to get a Google Analytics script tags embedded into the skin for this site, and somehow broke the dnn skinning system. I can't seem to gain access to my skin folder for this site anymore. Luckily I managed to download all of the skin files out of the folder before I was denied access. That'll learn me for not making a backup of the skin files.

Anyway as I was saying I got Google Analytics up and running so it will be interesting what kind of info I records or me. It also seems that many people are coming to this site by using a search engine to search for "xna", which reminds me that I have been meaning to post more xna related content on my xna page.

I will try to upload some more xna related content tonight ...

I just made a forum post on the creators.xna.com regarding the lack of a serializable attribute on the xna framework Color structure. A copy of the post is provided below. You can goto the actual form post by clicking here.

So I thought I would start a new project called XNAVisies and create a few simple debug visualizers for the xna framework objects. Hah!

Turns out I keep getting errors when I place a breakpoint in my code and bring up my debug visualizer for a xna color structure. I get vcexpress stating that Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Color is not serializable!

A quick look at the xna assemblies using ildasm shows that almost all objects are marked as serializable like Viewports, predefined vertex structures like VertexPositionColor and VertexPositionColorTexture etc, also Ray, Matrix, Plane, Point, Rectangle, Quaterion,  and all vector structures are marked as serializable EXCEPT for the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Color structure! Which just so happens to be the object type I am trying to create a visualizer for! Gargh!

For all that is still sane in this world please microsoft, add the serializable attribute to the xna Color structure by the next release of the xna framework!.


XMLDocContentProcessor

Published 3/5/2007 by createdbyx in News | XNA

It seems XNA and GSE (Game Studio Express) does not ship with a simple xml importer and/or processors, so you can use xml files as a game asset. So I created the XMLDocContentProcessor library that allows XNA developers to use regular xml files as game assets using the xna content pipeline, and returns a XMLDocument object containing the xml data. A simple example of how to use the library is provided below ...

// declare a XmlDocument that will contain
// the xml data
XmlDocument doc;

// call content.load method and specify the 
// XmlDocument as the return type
doc = content.Load‹XmlDocument›("Test");

// set the title of the window to the 
// content stored in the root node
this.Window.Title = doc.DocumentElement.InnerText;

XNA example code updates

Published 2/4/2007 by createdbyx in Example | News | XNA
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I just purchased a wired xbox 360 controller so I can test my code using the controller! I also just posted updated code for my two xna example projects ...

The examples now support the xbox 360 controller as an input device.


Well I just uploaded Release 2 of my Zider game engine. You can download the source code from the Zider page. I have also posted xFripperyXNA Release 1, xGameConsoleXNA Release 1, and AxiomXNAControllers Release 1. These three libraries are used by the zider engine and are included in the Zider Release 2 download.

I have also posted a introductory video for the xGameConsoleXNA library that you can watch here. Now that the preliminary zider engine is working, I will try to spend some time making a series of video tutorials that will walk through how to use the zider engine as well as the related projects that zider makes use of.

And just to change the subject, a few minutes before posting this I had started watching the first 20 minutes of National Lampoon's Pledge This! ... Good god, that series of flicks has gone down hill. I'm glad I only wasted 20 minutes of my life (that I'll never get back), rather then watching the whole movie. Wow,... I didn't think they still made movies that bad.

I have not made any blog posts in the last week or so. I have been working on getting some minor issues worked out of the Zider engine. I am planning to make availible release 2 some time very soon. I also have been getting my xFripperyXNA and xGameConsoleXNA projects converted and up and running so I can post the first releases of each library.

I am also starting to make a few tutorial videos that will walk through some of the various aspects of each of these projects. Stay tuned for more details...

First Zider blog post

Published 1/15/2007 by createdbyx in Games | News | Programming | XNA
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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.


Created by: X

Just another personal website in this crazy online world

Name of author Dean Lunz (aka Created by: X)
Computer programming nerd, and tech geek.
About Me -- Resume