Still out

Recovery is going slower than I expected. I don't know when I will be discharged. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

Brief break

So, I ended up at the hospital yesterday.  I'm still in the hospital. Not sure when I'll be back but keep checking in for more details on the next tutorial.

tutorial eleven update

Quiet day today. I did some work on the next tutorial. It's coming along nicely. I should have it up on Monday. I added a portal layer and collision layer to the tile map now rather than changing the save and load logic later. The rest of the tutorial will focus on saving the game. For saving I'm taking a shot gun approach and saving everything. Stay tuned for more information.

Tutorial eleven status

I haven't started tutorial eleven in the Shadow Monsters series yet. It will be about saving the game. I plan to finish it by Sunday or Monday. Stay tuned for more details.

Tutorial ten is live

Tutorial ten is now live.  It covers adding in basic items and how to use them. You can find the tutorial on the MonoGame Tutorials page of the site.

I will be starting work on the next tutorial shortly. Stay tuned for more information.

Tutorial ten status

I've been working on tutorial ten in the Shadow Monsters series. This tutorial covers adding in items to be used on shadow monsters. I should wrap it up tomorrow. I'm currently thinking on some topics for blog posts. If there is something you would like me to do a post on please leave a comment.

Tutorial nine is live

Tutorial nine has been uploaded to the site. It extends the battle state to include multiple Shadow Monsters. You can find it on the MonoGame Tutorials page of the site.

Tutorial eight is live

I just uploaded tutorial eight in the Shadow Monsters tutorial series to the site. You can find the tutorial on the MonoGame Tutorials page of the sute. This tutorial covers adding in battles between Shadow Monsters.

Tutorial seven is live

I just finished uploading tutorial seven to the site. It covers adding a component for the player. Check out the MonoGame Tutorials page for the tutorial. Stay tuned for more game programming goodness.

Tutorial seven status

I've been working on tutorial seven in the Shadow Monsters series. I hope to wrap it up tomorrow and upload it to the site.

I'm liking the short posts I've been doing in on theory without practìcal. If there is something you would like to see covered leave a comment here.

Input use cases

There are 4 basic input use cases. A key is down, a key is up, a key that was up the previous frame is now down and a key that was down the previous frame is now up. The same is true for mouse buttons. Analog inputs have more use cases such as how far in a direction it is pressed.

The most common use case for a key being down is movement in a direction. If the key is down the object moves in a direction. Another reason could be a shield or some other state.

A key being up is less common. I would use it for charging something. For example, if space caused a shield to be up while pressed and it recharged while it is up you'd want to test for that.

A key that was up and is now down is most common for instant actions that need to happen immediately. The most common is firing a weapon.

A key that was down and now up is often used in UI. I use it in menus and activating objects. In theory it prevents bleed through between frames.

Tutorial six is live

I just uploaded tutorial six to the  site. You can find the tutorial on the MonoGame Tutorials page of the site.

Tutorial six status and more

I've been working on tutorial six in the Shadow Monsters series. It is going well and I hope to finish it tomorrow. This tutorial covers talking with NPCs.

Let's talk a bit of theory. What exactly should happen in the update part of the game loop. Here is where you update the game world, handle any input, check for collision between game objects and the environment and any other processing that  needs to be done. For 2D games collision between objectts is usually done with bounding boxes. It can also be done a variety of other ways such as per pixel, pixel perfect, proximity and others.

Bounding box is done by creating rectangles around game objects and checking if the two intersect. If they do there is a collision between them and needs to be handled properly. Sometimes you want a finer degree of control when your game objects have a lot of transparency or are not rectangular in shape. Enter per pixel or pixel perfect collision detection which work at the pixel level. Sometimes you need to know if two objects are close. Enter proximity collision detection. There are other ways of handling collision detection but those are the most common. An example is multiple bounding boxes where an object may be cross shaped and you test the two rectangles and see if either collide.

That's it for today. Stay tuned for more tutorials and some talk about theory.

MonoGame theory

Let's talk a little theory today. The idea of a game is initialize the game world, the initialize and load content methods in MonoGame. Now loop infinitely and each time through the loop update the game world then render the game world, the update and draw methods. There is some timing thrown in there so that the game runs at a constant speed. The last thing to do is clean up after yourself, the unload content method. That is the basics of game programming.

Tutorial five is now live

I have  uploaded tutorial five to the site. You can find it on the MonoGame Tutorials page. This tutorial covers adding in NPCs  for the player to interact with.

I will be starting the next tutorial soon. Stay tuned for the latest news.

Tutorial five status

I've been working on tutorial five and it is coming along. I should be able to upload it tomorrow. It covers adding non-playrer characters to interact with.  The actual interaction comes in a future tutorial when I add conversations. Stay tuned for news on the tutorials.

Tutorial four is live

I just uploaded tutorial four and published it. Check out the MonoGame Tutorials page for the tutorial.

I've already started work on the next tutorial. It wiĺl cover non-playrer characters. It also fixes the issues in tutorial four. Stay tuned for more information on the next tutorial.

Tutorial four update

Tutorial four in Shadow Monsters is just about finished  i will be uploading it tomorrow. There is a small problem with it that I will fix in number five. It is a constant related problem.

Tutorial Four Status

I've been working on tutorial four in the Shadow Monsters series and I am about half way through. I hope to finish it tomorrow. This tutorial covers adding in shadow monsters. Stay tuned for more information.

Game Programming

Going to switch gears here and just talk a bit. I started game programming 41 years ago at the age of ten. My brother brought home a computer from school that plugged int the TV. It was a TSR-80. I was instantly hooked. It had a few games and I wanted to make more. If I recall correctly my first game was a simple text based adventure game. You would move room to room and fight creatures. It was pretty good for a ten year old.

From then on i have always tinkered with game programming. I wrote a module for Legend of the Red Dragon and published a game similar to it called Guild of Thieves. Sadly the rise of the internet made BBSes less relevant and they disappeared. Still it was a good experience.

I worked on a few personal projects for a while but didn't release anything. Around that time C# and .NET came out. I loved C#. There wasn't really good game development platforms until XNA. It placed game development in hobbyists' hands. I was hooked. I developed several games for game programming challenges at Game Institute.

Out of XNA came MonoGame which I also love. I've been tinkering with RPGs mostly for the last few years including a Pokemon inspired brew. It is what Shadow Monsters is based on. Game play is pretty much done it is now content that I'm working on along with editors.

Tutorial Three Published

I have just uploaded tutorial three in the Shadow Monsters tutorial series. This tutorial covers adding in game state management to the game. Check out the MonoGame Tutorial page for the tutorial.

Tutorial Three Progress

I've been working on tutorial three in Shadow Monsters and am  about half way through. This tutorial covers adding state management to the game. This is an important piece for future tutorials  and needs to be covered early. I hope to wrap this tutorial up in the next day or so. Stay tuned for the latest news.