Android

I spent the day porting Shadow Monsters  to Android. The issue I had was dealing  with input. Touch is very different than keyboad, mouse and game pad input. In most cases I had to implement an event based model to handle taps. I now have most of the game working. The items remaining are shops, selecting items and selecting shadow monsters. I'm going to hold off on those because I'm going to redesign how I handle lists. I will design them with touch input in mind.

I came across an issue I need to resolve. I load the world using the content manager. Trying to load it a second time,  if the player exits and goes back in, does not reload the world. The world is in the exact same state. The same is true for other content. I only just discovered this and haven't worked out how  I'm going to workaround it.

Over  the  next few days I will be devoting some time to my next tutorial. I haven't decided which series I will be working on. Probably Eyes of the Dragon but I might do another Shadow Monsters.

Shadow Monsters Tutorial 24 Live

 I have published tutorial 24 in my Shadow Monsters tutorial series that is made using MonoGame. This tutorial covers adding random encounters to the game. You can find the tutorial on the MongGame Tutorials page of my site or you can use this direct link.

Productive Day

 It was a productive day for me today. I didn't get near enough time to focus on projects though. A lot of other stuff was too important and could not be put off. I devoted my time to Shadow Monsters and using XML content and the content pipeline instead of saved binary files. I did that so I can easily port the game to Android. I did some inital tests and the results were favorable.

 Have a lot on my plate again tomorrow. Not sure how much time I will have for projects.  I hope to spend at least some time on tutorials.

Shadow Monsters Tutorial 24 Update

I did some work on tutorial 24 in the Shadow Monsters tutorial series today. I finished all of the code and am about a third of the way through the writing. This tutorial covers how I added random battles to the game. I hope to wrap it up tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest.

Frustrating Day

 Today was very frustrating from a code point of view. I was happy to be able to get my old project Silver Prophet working as a MonoGame project including my content. Moving on to  the editor caused nothing but headaches. There are reference issues and the code for the render control doesn't work in MonoGame. I have  some ideas but I needed to step away.

The other thing I tried to do is port Shadow Monsters to Android. Initially it went well. In about an hour I had an app running and the title screen showing. I updated buttons to work with touch and wanted to test a virtual thumbstick. That is when the problem hit. I couldn't access non-content manager conten. Tried a number of things but nothing proved fruitful. That means I need to rethink how I load  and save worlds and  shadow monsters. Not sure how much work it will end up being but probably worth it in the end.

That was my day. Frustrating becauae I kept hitting walls. Some good did come out of it though so not a complete waste.

 

Off Day

 I spent the day yesterday working on other projects than Shadow Monsters. I migrated my project Silver Prophet from XNA to MonoGame. It went rather smoothly. I had to upgrade some references and modify some code but it builds and runs.

Today I'm working on bringing in the editor. There are some reference errors and some ambiguous errors between two namespaces. It is weird that they are here when it works fine in XNA. I should be able to resolve them without much problem.

Once I get the editor up and running the next step is to switch back to Shadow Monsters and work on maps. Tomorrow the plan is to work on a new tutorial. I will probably do Shadow Monsters and add in random encounters to the game and the editor.

Shadow Monsters Update

 Today I worked on my Shadow Monsters. A lot of the work was content related but some of it was new features. I updated the game so that if you walk in front of somebody that is looking at you the game pauses and they walk up to you and initiate a fight, if they have shadow monsters that aren't fainted. I was having a problem with one case. That is if you are west of a character and you walk in front of them. They would start walking and just keep on going. It was quite frustrating to track down.

Project Migration

Today I migrated my Shadow Monsters from MonoGame 3.7.1 to 3.8. I ended up having to create a new user profile to do it. It's because of a bug in MonoGame 3,8 where if there is a space in the folder name the content builder is in it breaks. I used my full name so there was a space.

After I had a working profile and could run a test game it was time to migrate. The recommended process is to create a new project then copy over your .csproj files. I ended up going a different route. I decide that because everything was in one project and I wanted to reuse the code in other projects to split the project in two. I created a new project. I added all of the GameStates from the old project to the game and replaced the Game1 class with that. I created a new .NET Library and added the NuGet Packaages for MonoGame.Framework.DesktopGL and MonoGame.Framework.Content.Pipeline because I use the intermediate serializer for some custom content. I then added all of the other .cs files to this project. I added a reference for the library to the project. Then I needed to fix the bugs from splitting the solution but I got it working.

I have a custom tool that I use for building sprites. I added that project to the solution but when adding a reference for the library Visual Studio complained that .NET 4.7.1 cannot reference .NET Core 3,1, which MonoGame 3.8 is built with. Fortunately there is a workaround that was introduced in Visual Studio 2017. That is a project can target multiple frameworks. This isn't a perfect solution because there are differences between the different frameworks but I got it to work by targeting Core 3.0 and Standard 2.0.

That was my adventure for today. I'm happy with the end result and look forward to working with MonoGame 3.8.

Battery Recharge

I'm going to be taking a break from tutorials. I can do the code but I'm having problems with the writing. It just hasn't been flowing. I will still be working on my game and a lot of it will be going into the Shadow Monsters tutorial series eventually. I will also be porting my XNA game to MonoGame now that I've repaired a huge problem I was having with Visual Studio and found a way to move my content.

It would be really helpful is you left comments on what you'd like to see tutorials on. I'm only going off what I've implemented so far but you might have an idea for a cool feature you would like to see implemented.

Bad Day Yesterday

 I didn't get much work done on anything yesterday. I was debugging some problems with Visual Studio. I managed to fix them up this morning. I did update my demo version with my latest changes. If you want to bind shadow monsters you can buy binding scrolls in the house to the east of where you start. You can heal your monsters in the house to the far east by choosing the rest conversation option. There is still a lot that I want to add but it is coming along nicely.

TodayI hope to get more done, working on the Eyes Of The Dragon tutorial series. I think that I will be starting with editors early and build up the engine with the editor instead of the game. I might even go over upgrading the project to MonoGame 3.8.

Binding Shadow Monsters

I've been working on my Shadow Monsters project. I added in the ability to bind shadow monsters similar to capturing pokemon in Pokemon. It is working okay. I will probably change the animation but it works for now. Here is a short video of the battle engine with the binding process.

Shadow Monsters Tutorial 23 Is Live

I have just uploaded tutorial 23 in the Shadow Monsters series to the site. This tutorial adds in a few more game states including a loading state. You can find the tutorial on the MonoGame tutorials page of the site or you can use this direct link.

Status Update

 The focus for day was content creation for my Shadow Monsters. I did a lot of work on my first level creating the interior for several houses, created several sprites and map work. I also worked some on the next tutorial in the Shadow Monsters series. I got most of the code done and some of the writing. I should finish it up in the next day or so. The tutorial and my game are nearly identical but with some key differences. One of the biggest difference is the sprites. I'm using sprites made with Spriter Pro. I purchased the RPG Heroes pack ages ago and they are fitting in well with my game. I'm also using some images that I found through OpenGameArt.org for my shadow monsters.

Keep checking back for new tutorials and the latest news on my projects.

Was A Good Day

 Today was a good day for my Shadow Monsters project. I made some good progress on adding polish to the game. I have almost all of the essential areas of game play working. There are a few areas that I still need to work on. They revolve around battling other characters and some display issues when the aspect ratio of the player's chosen resolution does not match the base resolution. I have a plan in place for that though. 

On another note I'm happy that I got my XNA version of thel Eyes of the Dragon working again. I had to revert back to Visual Studio 2010 but at least all of that work is not lost. I will be updating my project page to include it. I should probably upgrade it to MonoGame but I had so many headaches the last time that I tried. I do have a workaround for the content issues I had though so might be worth giving it a go.

Shadow Monsters Update

 As well as working on my Eyes Of The Dragon tutorial I worked on my Shadow Monsters game. I worked on capturing random shadow monsters. I'm pretty happy with the results. Developing the game is getting less and less about programming and more and more about content creation. The editors are all in good shape and I'm making progress on content. I need to flesh out the story and the conversations of the characters.

Eyes Of The Dragon Tutorial Five Live

 A day later than I planned but I just uploaded tutorial five of my MonoGame tutorial series Eyes of the Dragon to my Google drive. This tutorial adds in a sprite for the player to control and does some work on the role playing system. I'm using a variant of the SPECIAL system for the back end. You can find the tutorial on the Eyes Of The Dragon page of the site. You can also use this direct link.

Eyes Of The Dragon Tutorial Five Status

 I did some work on tutorial five in Eyes of the Dragon today. I got a good start on it, about half way through I'd say. I have the code ready to go for the rest of it but I need to do the writing. I should have it up on the blog tomorrow. The tutorial will cover creating the player component and go a bit into character classes. Character class will evolve a bit as I go through the tutorials because I can't implement everything all at once.

Slow Day

 I took the day to work on my home brews rather than tutorials. I put up a video of my demo of my version of Shadow Monsters as well as the demo version. You can find the details on the My Project page of the blog, I linked to the artists that I used from OpenGameArt,.org and I suggest checking them out, especially cynicmusic because good music can be hard to find.

Shadow Monsters Tutorial 22 Is Live

 I have published tutorial 22 in the MonoGame tutorial series Shadow Monsters to my Google Drive. This tutorial covers adding in a character generator to the game so the player can choose their character. You can find the link to the tutorial on my MonoGame Tutorials page. You can also open the PDF using this direct link.

The next tutorial I will be working on is my Eyes of the Dragon series that is also made with MonoGame. I will be working on it soon and hope to have it up in the next few days. Keep checking back on my blog for the latest news on my tutorials and projects.

Shadow Monsters Tutorial 22 Status

 I've been working on tutorial 22 in the shadow monsters series. I'm about half way done with it. This one covers creating a text box and a character generator. I will also fix a problem with resizing content based on screen resolution. I was doing integer division instead of floating point division when calculating scales. I resolved the problem by adding a property to the settings class that calculates the scale vector.  I then use that property instead of calculating the scale in all of the Draw functions.

Day Off

There was a death in the family last night. I just can't focus so I won't be working on a tutorial today. When I return to work I will be creating a character generator for Shadow Monsters rather than just creating a hard coded character.

Happy Labor Day

Busy  Labor Day for me. I didn't work directly on a tutorial. I worked on my game that Shadow Monsters is based on. A lot of it was spend in the editor. Game programming is easy, creating content is hard work. I did make a lot of progress on my map though. It was challenging getting some of the tiles to line up the way that I wanted to but in the end it worked out. I've included a few screen shots of the game play and the character generator.

Eyes Of The Dragon Tutorial Four Is Live

 I have uploaded tutorial four in my Eyes Of The Dragon tutorial series to my drive. This tutorial covers adding game settings and handling different screen resolutions than the base resolution. You can find the tutorial on the Eyes Of The Dragon page of the blog or you can use this direct link.

Frustrating Day

 Today was a wasted day. I was working on my XNA project and it randomly stopped working. I started getting platform unsupported errors. It's not so much the code that's the problem. It's all the custom content that I created for it. It is quite maddening to be sure. I am going to have to bite the bullet and migrate to MonoGame or Unity. I'll probably end up going with MonoGame. At least it's not a total rewrite. Just need to figure out what to do about the content. Not tomorrow though. Tomorrow is dedicated to tutorials.

Shadow Monsters Tutorial Twenty One Is Live

I have just uploaded tutorial twenty one in the Shadow Monsters tutorial series. The tutorial covers editing shadow monsters in the editor and encrypting the data. I also create some now moves for each of the starting avatars. You can find the tutorial on the MonoGame Tutorials page of my web site or you can use this direct link.

Shadow Monsters Tutorial Twenty One Status

I've been working on tutorial twenty one in the Shadow Monsters tutorial series. I'm about half way through it.  It covers creating shadow monsters in the editor and encrypting the output. I should finish it up tomorrow. After this one I will be working on an Eyes Of The Dragon tutorial.

Eyes Of The Dragon Tutorial Three Is Live

I have just uploaded tutorial three in the Eyes of the Dragon series to my web site. The tutorial covers adding in three game states. You can find the tutorial on the Eyes of the Dragon page of the blog. You can also find the tutorial at this direct link.

Eyes Of The Dragon Tutorial Two Is Live

I have published the second tutorial in my reboot of my Eyes Of The Dragon tutorials in MonoGame. This tutorial creates the tile engine and renders a map. You can find the tutorial on the Eyes Of The Dragon page of my web site. You can also use this direct link.

Shadow Monsters Tutorial Twenty Is Live

 I have just added tutorial twenty in the Shadow Monsters tutorial series. The tutorial makes some improvements to the game and adds in sound. You can find the tutorial on the MonoGame Tutorials page of the web site or you can use this direct link.

Eyes Of The Dragon Tutorial One Is Live

 I have published the first tutorial in my reboot of my Eyes Of The Dragon in MonoGame. This tutorial creates the basic projects and adds some of the core components. You can find the tutorial on the Eyes Of The Dragon page of my web site. You can also use this direct link.