Kobo's Blog » Programming

Vorpal – Alpha 1.7

Kobo — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 03:33:44 +0000

Still a lot of work pending, but a great improvement from my last video gameplay-wise. Frameskip is still an issue, I wish I had better hardware for screen capture, but yes, the game is basically that insane, it’s also on the hardest difficulty setting, so don’t get discouraged. Ah-Son Emmanuel’s music is fantastic! SFX are placeholders at the moment.

Beta/Demo release next week and hopefully around September you’ll see it on Xbox Live Indie Games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3TH-qYb8Bo

Vorpal – Bullet Patterns Test

Kobo — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:00:04 +0000

Now we are getting fancy with Vorpal. I went back and made severe changes on mechanics which aren’t shown here, basically one bullet hit kills. Still lots of work to be done, but I’ll have a demo for sure in a couple of weeks. Promise : )

For those who don’t know about the project. Vorpal is a Single Player 2D shooter/Bullet Hell where player-characters try to destroy their opponent’s ship by firing bullets and depleting the ship’s various shields while dodging bullets and while using various powerups to increase the player’s bullet quantity, lives and score. Opponents try to hinder the player’s progress by firing a lot of bullets in artistic patterns.

The following video is just a test of some of the enemy bullet patterns. Sorry about the frameskip, I have yet to find good screen capture software.

Temporada de Patos 7 = HUGE SUCCESS!

Kobo — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:29:48 +0000

To the Staff of Temporada de Patos 7 thanks for having me as a Special Guest! It was such a great event! The Tournaments, conferences, guests (Jorge Morales from Larva Game Studios, Jochen Seiss and Andro Miralrio from Sabarasa), cosplay, giveaways, contests, tutorials, wow, so much going on those 3 days! Best con in the state!

If you missed it, seriously, shame on you; you’ll just have to wait another year for the next one!

[Links with Photos and Articles of the Event]

Venture – Tower of Ancients

Kobo — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:04:10 +0000

Decided to work on my XNA RPG Engine again, it’s so tiny, I love how it looks. Still need to fix a few things and merge the project with the Battle Engine. Anyways, back to coding!

So, that game I was working on…

Kobo — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 08:47:40 +0000

Well, just dropping by to tell you that Vorpal is coming along nicely, and I share with you a couple of teaser screens, mind you, they are still works in progress.

Adding a Cursor in XNA

Kobo — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 06:53:34 +0000

If you want to add mouse cursor functionality to your XNA project you can simply add the following in your Initialize() method:

this.IsMouseVisible = true;

Then of course, where’s the fun in that, right? Real cursor functionality consists on you adding your own 2D Texture to represent your mouse, this is actually pretty easy to do, first of all, you will need the texture, typically, a cursor texture has its hotspot (The tip of the arrow from where you click) on the upper-left corner of the image. Your cursor could be any size, try not to make it too big or too small.

Here’s an example:

Let’s add a few global variables:

Texture2D cursorTexture;
Vector2 cursorPosition;

Now load the texture in your LoadContent() method:

cursorTexture = Content.Load("cursor"); //Use your asset name.

On our Update() method, we’ll pass over the mouse’s position to our cursorPosition variable:

cursorPosition.X = Mouse.GetState().X;
cursorPosition.Y = Mouse.GetState().Y;

Lastly, we need to draw our cursorTexture with the continuously changing cursorPosition, we do this of course in our Draw() method:

spriteBatch.Begin();
spriteBatch.Draw(cursorTexture, cursorPosition, Color.White);
spriteBatch.End();

Simple as that, try it out!
Happy coding!

Sudo make me a sandwich!

Kobo — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 03:07:26 +0000

XKCD is pretty much a comic about a programmer’s and/or mathematician’s daily dribble. Picture this, all day working on your computer, expanding your knowledge by allowing the internet to fill the void of ignorance, sometimes stuff goes in, stuff goes out, you may call this SISO. Anyways, time pretty much passes by! You tend to forget to satisfy certain bodily functions that you actually need in order to live, like eating and of course or drinking water, whatever it is you were thinking, well that too.

So here it is! From a comic comes a brilliant idea, sure, asking for some mustard or mayo, maybe some Doritos or jalapeños in between is out of the question at the moment, but I truly believe the guys in this video are GENIUSES.

One small step towards a future with ROOOBOOOTS!!
BTW, why not click the links I post, they have funnies.

XNA, OOP and you!

Kobo — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:48:44 +0000

I wrote this neat little article for n00bs that would like to create games for Windows and the Xbox 360 using the XNA Framework, it’s actually aimed at those who have very little programming experience. Since Object-Oriented Programming has become pretty much a standard for real software developers and engineers, game development is no exception. However, most beginners tend to get scared and/or confused with this simple paradigm that’s actually designed to make your coding EASIER.

So go ahead! Download it! This tutorial will guide you step by step through the basic principles of the XNA Framework while learning OOP, by the end of it, you’ll create a simple shooter game engine. This article was also featured in ziggyware.com.

[Download Article (PDF)]
[Download the Sample]

If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, let me refer to an older post, XNA is a collection of tools developed by Microsoft for developing games for the Xbox 360 and Windows, all you need is either Visual C# Express 2008, which is free, or Visual Studio 2008, which is expensive, and of course, XNA Game Studio Express 3.0, which is also free. Have fun!

New artwork!

Kobo — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:57:45 +0000

Aside all the coding I’ve been doing I found some time to begin working on new stuff for EPAC 2009. I had fun with this, tried out my new tablet, it was quickly drawn but good practice before doing the good stuff.

If you have any suggestions for liable new artworks by all means please comment! By the way, we are almost done with Arrows it’s coming along FANTASTICLY, we’re coding finishing touches on the Multiplayer Mode and after that, it’s porting to the Xbox 360’s Community Games, so be sure to check back.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Is Live!

Kobo — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:21:18 +0000

YES! XNA Game Studio 3.0!

Now, this is why I like Microsoft, they are just doing so many good things lately (Let us ignore Vista for now) XNA Game Studio 3.0 expands on all the offerings of earlier iterations to include additional functionality to appeal to game developers of every level and enable them to create games to distribute through Xbox LIVE Community Games on the Xbox 360 as part of the New Xbox Experience.

But that’s not all! Besides developing games for the Xbox 360 and Windows PC you can now deploy to Zune! Which of course means, I must get one! The iPod SDK is just too damn expensive!

What are you waiting for? Start downloading XNA Game Studio 3.0 now!