Kobo's Blog » Video Games

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!

New Vorpal Screenshots!

Kobo — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:16:51 +0000

The game is coming along great, had a little trouble with a Sprint and wasn’t able to finish in time but picked it up this week, there’s still some work to do. I also redid the menu to fit more of the game’s overall design. And sorry, I’m really really sorry, no demo until Temporada de Patos 7.

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!

Canabalt!

Kobo — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:38:36 +0000

Ever so often we get VERY original games which are actually quite simple and really inspire you to get designing and coding. Curiously, most of them come from the Flash comunity, for example: Time Fcuk.

Recently, I stumbled upon Canabalt, which surprisingly took an overrated concept and converted it into something quite fun, challenging and all of this around a very tense atmosphere. Try it out! http://www.canabalt.com/

Crazy Japanese guy plays Hi-Speed Mario

Kobo — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:11:53 +0000

I just find this hilarious!! At one point the guy says “Ay Wey!” hahaha!

Source Engine + Fire Drill

Kobo — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:37:16 +0000

Durham University students put Valve’s Source 3D Game Engine, used to drive the oh-so-famous-FPS Half-Life 2, to good educational use by creating a fire drill simulator and use it to examine people’s behavior in a real scenario. Check this link for the vid and the rest of the tldr text.