31st July 2009

Another day on the project has led us to finally attempt an Xbox 360 conversion of the Pengu Engine.  After 4 hours of effort, it was up and running 100% on a 720p display over the Xbox 360.

A word of warning to those that are storing XML in their XNB compilations, the .Net Compact Framework has limited stream reader capability.  In Pengu’s case, we were storing game and level details in XML through the ContentTypeWriter.  This resulted in an inability to read it in using the Compact Framework’s Stream Reader due to a lack of seeking functionality.  We got around this by creating our XNB compilations in the correct manner, through Binary streaming.

I’m happy to provide the end code for our Game and Level data Custom Content Processors that worked on the 360 should you but ask.

26th July 2009

I suppose it’s about time to release a screen shot of the engine.  Obviously it doesn’t look anything special, but it does show some of our progress to date.  The sprites are stock sprites that will not be used in the final game.

23rd July 2009

So after a long break and well deserved holiday in Europe, I’m back and ready to get back into the thick of it.  First things first though, a new version of XNA Game Studio was released during my break.  I am glad to inform that the conversion from 3.0 was almost seamless and Project Pengu required absolutely zero code changes to compile and run.

I’ll be releasing some early screen shots of the Pengu engine soon.  I just have to replace some of the Sprites in game to avoid anyone contacting me to take the screen shot down >.>