20th December 2009

Finally back at working on Pengu.  This time I spent a couple of hours fixing up the collision detection between in game objects to register enemies being bopped on the head.  Looks a little bit shifty at the moment until I nail down the enemy death animations, but I’m glad it actually works.  Now Pengu has gameplay!  I’m hoping to get a few days in over the Holidays to add the music and sound engine.  Then it’s down to designing the levels, creating the art assets and fixing up bugs.  I’m hoping to have a demo out early next year for testing.

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.

11th February 2009

It’s been a long time since my last post, as is my norm.  This is just a quick update to let you know that Pengu is still under development.  I’ve recently implemented the Levels, Graphic layer and Game Objects to read in from xml.  This is going to make creating the content of the game much quicker as changes need simply be made to the xml file(s) and loaded in at runtime as opposed to hard coding the content.

Next is on to the game editor tool which will be used to create the levels, etc.. and write the result out to xml files.

I’ll update the site soon with a progress checklist, so you’ll actually be able to get a feel for where I’m at in the process.  Unfortunately I’m hesitant to provide screenshots just yet, as although the game mechanics are in place, the artwork isn’t.  Hence any screenshot posted will not resemble the finished project.

17th October 2008

That’s right, the new version of XNA Game Studio that is used to created XNA games is due to go live on October 30th 2008.  With the New Xbox Experience due out in mid November to include the Xbox Live Community Games channel, this basically means we have all we need to start publishing our projects.

What this means for me, is that come October 30th, I’ll be going through all my code to convert it to the new XNA framework.  Yay for me.

Now a quick update on my current project.  I have given the game a codename “Pengu”, which may very well be the name of the game at completion.  Background scrolling, Sprite interaction, Text and Menu systems are now in place.  I now have the engine to a point where I’m starting to develop the Level Editor.  Basically this means I’ll be creating my very first Custom Content Processor which looks very interesting indeed. 

Anyway, time to get back to work.