Exploding Studios

Whoops!

Mr Explody — Tue, 04 May 2010 05:34:18 +0000

In a stunning effort in explaining to a colleague the benefits of CSS, I inadvertadly removed the contents of my stylesheet, which I then suddenly found out was a big no-no in Wordpress as the stylesheet holds the meta-data for the theme. As such I can no longer manage the theme through wordpress. So until I can get home to manually upload my stylesheet to the server I have reverted back to the original style design, which is inheritely flawed.

Oh well, hopefully I’ll remember that little tid-bit for the future.

No games development news to speak of. Aching to get back into it but struggling to find the time and motivation. In the mean time, I suggest everyone who reads this to go annoy Pocket Watch Games into releasing Monaco.

EDIT: Fixed now, all is well.

I bopped your head!

Mr Explody — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:48:54 +0000

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.

Pengu running on Xbox 360

Mr Explody — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:41:37 +0000

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.

Pengu Screenshot

Mr Explody — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:56:29 +0000

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.

XNA Game Studio 3.1

Mr Explody — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:07:08 +0000

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 >.>

Damn the Spam

Mr Explody — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:30:38 +0000

Unfortunately due to a huge increase of Spam that I am decidedly too lazy to moderate, the website will now require users to register and log in to post comment. Although we apologise for the inconvenience, we are blissfully aware that nobody actually reads this site enough to care.

Pengu - Still Rockin’ Along

Mr Explody — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:58:27 +0000

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.

Xbox Live Community Games for Australia!

Mr Explody — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:00:22 +0000

I’ve made a few snide comments before about Australia being left out of the loop when Community Games launched last month. I take it all back now. Microsoft have recently announced that the Community Games component of the New Xbox Experience will launch in Australia, Singapore and New Zealand on the 15th December 2008! That’s really only one month since the US launch, so I’m still quite happy with that… especially since I haven’t finished a single game for it yet…

Now back to making Pengu…

XNA Game Studio 3.0 - October 30th

Mr Explody — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:31:11 +0000

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.

Quick Update

Mr Explody — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:21:25 +0000

One day I’ll learn to be a bit more proactive in keeping this blog thing up to date. A quick update to bring you one or two readers up to speed. I have put To The Top on the bench for the time being while I concentrate on something a little smaller. I’d like to have something finished before the Community Games system is promoted to production (In Australia, which could be 2020 for all we know).

As such, I have moved my attentions to creating a small 2D platformer in the same vein as Mario, etc.. Yes it’s been done before, but not by me. I also see this as a means to an end, with the hope of extending the 2D tile engine for another game I have in mind.

So far, I have created a simple tile engine, with a sprite->tile collisions currently working (no slopes yet). Next I’ll be working on:

- Background scrolling (both character centric, and parallax)

- Sprite -> Sprite collision.

- Text System

- Menu System

With this done, I’ll either obtain, create or modify a tile map editor to populate the game.

Screens to follow (once I stop ripping other peoples art for filler art).