Hey again! Two updates in less than a month! Wonder if I can keep this up :). Anyway, just finished another article for Ziggy’s site. This one shows you how to do those cool, seamless ribbon trails you sometimes see trailing behind melee weapons (swords, sticks, etc) and other objects. I’ve also included a sample with full source code that works on both the PC and Xbox 360. So go check it out!...

Wow it has been a while! School is back into full swing so I’m spending time at school and in labs longer than should be legally allowed :|. I managed to scrounge up some spare time to write up this distortion shader article and some explanation of how things work for Ziggyware.com. Go check it out! Feedback is welcome as I’m still somewhat new to the world of shaders. Below is an example picture of the post-process shader in action....

I’ve written networked games in the past, but never in XNA. So after writing the networking logic for Gunstyle I figured I could write a blurb about general networking in games for XNA, which in reality isn’t that much different from any other API. I do not claim to be some expert in networking and I only present to you what I know based off prior experience from a few multiplayer networked games. Oh, and yes I am aware the diagrams are not completely correct UML diagrams, I am simply trying to illustrate a point. This isn’t a How-To guide to networking either, just food-for-thought for those just starting out with networked games. ...

Its been quiet on my blog and the End Dream site, due to me being on vacation. And man, was the beach great! Now I have to get back into the daily work routine :(. Oh well, that’s life as it seems. So we’ve got an update for Gunstyle available to any irc #xna chatters on EFNet at the moment. A lot of the major core building and development is done with Gunstyle and we are now shifting into more of a ‘polish’ mode to fix bugs and tring to create an accessible, easy, and hassle-free multiplayer experience....

Last night we hosted our very first semi-public play test with the new XNA version of Gunstyle. Tonight is the midnight deadline for submitting to Dream Build Play. I’ve been hearing some bad experiences about it, so we’re all a little worried about getting it submitted in time. We’re going to be submitting our current build for now, but also try to get more fixes in before the deadline and hopefully submit a newer one later today....

Well the Dream Build Play deadline is approaching and as always there seems to be a crunch to get those last final features implemented, down-sized, or cut and squashing bugs all the while. It’s clear the game won’t be in a ‘final’ state July 2nd, but very playable. After the submission we’ll be continuing development as usual to get the game where we originally wanted. Right now I’m finishing up the dedicated server to allow us to just setup a host machine to run servers with no graphics component to allow players a place to play....

Wow, it’s been months since my last update! Figured I better post a quick update on some of the things I’ve been working on for the last few months. I’ve been really busy between school, job, and this Dream Build Play entry. Whatever spare time I’ve had I’ve been tinkering away at getting this new XNA game up to snuff to submit to Dream Build Play with two other team mates....

For some reason I’ve been listening to APC a lot lately (can you tell?). Maybe it’s been the numerous all-nighters I’ve pulled recently and this music soothes me late at night. It’s been too busy the past few weeks for me to sit down and gather some thoughts for a post. Been hard at work with the new game for Dream Build Play, along with life’s other issues. Don’t have much to show at the moment as everything is a bit too early in development, but I figured I’d at least post one of the concepts by Adam (below)....

Well, Nut Harvest is out to the public and so far it seems most that have tried it have enjoyed it. That’s always good to hear, considering it was just a toy-around game for my friends and I :). Unfortunately, I know that it certainly won’t get as big of an audience as WildBoarders simply because it’s an XBox360 XNA exclusive. There just doesn’t seem to be a good venue yet to release Xbox360 XNA games....

Today is the day I release a ‘release candidate’ for Nut Harvest. It feels so great to finish a game! Nut Harvest is for the Xbox 360 only. This game almost took longer to release than to actually develop! It started near the end of last December when I was over at friend’s house hanging out with some buddies. Of course, we were playing some games on the Wii and 360....