SpriteWorks SpriteWorks SpriteWorks!
All during the summer, I was on an ASP .NET and server trip. It included me reading 2 or 3 books on ASP and Javascript along with getting a new server to do a bunch of development on...well I've gotten the itch back for some old school game programming. I've been working on SpriteWorks over the last week and trying to get it to a state I deem "adequately" usable. I usually test this by taking the library and trying to make a simple puzzle game or arcade shooter, and figure out what should be added, changed for the better, or removed altogether. I guess i'm kind of nitpicky but thats how it is.
Right now the current support SpriteWorks has is a global drawing manager, input(kb, mouse, gamepad), sprites, particle system, GUI system(to be redesigned...), sprite animations, math and utility libraries, and some other prototype classes for maps/grids and physics. I think that encompasses what it will probably be in the very end. So thats the update and imma get back to watching some college football and programming simulataneously, isn't that a weird combo? =D
Rough Times
it's been a kind of rough month, i moved to a new place not too far from my previous place, but it was rough on me with my knee being messed up. And worse, my mother unfortunately passed away last week after a long fight with breast cancer. The homegoing service(as my family likes to say) was last Saturday, and heard a lot of words from all the people she touched, and I even got up to say some things which i'm proud of myself for doing. I will really miss her.
I had the week off yesterday and got some things done and helped my family with some of the homegoing stuff...but to keep my mind off things i watched a lot of the olympics. The USA is being destroyed by China in Gold medal count, which is what really counts BUT the USA is sort of staying ahead in total medal count. Either way, I hope they can catch up. Other than that, I've seen a slew of movies that were hilarious, Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express, and Step Brothers....very good stuff. Well I guess thats it for now, back to work.
A Midsummer’s Night Dream
Summer is already halfway over and its been pretty uneventful. I've still not had the chance/funds to go on a vacation but hopefully i'll be able to sometime. I'm going to be moving up at the end of the month to a friend's townhouse. it'll allow me to save some $$$ so it'll be all good. I'll have to hire some movers since theres no way my crippled self can move heavy furniture up and down stairs.
Other than that....i've just been going to work, trying to rehab(im slacking =( ), playing games, watching movies, listening to music, etc....also i've started reading some computer related books so i can add stuff to my resume, and think of a career move late this year or early next year, we'll see.
World’s Greatest
I rarely watch golf, but last weekened, Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate gave me an exceptional reason to tune into the US Open, and I am so happy I did. Golf hasn't been this interesting in a long time, let alone interesting enough to be watchable. Tiger was Tiger, and hit clutch shot after clutch shot. But I give many props to Rocco who battled all the way back and made it a contest during the playoff. A lot of writers and journalists are giving Tiger the world's greatest golfer title, and he probably does deserve it after last weekends performance, it was amazing.
And then there's Kobe Bryant, the media proclaimed best all-around basketball player in the world and in a lot of ways he is. Though the comparisons to Michael Jordan must stop, besides a couple of moves that Bryant emulates of MJs, they aren't the same. MJs ability to take over the game still amazes me to this day, and while Kobe can do it sometimes, MJ did it on a consistent and regular basis. MJ would never let his team lose a game when they were up 24 points. I'm hoping Kobe can step up tonight and live up to what people want him to be. For him to force a game 7, and maybe even win the NBA Finals with 3 straight wins would be amazing. And then I could call him the World's Greatest, until then, he's just a cheater and a whiner, but i still support him.
Been Around the World
I don't know, I've just not been in game dev mode lately...i started playing Age of Conan which is pretty cool I must admit, even with all the bugs and lack of high level content. I'll probably keep playing it for a bit. I've also been watching the unfortunate NBA Finals with my lakers now down 3-1 after giving up a 24pt lead. oh well. I've seen a number of movies(zohan, prince caspian, and others) and just been hanging out a lot. I was hard core programming from like november to april so i guess i need a break, but i hope to be back later in the summer.
peace
Gettin’ Lazy
Man, i don't know, im like in the middle of a coder's block at the moment. And I've just straight up been lazy lately, just been watching TV, sports, or going out. Hopefully I'll get back into a rhythm soon as the NBA playoffs wind down. Well its 2 in the morning and im tired, so thats it i guess.
Stayin’ Alive
It's been a minute but i'm still alive and kickin. I guess you can associate my absence with the release of GTA4. I've played it a lot in conjunction with CoD4 so haven't been spending too much time in development, but im going to try to split that time so i can start programming again. XNA 3.0 CTP was released but I'm not going to mess with it since it doesn't really have anything I want, and I don't feel like moving to VS2008 just yet.
I can also attribute a lot of time going to watching the NBA playoffs, even went to the Hawks home game(game 4) and it was amazing. Easily the best NBA game i've ever been to in my short life. Other than those little tidbits, ive just been out and about and not home too much really. But I'm hittin the code again soon, so don't worry. =)
XNA Follow A Path
I was dabbling in the XNA documentation, and came across the Curve class. I had seen it a couple times before but never really went into it much. But I was looking for something new to do so I got into it and converted the Curve3D class created in the XNA Documenation to a Curve2D class, and added a wrapper class called Path2D which uses to the Curve2D class to travel a long a pre-defined set of points. The Curve2D class itself is very usable by itself, but the Path2D class brings it into a package where you could add it to your Sprite class and let it move around all cool-like on the screen. I also added a couple extra functions for making new paths, and timing how it may take to travel it.
Download it here: http://alwayschillin.net/downloads/FollowPath2D.zip
Enjoy!
XNA Sprite Orbit
This is a quick sample I wrote to answer a forum question at Ziggyware(http://www.ziggyware.com/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=12&thread_id=12979). It has a sprite rotating around another sprite in an orbit. Pressing A and D will make it orbit around the object, and W and S will make the distance from the sprite increase/decrease.
XNA Text Drawer
I have a text drawing class that i find pretty useful. It allows you to draw text(single and multi-line) to the screen and align it where-ever you wish to inside of a rectangle top, left, bottom, right, and center. link for the download is right here: http://alwayschillin.net/downloads/TextDrawer.rar
