UberGeekGames Avatar Wrapper

Having been playing with the Avatar stuff these last several days (i haven't had much time for my own work). I knew i needed to write a good surrounding class to put all the crap in, the stuf that needs to be done regardless, the messy stuff that should be easy and straight forward. But before i could get to that i would need something else.

The default animations for the Avatars are very nice. But apart from allowing a game to play Simon with them, i do not think there are many other uses. so i did a search to see if any kind soul had put out any other anims, namely i wanted a run animation. Well lo and behold Microsoft had an avatar animation pack. It took m a post in the forums to find it, but i did get it from the new app hub in the end. This pack supplies a bunch of stuff and a run anim is one of them, woohoo!

This however opened up a can of worms. Ya see, to get custom animations into the Xbox (yes, these new ones are counted as custom, cos they are not built in). ya have to go through some severe pain. Namely you have to have a content importer, and of course this means work, cos well. why would anyone wan tto put this into a real nice tidy simple to use wrapper? I mean, why bother. I know i should not complain, but it seems to be that they did the work to make this system, and then just stopped short on a few things that would make it so much tidier and nicer for new and old developers.

Anyway, this casued me some consternation and i figured i would not bother, until i also decided to search for an Avatar animation class, feeling like maybe someone had already done some of this work. And woah, there it was. Lying in wait for me at UberGeekGames was an avatar wrapper, and also some extra goodness.

The extra was in the form of they had made it so on the PC there were the bones of the Avatar displayed. This is big, as Avatars cannot actually be rendered on the PC, and as most Xblig devs do a high percentage of their work on the PC (like me), this should prove a real beneift. BONUS!!!

I have now integrated the wrapper class into my test application, with much trouble over the oddites of having to have two separate libs for the skinnedModel class. Once i was over these issues i can see the dudes rotating on my Xbox screen. funnily enough getting it working on the PC was real fast.

Thanks very much UGG, you folks rock, along with the other people that helped you give this to the community.

You can check out their Blog here.

G'night

I know i shouldn't

But i could not help myself.

I had to start playing with rendering Avatars. This was going extremely well and i had no issues watching them dance around my screen and generally frolic around in their 3d world.

Then i decided i should stick them in my Ortho Viewport, so i can use them in a more 2d way. Then i started to have issues. I have spent more than 1.5 hours on this, yet it should be so simple. I have given up for the night, but i just saw a tweet from a friend called Mikebmcl(twitter name), saying he had recently done this. Woot! He is gonna find me some code it seems.

Isn't it wonderful that we cna get help in this way, and at this time of night. I loves my tweeple. Maybe i am getting payback after giving a ride to a fella hitching a ride into Simi valley. Wowza if so, cos that pay it forward stuff worked Quick!

G'night everyone

In Game Instructions are under rated

I know nobody really reads in game instructions and i am no exception of course. I just go for it when i get a new game. Usually games are pretty easy to pick up these days. However to really master a game you might have to go deeper into the game knowledge base and learn some useful tips and tricks. Hell, ya can learn some more buttons you had no idea what they did etc.

So lets take A Shooter. I took a while to put these instructions together and was quite proud of all they said. But as the weeks have passed since the game went live, i have come to realise there is an error in my ways. I am missing vital bits of information and if a player wants to know them, he will somehow have to find his way to this blog most likely. That is just not optimal.

Here are a few examples just to give ya more of an idea of what i am talking about.
1. Going for a high score in the game. In easy mode you can earn approximately 2.1Million by completing the game from the start. for normal it is about 2.5million and then 2.8million and finally for hardest mode 3.1million. this information would have been invaluable for people trying to win my top score competitions.
2. Practicing a level you just failed on is the fastest way to learn a new level or Boss and progress through the game.

So although those examples are quite different to each other. They are both really important. I chose those two because they are so different.

Conclusion...
Any time anyone gives you feedback about your game. Any question at all, you should note down the possibility that you need to add it into the in game instructions. Don't be lazy, just do it, and you will be rewarded with understanding of the game and therefore more likely to get good word of mouth.

good luck

A Shooter - You can help

I wasn't whether or not to write this post. I think i am still in a little bit of a dilemna, but then i realised that asking is free, and you my dear readers can actully help me out at no cost to yourself, except a couple of minutes at most of your time. So i am asking....

1. Download A Shooter from the Xbox Dashboard or online from here.
2. Rate A Shooter as many stars as your consience will allow (the more the merrier).
3. Tell other people you know that have Xboxes to at least downbload the game.

So you see i am not asking much. The number of downloads is critical to getting on another list and the rating is critical for yet another list. Getting on lists is the big thing for Indie games, get on them and your chances of success rocket extraordinarily.

So please help me get the game on a list.

Da Voodoochief

Pretty Instructions

Today i finally got around to upgrading my Help/Instructions page. I already think it scrolls in a nice way, and also has a nice fade out and in at the top and bottom of the screen (or near it). I think it looks very nice and professional, however i have always though that my Instructions screen was a bit bland. The main reason for that i believe is the fact that the Instructions (every line!) are all single color.

So slightly off white text is the order of the day and it looks ok i guess. Anyone that has read this blog for any time will realise i like a bit of color in my life. So today i finally got around to fixing up some color into some lines. So far the system is a bit primitive. I am able to color any single, but whole line. So this is great for headings that are already Capitalized and are now in a more stand outish color.

I may go further and make it so i can recolor in the middle of lines. This isn't really too difficult now i have the String.substring() and String.Compare() under control. It was a bit of a trial to get right at first as i am a veteran programmer that started writing in machine code. So I tend to view memory as memory, laid out in whatever fashion it is. I do not really view data as types per se. This of course means i am a pointer using Freak, that it seems is TOO dangerous for folks to program with in Xna. To be honest i am sure it has more to do with managed language control than any useful prevention. So will i recolor partial lines? I don't know, maybe if i have a good reason too.

And that brings me to why the hell did i waste time on colorizing a few lines in the Help section of my game, that hardly anyone will ever read? The reason is of course that every aspect of a game should be given attention. Why should i short change people that want to read the help section. Same goes for the Credits section. It should be as good as you can make it. It oddly enough could be the deciding factor on why peolpe buy your game. Not overly likely i know, but what if even just 0.5% of people that picked up your game saw the excellent credits, would that make a large percentage of them buy it? I'll let you decide your own course. Mine is set... I want this game to be great quality and that means everywhere.

G'night

Once again Twitter Buddies to the Rescue

Today and in fact a few days ago i was stuggling with some Xna coding. I know i probably should read all the help and documents pertaining to the C# language and the Xna suite provided by Microsoft. But i cannot bring myself to spend the time. It would be time not spent on programming and gameplay. So what do i do when i get stuck.

Well to start off i try to find any web page with the right info on it. Then i browse the Xna forums and Faqs. But if these turn up empty, as they have recently, what should I do ?

In both these cases i ended up posting a simple question to my twitter feed. Then wait a few minutes or less, and Voila.. refresh and the answers are mine. Not just simple answers. Some people give me links and more info than i ever needed. WOOT! It is like having my own workmates, or online live help. Seome people from twitter have helped me sort design items out and color etc.

These people ROCK and deserve a lot of credit for caring about lil ole me.

Thanks eveyrone for the recent help.
@clingermangw
@quimbyrbg
@mikebmcl
@mechaghost
@echofiend
@kriswd40
@hodsey77
@tehgrumpydude

This is only the recent selection of help i have received. I apologize if your name is not present and you have helped me recently. I cannot get it all right all the time. Or even some of it right some of the time. HAHA

g'night and Twitter on!