everydayXNA

I have done some more work to my Age of SIMpires game. I have tweaked the controls a bit and have added the dude from the Skinned Model tutorial. I can now click on him and tell him where to walk to. He is animated, but the animation only runs when the man is actually walking. Hopefully I'll have time soon to create my own characters which will be equipped with several types of animations including standing and looking around, waving, dancing, running, picking up stuff, etc... If any of you out there in XNA land would like to help out with the models, please send an email to webmaster@everydayxna.com, post your proposal in our forum, or drop us a line on our contact page.

Well, I've started yet another game. This time, it's a top-down strategy-ish game. I've decided to take 2 of my favorite strategy games and combine them into one; Age of Empires and The Sims. So, I came up with Age of SIMpires. It isn't much yet, but I do have the camera & controls working. Plus, you can select from several different tiles and some basic models to load onto the screen. It also includes Path Finding capabilities. Check out the game page for more screen shots and details.

I've started a new game as you can see. This time it's a first person shooter. The scene I'm working on now takes place in an airport. The story goes, you are at the airport waiting on a family member to arrive when terrorists take over the airport. More planes are allowed to arrive, providing the terrorists with more and more hostages. In fear for the safety of your family member, you must find a way to take out the terrorists before your family member's plane arrives. You also have to find away to get the other hostages out of the airport by either sneaking them out, finding passenger items around the airport to bargain with, or by doing jobs for the terrorists in return for freeing a hostage. Check out the details and screenshots at the hostage page.

I recently came across a problem where I had upgraded my projects from XNA 2.0 to XNA 3.0 and after the upgrade, none of my textures were loading for my FBX models. I had originally exported my models to FBX using Milkshape 3D. However, the MS3D FBX exporter is not compatible with XNA 3.0. So, instead of exporting my models directly to FBX, I had to export them to 3DS and use Autodesk's FBX Converter (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=6837478&siteID=123112) to convert them from 3DS to FBX. I did this with all of my models and the textures are now showing up.

If you need a place to host your projects, we can do that for you. Just send an email to hosting@everydayxna.com and we'll hook you up. We'll provide you with a place to store your downloads, source code, images, etc... and we'll do it all for FREE!!!! We'll even set you up with a forum just for discussing your projects.

If you're not much into writing code, but enjoy designing video games, you definitely have to checkout Visual3D.net It comes complete with the game engine and game designer GUI. You can create entire games with just a mouse using drag-and-drop functionality. When I first came across this site, I was blown away by the videos and screenshots that they display in their showcase and I'm sure you will be too. But, I was more impressed when I actually got into the program and started designing my own games. Be sure to check it out at http://www.visual3d.net or jump over to the download page and grab a copy. Visual3D.NEt v0.9.4 (Beta 4.0) was recently released a few days ago. I've just downloaded it and am excited to see what's been added.

First off, I apologize for not putting much online lately. I have been swamped with work lately and haven't had much time to maintain most of my websites, including this one. However, I have found a little bit of time to work on the BrawlBots game. I have included almost an entire city, complete with ramps, roadways, buildings, toll booths, etc... Be sure to jump over to the BrawlBots page and check it out.

Well, ask you can see, I've added a little more to my game. I haven't had much time lately to do a whole lot with it. But, I have managed to sneak in a few things here and there. One of the biggest things I've added recently is model instancing. Instead of having all of my stuff in the Update method, I took off a lot of the work load from the CPU and put it on the GPU instead. That way, all I have to do is load the model one time and draw it as many times as I want. The screenshot shows instancing for the telephone poles and the road. I have some other things that use instancing, but I haven't had time to load them in yet. Also, if you go to the gallery page or the BrawlBots page, you can see street lamps along the fence that are using model instancing.

I've added the ability for you to upload and share your images and screenshots of your games. Just login using the link in the upper-right corner of this page. Once you've logged in, all you have to do is click the "Browse" button, locate your images, and click "Ok". When you want people to see your images, just send them a link to your profile page. When I have time, I plan on adding the ability to customize your profile. I think it would be neat to make your profile look like your game. But, that's just my thoughts. You'll be free to customize your XNA profile any way you want it.

I was wondering how my game could handle multiple bots in the arena at the same time. So, I dumped 25 other bots in there with me and the results were amazing. The game didn't slow down at all. I'm able to run around and smash up several other bots and still get an awesome frame rate.

I even added the ability to choose what color you want the frame of your bot to be. In my quick test with the 25 other bots, I simply told it to pick random colors for me. The screenshots don't show all 25 bots since I was pushing them all over the place. But, trust me, they're there. I'm going to do another test with 50 and 100 bots just to see what happens. Currently, I'm planning on designing this game for the Xbox 360 only which I can only have up to 12 players in a game at a time. But, if things work out, I might add PC compatibility and increase the number of brawling bots.