Back to Cool Stuff:D

Hello Everyone,

here we are back to really cool stuff. First of all, we are starting our new engine, we have a current code name: Unleashed Engine 2D. As you can see by name, it is 2D, but this doesn't mean that we are rendering only in 2D, but it is directed for 2D gameplay.

We are planning a some nice features, but for now, the coolest is an editor with real-time intercession.
More Desired Features:
- Avatar Support
- Generic Physics Wrapper (until now, it is wrapping the basic functions of Box2D and Farseer)
- Cool pre-created cams
- Post Processing in a easy way
- Animated Sprites and an Editor
- And some others that will appear:P

We are only in beginning, but experimental version is almost done and we will make a stupid demo to test it and of course, it will appear right here.

Another thing that I'm doing and that will be posted in next days/weeks, is an Async Resource Manager! What is it? It is a simple extension to ContentManager. If you already played Halo, you probably have noticed that mid-level loadings are very fast and silent. So I want this kind of loading in my games and this resource manager open this doors for me (I think).
I did it in this weekend and preliminary results are very good.

But, what it does?
- First you need to subdivide yours assets in groups. (Levels, Checkpoints or other else division, you probably think that is fine for you)
- You subdivide that groups using requests. A request is a List of assets ID, Path and Type.
-When you create some group, you want to pass a Callback to be called when manager finish the loading of that group.
- Finally when you think that you will need some resources soon, you call GetResource(name). Manager loads the resource in another thread and callback your application when finishes. So in meantime, the player can continue playing or if it reaches the point where you need to swap resources, you can present a little loading screen, while manager do not finish its work.
- And Yes, you can and you must call Unload(group) or Unload(resourceName) when you think that is desirable.

I'm preparing the sample and fix some minor bugs:) I'll post the source as soon as possible.

Stay tuned

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Hello Everyone!

Why didn't we post anything in almost 3 months? Because we are very busy with our projects and working on a prototype that we need to finish before sharing some news.

But we are making new components for our projects and we will publish them soon. We are also working on a 2D version of our engine, to allow a quick and easy 2D game development.

If someone has some idea for a tutorial or sample that we can do, mail us:D

Stay tuned for new updates, as we will try to post more often.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for everyone!!

Console Component Updated [AGAIN]




ChangeLog:

04-10-09
----------------
- Scroll Down and Up is now supported (Up/Down arrow on PC and DpadUp/DpadDown on Xbox)
- Added a Solution to Xbox360 and now it supports Xbox built-in OnScreenKeyboard
-Press Back+Start to Show Console
-Press A to open onScreen Keyboard
-Some bugs appear in xbox version
- Project was upgraded to XNA 3.1

28-08-09
-----------------
- System Rewritten now commands are added dynamically via Action Delegates
- Added Support for numeric keys, minus and comma
- Added support for help messages
- Added a WriteLine method to write in console, even in command action

15-03-09
-----------------
- XNA 3.0 Support
- Console fits to Window Resize Events

Console Component Updated

Hello again,

to give some life to blog, I'm posting the latest version of the console component. We've made some modifications for Phyzell and now we give you the updated component.

Initial Console credits go to: Kevin Jurkowski


Change Log:

28-08-09
-----------------
- System Rewritten now commands are added dynamically via Action Delegates.
- Added Support for numeric keys, minus and comma
- Added Support for help messages
- Added a WriteLine method to write in console, even in command action

15-03-09
-----------------
- XNA 3.0 Support *
- Console fits to Window Resize Events




Stay tuned for the next posts!

Holidays and a simple new tool

No we are not going to let the blog die!

We are on school holidays and we are starting to work on our master theses. But in few weeks we will start developing a new game. Once again we will share all the milestones and hopefully release some more samples. =D

However you can take a look at this project: http://xnaphysxtools.codeplex.com/. It's a simple tool that we mostly developed for Phyzell which allows to create PhysX meshes from XNA models. It will be expanded if we get feedback from anyone who wants to use it. Please stay tuned for future developments.

Phyzell - Alpha


Hello!

We've been working hard for the last couple of weeks, trying to polish some of the techniques we implemented, as well as tweaking the game mechanics. We're quite happy with the final result, after 3-4 months of part-time work in this game.

Well, for now, at least, this is it! We submitted our project (that was developed as a course project of our master's degree in Computer Engineering). We're not prepared to completely say goodbye to Phyzell, so we're dubbing this version as Alpha, hoping that in the future we get enough time and resources to improve this concept and turn it into a real game. Nevertheless, we will definitely use our engine in our future projects for XNA, from which you might be hearing about in the upcoming months.

For now, we leave you with the gameplay video and the installer of the alpha version, so you can try it out for yourselves.



Phyzell - Pre Alpha 2 Video


Hi there!

We're very excited with the improvements that Phyzell had over the past couple of weeks. You can watch a gameplay video (here in HD) of the the second pre alpha version (yes, that's what we're calling it).

Just a quick reminder of the techniques we're using in this game:
- Deferred Shading
- Deferred Shadow Maps
- HDR - High Dynamic Range Rendering
- Distortion effect for camouflage
- Particle system for the blackhole graphical representation
- Everything running on a custom made engine that is using PhysX.NET and XNA.

Please, share your thoughts and critics.



top