FlatRedBall

I actually didn’t plan on doing this release this morning, but I wanted to see if some of the template changes that I’d made were actually working properly, and while I was working on it I thought – okay, let’s just finish the whole thing.

This release brings a few small fixes and improvements to the engine – nothing huge. One big thing that we’re working towards (no surprises here) is continuing to make cross-platform development easier. This release brings templates that now have their .dll files in subdirectories in the Libraries folder. That means that if you combine an XNA 360 and XNA PC projects, you will no longer have issues with both referencing the same .dll and giving you very confusing compile errors.

I apologize for slowing down this last month – I’ve been very busy with contracts. However, they’re coming to a close soon and I anticipate having a lot more time to work on FRB in the coming months, so the releases this fall will be much bigger and add lots of new features. Stay tuned!

–Vic–

Thanks to everyone for being patient with this new release.  It’s finally out and ready to go.

NOTE:  If you’re using Glue and have a project that you have been working on so far, you must make some manual changes to your project for it to work with the current release of Glue.  More info on this here:

http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/index.php?title=Upgrade_Information:June_2010

As always this release fixes a number of engine bugs and completes some collision interface.  As far as Glue goes, this new release adds support for creating new projects right in Glue instead of manually opening the NewProjectCreator.  Newly-created projects are even loaded automatically in Glue!

Other changes include support for async Screen loading, exposing PositionedObject variables on Entities, and Screen inheritance.

–Vic–

For those of you looking for support on the forums or a new release of the engine, I apologize and ask if possible to just be patient for a little while longer.

FlatRedBall is very close to releasing its first internally-made Xbox Indie Game! I’m very excited about it, and because of that I’ve been pouring every free second I have into getting this game ready for play test.

We’re very close, and as soon as it gets back into play test everything will return to normal – including a new release.

Thanks to everyone who is waiting around. We’re almost done!

–Vic–

Great new ARES video is up. Check it out:

A.R.E.S. by Extend Studio from Nenin Ananbanchachai on Vimeo.

Super thanks to Torsten and Josh! Josh reported a malware problem on FRB, and Torsten looked into it and saw that we had some Wordpress scripts changed. He fixed them up and the problems should be gone.

We apologize for any inconvenience or scares this may have caused.

–Vic–

Congratulations to the Cyber Edge Studios team for releasing Quarantine!  As far as I know this is their first Xbox Indie Game title, so it’s a big first for them.  This is also big news for FlatRedBall as this is the 2nd game to be released on the Xbox using our engine.

I’ve updated our Games page to include a Quarantine page.  It can be found here:

http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/index.php?title=Games:Quarantine

Way to go guys!  Good luck with sales and your future development.

–Vic–

I know, release after release…

Our good friend jrxnadev found some problems with Glue which we had to fix so his project could keep going. Thanks to him for being patient with us and reporting these issues. The new version is now up.

–Vic–

I just finished a set of new tutorials for the AnimationEditor. These tutorials assume a new version of the AnimationEditor because I found some areas to improve in the tool as I wrote them up.

Here’s a direct link to the tutorials:

http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/index.php?title=AnimationEditor:Tutorials

I feel really good about the tutorials – they’re similar in style to what was established earlier this year with the Glue tutorials.  Please check em out if you are planning on doing any type of animation in your game – I’m sure these will help.

–Vic–

Wow!!!! The X10 team has just won 2nd place in Dream Build Play with their game A.R.E.S. Amazing job guys! I’m so excited for you! Keep up the fantastic work.

For those of you interested in the game, check our their site:

http://trashman.x10studio.com/

–Vic–

I’ve just finished uploading the May release. As always, it’s got lots of minor improvements to the engine. Big things that may interest you are:

* Lots of usability improvements in the AnimationEditor
* New project creator works from any install location
* Fix on .bmp loading on the 360
* 360 template works!
* And much more…

For those of you using Glue and upgrading, you will likely need to update your Screen and ScreenManager code. You can get the latest here:

http://www.flatredball.com/FlatRedBallAddOns/FlatRedBallAddOns/Screens/

Just copy the contents of the Screen and ScreenManager files. Be sure to not mess up your namespaces.

Until next month, good luck to all and thanks to everyone for feedback.

–Vic–