FlatRedBall

I was planning on releasing the version of FlatRedBall which uses XNA 3.0 this weekend. On Saturday I decided to clean up the UI libraries – specifically reduce the memory allocation during runtime and add a few small features. I was able to reduce memory allocation by over 90% making the UI far more efficient than before. Today I started making the necessary upgrades to the FRBDK and found that my performance work from yesterday caused a number of significant stability issues.

I believe I’ve worked most of them out, but I’d like to test things out a little more before the release. So, for those of you looking for the 3.0 update, please be patient. We’re hard at work getting it ready and it should be out (hopefully) in the coming week.

–Vic–

Well, usually my answer is “learn how to program, download FlatRedBall, etc.” But some people have done that and they still ask “ok, now that I’ve done that, how do I make a game?”

To help give old and new users alike a high-level view on what it takes to put a game together, I’ve created an article in the wiki to discuss this – and it uses the old favorite Super Mario Bros. as an example. So, check it out and let me know what you think in the forums.

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

–Vic–

My good friend Smitty posted a contest on his blog and asked I forward it to FRB users. If you make some fan art for the game and it’s selected, then you’ll get it featured in the final game. A neat way to connect to the community. More info here:

http://elecorn.com/blog/?p=118

–Vic–

When I first started working as a paid game programmer at the studio which eventually became EA Salt Lake I was surprised by how slowly things moved. Of course some of this reaction came from only having worked on small (sub 10 developer) projects. Also not having to worry about marketing, distribution, profitability, and scheduling helped my efficiency. So, before this is misinterpreted as an EA bash fest, let me defend my employer by saying that some of the inefficiency and overhead I’ve experienced is a natural consequence of developing larger games at a larger company.

But not all…

Read the rest of this entry »

So, as always we’ve released our monthly update, but this month if you’re updating you’ll notice something new – we now have a web installer. That’s right, simply download and run one .exe and it’ll handle everything for you. It downloads the latest templates (MDX, XNA, ToolTemplate), the FRBDK… even checks your computer for .NET, Visual Studio, Game Studio, DirectX. If you’re missing anything you can get it all through this nifty installer. Not only that but the FRBDK is automatically unzipped for you and you get start-menu shortcuts. Wow!

Of course this is great for new and upgrading users alike, but also nice for me because I have fewer things to update on the wiki each month. Nice when I get to save some time as well.

There are a variety of other fixes this month – in fact looking at the version history shows that this month was a very busy one. I’d like to thank all of the interns at Indiana University who have helped this month. I’m sure that next month will be even better. Thanks all, and I hope that the community benefits from this latest version. As always, please report any problems you encounter.

–Vic–

Due to a bug reported on the forums of the 360 .dll crashing immediately, we’ve released a new version of the engine. In addition to this fix we’ve added significant improvements to the SpriteEditor for handling AnimationChains. Check it out!

–Vic–

Another month, another update. During this last month we’ve focused heavily on the FRBDK again. Look for big changes in texture coordinate selection in the SpriteEditor and AnimationEditor, along with some general editing improvements in the PolygonEditor. We’ve been hitting the 2D side of the tools now and we’re very excited about the new features this release brings for creating .scnx files from tile map textures and .achx files from sprite sheets. A number of bugs and small features have been implemented. Keep the suggestions and feedback coming!

–Vic–

One of the most fascinating things about economics is that it’s so closely tied to psychology – a science which we find difficult to quantify. There are a number of thought experiments which can be used to analyze people’s behavior, but the “I bid you $100″ is one of my favorites. Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t heard of it, there’s this game called Ikariam. It’s a free, browser-based MMO which incorporates “passive play”. Before I go into the details of the game and its economics, if you’re interested in playing it, go to www.ikariam.org, make an account, join the Kappa server (that’s where I am) and message the BnB alliance (that’s my alliance). So, back to where I was – it’s passive play meaning you give a command and that command takes a certain amount of time. That time passes whether you’re logged in or not – it uses real world time. For example, one of the first things that people do is they build an academy. You simply tell your town to build an academy, then you wait 20 minutes (or whatever the time is) until it’s complete. Once it’s done, you move on. So, what’s so great about Ikariam? Read on: Read the rest of this entry »

The September update of all FlatRedBall files is uploaded. Here are the highlights of this release:

* The GuiEditor is a new tool that’s been added to the FRBDK. Now users can create their own Gui skins (guisknx) files and apply them to the FlatRedBall.Gui. We expect this tool to see improvements over the coming releases so please let us know your thoughts on it.
* Significant Gui fixes and improvements – we’ve focused heavily on GUI this last month while working on the GuiEditor so this month also brings a lot of releases to the FlatRedBall.Gui namespace.
* Fixed 1080 crash on the 360 – now FlatRedBall runs on the 360 when the console is set to 1080i or p.

Of course there are a variety of small bug fixes. As always let us know if you encounter any problems this month and thanks to all contributors for your help.

–Vic–