FlatRedBall

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…

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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–