FlatRedBall

Finally! That…took a long time! First, I apologize to everyone who’s been waiting for this release. Microsoft does a fantastic job of upgrading XNA on a yearly basis, but every time we do we scramble to make sure everything is working right after the upgrade and there is always unexpected stuff.

So, what’s new? Well, of course, now we support XNA 3.0 and that means COMMUNITY GAMES!!! Very exciting stuff. In conjunction with that, we’ve (well, ok, mostly Terry) organized the .Content project so that all from file stuff works in the engine WITHOUT including the .Content.dll. That means you can load from file AND distribute your game to folks with only the runtime. That obviously also includes the Community Games – another distribution win.

The up-side to having waited until the end of the month to release is that we implemented a LOT of fixes. Lots of FRBDK improvements on stability and performance, and as always bug fixes and improvements on the engine.

So what are you waiting for? The new FRB is a simple .exe download and double-click away. As always let us know about issues you have. 2009, here we come!

–Vic–

Somjade (whose work you may have seen on Trashman) decided to make some FRB mascots for us. I’m a huge anime fan so this is really really cool. Check it out:

–Vic–

As those of you who have been following the releases may have realized, we skipped November. But worry not, that’s not because we didn’t spend time working on the engine. Instead, we had some installer issues that we were working out, and while that was happening the engine and FRBDK were still moving along full speed.

Very full speed.

Don’t believe me? Check out the version history for December 2009:

http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/index.php?title=FlatRedBall_XNA_Version_History_2009

It may be our biggest update yet in terms of fixes.

What kind of things changed this month?

The TileEditor is the biggest changing part with so many new improvements including click+drag movement of props, collision support, and a LOT of bug fixes. Also, the wiki for the TileEditor now includes a video showing you how to get started with the TileEditor.

Lots of improvements on FSB as well including multiple camera support, text bug fixes, sub-pixel texture coordinate support for Sprites, and a lot of performance improvements.

Other improvements this month include a lot of stability and feature adds to ListDisplayWindows and PropertyGrids, more general FSB/FRB XNA syntax unification, and a number of fixes related to loading a variety of FRB file types.

I encourage everyone to check out the new TileEditor and the tutorials on the wiki. I think you’ll like what we’ve done…oh, and before I forget here’s the TileEditor wiki link:

http://www.flatredball.com/TileEditorWiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Thanks for all of the bug reports and we’ll see you next month with another awesome update!

–Vic–

For those of you waiting for the next release of FRB, this is probably not the update you wanted…but that’s coming this weekend now that we’ve finally fixed some installer issues.

However, if you’re new to FRB you might still appreciate the two new tutorials that can be found on our tutorials page:

http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/index.php?title=Category:FlatRedBall_XNA_Tutorials

They are tutorials #12 and #13 under Learning FlatRedBall covering attachments and collision – two very powerful but often misunderstood features in FRB. Hopefully this will help new users get up to speed faster.

Keep an eye on the front page, the next release is coming this weekend – and it has a LOT of improvements.

A new game by OggaSoft has been developed with FlatRedBall. It’s a 3D puzzle game called Cubism.

I’ve put information about the game on the Games screen and have redone the screen a little bit to be cleaner and more to-the-point. So, check it out, and give Cubism a shot as well:

http://www.flatredball.com/frb/docs/?title=Category:Official_FRB_Games

–Vic–

Yay! Another monthly release!

What’s new you ask? Well, on the code side a few things. First, all FlatSilverBall bugs that have been reported have been fixed. This includes positioning bugs related to changing the Camera’s Orthogonal values, Text colors being wacky, and Sprite flipping not working. We’ve also significantly reduced the amount of memory allocation that’s done on a per-frame basis in FSB, so your applications should run smoother.

We’ve again focused on more UI improvements this month, fixing up and adding more features to the PropertyGrid, ObjectDisplayManager, and ListDisplayWindow. Automatically-generated UI has never been easier to use.

But the big changes this month come in the tools, specifically the TileEditor. We’ve gotten good feedback on how to improve the TileEditor and we are very pleased with this month’s improvements. If you’re working on a tile-based game, we strongly encourage you to upgrade. And of course, as always keep the feedback coming so that November’s release can address your most important requests.

Thanks for everyone’s involvement this last month. We have a very large change list and a very active community. Oh, and speaking of which, we hope that everyone’s enjoying the new forums as well.

We’re hard at work overhauling the front page blog, so soon we’ll have that style matching the forum style, and comments will be re-enabled.

Good luck making games, all!

–Vic–

The forum was up and down for the last little while. We now have it up, it feels stable, I think uploads are working, and I’ve tweaked the theme. Thanks to Rory and Somjade in helping me with the tweaking and graphics, and thanks to Terry for getting things set up.

What’s next? Well, if you visit the forums now you’ll notice that it doesn’t have the top bar with the links to the rest of the site. That’s coming soon.

Please let us know how you feel about the new site. I’m personally pretty excited with what it opens up.

–Vic–

It’s pretty interesting to compare how frequently we update the engine (usually at least once a month) to how frequently we update the website (I think the last was 4 years ago). We’ve been wanting to make some changes for quite a while, but now it’s finally time.

First we’ll be upgrading the forums, moving from PHPBB 2 to 3. From what I’ve read, 3 brings a lot of new features like a personal file storage, blog integration, and enhanced spam control.

Terry is working on the forums starting now, so we apologize if there is any downtime. We hope the upgrade goes quickly and results in a better site for all.

–Vic–

The team at X10 studio (http://www.x10studio.com/) have just released a new trailer for their game made in FRB called Trashman:

This is the most advanced FRB game I’ve seen to date. They are definitely paving the way for future games by reporting bugs, requesting features, and providing a lot of inspiration.

This game runs fully in FRB. Levels were created in the SpriteEditor, characters in the AnimationEditor, effects in the ParticleEditor, and level collision in the PolygonEditor.

Great job X10 team. Keep up the fantastic work!

–Vic–

Terry and I have just finished yet another update. We know, it’s just absurd how many updates we’ve had this month. But, we think this time it’s fairly significant.

We’re introducing 2 new tools to the FRBDK. That’s right, 2 at once! They are:

* SplineEditor
* TileMapEditor

The SplineEditor can be used to create curved paths for a variety of things such as scripted camera movement and enemy flight patterns in airplane shooter games. We think that users will find a variety of other uses for them as well, so check it out.

The TileMapEditor is a very exciting release as it’s been one of the top asks for FRB for a long time. The TileMapEditor is an application that can create .scnx files, but it is specifically used for creating tile maps for games. Now you can easily assemble levels like you’d see in the old Final Fantasy or Zelda games (as long as you have the art).

We’re currently focusing on the TileMapEditor, adding lots of new features and fixing bugs as they come along. As always, your feedback is welcome and appreciated, so please let us know how we can make things easier and better.

Until the next month (or maybe 2 – 3 days based on the latest activity), good luck with your game development efforts.

–Vic–