Moved game dev stuff!

If you were directed here looking for game dev stuff, i’ve moved it to here:

http://xnadev.wordpress.com I have a lot more up to date content there!

XNA 2D Sprite Sheet Animation Kind-of Tutorial

So based on my blog stats, people are looking for a little help with 2D animation in XNA. It’s really quite simple, however getting it all to work together in a object oriented structure does take some practice. For those of you that are looking for a little help, I’m going to post the solution to my assignment for my XNA development class. If you aren’t sure what the assignment is about, check out the post below it talks all about it.

This solution basically entails all of my assignment requirements in one. It is a bomber man clone type game (which i didnt finish) and currently you can move bomberman around, plant bombs, watch them explode, and see some minor collision detection with the flame. If you run into your own flame you die. It currently only supports one player. Since it was an assignment and we moved on, I dont have time right now to continue to work on it. If anyone reading this decides to take it and make it into something better, go for it! Just make sure to mention how kind and loving I was to give it away.

On a side note, I included all the sprite sheets i found for bomberman. There is a bomberman red, green, white, black, a bomb sheet which includes bomb animations and flame animation, as well as an enemy sprite sheet, that includes all the animation for single player bomberman enemies.

The full solution can be found here: DOWNLOAD ( mirrored from my website http://www.utahairsoft.com )

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the lack of commenting in the solution. I’ll have to write an actual tutorial some day when i get some time.

XNA 2D Animations Using Sprite Sheets

So my first assignment for the XNA class is to create a 2D game; Or at least create the begninning of one. I’ve decided to try and make a bomberman clone, like I said in the post before.

Either way, in order to do that were going to need sprite animating. It makes most sense to me to put this in a class somewhere, that way if we have other things other than the players that we want to animate, we’ll be able to just toss it to this class and, boom, were done. However animating a sprite sheet is a little more complicated that you’d first think. After all it’s just once giant image, with smaller images inside separated by an exact number of pixels. So that means were dealing with nothing but pixels and math. Basic math, but math none the less.

If you were to take the entire sheet, and make it into a grid to see how all the images are laid out, you probably wouldnt want to port that straight over to your game. Why? Well, generally sprite sheets have spaces between the character animations. This means if we port straight over, were going to end up with un-even spaces on all the sides of our character, and we dont necessarily want a space that big, or even a space at all.

I’ll write a tutorial on the final class, but i might as well overview it now. Basically we need to create a rectangle, one that is the same size all the time, then we grab different parts of the large sprite using the rectangles X and Y coordinates. Generally animations will remain on the same line, unless its a really long animation then we would need to deal with line breaks. Since we do not want our character to have spaces around it, we need to make sure to calculate exactly how much of the character we want, and what the space is between that so we can add it to our X and Y each time we change the frame.

I know it doesnt make much sense right now, hopefully i will have a tutorial up soon so you can see how its working i just wanted to let you know what i plan on doing next. Keep your eyes open for that!

XNA Game Development

I just wanted to go ahead an update. Whenever I start something new, I instantly think about my blog. Don’t ask why, I just think it would be fun to keep track of what i’m doing, so here it is! Hopefully i will be able to write some tutorials on XNA, while I’m working though the class, that would be amazing.

In any event, i’m currently taking an XNA class at Neumont University, for our first assignment were suppose to be using 2D animation to create a simple game. A game i always thought was fun, was Bomberman, so a friend and I decided we were going to try and start making a bomberman clone, not sure on a name yet though.

Being as how i’ve just started i know next to nothing about the XNA framework so hopefully if i keep it updated here, i’ll help someone else on the road to figuring it out. If i can at least accomplish that I’ll be happy with myself.

Look for updates soon i hope to have some information about my bomberman clone soon.

Joining the workforce.

A couple months ago I put my resume on Monster, if anyone reading this has used monster you know thats a good, and a bad thing. In my case it really didn’t help at all, and I think I can see what happened to monster and what their true goal is, that could probably have a topic of it’s own.

In any event, my resume; on monster. The day after I posted the damn thing I got, 5 voice mails on my phone for people who wanted me to call them back or come interview because they all claimed to have positions that I would be interested in. Now don’t get me wrong there were a couple of places that were really nice, and if you fancy working for a consulting company, or help center, then great! Monster on. However, I was not looking for something like that; I wanted something that had meaning, and goals, something that when I created something great at work, it really helped the company become more efficient. I was sick of the “I’m just another coder” mentality.

Unfortunately what I found through monster is that generally the people who surf it looking for IT type people, are generally recruiters for consulting companies, or bigger companies that cannot give their IT deparment the personalization they need. Because we all know a happy IT department, is an efficient one. I just feel like Monster is way over commercialized, I’m sure they have some back end feature that employers get e-mails similar to the job search agent that shows you jobs it returned based on your skills. It’s just too commercial for me, and actually I only want certain people to see my resume, but its not like i can tell monster to only show me employers that aren’t just recruiting centers.

In any event, I got hired on with No More Mortgage out here in Orem, UT. It’s a lot of fun, and exactly what I was looking for. I should thank my friend Mike for leaving my name with them a while ago, and them for keeping it on hand and hiring me.

Oh and to finish, anyone looking for a job, good luck!

Well… at least I thought it was funny.

The other day while I was taking a lovely drive on my motorcycle, a heavier lady came screaming by me in her car. When I looked at the make and model I noticed it was a Honda Fit. Hahaha.

New Puppy!

I figured I would write a post about this, maybe I will write more about it later too as I go through life with my adorable Norwich Terrier, which I just go two days ago.

I figured it would be best to start with a picture! This is a picture of Baxter, he is a 2 month old Norwich Terrier which I got from a local place called Incredible Pets, who were very helpful by the way. So how did it begin? Well, I was looking for a puppy, and if any of you know my parents they have this… well… complete and utter hate for animals; so I knew there would be somewhat of a battle to get one. Seeing as how I still live at home and I already love smaller dogs, I was thinking any adorable dog in the Terrier group would probably fit just fine.

When I first started looking, I was really interested in the Wire Fox Terrier; I ended up finding one in all of Northern Utah, when I went to see her she was extremely active, biting, and out of control. This was a little too much for me, I have some fairly nice stuff in my room, and I don’t need a dog just running around tearing it apart, so I decided against the wire fox.

When I went to Incredible Pets, they had quite a few there, two of them actually caught my eye; the Norwich Terrier and the Carin Terrier. (Carin Terrier’s are the same dog as the one on the Wizard of Oz… The lady at the pet store really wanted me to know.) After reviewing their stats, and looking for the better dog, not to mention how damn irresistable he was, I decided to go with the Norwich Terrier.

In any event he is a handful but it’s a lot of fun. It’s nice to have something there to keep me busy when I have some down time from school. I spend about 30 minutes walking him or playing with him then its kennel time until he gets housebroken. It’s interesting to take on a responsibility like this, it’s different and challenging, not to mention a LOT of fun. Anyway, if you know me and want to come see him you’re more than welcome to. 

Last but not least, here is what they look like when they are older:

Thanks for reading!

Wade - 1 | Cell Phone Companies - 0

So after school i dropped by the local sprint store, if you read the last post you know why, and they promptly took care of me. Which was amazing in itself…

After i spoke with the clerk she walked back to the repair window to see if my phone was there, and upon arriving back at her station she had a brand new Treo as well as my old cell phone. Turns out they don’t carry my cell phone anymore so I’m eligible for one of equal or better quality. So when it was all said and done i left the sprint store with a bran new cell phone, one that is better than my previous one. Thanks sprint for working in my favor… for once. Hopefully it wont happen again cause now i got my one freebie, huh?

It’s just one of those things…

Let’s have a little chat about cell phone companies shall we? Cell phone companies SUCK; they’re just one of those things that everyone hates, but you cant live without them. I’m sure if you’re like me whenever you deal with cell phones, plans, companies, or whatever; you feel like your totally being violated and ripped off. Well, don’t feel bad because its a normal feeling in the cell phone industry… Let me elaborate:

Last night my cell phone broke, it fell from my hands onto the floor, and being as I have a pocket PC the majority of the cell phone is the screen. During it’s fall it hit the corner of something and sent a nice little crack across the entire screen. Today i went to get it exchanged, i always try to buy those lovely insurance plans that the cell phone companies offer you, even though its probably all part of their plan to steal all my money anyway.

When i arrived at the local sprint store, it wasn’t too busy, i was pretty amazed. They always have this protocol that they have to go through, which is fine, except that i own a company and every minute I’m without a cell phone is another minute I’m disconnected from my main source of income, and any clients that might want to chit-chat… I digress, they told me that they want to see if they can repair it, and that it would be about 30 minutes, since i was late for class i didn’t stay. I already know what they’re going to tell me when i go back today: “Sorry, we can’t repair it. Unfortunately we don’t have any phones of your model in stock, so we’ll have to ship one to you in 2-3 weeks.” Wow, thanks, thats NO help at all. Maybe i can convince them to overnight it or something.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, cell phone companies are pretty full of crap. I bet it only takes 10 bucks to make a cell phone, that we pay 300 dollars for, not to mention their plans are extremely overpriced, and then at one point or another you’re killed be overages. You know what the best part is though? Cell phones are great, and we all love them. So bitching aside, can’t afford to live with them, can’t afford to live without them.

Business is business…

Just a little update, I’ve started my own company. I figured that people who read, if anyone, would care to know. The company name is Defiance Interactive, and its a application design and development company. If you, or anyone that you know needs some applications developed don’t hesitate to let me know!

As far as other things, school is going well, I’m ready to be done i have about two more quarters, and I’ll be out of here and ready to focus on my own stuff! I’ll try to get on here a little more and keep everything updated, as for now, see you guys later!