Day 4 : 2D game

For those that don't know I am currently in the process of creating a 2D game which I will add to my website GamerCity.co.uk for download when I am finished. This 2D game will be programmed in C# and XNA and shouldn't take longer than a week or two to finish.

Throughout the process of programming the game I will be giving daily updates as to how the game is coming along and what things I am going to add and other things like that!

So today I am working on adding placeholder sprites. "What?!" you say? Well I managed to find an artist that is willing to work for nothing in order to create decent looking art work for my game. This will hopefully come to fruition in the next couple of days and hopefully I will have some nice art to add to my game. I think the art will definitely add to the game as a whole but right now it isn't very fun to play. Although I have had some ideas.

Firstly I will make it a sort of boss type level found in games like devil may cry. For instance I will make it so that after the boss reaches 25% health I will have some sort of flying bat fly down and try to attack you. I will have it so that it is a sort of quick fire click fire. Then you have to click on the bats before they reach you. Hopefully this will bring a bit of fun to the game.

So today I have added a couple of things like

A sprite which travels across the screen to hit the enemy.  AKA a fireball
I have also added sprites which represent the player and the enemy
Also I added a timer function so that if you press the H button you can rejuvenate some health at the cost of some Magic Power.

More updates tomorrow

2D Side Scroller

Today I managed to get quite a few things up and running with little trouble. I thought I would give you a quick preview of what the game looks like after the first day in development.

As you can see programmer art leaves a lot to be desired. But I am happy as I have gotten the viewport set up as well as health. I am going to have the enemies stats in the top right of the UI. and all the rest at the bottom. The bottom right will play host to the backpack to which I have no idea as to how I will get that implemented.

I haven't got round to getting a decent sprite for my character, nor my enemy character. I will also need to get a couple of sprites for attacks such as fireballs and arrows. Close quarter combat will have to wait until I learn animation and how to use character sprite sheets.

Any way time to have my sleep so that I can continue to work on my latest game tomorrow.

Remember to become a follower so that you can track how my game is coming along!

XNA side scroller

Ok guys so I am going to try my hand at creating a RPG XNA side scroller. This will hopefully be good fun as I really want to try my hand at 2D games. I have a few Ideas in the pipeline but this game will be my number one priority.

My main ideas for the game will come from other 2D rpg's for instance I have had a wee look at the RPG that XNA creators website gives you. This is a complete game so if I get stuck I can easily just check out how they did it.

Anyway I am currently looking for a good sprite that will be used for testing. As well as a good background for my game.

I haven't quite decided whether I will try a pokemon-ish type top down scroller. Or just a classic side scroller. I think side scroller would be best at the moment as a full top down scroller would be a big drain on my resources.

Todays tasks:

Get a decent sprite
get a decent background
program in movement for sprite chosen
find enemy sprite
work on Human computer interface( get a main menu, in game menu)

Also I need to get the basic lay down for the game interface. This will have things like health and backpack information

Anyway I need to get working. Lots to do!

Im back

So recently a lot of things have been happening which has meant I have not had a lot of time and effort to put into game programming, But now that has changed. I still have to focus on my school work, but I can find time to program games again. I miss the feeling of joy when you realize that you have solved a problem and that when you complete your game you have achieved something.

Its gonna be different this time though. I am going to use purely C# and XNA and I will work on larger and larger 2D games to begin with. This will mean that I can easily put the finished product onto my website and I can move onto 3D quite easily when the time comes.

I just hope that I will be able to create the 2D games that I have in mind quickly so that people will come to my site and play these games because they enjoy them.