Appologies...

I have been very busy today helping my roommate build her new computer, only had a few minutes here and there to myself so not much got done today. I will try and get back to things tomorrow.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Well, it is the last day in April and I think with the start of a new month I'm going to change things a little. I don't have infinite time and have to divide my attention between many things (my dogs have to eat, go for their walks and I have other things that must be done in a day.) but I'm not going to forget about you.

I have about 4 hours in a day that I can devote to the project. Writing the code takes a while and so does writing the tutorials about the code. One tutorial can take upto 6 hours.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

What I'm going to try...

Welcome back!

I think I'm going to try a new approach. I'm going to pick a simple program, like finding the factorial of a given number, finding if a number is prime or printing a message. Programs that will introduce different concepts.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Help getting you started...

Welcome back!

I'm trying to write some tutorials to help you learn C#. I don't want to go too fast though. If you have a topic that you would like covered feel free to send me an email or leave a comment here on the blog. I will try and help you as best I can.

I will try and have something up very soon. Unfortunately Tuesdays and Wednesdays are very busy for me so I might not get back to this today. Hopefully I will though so please come back after 9:00pm EST and if I managed to get some spare time I will add something to my website.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Hi there..

Welcome back!

I haven't forgotten about you. I'm doing some work on helping you get started with C#. I've been contemplating the best way to do it. I'm thinking that Console projects will be the best starting point. They are simpler to write than Windows projects.

So keep checking back I should have something up soon.

Just a side note, I'm currently redesigning my website. I'm going to divide it into three sections, one for the RPG, one for my business and one for my C# tutorials. Right now I'm working on CSS files. So far I like what I've come up with.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Expect the unexpected...

Welcome back!

I've got unexpected company so I don't think I will be able to make a post today.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

The next tutorial...

Welcome back.

Hopefully the next full tutorial will be posted on my website soon. In this tutorial I will talk a little more about variables and how to use them. If you will remember, I said that everything in C# is an object and there are some special objects like integers, floating point numbers and booleans. These are called primative data types. All other classes are made up of combinations of these data types. I will go into that more in the tutorial. So please be patient and look for the link soon.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

About classes...

Welcome back!

In C# classes are used quite often. They can help reduce the complixity of code by hiding data and methods. This behaviour is call encapsulation. By doing this it is easy to update the class and reuse it elsewhere. This is a key topic in object-oriented programming. Many years ago, and even sometimes today, programmers did not use classes. Updating a program could take hundreds of hours or more going through thousands of lines of code, sometimes hundereds of thousands, even millions. With object-oriented programming the use of objects has made the process a little easier. By using objects, if something needed to be updated, you just found the class and updated the class. Because you encapsulated your class, it didn't matter to the rest of the applicatoin how your class did what it did. All that mattered was it did what it said it did. Can you see the advantage?

I will post a new lesson on 25/04/2009.

Come back and look for it.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

So, sorry...

So sorry I missed my post yesterday. I was planning on posting in the evening but as things tend to do, they went astray. I will try and make a post later on today.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Your first C# program

I've finished writing the first tutorial, and 48 minutes before my deadline. It is in a PDF format so you will need a PDF reader like Adobe Reader.

This is where you can find the tutorial: Hello, World!

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

About the tutorial...

Welcome back!

Unfortunately I did not finish the tutorial last night. I'm going to start working on it now and try and have it ready to be posted by this evening (before 9:00pm EST) as I have a pretty busy day today. There never seems to be enough time in one day! I have a lot of projects on the go and time management can be difficult.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

What is next...

Sorry about today. I've been busy with the tutorial for my RPG in XNA today. It took more time than I thought it would. However I've made a decision about this blog. Instead of making HTML tutorials I will be making PDFs that can be downloaded to your computer. I will try and get a PDF up and going shortly.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

What's up for tomorrow

So, I've got my new computer up and running and everything I need installed on it. So, look for a good tutorial tomorrow. What I'm planning on is going over the structure a C# program. It might be a lot to digest but I will try and go over it and explain everything.

Check back tomorrow and look for my newest post.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Making posts...

I will only be able to make short posts for the next few days. I'm in the process of upgrading my computer from a PIII-667MHz to a P4-1.8GHz and don't have the time that I thought I would. But come back and I will try and get things up and running pretty soon.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

C# Basics

Why is object-oriented programming important in C#? It is because C# is a true object-oriented language. In C# everything is an object. Some objects are simple like integers, floats, doubles. Others are more complex like TcpClients and TcpListeners. You can also create your own objects that can be reused in other programs.

Some objects are considered types. These are fundamental objects that are used to build other objects.

Here is a short list of some of them:

• int represents an integer like 1847 or -12784
• float represents a floating point number like 1.29847 or 3.14159
• bool represents a Boolean value that can be true or false
• char represents a character like A or Z
• string hold many characters of data like "Hello, my name is Bob!"

Objects are stored in variables. For example, suppose you wanted to store an integer. You would declare it like this:

int myInteger;

I think that is enough for today. Check back tomorrow and I will try and have a tutorial about how you would go about creating a simple C# program.

-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Introduction to Object-Oriented Progamming

If you are completely new to programming then there is something you have to understand before you start programming C#. That is the idea of object-oriented programming (OOP). The idea of OOP works something like this. The world is made up of objects. A cat is an object. Your computer is an object. You are an object.

So what does that mean to a programmer? In your applications you break everything that you are trying to model into objects. Say you are trying to write a program that models cars. Think about a car. What are some of things that are common to all cars? Well, cars all have a manufacture like Ford, Buick, Toyota. Cars all have colors. Cars all have a number of gears. Cars can be standards or automatics. These are just a few of the common things about cars. So why is this useful? Well, if you wanted to model a car you need to understand the attributes of cars. Attributes are used to differentiate objects.

Cars also have behaviours. For example you can turn on or off the ignition. You can change gears. You can change speeds. You can steer. Why is that important? When modelling an object you will want the object to perform different actions. These actions are called methods.

So how would you go about implementing this in your programs? You would use what is called a class. A class is used to define the attributes and methods of an object. You can think of a class like a template. When you need a new object you use a class to make the object.

That is a lot to take in so that is all I will be writing about today. Tomorrow I will show you how you would go about creating a class.


-----------------------------
Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Getting started with C#

So, you want to learn C#. It is a good programming language to learn for just about anybody. I will try to guide you through the process. If you are not fortunate enough to own a full copy of Visual Studio, there is an alternative. There are Express Editions that Microsoft has developed. They are free to download and use.

In this tutorial series I will be using Visual C# 2008 Express Edition. There was a 2005 edition but it has been discontinued. Not all of the code will work in Visual C# 2005. It is always a good idea to use the latest version of software anyway.

Tomorrow I will help you get started with C#.

Proud member of Dream.In.Code

Tutorials on C#

I will try and a new tutorial on C# every other day, starting tomorrow. I will be starting with the basics to help you learn C#. If you already know C# you might not learn much from these tutorials but sometimes reading somebody elses code may give you new insights.

My new blog...

Here is the address of my blog about my Role-Playing Game project in XNA.

Role-Playing Game Project http://xna-rpg.blogspot.com

Change in plans...

This is what I am going to do. I'm going to keep this blog going but only post short tutorials about C#. I'm going to create a new blog about the Role-Playing Game project in XNA. Once I've created the new blog I will post a link here to the blog.

Look for the new blog shortly and the first of my tutorials about C#.

Introduction to Tiling

Well, I'm not going to post the tutorial until the 13th. What I am going to post today is the basics of creating a map and you would draw the map.

For a simple tile map, the best thing you can do is make an array of integers to the index of like this:

int[,] map = new int[,]
{
    {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, },
    {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, },
    {1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, },
    {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, },
    {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, },
    {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, },
};

You can think of the 0's representint the first tile that is say a grass tile, 1's represent the second tile that is say a road tile. , the 2's would represent another tile, and so on.

static int tileWidth = 32;
static int tileHeigh = 32;

It would be a good idea to create two variables to hold the height and width of the tiles you are going to use like this:

Before you can draw something you would have to load the Textures in the LoadContent method. I'm not going to go into that, this is just a quick introduction (because I still haven't found tiles I like). But I will assume that there is a list of tiles that was loaded in the LoadContent method. This is how the list was defined:

List<Texture2D> tileList = new List<Texture2D>();

So, how do you draw the map?

In XNA you will do that in the Draw method. You would do something like this:

int mapWidth = map.GetLength(1);
int mapHeight = map.GetLength(0);
int index;

spriteBatch.Begin();

for (int y = 0; y <>
{
    for (int x = 0; x <>
    {
        index = map[y, x];
        spriteBatch.Draw(tileList[index],
            new Rectangle(x * tileWidth,
                y * tileHeight,
                tileWidth,
                tileHeight),
            Color.White);
    }
}
spriteBatch.End();

Looking at the code you might be thing: He's got the x and y backwards! Truth is typically in math coordinates are writen (x, y) so are screen coordinates. For our tile engine to work we have to reverse them to (y, x).

The drawing code works this way. I get the size of the map that I will be drawing and define a variable to store the index of the texture in our list.

Then I call spriteBatch.Begin(). If you are going to draw Texture2Ds you have to put the
drawing code between a spriteBatch.Begin() and a spriteBatch.End().

I set up two for loops. I start at coordinate (0, 0). Then I go through the rows of the array and draw the tile using the spriteBatch.Draw method. There are many overloads to the Draw method. I just used the first one. The parameters are:

1. the texture to be drawn


2. the destination rectanlge on the screen


3. the tint color

The texture is easy. It is just the texture from the list indexed by the index from the tile map. The destination rectangle is what needs explaining. The destination rectangle is a rectangle whose x and y coordinate will go someting like this: (0, 0), (32, 0), (64, 0), (96, 0), ... for the first row and (0, 0), (0, 32), (0, 64), (0, 96), ... for the first column.

The second row would go like this (32, 0), (32, 32), (32, 64), (32, 96), ...

The second column would go like this (32, 0), (32, 32,), (32, 64), (32, 96)...

You will see better when I manage to get the tutorial for the tile engine working.

The tint color allows you to tint your textures. Typically you don't want any tint so you put in Color.White. That is the basics of how tile works. There are a few more concepts to be tied in. Such as preventing the map from scrolling off the screen, only drawing the portion of that map that is visible and scrolling the map in general.

What's up...

Well, I have been very busy the past few days. I'm trying to find some nice textures to use for the tile demonstration, so far I have not had very much luck. The tile program is done though and I am trying to write it up. I might download the Role-Playing Game starter kit from the XNA Creators Club and use some of those tiles. I don't think they can be distributed with the finished game though. I have found some nice ones for isometric tiling but I don't want to get into that.

Look for the tutorial maybe on the 11th or the 13th at the latest. I am not going to be doing anything on the 12th as it is Easter.

Introduction to XNA 3.0

XNA Game Studio 3.0 is a Framework offered by Microsoft for creating games with C#. With it you can create Windows games, XBOX 360 games and games for Zune. I don't have an XBOX 360 or a Zune so I really have no idea about those platforms.

For Windows games you must meet the minimum requirements for Visual C# 2008 Express Edition and you must have a graphics card that supports Pixel Shader 1.1 or better. Most modern ATI and nVidia graphics cards support Pixel Shader 1.1 or better. If you do not have a card that supports Pixel Shader 1.1 you really can not program in XNA.

In XNA you have the Content Pipeline. It is used to import a wide variety of content to your project. For the purposes of what I will be doing all you have to worry about is Texture2D, which will be used for tiling and sprites and sound files. Eventually there will be some XML files but I am going to make custom importers, processors and exporters to compile them into .XNB files. Otherwise the XML files could be edited by others playing your game and they can change the content of your game.

XNA has two methods that are called often. They are the Draw and Update methods. In the Update method you process thing like input, collisions, moving objects, etc. In the Draw method you draw your scene. The rate at which they are called can be changed programmatically.

Tomorrow, or the next day, I plan on posting a tutorial on how to do basic tiling. So look for that in the next do or so.

Really good news!

I just got the adapter for my notebook! I should be able to start posting some actual game code soon. So look for new tutorials with more coding using XNA!

Next tutorial on RPG

Welcome back.

Today I will be posting a new tutorial on the Role-Playing game. In this tutorial I talk about how you could go about implementing the different modes of play in the game in such a way that you can easily edit and change the modes with out going into your code and manually changing them. Like I said when I first started these tutorials, I want to try and make the game skinable so all you have to do to make a new game is edit the data files. Hopefully this will work out.

Role-Playing Game Tutorial 2

What is next...

I am working on writing the second tutorial about making a role-playing game in XNA 3.0. In this one I will be talking about some of the technical details of the game. Some of the features that I want to implement and how I am going to implement them. I also decided to remove the AdSence from the tutorial, after all you are interested in programming not ads and I want to try and keep you in mind when writing these tutorials. You have also noticed that I changed the blog template. I hope it is a little easier to use.

First tutorial on Role-Playing game

Well, I finished the tutorial on creating an editor for making a Role-Playing game using XNA 3.0. It is a little long. If you just want to download the code and look at it, that is fine. If you have downloaded the code and don't understand something or you want to read the tutorial to see why I did something the way I did that is fine too. I will place two links that you can travel to, one for the tutorial and one for the project. Look back tomorrow and I will probably have another post.

Role-Playing Game Tutorial 1

Role-Playing Game Project

The NPC editor

Hi again and welcome back.

I have been working hard on the editor and the tutorial on writing the editor. It is almost done and it should be posted very soon, maybe even tonight. In the editor I have elected to use XML Serialization instead of coding it by hand. I haven't yet added error checking when loading in XML files. I just want to get an editor working so you can start working on creating the different NPCs and monsters for the game. Which in itself can be fun.

It will be a while for the part for my notebook (up to three weeks) so I won't be able to do any XNA stuff. I will try to work on the design aspect until the part comes in. I know a lot of people just want to throw code at a problem but I am a firm believer in planning. I find that if you have a good plan for what you want to accomplish it is easier to work out what you need to do to accomplish your goals. I will also try and talk about some of the XNA specifcs that I am planning on using.

So tomorrow I will try and post some more about how the game will work in more detail. One thing that I am thinking about is having different difficulty levels. An easy mode, normal mode and hard mode. Easy mode characters will level up faster than normal mode characters but they will not get as many points to distribute between their attributes and skills. In hard mode it will take more experience to level up than normal characters but the character will get more points toward their skills and attributes.

Delays, delays, delays...

It looks like I will have to order the AC adapter from HP directly. That is going to take up to 7 business days to get it. So, what I am going to do is this. I am going to work on an editor for creating NPCs and monsters using Visual C# Express 2005 (only because that is what is on this computer.) You should be able to upgrade it 2008 with no problems though. It will output a XML file that will be added to the game using a content importer, processor and exporter. So today/tomorrow I will decide what is to be included in the NPC/monster classes. Things such as Experience value, gold drop range, spawn rate, etc. The class will be imported into the game later so keep it around. Sorry about the delays.

Role-playing game specifications

Here is a run down on the design elements of the role-playing game engine that I will be developing.

First off it will be a single character game(I might expand it so that others may join your party.) It will be a skill based game instead of a class based game. In that way the player will be able to have more control over their character and they can choose how their character will develop. The character (and all other NPCs and creatures) will have six abilities. They will be Strength, Stamina, Agility, Speed, Intellect and Luck. Strength will help measure how much damage a character can do. Stamina will help determine how much damage a character can take. Agility will help in deteriming attack success and evasion. Speed will help a character strike first in combat. Intellect will determine the power of spells the character can cast. Luck will measure the ability of the character to have critical hits. I'm still working on the skills that a character will be able to learn.

The game will have a simple inventory system. Equipment will require certain levels of ability. For example a character with a low Strength will not be able to wear heavy armor and a character with low Intellect will not be able to learn sophisticated spells.

There will be three types of maps for the player to explore but they will all use the same tile engine to be displayed. The first is the adventure map where the player will be able to travel between towns and dungeons. Towns will have buildings the player can enter to buy equipment, rest, find quests, etc. Dungeons will be where the character will fight monsters. They will all behave relatively the same.

Combat will take place on a seperate screen. It will be a simple turn-based combat system. There will be an intiative roll that will be modified by Speed. The one with the highest intiative will go fisrt.

There will be a quest system where you will be able to find quests to perform. The quest system will be done using XML. It will use a content processor, importer and exporter so that the quests will be compiled into an XNB file.

I'm leaving right now to see about an adapter for my laptop. Hopefully they will have one and I will be able to start the tutorial on the tile engine. So check back soon and hopefully the tutorial will be up shortly.

When it rains it pours...

Just when I thougt everything had been worked out I have another problem with my computer. I need to replace the AC adapter for my notebook. It will not be until Monday or Tuesday. So tomorrow I will post a sort of design document about what the role-playing game will be like and hopefully I will be able to get the adapter quickly. The store should have them in stock and I can get back to the tutorials.

The next tutorial

I am hoping that the next tutorial will be ready Sunday. But until then I want to make a mini-post.

I find the documentation on how to check if a key has been pressed and released a little confusing. Here is a simple way to do it. You need to save the old state of the keyboard and compare it to the current state of the keyboard. I believe what they are checking is if the current state of the keyboard the key is down and the last state of the keyboard is up. I think that it works better if the current state of the keyboard is up and the last state of the keyboard is down.

So, create an XNA game. In the Game1.cs file add a variable at the top of the class to hold the old state of the keyboard and a variable to hold a color:

KeyboardState oldState;
Color bgColor = Color.White;

Now in the Update method add a call to a new method:

CheckKeyboard();

Now, write the CheckKeyboard method as follows:

private void CheckKeyboard()
{
  KeyboardState currentState = Keyboard.GetState();

  if (currentState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space))
    {
      if (oldState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space))
      {
        bgColor = new Color((byte)~bgColor.R,
          (byte)~bgColor.G,
          (byte)~bgColor.B);
      }
    }

    oldState = currentState;
}

Now just replace the Color.CornflowerBlue in the Clear call to bgColor in the Draw method. When you run the program the screen should switch between black and white when you press the Space key and let it go.

Give it a try and see how it works. I am not posting the project for this simple tutorial.

So, so sorry

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while but life has a way of changing your plans. I don't have the time that I thought I would have and I did have some technical difficulties for the past little while. With that said I have decided to change things a little. I know I said that I wanted to make tutorials that people with less capable hardware could do. Everything that I want to do is incredibly complex and each little step needs tremendous explanation. So I have made a new decision. I am going to make posts to help you write your own skinnable role-playing game using Visual C# Express Edition 2008 and XNA Game Studio 3.0. I know that there is the role-playing game starter kit on creators.xna.com that you can follow and I think it is a good starter kit and well worth exploring. I will be trying a slightly different approach though. You are welcome to use any of the code that I post to create your own game. All that I ask is that if you publish your game you send me an email and tell me that you are going to and that you put my name in the credits.

This will be a 2D game with a scrolling map that you can have as many layers as you want and as many maps as you want. The quests will be fully customisable as well as the characters in the game. I will also be putting in utilities that will help you create quests, maps, items, etc. I want to try and do two or three posts each week to try and help you get started. Just remember, I am not an artist so the graphics will not be the best but there are many places on the Internet where you can find good quality graphics.

So look for the first post in a few days. It will be about creating a simple tile engine that will be at the heart of the game.