XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide

XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide - Visual Basic Edition

By : Kurt Jaegers

Buy this Book

XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide - Visual Basic Edition

By: Kurt Jaegers

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

XNA Game Studio enables hobbyists and independent game developers to easily create video games, and now gives that power to Visual Basic developers. XNA lets you bring your creations to life on Windows, the Xbox 360 and the Windows Phone platforms. The latest release of XNA has added support to Visual Basic and therefore, Visual Basic developers now have the power to give life to their creativity with XNA.This book covers both the concepts and the implementations necessary to get you started on bringing your own creations to life with XNA. It presents four different games, including a puzzler, space shooter, multi-axis shoot 'em up, and a jump-and-run platformer. Each game introduces new concepts and techniques to build a solid foundation for your own ideas and creativity.This book details the creation of four games, all in different styles, from start to finish using Visual Basic and the Microsoft XNA framework. Beginning with the basics of drawing images to the screen, the book then incrementally introduces sprite animation, particles, sound effects, tile-based maps, and path finding. It then explores combining XNA with Windows Forms to build an interactive map editor, and builds a platform-style game using the editor-generated maps. Finally, the book covers the considerations necessary for deploying your games to the Xbox 360 platform.By the end of the book, you will have a solid foundation of game development concepts and techniques as well as working sample games to extend and innovate upon. You will have the knowledge necessary to create games that you can complete without an army of fellow game developers at your back.

XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example – Visual Basic Edition Beginner's Guide

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Introducing XNA Game Studio

Overview of the games

System requirements

Installing XNA Game Studio

Time for action – installing XNA Game Studio

Building your first game

Time for action – creating a new Windows game project

Time for action – adding variables to the class declaration area

Time for action – customizing the Initialize() method

Time for action – creating the squareTexture

Time for action – coding Update() for SquareChase

Time for action – draw SquareChase!

Time for action – play SquareChase!

Summary

Flood Control – Underwater Puzzling

Designing a puzzle game

Time for action – setting up the Flood Control project

Introducing the Content Pipeline

Time for action – reading textures into memory

Sprites and sprite sheets

Classes used in Flood Control

The GamePiece class

Time for action – build a GamePiece class - declarations

Time for action – building a GamePiece class – constructors

Time for action – GamePiece class methods – part 1 – updating

Time for action – GamePiece class methods – part 2 – rotation

Time for action – GamePiece class methods – part 3 – connection methods

Time for action – GamePiece class methods – part 4 – GetSourceRect

The GameBoard class

Time for action – creating the GameBoard.cs class

Time for action – initializing the game board

Time for action – manipulating the GameBoard

Time for action – filling in the gaps

Time for action – generating new pieces

Time for action – water in the pipes

Time for action – making the connection

Building the game

Time for action – Game1 declarations

Time for action – updating the Initialize() method

Time for action – drawing the screen – the title screen

Time for action – drawing the screen – the play screen

Time for action – scores and scoring chains

Time for action – handling mouse input

Time for action – letting the player play

Play the game

Summary

Flood Control – Smoothing Out the Rough Edges

Animated pieces

Time for action – rotating pieces

Time for action – falling pieces

Time for action – fading pieces

Time for action – updating GameBoard to support animated pieces

Time for action – generating fading pieces

Time for action – generating falling pieces

Time for action – modify Game1 to generate rotating pieces

Time for action – updating Game1 to update animated pieces

Time for action – update Game1 to draw animated pieces

SpriteFonts

Time for action – add SpriteFonts to Game1

Time for action – drawing the score

Time for action – creating the ScoreZoom class

Time for action – updating and displaying ScoreZooms

Time for action – game over

The flood

Time for action – tracking the flood

Time for action – displaying the flood

Time for action – adding difficulty levels

Summary

Asteroid Belt Assault – Lost in Space

Creating the project

Time for action – creating the Asteroid Belt Assault project

Another definition for sprite

Time for action – declarations for the Sprite class

Time for action – Sprite constructor

Time for action – basic Sprite properties

Time for action – animation and drawing properties

Time for action – supporting collision detection

Time for action – adding animation frames

Time for action – updating the Sprite

Time for action – drawing the Sprite

A Sprite-based star field

Time for action – creating the StarField class

Time for action – updating and drawing the StarField

Time for action – viewing the StarField in action

Animated sprites – asteroids

Time for action – building the AsteroidManager class

Time for action – positioning the asteroids

Time for action – checking the asteroid's position

Time for action – updating and drawing Asteroids

Time for action – bouncing Asteroids – part 1

Time for action – bouncing Asteroids – part 2

Player and enemy shots

Time for action – adding the ShotManager class

Time for action – firing shots

Time for action – updating and drawing shots

Adding the player

Time for action – creating the PlayerManager class

Time for action – handling user input

Time for action – updating and drawing the player's ship

Enemy ships

Time for action – creating the Enemy class

Time for action – waypoint management

Time for action – enemy update and draw

Time for action – creating the EnemyManager class

Time for action – setting up the EnemyManager class

Time for action – spawning enemies

Time for action – updating and drawing the EnemyManager

Summary

Asteroid Belt Assault – Special Effects

Explosion effects

Time for action – constructing the Particle class

Time for action – updating and drawing particles

Time for action – the ExplosionManager class

Time for action – creating explosions

Time for action – updating and drawing explosions

The collision manager

Time for action – creating the CollisionManager class

Time for action – player shot collisions

Time for action – player collisions

Time for action – using the CollisionManager class

Sound effects

Time for action – building a sound effects manager

Time for action – using the SoundManager class

The game structure

Time for action – structuring the game

Time for action – drawing the game structure

Summary

Robot Rampage – Multi-Axis Mayhem

Modules, modules, everywhere

Time for action – creating the Robot Rampage project

A world larger than the screen

Time for action – creating the Camera class

Time for action – building a new Sprite class

Time for action – viewing the Sprite and Camera classes in action

The game world – tile-based maps

Time for action – creating the TileMap module

Time for action – dealing with map squares

Time for action – handling tiles

Time for action – drawing the tile map

Time for action – random wall placement

Adding the player

Time for action – building the Player module

Time for action – handling input

Time for action – staying in bounds

Time for action – accounting for walls

Summary

Robot Rampage – Lots and Lots of Bullets

Visual effects

Time for action – the Particle class

Time for action – the EffectsManager module

Time for action – building explosions

Time for action – spark effects

Adding weaponry

Time for action – beginning the WeaponManager module

Time for action – new weapons

Time for action – shots colliding with tiles

Time for action – power-ups

Pathfinding

Time for action – the PathNode class

Time for action – beginning the implementation of A*

Time for action – finding the path

Time for action – adjacent squares

Time for action – updating the WeaponManager class

Player goals

Time for action – building a computer terminal

Time for action – the GoalManager module

Enemy robots

Time for action – building the Enemy class

Time for action – enemy AI methods

Time for action – the enemy manager

Time for action – destroying enemies

Game structure

Time for action – the GameManager module

Time for action – awarding points

Time for action – updating the Game1 class

Summary

Gemstone Hunter - Put on your Platform Shoes

Borrowing graphics

Time for action – creating projects

A more advanced tile engine

Time for action – the MapSquare class

Time for action – the Camera module

Time for action – the TileMap module – part 1

Time for action – the TileMap module – part 2

Time for action – the TileMap module – part 3

Time for action – adding the tile map to the game project

The map editor project

Time for action – creating the Level Editor project

Time for action – adding a form

Time for action – adding event handlers

Time for action – creating the menu bar

Time for action – tile selection controls

Time for action – scroll bars

Time for action – final controls

Time for action – updating Game1

Time for action – the Game1 Update method

Time for action – completing the editor – part 1

Time for action – fixing the scrolling delay

Time for action – implementing loading and saving

Time for action – handling the FormClosed event

Summary

Gemstone Hunter—Standing on your Own Two Pixels

Animation strips

Time for action – building the AnimationStrip class

Animated game objects

Time for action – building the GameObject class – part 1

Time for action – building the GameObject class – part 2

Time for action – building the GameObject class – part 3

The player

Time for action – creating the Player class

Time for action – overriding the Update() method – part 1

Time for action – overriding the Update() method – part 2

Time for action – repositioning the camera

Loading levels

Time for action – building the LevelManager module

Time for action – building the Gemstone class

Time for action – implementing score tracking

Enemies

Time for action – summoning the zombies

Time for action – interacting with zombies

Level transitions

Time for action – supporting map transitions

Processing other codes

Time for action – handling codes

Game structure

Time for action – implementing game states

Summary

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Time for action – filling in the gaps

Add the FillFromAbove() method to the GameBoard class.

Public Sub FillFromAbove(x As Integer, y As Integer)
  Dim rowLookup As Integer = y - 1

  Do While (rowLookup >= 0)
    If GetSquare(x, rowLookup) <> "Empty" Then
      SetSquare(x, y, GetSquare(x, rowLookup))
      SetSquare(x, rowLookup, "Empty")
      rowLookup = -1
    End If
    rowLookup -= 1
  Loop
End Sub

What just happened?

Given a square to fill, FillFromAbove() looks at the piece directly above to see if it is marked as Empty. If it is, the method will subtract one from rowLookup and start over until it reaches the top of the board. If no non-empty pieces are found when the top of the board is reached, the method does nothing and exits.

When a non-empty piece is found, it is copied to the destination square, and the copied piece is changed to an empty piece. The rowLookup variable is set to -1 to ensure that the loop does not continue to run.

Generating new pieces

We can create a single...

XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide - Visual Basic Edition

By : Kurt Jaegers

XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide - Visual Basic Edition

By: Kurt Jaegers

Overview of this book

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Current Title:

XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide - Visual Basic Edition

Time for action – filling in the gaps

What just happened?

Generating new pieces