Comments for Nick Gravelyn

Comment on Know when to be lazy by Crowbar

Crowbar — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:04:00 +0000

Having been working on my own Platformer using XML and dreading the whole “I need to make a level editor now ” thing, Tiled looks to be a blessing. I shall be playing with this later tonight for sure.

Thanks!

Comment on Scaling retro sprites at build time by kriswd40.myopenid.com/

kriswd40.myopenid.com/ — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:22:28 +0000

I think I’m going to need to use this for my upcoming game… I was going to create everything at 320×180 and scale up with a matrix transformation, but (as you may already know), this causes the movement to be a bit jerky. I think your idea here will improve (fix) that… it will also be easier to think about the game in terms of 1280×720 screen resolution too.

Comment on Know when to be lazy by Nick

Nick — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:15:51 +0000

Oh yeah. Whoops.

Comment on Know when to be lazy by Tangeleno

Tangeleno — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:12:43 +0000

Thanks so much for posting this code, there is one small problem when it comes to the TmxProcessor in regards to adding the tile properties. The code doesn’t hit all the values in tileSet.TileProperties. TmxProcessor.cs lines 85-89;

// get any properties from the tile set
if (tileSet.TileProperties.ContainsKey(y + x))
{
tile.Properties = tileSet.TileProperties[y + x];
}

Should Be

// get any properties from the tile set
if (tileSet.TileProperties.ContainsKey((y * frameCountX) + x))
{
tile.Properties = tileSet.TileProperties[(y * frameCountX) + x];
}

Comment on Know when to be lazy by Stephen Belanger

Stephen Belanger — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:41:31 +0000

Yeah, I didn’t really put much work into the TMX loader. It was my first project with XNA and C# too, so I was still learning and I only spent a few hours on it.

It didn’t really need to be super optimized or anything for my uses.

Comment on Using GamerServicesDispatcher to fix up exception handling by John Brown

John Brown — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:16:58 +0000

Thanks for the prompt reply. I had already moved the Window.Handle in my code but it made not difference to the problem. I have just finished creating a simple game form and that is what I use on both Windows and Xbox. It’s not quite as neat as the Guide display, but it does the job. Although I am only ever going to distribute the game on the Xbox I might distribute the level editor on Windows so I like to keep the two code sets as similar as posible.

Thanks for the examples they have been very helpful.

Comment on Using GamerServicesDispatcher to fix up exception handling by Nick

Nick — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:00:39 +0000

That is odd. I fixed one bug in the code above which is that you should always set the WindowHandle in the new game. But it’s strange that this works fine on Xbox but not on Windows.

Personally though, I don’t worry about it. Since running on Windows I’m always under debugger, I can see when errors happen. Alternatively if you wanted to run off the debugger (or ship the game), you shouldn’t use gamer services as they aren’t in the XNA redist. In that case I would use System.Windows.Forms and display a message box instead. Or, for bonus points, make a nice, neat form that shows what happened with a button to email it to you or send it to your server.

Comment on Using GamerServicesDispatcher to fix up exception handling by John Brown

John Brown — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:22:58 +0000

I like this error handling series and I am very please I can get rid of my last component, by using the …Dispatcher instead BUT… you knew there would be a but.

I can’t get the Guide message to display in Windows. It works great on the Xbox.
What extra trick do I need to do to get it to work?

Many thanks

Comment on Know when to be lazy by Warspawn

Warspawn — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:22:39 +0000

Awesome! Thanks so much for this! I had seen the blog post and website before in my searches, but wasn’t quite as clever as you to take it to the next level (I’m still starting out with XNA development). Anyway, I think this is great, being able to easily use Tiled in projects saves a ton of time and work.

Comment on Making noise by ProtheonX

ProtheonX — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:50:48 +0000

I have been using Propellerhead’s Reason software for years to do my MIDI sequencing. It doesn’t allow for audio editing (unless you buy their other software Record) which I bet you used in Garage Band and Acid. If you feel up to it, Ableton Live is a really great piece of software with some great built in instruments.