Crappy Coding

Farewell XNA

Dave — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:13:02 +0000

XNA remains one of the most beautifully well-designed APIs I’ve experienced in my many years of coding. Sadly, it seems like it’s being left behind by Microsoft in the rush toward newer and shinier things. I’m sure it’ll be around for awhile yet in one form or another, but it’s time for me to move [...]

Animation With Timers

Dave — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 22:31:39 +0000

Last time I talked about using timers for scheduling events by simply keeping track of a time limit and how much time elapsed. Another good use for timers is performing some action over time, such as modifying alpha to fade an object in or out, or sliding an object from one location to another. Let’s [...]

Make Your Time!

Dave — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 01:43:15 +0000

It’s going on seven months since my last post, which is kind of pathetic. When finishing a large project, like the WP7 port of Guardian, my brain tends to shut down for awhile for recharging. That, on top of starting a new job back in November, lead to a much longer blogging hiatus than intended. [...]

Guardian is Certified, Mostly

Dave — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 02:25:31 +0000

It appears that Guardian made it through the WP7 certification testing. It's now ready to signing, which in theory means it'll be in the marketplace within a few hours. I'll try to get a final video posted within the next day or so.

WP7 Analytics

Dave — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:50:19 +0000

Ben Kane has a great walkthrough for setting up Preemptive's (currently) free WP7 analytics. If yours isn't working, this is the place to start: http://benkane.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/howto-track-sales-and-downloads-with-xna-and-windows-phone-7-using-dotfuscator-and-runtime-intellience/ My problem was forgetting to add ID_CAP_NETWORKING to the manifest.

Guardian Menus

Dave — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 04:45:41 +0000

Spruced up the menus quite a bit with some floaty asteroids instead of just the raw text. Looks much nicer I think. The todo list is pretty much empty now. Mostly some final balancing and play testing left to go, and some art work for the various icons and other app store images. If all goes well over the next couple of days it'll be complete and ready to test when I hopefully get my hardware on Monday.

User Interface for Guardian High Scores and Challenges

Dave — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:05:14 +0000

Here is my attempt at using XNA to duplicate some of the UI functionality on WP7. Well, not really duplicate so much as “create a passing resemblance to”. The menu is pretty boring. I’ve been trying to come up with a good idea to make it interesting, and think I finally have something that will [...]

My name is Crappy Coding Guy, and I use Texture2D.GetData

Dave — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 15:48:52 +0000

In a previous post about texture modification, I mentioned the evils of transferring data from the GPU to the CPU, and then presented an example showing one way to avoid doing it. The post wasn't really about deformable 2D terrain or collision detection, but was intended to help newer game programmers open up a new way of thinking when it comes to using the GPU to accomplish tasks. Since that post, and the one showing a video of my WP7 game, I've received a couple of questions about how I do the collision detection in Guardian, which would seem to require the use of Texture2D.GetData.

Guardian WP7 Bosses

Dave — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 17:44:36 +0000

Added some tough "boss" asteroids. This one just has a single kill point so it's relatively simple. Later waves will require destroying multiple targets for the kill. Still need to add a destruction sequence when it's destroyed, rather than just fading away like it currently does.

WP7 Planet Defender Progress Video

Dave — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 03:19:07 +0000

I’ve been working on a Windows Phone 7 port of Guardian and finally have something to show for it. All of the systems are in place now, just need to do a lot of tuning and game play tweaking. Of course, at this point I have no idea how it’s going to perform on an [...]