Game Creation Program

Filed under: XNA

I think its time to write some sort of introduction to our main project. It’s a game creation program inspired by Game Maker’s simple user interface, and aimed to fill in the gap between Game Maker and ‘real programming’. Our aim is to make something almost as simple to use initially as Game Maker, but at the same time allow more advanced users the freedom to do what they want. Until we think of an actual name for it, its called Aziel. Here’s some info about it:


It’s based on Microsoft’s XNA Game Framework and C#. This means that you shouldn’t expect to be able to use it or anything created with it on linux or mac any time soon.
It is aimed at reasonably new computers. DirectX 9 and a graphics card that supports at least shader model 2 is required.
The above requirements mean that games created with it will have all the graphical eye candy you could imagine; distortion, post processing, color filters, normal mapping, you name it.
It is currently scripted in C# only. Python will be added in the near future as the primary scripting language, and later, perhaps other DLR languages such as ruby, lua, lisp, scheme.. etc.
It will be possible to extend most of its functionality to add features that we haven’t provided in the core libraries or change some existing behaviour. Extensions will be able to add new types of resources to the resource tree. These may be particle editors/systems, or webcam streams, or objects with special functionality, we’ll try to give as much freedom as possible to extensions.
It is designed with 2d games in mind, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from using all the power of XNA and drawing 3d objects if you want.
It is laid out somewhat similar to Game Maker, but with a few key differences. The main one is that it uses XNA to render the game assets and maps in the editor, this means that you’ll be able to get a preview of how the game will look like without having to launch it.


If you’re interested in taking a look at the current early progress and participating in testing or providing ideas and feedback, head over to the forum and download it. Understand that the progress is indeed early. Do not report bugs at this time. We know there are plenty of them!

[View with PicLens]

Tags: Aziel, C#, XNA

First glance at Kill Catalyst

Filed under: Projects, XNA

The idea for this game dates back to when I first started messing around with game maker, and I shall be explaining more about it in future posts. In a nutshell, its an overhead ‘tactical’ shooter with heavy emphasis on light as a gameplay element. Some enemies will lurk in the dark waiting for you to stray from the illuminated areas, others will set up a perimiter and have you lurking in the dark to get an advantage.

As I wrote earlier, I’ve chosen to go with a deferred rendering approach to handle the number of lights required for this idea. The above screenshot is the current lighting testbed, and its getting close to what I imagined the game to look like. The challenge is going to be to push as many dynamic shadow casting lights as possible. Given the overhead camera view I’m sure there are some speed-boosting constraints I can impose on how shadows are done, but I haven’t thought of anything yet.

PS: WT has put up a page for his ongoing art practice. As I understand it, the idea is to spend 90 minutes a day every day to draw pictures inspired by random ideas. Be sure to check it out, link is at the top.

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Tags: kill catalyst, Projects, XNA

Fast GPU color transforms with XNA

Filed under: XNA

Some time ago I came across a nice Siggraph paper on Using Lookup Tables to Accelerate Color Transformations and since then have been interested in seeing it at work.

The basic premise is that a 3d texture is used as a lookup table where the input 3d coords represent the input colour. A nice and simple fragment shader is then used to access this lookup texture and return the transformed color. Any number of any complexity operations can be stored in the lookup texture as long as you’re mapping the single input pixel (that is, no neighbours). Gamma correction, contrast, saturation, colorisation, levels, colour keying etc, are all possible in any combination at a fixed small cost.
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Tags: effects, shaders, XNA