Wow, it’s been months since my last update! Figured I better post a quick update on some of the things I’ve been working on for the last few months. I’ve been really busy between school, job, and this Dream Build Play entry. Whatever spare time I’ve had I’ve been tinkering away at getting this new XNA game up to snuff to submit to Dream Build Play with two other team mates. With less than a month left before the deadline it is going to be one hell of a tight schedule. In the next week or so going to probably hold some closed beta tests (since it is an online multiplayer game).
What is the game you ask? Well it’s Gunstyle. An original 2D multiplayer sidescroller. For those thinking “WTF that sounds familiar” you’d be right. If you’ve ever been over to our showcase site, www.enddream.com, you’ll see a version of Gunstyle for the PC available for download. That version was an early prototype of the game that was made in a different API and on a much older version of DirectX (in fact the game doesn’t even run correctly on Vista for me), and unfortunately isn’t supported any longer as this version will be replacing it. The current Gunstyle we are developing is using GarageGame’s new XNA engine, TorqueX. The overall concept is essentially the same, play as a team or alone and take on enemies in classic death match or capture the flag; but, a lot of the game mechanics have been improved, new weapons created, visuals have been greatly improved, and many other features to be added. So stay tuned, as in the next couple of weeks I’m sure we’ll have some more information and media to share 
.
This is the biggest project I’ve had in XNA yet, and so far I’m loving XNA…for the most part. The two biggest issues I have with XNA deal with the content pipeline and Audio (again). It may be from ignorance as I haven’t fiddled with all of the settings, but I don’t appreciate how XNA bloats all of the in-game assets to ridiculous file sizes. For example, I can take 16MB of png images for a game and XNA will increase that to around 270MB once built through the content pipeline. Our game is for PC only so we aren’t concerned with Xbox360 compatbility yet, but would like to keep it an option for the future. We’re using TorqueX, which uses the pipeline throughout it’s resource management layer, so it’s not as easy as turning ‘XNA content pipeline processor’ to ‘off’. With our time schedule I don’t have time to alter TX to allow for none-pipeline content, but after the contest I’m sure this’ll be high on the list of ‘things to do’ to see if we can decrease the physical space this game takes up on the hard drive without hurting load times too much.
The new 3D audio in 1.0 refresh of XNA is nice and we are employing those new features, but geez… only wav format?! In Wildboarders, the audio made up 80% if not more of the file size for the download because it had to be in wav. And it’s looking like it’ll be the same thing for this new game. May have to use a hybrid solution and see if we can use any .NET libraries for playing ogg files for background music and using the XACT just for normal sound FX.
Ok, I’m done venting on XNA. Other than those two issues (which I’m sure will be resolved soon), XNA is awesome. Right now, we’re all working to get the game to a state where it’s fully playable and robust enough to be deemed as an early beta. After the contest we’ll finally have some breather time. Soon after, we’ll buckle down on getting Gunstyle much more polished.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Hi Alex,
Can’t wait to see the new game.
How do you like TorqueX now that you’ve been using it for a while? Is it worth the learning curve it requires? Would you recommend it in place of pure XNA Game Studio Express?
June 11th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Hey Jeff,
TorqueX has been good so far. The time saved has been invaluable. When Gunstyle is released I’ll try to write a more detailed post on my experiences with TorqueX. But in short, yes I think it’s really worth the learning curve it requires. As for a replacement for pure XNA Game Studio Express, it depends on what you are using XNA for. If it’s a full game you are trying to develop then I think TorqueX can really help you create a game closer to your original vision, and do it in far less time (learning curve included). But if it’s some quick demo app or a ‘for fun throw-away’ prototype then pure XNA GSE might be better still before transitioning to a full blown game engine.
Pros so far:
1. The editor is superb for making levels, and should suit most of your needs. (It suited all of ours except one, which was visually creating convex polygons for level geometry).
2. The component system really makes TX flexible for whatever game engine architecture fits you (in our case a networked game with components that plugged into our network layer).
3. The level of visual fidelity you get from using TX’s 2D graphics engine is much higher than what we would have been able to achieve on this tight schedule and limited shader knowledge.
Cons so far:
1. Minor tweaks could be deal breakers if you don’t have TX source and TX doesn’t expose that functionality. If we didn’t have the TX source to modify for better networked play we would’ve been out of luck it seems :\ (phew).
2. GUI system is lack-luster for PC oriented games where the mouse is the primary input. I wrote a separate, pure XNA gui library to sit on top of TX for this reason.
June 12th, 2007 at 7:40 am
“(It suited all of ours except one, which was visually creating convex polygons for level geometry)”
This was one of the things that turned me off. I wanted to create Concave polygones in the editor that I could hook into my physics engine. I didn’t want to have to write a seperate app just for that.
Did you create a seperate polygon editor? Are you using Torque’s internal physics? If so, how is it?
June 12th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Oops, yes I meant concave.
But yes, I did write a separate app that allowed me to create them. Yea it was a pain, but in the end I think we were still better off than writing a complete editor from scratch just because of one lacking (and very important at that) function. The engine is a great tool, but I doubt any engine could take into account every possible use; yet, I feel the lacking functionality of creating general concave polygons is something that could be sorely missed and something many people could make use of (custom physics? animation paths?)
So now our workflow isn’t straight from TGBX to game but more like TGBX->custom poly tool->game. And no, we are not using Torque’s internal physics. We have our own (more basic) physics engine sitting on top of torqueX, which also allows us to collide against concave polys. I haven’t had much time to play with TX’s physics engine.
June 13th, 2007 at 12:24 am
ALEX hey its Dr. Giggles//MArCinKo//Drew i have been looking for gunstyle everywhere and I was wondering if you could help me out man havent seen you in forever man hope your doing well anyways jump on xfire i am Marcinko06 drop me a line we need to talk
June 15th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Hi Alex,
just came accorss this don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, a way to apply compression in xact. (i’ve not tried it myself yet).
http://blogs.msdn.com/mitchw/archive/2007/04/27/audio-compression-using-xact.aspx
June 17th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
No, I haven’t seen that! Thanks for the info Juxtadeus!