Physics problem getting close!

After much battling I've finally gotten quite close to my goal for implementing these accursed physics.

Terrain collisions are working as well as I could possibly hope, and the Rope isn't doing too bad either. Below you'll find a video showing how the roping looks in action. As for collisions, I changed from the weird collision area XML definition, to a much simpler outward in cross, and it seems to work great (at least with my circle test sprite) We'll see how it pans out later in the cycle. =D 

2d Physics are hard.

Boy are they kicking my ass... I can get things working halfway for one piece and then the other piece fails in a cycle of doom. However, I have a plan and I'm going to implement it in the next few days. The internet is rich with resources and with their help I might be able to get this troubling piece accomplished.

More to come.

Random updates.

Well since GameSpy is out of the question I looked around a bit and found RakNet. Turns out it's also free for us indie devs as well. What's even better is that they've done most of the hard work for us. Included is the support, setup, and documentation for using Swig to wrap the C++ dll's up for use in .Net. So yay! Windows Networking support without having to roll everything from scratch!

On that note I have a small side project used as a testing bed for learning that piece, more on that later.

The main project is progressing, if slowly. Got tunnel shadows implemented with remarkably little work, and it looks pretty good too.

GameSpy Technology And XNA?

So recently I discovered that "GameSpy Technology" had opened up and is now free for us indie type devs.
So this begs the question, can we XNA developers make use of this techology for our windows projects and, if so, how many hoops would we have to jump through to get the C libraries working in our managed C#?

A thing to ponder on certainly. I plan to dig into this mystery here soon and will report back any progress.

Back in Business!

Heh, so I forgot it again. Shocker. This time however I plan to be more active as I'm actively working on CODING a game, rather than trying to design one (Which was the case with the aforementioned RPG project.)

So let's take a second to get things up to speed since he last post. First and foremost: I finished Alpha Blasters and have released it to the world! (Go! download it/rate it/buy it etc...). It took until December 1 to do it, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

Next, the RPG project has been shelved. Couple of reasons behind this include lack of time/interest from the team members, and XNA 4 being released and ruining my map code pretty severely (Hard to draw a map if I can't load the data anymore).

And finally, more good news; I have a new project currently in development and coming along nicely. It's not named yet, and all art is currently placeholder while I work on getting the pieces functional. The core concept is pulled from an old windows game with a fairly large cult following. You may have heard of it: Liero (If you haven't, GO GET IT NOW!).

Great progress has been made in the map system already, and it more or less works (needs some tweaking still, but it functions enough to move on to other pieces), The goal is to get it into DBP 2011. We should have enough time to have it ready for that, but we plan to finish even if we miss the deadline. Anyway, feast your eyes on these early screenshots.