I am currently programming a very simple 2d game in C# with XNA.
I was wondering how to implement a console-type interface in a game or graphical software like there is in Skyrim or Counter-strike or some many more games?
These "consoles" can allow you through various command to change many parameters directly in-game.
I find this very interesting for debugging purposes and I was hoping to implement something similar in my program. Is there a particular way to achieve this?
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/ might be able to help. As far as I know, XNA does not offer any kind of pre-made dev console tool or class.
The simplest way to do this is just to throw a few sprites up on the screen - a black box, and some lines of white text. XNA already has methods for drawing strings of text onto the screen in whatever color and font you want. Throw in some code to detect keypresses and construct a string as it's typed.
The slightly harder part is parsing and executing the user's command. Taking a look at old adventure game text parsers might be relevant.
As for how to actually modify the various parameters of the code, you've just got to include the necessary getters and setters for your various properties, and have your text parser call the right methods.
Related
I am just a hobby programmer.. and even tough I know how, I don't want to mix windows forms and XNA for my level editor.
Has anyone done this before? Are there any examples around how to create "Windows like" controls for XNA, including events like mouse over, click and double-click and even accept keyboard input(if possible using language specific keyboard input)?
Below you find the basic layout of my editor but it needs so much more.
Yeah.
I'm now creating something like that.
See my project on Bitbucket.
I'm making own lib and voxel engine for Minecraft-like game. Just for fun.
So, in GameHelper lib you can fing folders Input (keyboard and mouse input) and GUI (forms and controls with events). I will be happy if it helps you, but there is almost no comment :P
Examples of use you can find in the Player class in main project (see ProcessInput method).
If you need I can give you better examples :)
I'm learning 3D programming and I decided to make a really simple "engine" where you can just fly around the map, etc. Only basic rendering of walls.
So, I was thinking - how can I save the level and how can I edit it. I don't want to make also an editor for it, because it is only a learning project, and not an actual game. So, I was looking towards this level format: UDMF http://zdoom.org/wiki/Universal_Doom_Map_Format although it is for a completely different type of game, still, it does what I need. Specifies vertices, floor, ceiling positions, etc. So, basic 2.5D geometry, which could be easily interpreted into a 3D space, which is more than enough for my purposes. There are also tons of editors (main reason).
BUT, I do realise that this is not really the best solution, and kind of workaround.
So, my question: Is there any "open" map format and "open" editors that I can use for my engine/game?
UPD: I'm working with C# and XNA, if that is important.
You could use XML (or something even simpler) that provides the location and other attributes of all the objects in the level. This would be the easiest solution (and have the benefit of containing whatever info you want but nothing else) but would not provide a level editor.
However, I know you want an editor (who wouldn't). Here is a very new, work-in-progress editor that looks interesting: 3D Scene Editor for XNA
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I just started learning C#, and I want to start making some small applications that are easy, but powerful.
Does anyone have any projects ideas? I'm interested to hear what you have in mind. Most of my experience is with HTML, CSS, JS, PHP.
Thanks
What do you like doing? I find games are always a cool place to start. If you like game-development you can do stuff like pong and pacman, but you can still have a lot of fun just making board and card games without much of the graphics complexity.
Here's some to get you started:
easier: tic-tac-toe, connect-4, go fish, black-jack, candyland, various solitaire games
medium: monopoly, poker, go, checkers, Yahtzee,
harder: scrabble, boggle, chess, Magic: The Gathering
here's different levels of difficulty:
design the logic. For example, make classes and methods to represent the board, properties, and the players in monopoly.
start making a gui. Make the game actually playable!
add AI and computer controlled players. Obviously AI is a huge subject, so there's many different ways you can go.
see here for a ton more projects on various topics
Since C# can be used in multiple types of applications, I'd try to do the same task in each. Perhaps a simple app that connects to a database and performs a lookup based on user input. Maybe connect to the "pubs" database that comes with the SQL Server samples.
You could do this as:
Winforms
ASP.NET WebForms
ASP.NET MVC
Dynamic Data
WPF
A Console app
using
Standard ADO.NET
LINQ
Entity Framework
You can even create a Windows Service that uses WCF, and a WinForms or ASP.NET front-end that consumes that service.
The idea is to get as many TYPES of apps under your belt as possible, so you can see how each is similar, and how each is the same. It will also help you get a better understanding of the "religious wars" over "which is best, Web Forms vs. MVC", etc. The ultimate answers to those "holy war" questions is invariably "what you're most comfortable with". There's nothing like having actual experience with the various options than to actually write something, so a nice, simple app in all of the available flavors would be a very good start.
And finally, since I listed so many things, here are some great starting points for everything I mentioned. There are videos, walk-throughs, etc to help you on your way.
http://www.asp.net/
http://windowsclient.net/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/default.aspx
How about a scientific calculator? It'll give you basic experience with GUI building and event handling, it shouldn't be too hard to knock one up and most of your focus will be on the language rather than complicated algorithms (which is what you want when you're just starting to pick up a language.)
I've always heard that a simple game like checkers is good place to start. It lets you handle things like:
Separation of Model from UI (possibly
with a view model).
Skinning of controls or custom controls
and is easy to understand and test.
You can try to create something likes todo list. You can to provide a lot of custom feature for it (save/open data files, import to other formats, UI)
A good place to start is something like a calendar/todo application.
You won't beat all the great programs already out there that solve this problem, but you can start with a very simple but functional program, and add a feature a day for the rest of your life without running out of things you can do.
This gives a lot of opportunities for using different UI elements, doing some custom graphics rendering, serialisation/streams/io, database access, and even synchronising with web-based calendars, etc. i.e. It's easy to find a use for many different .net technologies within an application like this, but you don't need to use them: you can write a basic "useful" application in only a few minutes and keep adding to its facilities to learn new technologies.
Personally, something I'd like right now is a program that performs batch file management operations...
Sorting files into subfolders based on date or name patterns;
Renaming files based on user-defined patterns (e.g. add or remove a prefix from all filenames)
Renaming files based on metadata, if you can figure out how to read it (e.g. mp3 ID3 tags)
Then again, maybe this is too advanced. Or boring. I always find it fun to write a game that is a clone of an existing game, but add a twist. Like 3D tic-tac-toe... bad example maybe, but you get the idea.
Write a graphical dice roller simulator. It should be one window and when I press the "Roll Dice" button it simulates a roll of the dice, showing me an image of how my dice landed. And bonus points if it makes a nice dice roll sound. Extra bonus points if you let me choose how many dice to roll.
I expect to see this by tomorrow afternoon.
Good luck.
Maybe a little more advanced, but I enjoyed creating a little cheating program for playing the bejeweled blitz game. I followed Mike Vallotton's blog to get me started. it's here
Another good one would be to count the number of words in a text file.
Add a little more functionality to it by searching for keywords and returning how many of those were found in the text.
Start with writing a simple program using Form Application using a button and when clicked: Open a MessageBox saying Hello World. Then going over to new stuff like a webbrowser and then obtaining the source code from the site
3 basic steps in learning c# by webbrowser development:
1. create a basic browser that opens up a hardcoded site (site preprogrammed, not decided by user)
2. user controlled, textbox that the user can decide webpage with.
3.pulling out source code and changing every picture on a page for example. That will combine HTML and C# and since you have experience with HTML, changing the client side of the WebPage is good practice.
Good Luck :) Look up ThenewBoston on youtube, really great tutorials on C#
got a couple ideas:
you can make a pretty basic calculator [console application or windows form application]
you can make a dice (give random number between 1-6 or a random number between two numbers selected by the user.
a magic 8 ball, this uses the dice in the previous dot point, but instead uses the randomised integer and prints out the corresponding string.
you can make a planner application (an app that saves data such as todo list on a .txt file, etc).
you can also make a desktop assistant (i made one recently), that recognises voice and speaks to the user. It can also obey simple commands.
if you want to go deeper, you can try coding using C# to create unity games, i had some experience in this, it is very easy (got pretty good at it after reading some documentation and watching some tutorials).
but if you are just starting out, then i recommend you to work your way upwards and start off with making something simple.
My goal is to gain a better understanding of the characteristics of C#, and become more comfortable creating simple apps. I am fairly competent with Flash (Actionscript 3), and found an old Tic-Tac-Toe game I'd written. I started wondering about porting this code into a C# application. Not knowing much about C#, I'm wondering how difficult the migration would be.
On the one hand, the underlying game logic is syntactically similar, and therefore would be easy to port.
However, as far as the graphics are concerned, I don't even know where to begin. So far, I've only exposed myself to Windows Forms and Console apps in C#.
I'm wondering if these Flash concepts have similar analogs in C#, or if the procedures and syntax are radically different:
Placing graphic elements on a stage
Rendering lines from start/end coordinates
Event listeners on movie clips
Swapping the image inside a graphic element (or, in my Flash version, nextFrame() in a movie clip)
You may want to try developping your little game using Silverlight. Silverlight applications, coded using C# and Xaml, are pretty similar in form with flash applications, and you should find everything you need without trouble.
So I suggest you download the Silverlight SDK (free) and give it a try.
Firstly, Flash is to WPF (close enough) as ActionScript is to C#.
The WPF/Silverlight model is much more similar to Flex that it is to Flash. Everything is added to the UI tree as a object, even lines.
Likewise, adding event handlers to controls (like a button click) can be done in the "code behind" (the code that lives with the view), but the recommendation is to use the MVVM pattern. If you are new to the concepts of separation of concerns and unit testing, feel free to start with the simpler "code behind" method.
While WPF and Silverlight are very similar, I'd recommend starting with Silverlight as the SDK and available samples are richer. You can easily move onto WPF later on (though porting an application from Silverlight to WPF is not automatic).
Swapping images, as you mentioned, would be done via "Visual States" in Silverlight (or possibly changing the image reference, which is more "hacky").
Have a look at the following links to get started:
Learn # Silverlight.net
Silverlight on MSDN
Shapes and Drawing (Silverlight)
If you're looking specifically to do games and the like, you may wish to look into the free XNA framework. However, there will be differences as Flash gives you far more ability to "set up" things beforehand and modify them.
Placing graphic elements on a stage
If you go the XNA route, you will be drawing sprites using the spritebatch, you tell them where and how to draw and that's where they will go
Rendering lines from start/end coordinates
In windows forms you can do this via a simple System.Drawing call, however if you wish to do this in XNA, you will either have to make a 1 pixel square and stretch/rotate it to what you want, or use 3d primitives (Though this will limit you to a 1 pixel line)
Event listeners on movie clips
Look into delegates, but there isn't really an equivalent for movie clips to my knowledge
Swapping the image inside a graphic element (or, in my Flash version, nextFrame() in a movie clip)
This is fairly simple, depending on what you mean. If you want to, say, animate a sprite. You can do this by moving the source rectangle or changing the texture of the spritesheet. If you mean the screen as a whole, this is mostly handled for you provided you use the spritebatch. In windows forms you'll have to do more of it yourself, but the base concepts are the same.
Overall it's not that bad, but if that doesn't sound appealing check out Silverlight. It's basically C# styled flash so you may find the transition easier.
Good luck and hope this helps.
NOTE: I am not exactly sure how to title or tag this question, so if you have any ideas, PLEASE help!
I'm currently envisioning a few possible projects that involve dynamically rendering something (whether it is a point, a line, text, or music notes on a staff, for hypothetical example), but, if I were to undertake these projects, I'm not really sure how to approach this design. What I'm curious about is sort of how programs like Word, or Geometer's Sketchpad, or Finale, create a blank "canvas" and render text, geometry, or music on it, respectively - how can this be done in C#, or in .NET, in general?
First of all, what is the best framework/platform to use: WinForms, WPF, something else? I'm open to many options, as I'm just trying to understand the different ways this can be done.
Next, how can I create such a "canvas" (if we go back to that metaphor) using the different frameworks you answered for part 1? And also, how can I render stuff onto it?
I hope my question isn't too confusing or n00bie. I just don't know how to approach such a prospect. Thanks!
UPDATE: I have now posted a follow-up question which is less broad. I have provided an hypothetical example of what I would like to accomplish. However, I will still accept an answer here, even though my question isn't fully answered.
WPF would probably suit your project well. I like the book Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, it covers most of the topics you're asking about.
You'll probably get better answers with a more focused question. The scope of your question is too large to be answered easily or concisely.
WPF makes it easier to refactor designs for such a project by easily moving shape drawing code between just drawing simple shapes and contents of controls. If you need the richness of custom controls, WPF allows a fairly smooth transition.
Most of the graphics can be defined in XAML which means you can export them from programs like Illustrator or anything that generates the standard SVG vector graphics, via an SVG-XAML converter.
I like WPF Unleashed and it has a nice discussion of 2D graphics and how to use the DrawingContext class for such a visual editor.
Do you know that there's an event called Paint? Everytime Windows OS needs to displays or repaint something on your form, this event is triggered. So, you create a Paint event handler, and everything is possible in that. For eg:
Word: you have a WordDocument data structure with the formatted tags and stuffs, you paint each character/ each word or each block of words one-by-one using a desired brush/paint and font. You might also wanna paint your background and stuff... If, for example the user change the font of 1 particular block, your WordDocument must change something to reflect that font change. And then you do an myForm.Invalidate() to repaint your form (and thus update your font). => Dynamically update your GUI.
Sketchpad: you need datastructures such as Line, Point, Triangle, etc. And then, each time OnPaint is triggered, you paint it dynamically. E.g: myGraphics.DrawLine(..), myGraphics.DrawCircle(..)
Similarly to Finale.
One thing you should do is to handle your data structure and drawing classes carefully, and instead of drawing everything in your OnPaint() method, you create several DrawMe(..) methods in your entity classes, and ask them to draw themselves. E.g: myCircle.DrawMe(..), myScore.DrawMe(..)
Hope that'll help,
Ben
There is no universal answer to your question - it is too generic.
Are you talking about dynamicly created controls, standard UI components (dropdowns, buttons)?
Is it vector graphics - like in drawings, or may be it is 2D image processing - or is it 3D?