Since it's been so quiet in here, I've been thinking we could liven it up with some programmer challenges or something. Since XNA is freely available and easy to get started with, perhaps we can do some simple challenges with that. Thoughts?
Well I don't own a 360, so I suppose I'd be out of the XNA challenge. But I've been looking for an excuse to look into LUA lately, don't know if there's an idea for a challenge to do something that involves some very simple LUA. I really don't know much about it at all, but a good place to start if you haven't even heard about it is here: http://www.lua.org/about.html
I might be interested in the programmer challenge, but have never used XNA. What about a challenge where we can use any compiler and language we want? I think that would draw a larger crowd.
[QUOTE=poser] Some images using particles for a steam effect - really slows down the grapics card though - trying to work out why...
Steam 1
Steam 2
Steam 3
Found out why so slow - too many particles - 600 can just do with 100 and thicken them up / change cycle / speed. Quite quick now.[/QUOTE]
Are you using XNA poser? If you are, I am not sure if you can, but I would look into trying point sprites for fog particles. On my old 6800gts, I could get up to 500,000 point sprite particles in OpenGL, without it slowing down my application. But XNA is Microsoft, so I am betting they want you to use DirectX? And I don't know if that supports point sprites.
Hi Swiftless, yes I'm using point sprites or XNA's implementation through HLSL to create particle systems - depends on how far the particles are away and how big the images for them but I can do 10,000's but only if far away which was my misunderstanding. Also, I've discovered post process bloom lighting - please take a look at the newest shot the models look a lot better lit.
Droid on the run - particle weaponposer2007-06-13 07:22:54
So what are we going to make the challenge? I've been thinking of doing this as two tasks, one not-so-hard task and one hard task. Beginners can start with the not-so-hard task, and tackle the harder one when they finish, and more advanced programmers can go straight to the hard one. eg. Start with the puzzle game starter kit and for the not-so-hard task change the game mechanic to something more like bejeweled, and the hard task is to change it to tetris or something.
I agree, enough of this umming and ahhing crap.
Let's get this show on the road. I'll be chatting to Redwyre on the specifics, but what say we have this challenge starting on August, and ending 4th of November (same day as the ending of the modeller challenge)..
Hopefully I'll find a sponsor for this challenge.
Well, I've got another PyWeek coming up. There's a number of folk from Melbourne and interstate playing along now.
I've not been to this board recently as I finally landed myself a job programming OpenGL and Python a few months back and have thrown myself into that :)
[QUOTE=chameleon]"Make a text based adventure game ..."[/QUOTE]
This is a good idea. Text adventures are sorely under-represented these days.
There was some mention of using Lua. Ive used Lua briefly and found it has some nice ways of manipulating text, and is simple enough to learn quickly.
Otherwise, I would probably prefer Python. Or maybe C++, since there's Popcap for 2d and Ogre for 3d.
Perhaps we could all work to a common theme rather than a specific language of framework. That would make it accessible to everyone.
Or there could be a joint sumea challenge-pygame week.
Sounds pretty cool to me
Sounds pretty cool to me also, but can XNA be used on linux? as that's not very cool for me :\, I'd even prefer python, maybe use the Blender Game Engine?
Anyhows I usually use C/C++ and my own 3d game/graphics lib :).
edit: Hah, seems I'm rather late to reply, just realised this discussion is very old!
sounds ok to me, it means it would give me a real reason to download XNA and have a play with it. Till now i've been constintly saying "i'll DL it next week".