Wednesday 20 June 2007

XNA Breakout

Well as i mentioned in my first post i've been working on a breakout clone in XNA. It's one of those games that gets made by most people when they start out in games development, either that or pong or tetris but it's simple and gives me a chance to play with XNA without geting into anything too complicated with regards to the game.

I've had two sessions with it now and im constantly surprised at how simple XNA seems to make things. I've probably spent around 4 hours and i've got a menu system, and a level of the game. As far as the level goes i have a ball bouncing around the play area and a paddle to keep it there that reacts to key presses. Adding 360 controller support would be very simple because of the way i'm handling input at the moment as well.

I reckon next time i should have some blocks on screen and a game to play so hopefully you'll have something to look at sooner rather than later.

Friday 15 June 2007

Google Gadgets

Well i've had some success with microsoft live gadgets and i was hoping to get an Inbox gadget working that could be put onto a Live blog or homepage and you would be able to check your inbox. I had some problems with the live API which i'm still hoping to work thorugh at some point but i did have some success with sending messages. I've also been looking at the google desktop SDK and i managed to get a gadget working that allows you to input your esendex account details and send a message from the google desktop sidebar. I need to tidy it up and make sure i'm handling all 3 "modes" it can be in, sidebar, expanded and desktop but i should have soemthing that can be downloaded and installed over the next couple of weeks!