Hello coders! This time here at StudioEvil we are working hard to provide first-class solutions for our new game! So let’s start with the level editor (codename: Shibuya)

In this first sprint i’ve worked on the integration between WPF and XNA. You know: there is a problem called airspace when you try to render different DirectX surface one above the other in the same window, and both these guys uses DirectX behind the scenes…

This is obviously ugly, and solution that suffers the airspace problem have a poor integration and support of all the great things that WPF can do for your GUI. To tell the truth, if you document yourself a little bit and you have a couple of hour of good work to spend on this you can achieve something very nice, it’s not so hard! In this post i’m going to provide you some usefull links, if you are trying to achieve the same result, and also i’ll demonstrate where i’m now.

Please keep in mind that is the result of the first sprint only (we are using SCRUM) this is not even a beta, and i’ve a dozen of other ideas to add to this now, but… hey! it already works great!

A couple of nice links for you…

A MUST-READ tutorial on DirectX/WPF integration

Interesting discussion between gentlements on WPF and XNA hacking

And now the trailer of ”Wpf loves Xna” in beautyful technicolor!

For G, it was like an intuition, a flash of images and shifting concepts coming from somewhere in my mind. But G it’s just a little game; intuition and the right amount of luck were enough to build a game experience that somewhat worked.
When we started the development of The Night of the Puppets, we knew we wanted to make a challenging project. But we lacked the experience to build such a larger project and ultimately we failed.
Failure is bad. Failure breaks motivation and the coesion of the team, and without a super-motivated team you can’t build games moonlighting. Also failure spawns fear and a fearful designer spawns crappy, soulless projects.
I’ve come to understand that creativity is somewhat an act of courage, you just have to be brave if you want to create something meaningful.

Now we have this new game concept. And it’s bold and challenging (and it’s still to early to talk about). But is this new game concept actually some good? Being brave does not mean blindly rushing forwards like we did before.
This time we have a plan: 1) Find an awesome idea (We’are almost there). 2) Have a consistent team organization and workflow (we’ve adopted an agile method and it’s working great).
3) Keep our minds healty, feed our intellects and skills with tasty informations and experiences 4) Wirte code / Do art. 5) Dont’ stop. 6) Win.

Gamasutra recently translated in english and interview with Jordan Mechner and Eric Chahi.
If you don’t know those two guys, they designed two of the greatest games of my childhood (and probably two of the greatest games ever), Prince of Persia and Another World.
There is a part of this interview that really helped me change the my perspective. Asked about where they take their inspiration for games, Jordan Mechner says:

“[...] A game should be about something, not just about other games“.

So, how do you start creating a new game? I’m really no great designer but … Find an expereince, find something you want to communicate. Dont’ start looking at other games, look elsewhere, be brave, and DO that game.

I can’t belive you are still following us!
I mean … This is amazing considering thie huge amount of nothing and bullshit we released during the last two years!

We’ve finally re-united the team and we are back to work.
Can’t really say anithing more than that, there are already too many useless posts on this website.

While you wait for us to post something tasty, we have a couple of friends up to make awesome games … check out UFHO2 and Zombiedog!