So i am still making slow progress on my game, but in terms of functionality its almost finished. Here is an updated shot of the game.
As you can see it it now fits the screen properly, on the last blog post i had forgotten to set the full screen property in the Game initialisation code. The quality of the graphics is still really lacking, but that will be solved soon.
So i brought a new domain name today and I’ve realised how much I’m spending on domains each year so i have decided to sell / get rid of some of them.
If you are interested in any of the following please post a comment and we can arrange a transfer of ownership if an offer isn’t made on a domain by the lay day in october i will simply unregister it, and it will fall back to my registrar who will probably charge a lot more for you to acquire it.
Anyway the domain names are:
If your interested post me a comment (with your email address so i can reply) or email me if you have my email address.
As my old laptop is rather crap (battery, speed, graphics) and it was restricting me from getting any real work done I decided to move up my intended purchase of a new laptop mainly a MacBook Pro 13.3/2.4/4/250.
Now I am a Microsoft fan and i generally hate Apple so why did I buy a MacBook Pro?
Ok so that’s why I brought it, but how did it go? It didn’t go so well. In the space of 7 days I have had to have my MBP replaced twice due to dead pixels on the first two. The nearest Apple store is in Bristol which is a good 5-6hour round trip and I have now made that journey 3 times which as you can imagine is quite annoying. Anyway i finally got a non faulty MBP and it is now setup with all my favourite software, but there were some issues with this.
First issue is that you cannot boot a Windows installer from USB using the default EFI firmware, to get around this you need to install rEFIt which does allow it.
The second issue was turning off the annoying Start-up boing to turn that off you need to get StartupSound.prefpane.
At the moment I am on a terrible internet connection (only getting 40KB/s) and OS X wanted over 1gb of updates (including X-Code update) which it will download in the background if you don’t turn it off. To turn it off go to Apple Logo –> System Preferences –> Software Updates and turn off automatic downloading.
The most recent issue i have had is in Windows and finding the hash-key (which doesn’t work in Live Writer for some weird reason). After about 15minutes of playing around and downloading the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator i found out it is Alt-GR (the Alt on the right hand side of the keyboard) + 3
Anyway I’m really pleased with it, and it runs Windows 7 like a dream, its almost as powerful as my desktop. With some initial testing Windows does get a good 7+ hours out of the battery which while begin 3 less than OS X, its still very good.
So i have gone out and brought a new laptop (MacBook Pro 13.3 2.4 etc.) so i can now develop applications in the emulator.
The emulator is still buggy, if i rotate the emulator i just get a garbled screen rather than what i want in the correct orientation (happens with the start screen on the emulator, and IE). Also the game doesnt seem to be taking up the whole screen, which im not sure if thats a emulator bug or a problem with my code.
Anyway i have spent the last hour or so making some modifications and improvements, and here are the latest screenshots it think it looks quite good in the WP7 Emulator. Next major job is the graphics, then everything should start to fall into place. I have the map now automatically generating, and movement around the map working. I have also renamed it, and i think i have one i like now.
This is part two in my progress report on the game I’m writing for Windows Phone 7. This week i have made a lot of background changes. I have now added Buttons, Taps (from touch panels on Windows Phone 7, and Clicks on Windows). I have added a Load Game screen. You can now also traverse all of the menus.
Next week i intend to work on the graphics (because it is very ugly at the moment) and the code which draws the landscape to make it efficient as possible. I also have some plans to add support for none rectangular buttons.
Anyway these are the screenshots so far…
