Caution: Men at Work

I know it might not seem like it by looking at this site, but Perplex Beats has changed a great deal since the version that was sent to Dream-Build-Play. A new puzzle element has been added, so expect that to be featured in the next video.

The puzzle tracks for the game’s 10 songs are being finalized, placeholder art is going out, and the whole game experience is coming into place.

If there’s one thing I regret its that its taken this long to get another video out there, but we’re hoping to have one made up soon.

Now More Like You!

Sorry to break the streak of posts with pictures, but I’ll try to instill this one with lots of mental imagery.

I just wanted to post and say that I got Comcast High-speed internet today. Up till now I’ve been on snail-speed dialup or FAP-alicious satellite, my connection was unsuitable for video games, streaming video, Pandora, or anything fun the internet had to offer. But now that burden’s lifted! I believe Digby and I are overdue for a couple dozen rounds of Left 4 Dead–more on this as the news develops.

LEEBO IZ DRINKIN EGG NOG

The holidays is a busy time of year. It’s hard to focus on developing a game with all of these distractions.

PreAnima’s Little Holiday Worker

I couldn’t find any elves so I hired Kode Kat instead! Oh he’s perfectly safe to have around the project. And if he’s not, well… that’s what we have Source Control for.

Happy Holidays!

Ziggyware Article by Preanima Programmer

I’ve written a tutorial for the Ziggyware Article contest. It’s my first article. Take a look and let me know what you think! The LanguageManager code file is actually a touched-up, more documented version of the language localization class in Perplex Beats. After finishing the tutorial I copied the class back into PB because I thought it was better than what was there before. It touches upon features like localizable objects (such as textures), and demonstrates how to design Extensions Methods into existing types, which is available now in XNA 3.0.

Language Localization using Method Extensions

GS 3.0!!!!

Upgrading Perplex Beats wasn’t so bad. For anyone still having issues with it; a lot of times the error you’re getting has nothing to do with the problem. That’s especially true for those weird XML Error messages originating from the textures of models. Go through every Content Pipeline Extension project and check the Version Property on the project references Microsoft.Xna.Framework, Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline, and Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game. If the property is 2.0 delete the references and use the Add Reference window to insert the 3.0 versions of those dlls.

Rebuild the solution and if your dependencies are working then everything should sort itself out from there.  Otherwise you may have to build each project by hand in order from Library projects, CP Extensions, then Game projects.

In development news, I’ve finished the second Track Editor for designing puzzle tracks in Perplex Beats. Apparently the first one was too scary to be used, so I’ve created a second one with lots of attractive pictures to appear less frightening.

Now with attractive pictures!

As an aside to anyone else working on making WinForm Editors for their game content, I highly recommend the IntermediateSerializer for serializing the editor data into XML. The job was much simpler than my toils with the XmlSerializer on the first Track Editor.

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