Category Archives: Game Development

Xbox One Indie Game Development – What We Know So Far

By Shahed C on October 17, 2013

Feedback from ID@Xbox:

Chris Charla, Microsoft’s Director of ID@Xbox has this to say about my blog post: “That’s pretty good! Did you mention the free dev kits and the retail -> dev kit transition?”. In response to his feedback, I’ve updated the content, using quotes from Xbox News and Xbox Corporate VP Mark Whitten.

Updated Post:

Some of you may know that I am heading to Microsoft HQ in Redmond to attend the upcoming Xbox One Developer Summit, aka ID@Seattle. This is the first dev summit to welcome the new crop of developers who have signed up for ID@Xbox, the Xbox One’s Indie Developer Program.

I’ve signed an NDA for this event, and will not be revealing any confidential information during/after the event. So, I’ve put together the information below from everything that has already been announced in public.

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Storing and Retrieving Multiple Flags in an Integer

By Shahed C on October 5, 2013

Many years ago, I taught myself game development from Andre LaMothe’s “Windows Game Programming For Dummies”. Back then, I was just learning about C/C++, Win32 and DirectX for making video games.

One of the interesting things I learned was about using bitwise operators to store multiple states in a single variable. This can still be useful in any C-derived language, such as C#. You can even use this technique in JavaScript!

Let’s say, your game character has a carry-on weapon bag with 8 available slots. Each slot can store 1 type of weapon.

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Ninja Cat Runner: Release 2

By Shahed C on August 4, 2013

I had recently released Ninja Cat Runner on the Windows Store and for the Web, supported on any mobile/desktop platform.

DownloadDownload Ninja Cat Runner for free from the Windows Store!

WebPlay the web version on your smartphone, tablet or desktop browser!

This week, I have released an update that includes the following:

  • Bugfix for Quit/Restart buttons 
  • Keyboard support

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OnekSoft Games/Labs Q&A with Microsoft Technical Evangelist Frank La Vigne

By Shahed C on July 14, 2013

Earlier this week, I spoke to Frank La Vigne, a Microsoft Technical Evangelist, for his YouTube
channel: Frank’s World TV.

See the entire video here:

FWTV: Indie Games, Windows 8 and Ninja Cats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRjrQPvVOpo


 

 

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Ninja Cat Runner: My First Windows 8 Game!

By Shahed C on June 23, 2013

Download: Download Ninja Cat Runner for free from the Windows Store!

Web: Play the web version on your smartphone, tablet or desktop browser!

DownloadDownload Ninja Cat Runner for free from the Windows Phone Store!

Having published 2 XNA games on Xbox Live Indie Games, I have been interested in looking at new platforms for future game projects. When Windows 8 was announced, I was disappointed that Microsoft didn’t officially support XNA for Windows 8. I looked at the other options for Microsoft game development, and even wrote a blog post about it.

But recently, I learned about a game creation tool called Construct 2, which provides a UI for quick game design. The games can be exported to all major platforms, as an HTML5/web game, a PhoneGap package, even a Windows 8 game.

Construct 2, from Scirra

Construct 2, from Scirra

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