All Da Pages

Monday, May 22, 2017

Small Update - Old XNA Project Source Links


I've had many requests of late for my archived XNA projects, so I added the to the Tutorial & Project Source Code page (on the left).

Much of the original XNA tutorial source is unavailable as it resided on my dead laptop and old web server. I added a couple copies from the inventory videos and animation testing.

You're welcome to do as you wish with the projects, but please understand that I'm not in a position to support or assist with these old projects. Sorry! Best I can do is direct you to the old tutorials in hopes that you'll better understand what you're working with.

That said, please consider switching to Monogame. XNA has been discontinued, while Monogame [Built from XNA] has continued development and a thriving community. Because it was developed from XNA you'll still get the amazing frame rates and the syntax, to date, has been virtually identical, making the project conversion surprisingly easy. :-)

Life Updates & Death of My VB Tutorial Laptop :-P

 

 

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

"Temporary" Site Move For Aardaerimus.com & Personal Update


Sooo, last summer I moved to a new location and my personal web server for Aardaerimus.com, formerly located in my basement on an ancient 800mHz Dell running Windows 2000, had to be taken offline.  :-(

Unfortunately, the complexity of the new hardware and pitiful connection coupled with the much increased ISP costs in my new location has dissuaded me from hooking the old beast back up. It held up really well for many, many years!

I had no idea that the site and its small trove of ancient tutorial files hosted on that box was in such high demand until I took it down. I'm constantly hit with questions about why my site is down and requests for those old project files, so I figured that it was high time to, at the very least, reestablish my web presence. Additionally, I'm hoping that this will provide a medium or community for interaction and commentary between myself and my viewers.

Why not set up a fresh web server? Well, I plan to be relocating, yet again, this summer. Where I'm headed, I have no idea what I will be doing or whether I'll even be able to continue doing tutorials. For my most recent tutorials on the VB Toolbox I've been relying heavily upon Dropbox for project source code sharing. I figure that I can continue to use that throughout my transition without fear of interruption in file distribution. Yay!

If I begin seeing traffic here, I will try to get links up to some of the more requested projects. Please, let me know what you think! :-)

- Aardaerimus / VB Toolbox

Tuesday, March 19, 2013


Working on a "simple" map editor for the AIX series. Still need to make it pure XNA. Presently it's a GDI/XNA hybrid eww. Still have a long ways to go.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Adventures in XNA - New Visual Basic Game Programming Series

Greetings, humanoids!

I'm back - finally - and trying to get my new tutorial series "Adventures in XNA" off the ground. After playing with XNA a bit, and with a tremendous amount of help from Kalamus1, we've greatly refined the process of setting up an XNA game, movement and animation cycles, managing game screens, and much more.

You can follow the new series on YouTube!






Friday, August 10, 2012

Project 5 ~ XNA Sound and Music Class & Touch Trigger (sign post) ~ VB 2010 .NET



Work In Process - Project 5:
Rad Marvin takes a leisurely stroll through TinyWorld and finds a sign post whilst groovin' to some new tunes thanks to the addition of a new sound class.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Kalamus Project ~ XNA 4 on VB .NET - Fun with Particles!


He's done it again, folks! Kalamus1 is mastering XNA's particle engine! This is his first demonstration of particle effects. Regrettably, I'm recording at work and didn't get to capture the thunder claps that follow the flashes of lightning. Boo! Needless to say, it's awesome! :-D

Stay tuned - there's more to come!

Kalamus' Project ~ XNA 4 - Procedural Tile Map Generation, A* Pathfinding, & Selectable MiniMap


This in an awesome "Work In Process" that belongs to Kalamus.

So far he's added the following:
   - Procedural Tile Map Generation (On Key Press)
   - A* Path Finding
   - A Minimap interface that can navigate the world map
   - A debug menu
   - Dead Sexy, Animated Menus
   - Water animation cycle
   - Kalamus' Adaptation of Mango Screen Management
   - A clean, smooth class flow that I REALLY need to adopt...

I'm ever grateful and indebted for being given the opportunity to learn from this guy! :-D

Project 4 - XNA Toon Movement, Map Triggers for Map Loading ~ VB 2010 (.NET)

Work In Process - Project 4:
Rad Marvin rides again! I have added character movement, tile blocking, and map triggers to load new maps/teleport and reposition the toon.
I also have working sound (not featured in this video because I'm recording at work :-P ).

Project 3 - XNA Simple Title Screen and Animated Tile Map ~ VB 2010 (.NET)

XNA 4 - Visual Basic 2010 (.NET)
Work In Process - Project 3:
Today, I worked on setting up a very simple title screen and world map. When you press "ENTER", it then loads the world map, complete with basic water animation, and a welcome dialog using my Text Processor class from Project 1.

I'm using 16x16 tile textures drawn at 32x32 on a 512x448 (SNES format) screen.

I still have a bit of improving to do on my text processor. I want to create enumerated screen type templates to automatically choose the backdrop style and location.

After that, I need to reformat my battle processor to fit the screen more dynamically.

Project 2 - XNA Classic RPG Style Battle System ~ VB 2010 (.NET)

XNA 4 - Visual Basic 2010 (.NET)
Work In Process - Project 2:
I'm working on a simple *riiiiight* battle system that will be similar to the classic NES "Dragon Warrior". Naturally, I hope to add more glitz and glamor in the future. For now, I just want it to be functional. I'm presently displaying the creature stats just to show that their entity class is updating successfully.

~ NOTE ~
I will eventually be releasing tutorials and source code for these projects.

Project 1 - XNA Text Processor & Menu Classes ~ VB 2010 (.NET)


XNA 4 - Visual Basic 2010 (.NET)
Work In Process - Project 1:
I'm building a text processor class to handle game dialog.
It's large and sloppy but I wanted the "typing stream" effect instead of instant print.

~ NOTE ~
I will eventually be releasing tutorials and source code for these projects.

Friday, November 4, 2011

XNA 4 In Visual Basic 2010 - Part 2 - SpriteFonts & Tile Mapping With The SpriteBatch



This beginner Visual Basic Game Programming tutorial is designed to help you get started with XNA 4.

In this VB video we'll be covering:
Adding a SpriteFont to our project
Creating a frame counter and drawing it to the screen with the SpriteBatch
Adding a tileset to our game content
Drawing a basic tile map with the SpriteBatch