Why aren't you using MonoGame!?

Where to go?

Sitting here with VB.NET 2019 open in front of me - empty project - wondering, "Is it possible to get back into the game after so much time away?"

It feels like floating in space - directionless in a vast void.

I can't really do tutorials, simply because I have no reliable internet to upload large video files.

I really miss game design sometimes. I could install Monogame again, since I have a WinX machine, now.

Hmmm...

Where am I?!

Soooo... Things were really cooking along great on the programming front for a few years.

What happened?! Well, life happened. :-P

After a fun and relatively successful (however one might define that) run in VB.NET tutorials focusing originally on game design, and later on, primarily on database connectivity and general VB.NET topics with VBTOOLBOX, I decided that it was high time to follow my dream of moving to the tropics.

Sounds pretty paradisey, right??? Hah! It's is nice, but my lifestyle has been completely upended. Hardly a sob story, but my path has been extremely challenging. I went from being gainfully employed, to literally figuring out how to make my $0.56 bank account stretch for three months.

Currently, I'm living off the grid with two batteries, four solar panels, and extremely poor internet. Couple that with the fact that my coding machines are broken or damaged and my electrical limitations, code work is extremely challenging. Add to that the fact that there is no incentive from YouTube for video production anymore, as I've been informed that my content is too "small potatoes" and will be demonetized.

I have finally found employment to help get me afloat again, but I won't see stability of any kind for at least a year, unless I can figure out a secondary means of income, or some long lost uncle wills me a gazillion dollars. Har har.

Until I get a life, I won't be producing much in the way of VB.NET programming content, as I'm currently running on a Raspberry Pi 3 to save on power. I am picking up a little Python, however.

From time to time, I intend to blog and vlog about my new life, and will attempt to supplement my income with the Amazon Associates program. I've already made $0.90 in four months, so I'm well on my way. ;-)

You can follow us on YouTube on our Big Island Lava Pioneers channel, or on WordPress [https://bigislandlavapioneers.wordpress.com]

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

 

 

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

VB Toolbox on YouTube

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

Visual Basic Beginner Game Programming Tutorial ~ Music and Sound with mciSendString

This video will teach you how to play multiple sounds, simultaneously, by creating a sound class and employing MCISendString in Visual Basic 2010. This can be very useful for apps or games. :-)

We'll be covering how to play sounds, volume control, and how to kill running sounds.

XNA 4 In Visual Basic 2010 - Part 1 - Project Creation & Graphics Initialization

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:
XNA Project Creation
Graphics Initialization
Preparing The Game Screen

clsContent Code: http://www.xnatutor.com

You must have XNA 4 (contained in the Windows Phone SDK 7.1) Installed to follow this video.

Download the Windows Phone SDK 7.1:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27570

System Requirements:
Windows 7, Windows Vista
Windows® Vista® (x86 and x64) with Service Pack 2 -- all editions except Starter Edition
Windows 7 (x86 and x64) -- all editions except Starter Edition
Installation requires 4 GB of free disk space on the system drive.
3 GB RAM
Visual Basic (Visual Studio 2010) (SP1 Recommended)

Connecting to a MySQL Database with VB.NET Using ADO.NET

In this Visual Basic 2010 programming tutorial, we'll be connecting to and pulling data from a MySQL database, utilizing the ADO.NET connector provided at http://www.mysql.com/products/connector/

In this video, we will perform the following tasks:
1.) Creating the Connection Objects, a Connection String, and a Query String
2.) Connecting to our MySQL Database
3.) Drawing Data from our Database to our Windows Form
4.) Filtering our query results, and sorting the data
5.) Creating a Table Relationship to pull data from multiple tables
6.) Disconnecting from the Database

This tutorial assumes that you already have an operable MySQL database, access to the database, and a basic working knowledge of your database.

Trying to stay on task...

Wow... So many new goodies to play with and so very little time.

Sorry, if the updates are coming a bit slowly. The four dollars I've made via Google over the past few years just isn't quite enough to allow me to quit my day job. ;-)

So, work has had me really busy, and in my little bit of spare time I've been trying to diversify my talents by learning PHP with MySQL, exploring XNA with VB and trying to memorize the basic configuration, trying to support old tutorials, and considering ideas for new tutorials.

I know, I know... Just more excuses, right? :-P

Well, I have been working on another tutorial, though it's not quite as "game-centric" as the others. Actually, it is - but it isn't. I'll be outlining the very, very basics of employing a database (MySQL) for things like user account storage. While it promises to be a very elementary video, I will not be outlining MySQL configuration, and will expect that you already have an operable database and know how to create and manage your own tables. All I will be demonstrating is how you can connect to it with VB.NET using the ADO.NET driver.

In the first video we'll focus on:
1.) Establishing a connection to a MySQL database with Visual Basic 2010
2.) Accessing table data
3.) Joining two tables with SQL to access relational data (TOONS by USER ACCOUNT)
4.) Closing the connection

Depending upon how this tutorial is received, future videos may go a bit deeper and may include record insertion and whatnot.

Sooo, that's where I'm at, right now.

Take care, and thank you for stopping by! :-)

Aardaerimus