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	<title>luminance &#187; free</title>
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	<description>Programming and Game Development - Kevin Gadd's Personal Blog</description>
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		<title>Spite: An entry for Gamma 4</title>
		<link>http://www.luminance.org/games/2010/02/17/spite-an-entry-for-gamma-4</link>
		<comments>http://www.luminance.org/games/2010/02/17/spite-an-entry-for-gamma-4#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:41:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kael</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[download]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[free]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[game]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gamma4]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gdc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kokoromi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xna]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.luminance.org/?p=842</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[John and I spent a few weekends putting together a little game experiment for Kokoromi&#8217;s Gamma 4 competition. We didn&#8217;t get selected, which I think means we can look forward to some outstanding winners, based on some of the other entries I&#8217;ve seen. My favorite aspect of the competition is how severe the limitations were [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://twitter.com/BryneShrimp">John</a> and I spent a few weekends putting together a little game experiment for <a href="http://www.kokoromi.org/gamma4/">Kokoromi&#8217;s Gamma 4 competition</a>. We didn&#8217;t get selected, which I think means we can look forward to some outstanding winners, based on <a href="http://infiniteammo.ca/blog/have-some-c4ke/">some of the other entries</a> I&#8217;ve seen. My favorite aspect of the competition is how severe the limitations were &#8211; it really forced me to get out of my comfort zone and experiment with storytelling and gameplay mechanisms I&#8217;d never put much thought to before. In the end I think we were both surprised by how much we managed to get done in such a short time span, and by how well the final product actually expressed the little bit of story and gameplay we put into it. It&#8217;s 5 minutes long and only uses a single button, so I encourage anyone to check it out. If you&#8217;re a fan of games like Zelda I think you will find it strangely familiar. <img src='http://www.luminance.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1643240/SpiteScreenshot.jpg" alt="Spite Screenshot" /></p>
<p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1643240/SpiteGamma4.zip"><b>Spite</b> is a one-button game for the Kokoromi Gamma 4 competition built with C# and XNA.</a> You&#8217;ll need Windows XP or better and a Direct3D 9 capable video card to play it. Also, a finger to press your spacebar. XBox 360 controllers are supported. Also, there&#8217;s no audio &#8211; sorry, contest limitation. <img src='http://www.luminance.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1643240/SpiteGamma4.zip">Download</a><br />
<a href="http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=10833.0">Discuss on TIGSource</a></p>
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		<title>Tiled map loader for XNA</title>
		<link>http://www.luminance.org/code/2009/06/17/tiled-map-loader-for-xna</link>
		<comments>http://www.luminance.org/code/2009/06/17/tiled-map-loader-for-xna#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:02:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kael</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Code]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[editor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[free]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[loader]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[map]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[open]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[open-source]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[source]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tiled]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xna]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.luminance.org/?p=495</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Update: Stephen Belanger of Nerd Culture has made some great improvements to the following code, so I encourage you to check out the post about it on his blog.
Early in the development of my game, I used the free and open-source Tiled Map Editor to create levels. It was a big time-saver since it let [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Update: </strong><a href="http://www.nerdculture.org/" target="_blank">Stephen Belanger of Nerd Culture</a> has made some great improvements to the following code, so I encourage you to <a href="http://www.nerdculture.org/2009/07/14/tiled-maps-for-xna-full-support-for-the-tiled-map-xml-specification/" target="_blank">check out the post about it on his blog</a>.</p>
<p>Early in the development of my game, I used the free and open-source <a href="http://mapeditor.org/index.html">Tiled Map Editor</a> to create levels. It was a big time-saver since it let me worry about more important things instead of investing effort into being able to place tiles down on a map. Later on I decided that the traditional approach to map construction wasn&#8217;t right for my project &#8211; but I was still glad I&#8217;d used Tiled.</p>
<p>Recently I realized that there aren&#8217;t very many easy ways for newbie XNA developers to get maps into their games, so I decided it was worth packaging up my Tiled map loader and sharing it with the world. So, I&#8217;ve created a <a href="http://luminance.org/xna/Tiled.zip">simple example that shows how to load Tiled maps in your XNA game on Windows PCs and the XBox 360</a>, and included the loader with it. It&#8217;s open-source and free for your use, no strings attached. I hope you find it helpful.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.luminance.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/screenshot.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-499" title="screenshot" src="http://www.luminance.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/screenshot_small.jpg" alt="screenshot" width="540" height="420" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://luminance.org/xna/Tiled.zip">Download source code and binaries</a></p>
<p>Note that it doesn&#8217;t have support for isometric tiles or embedded tilesets, because I had no use for either feature. Tiled&#8217;s file format is relatively simple, so if you need those features, it should be simple to add them.</p>
<p>And of course, this wouldn&#8217;t be possible without the generous contributions of the developers of Tiled, <a href="http://mapeditor.org/contact.html">Adam Turk and  Bjørn Lindeijer</a>. If you&#8217;d like to try it out, you can <a href="http://mapeditor.org/downloads.html">download it from their website</a> (note: requires Java).</p>
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