I am Mário, but also known as Wizardum and Wizzy. I'm a beginner/intermediate C# programmer. I'm working to be a Indie Game Developer using the XNA Game Studio tecnology provided freely by Microsoft. I'm building up my game programming experience, I worked on a 2D game development tool and I'm currently working on several game projects. Because IndieDB is so awesome I will use it has my own online portfolio. You can also follow me on Twitter: Wizardum

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Lunar Development Kit

Wizardum Blog

Hello everyone!

I decided to start showcasing my work and turn my IndieDB profile into a portfolio, and as such, my first post is about my first big project called Lunar Development Kit.

I started working on LDK around September 2010 and finished it around April 2011, so it was 7 months of heavy development but only during my free time.

I was working on LDK for a indie team called PauldronGames.

There were a lot of ambition on the project and it was supposed to be a set of several application tools that would aid the XNA game developer in his projects, by speeding up the development process.

Other team members were tasked the other tools, while I ended up doing the level editor.
But it didn't stayed a simple level editor for too long, as the ambition grown so did the application's complexity.

The level editor became a 2D game maker.
Although the project wasn't finished, it possesses functionality enough to create a full-fledged 2D game.

  • The level editor part of the application is somewhat complex and has some useful features.

  • The Assets Browser is also a very useful and a quite good-looking component and essential for designing levels, since it gives the user access to the game's assets like sprites and actors.

  • There is also C# scripting support with compiling capabilities and a basic scripting editor where you can code your scripts.

This covers the more important aspects of the application, but there are more happening behind the scenes.

Besides images I can also provide three videos that cover most of the progress of the project, the first two were recorded by my great friend Kimphoe and the third one by myself.

LDK Update 1

LDK Update 2

LDK Update 3

Now I'll provide the link to download the entire application source + binaries + two demo (and senseless) games made with the tool (both source and binaries).

To run the application you need to have installed the .Net Framework 3.5 and the Xna GameStudio 3.1. To run the demo games you only need the Xna Framework 3.1 Redistributable installed.

I can't guarantee that it will still work, I simply tested if the application executed fine, no more no less. I'm pretty sure you won't use it to create your own games since it's very inefficient, use it just for learning purposes.

To wrap things up, when I stopped working on the LDK application, I had so much more knowledge and experience in C# programming than I expected. It was a really outstanding experience, even though I ran across so many issues during its development.

LDK was essential in that it defines the way I see and approach my new projects.

This is the end, thanks for reading!

LDK is no more

Wizardum Blog

I've been working on LDK since around September 2010 and have been very happy about it since I had the opportunity to learn plenty of new stuff about software development and such.

I was working on LDK for a team, called PauldronGames.
But PauldronGames have been suffering, along the way, of a disease called "inactivity".
In a team of around 10 members, only two or three actually do something, that's very demotivating.

No video update was released, but the editor had a significant improvement since the last update.
I integrated audio support and more stability, implemented Farseer Physics and Mercury Particle Engine in the LunarEngine. So basically the editor got pretty powerful and I started a discussion in the team to what game we should start working.

Guess what? there were a few answers, around 4 members participated in the discussion (including me) and the last post made (which was also made by me) was a week ago.
I decided to leave the team, I'm that kind of guy that actually likes to work with others, and I was working almost alone so ^^

Anyway, I could continue work on the editor right?
Well wrong.
when I started working on the editor, I should have designed and planned the editor better.
Though the editor is now a bit more stable than it was previously, it's very hard to maintain, specially when a new feature is added. Usually a lot of stuff needs to be changed in order for it to work properly, and it kills so much time to get things right.

Also, the editor had the ability to build assets, like in Visual Studio, compile your images and assets into xnb files. However the files don't get compressed in my editor so an image of around 200kb gets up to 9mb. It's really crazy xD

So basically, I'm not going to keep developing LDK but...
yes, there is a 'but', I'm planning on starting the development of a new editor. With the same concept, helper for XNA to create games, but with new features and better design.
The name will be different as well, still deciding on it.

Regarding LDK, I'm still considering if I should open source it and distribute it on codeplex or something.

And that's it for now, no one will be reading this probably, I'm not famous yet xD
But if you do happen to stumble upon this, don't be shy and share your thoughts ^^