The Menu

In this blog entry I want to give you a short introduction on how I did the 3D-Menu.

When you know, how it's done, you will see, that it is easy.

Let's start with the parts of one of the Panels:
- It consists of several automatically generated quads. These are surrounded by a simple model for the curves. This model is just drawn 4 times, each rotated by 90 degree on the Z-Axis. The number of quads is generated in a loop. For each menu-item of the panel some qauds are used. These quads are drawn with the help of several shaders
- One of the quad is used for the graphic and the text, that represents the item. This is simply done by creating dynamically a texture for each menu item. On this texture I just draw the left orientated image and a text (using simple text-drawing functions). This texture is assigned to the qaud by using a shader.

Placing the Panels in the 3D-World
I have created a model class for the panel, that hides all the things that has to be done for creating such a menu-panel. So I instantiate this panel-model, assign all the items (text and pictures) to it and let it draw as I would do it with a normal 3D model. So I can positionate this panel like any other 3D model in my 3D-Space. The trick is now, that I have assigned the camera to the actual active panel and there to the actual selected menu-item. So everytime I choose another menu-item the camera follows it. This gives an nice effect.

When I select a menu item, so that another menu would be selected in the 3D-Space. I let the camera fly to the new position. The flying is very easy done by just subtracting the destination coordinates by the actual coordinates and divide the result by a factor (the greater, the slower it will fly). The divided result is added to the actual position, example:

float factor = 10.0f;
actCamPos = actCamPos + ((destCamPos-actCamPos)/factor);

Some Details
- The pulsating of the actual menu-item is done by a shader, where a color-parameter is changed with a sine-wave.
- I used a little bit blur , so that it looks more shiny.

I thought of putting in a demo here, but the whole menu uses parts of my engine, and I didn't want to post the whole code here (it would not be so good unterstandable). Maybe I will put some code-fragments for a better unterstanding.

Let me know, If somebody wants to know more!

Survey closed

So, I have closed the survey... it has finished. I think it gives now a nice overview about the known DBP Games and what you think about them. Thanks for taking part!

Show all survey results



Your Top 20 DBP-Games:

01 - 1.68 - HurricaneX

02 - 1.73 - Shuggy

03 - 2.00 - The Night of the Puppets

04 - 2.17 - Vacuum Ball

05 - 2.22 - The Dishwasher: Dead Samarai

06 - 2.23 - GunStyle

07 - 2.26 - Dream Sower

08 - 2.33 - Crystal Glyder

09 - 2.41 - Little Gamers

10 - 2.52 - Magic Crystals

11 - 2.57 - Blazing Birds

12 - 2.57 - Samurai Soul Hunters

13 - 2.58 - Xtreme Table Soccer

14 - 2.67 - Botload

15 - 2.72 - Rocketball

16 - 2.78 - Exisled

17 - 2.79 - Dark'nd

18 - 2.82 - Odyssey

19 - 2.82 - Snapcount

20 - 2.88 - Block Realm

New Video

I have made a new Video of Crystal Glyder. Now with music, better quality, more gameplay and more levels. Lean back and enjoy !

evolutionary history of CrystalGlyder

How did it start? Oliver was absolutely fascinated by his XBox360, and of the possibility to make games for it. With the appearance of XNA this dream came true! At the beginning he just did some graphical tests on it, wanted to find out, what the limits are, and so on... This was at the end of the last year in 2006.

In Jan. 2007 we decided to sit down for a weekend and to try out how far we would come in programming a game with it. The weekend had been very long, we didn't really sleep. There also Olivers friend joined us: Michael Hopf. He took influence in giving us hints with the design of the spaceship. He describes himself a bit as the godfather of this project. Later he helped me with discussing and thinking about some gaming ideas. He also did the tests at the end.

At the end of this weekend we just had a simple looking ship that could be moved through a grassy-looking terrain with a tower in the middle. It looked terrible (in comparison to today), but we loved it and decided to continue...

Two months later we heard about the dreambuildplay competition. We decided: that is our aim ! Let's make this game as good as possible for that date !

The consequence had been: very, very less sleep, no more time for gaming and not enough time for the people, we love. It had been 3 months of hard work, but today we would do it again! And there were many things, that had to be done besides: Oliver had a wedding, Philip and Robert had many exams.... But, it was very cool and did make very much fun! It's always fun, when you create things.

So at the end, we hope, our effort is beeing rewarded!

Who we are

I think, it's time to introduce ourselves. Who are we ?

Our name is "team olphro". We are 3 brothers. The name is built of the first two letters of our Names:

[ol]iver [ph]ilip [ro]bert

It's just simple like that !

Gaming is our hobby, we love it to dive into foreign worlds and to explore them. Sometimes we just want to do more than "just" consuming.... We want to do more creative things. For example, building up a game.

In the past we did several projects, maybe one of our most popular one are two Deathmatch-Maps of HalfLife 2. They are called "dm_airstrike" and "dm_powertowers". Even today, there are several servers out there, that are hosting it! We also did some Game-Programming, but that has been a long time ago....

We want to give you a short view to our personal profiles, who we are, what we are doing:

Oliver:
I am 28 years old. The oldest of the 3 brothers. My profession is programming. Already with 8 years I started to programm small programs on a C64. Later I started building up games and graphic demos on a PC using Assembler-Language.
Today I am the Manager of the agorum Software GmbH and there I am responsible for the development-department. We produce Software for retrieving information and making them better accessable, searchable and useable.
Game-Programming and there especially XNA is my hobby. I do it beside my work.

Philip:
I am 17 years old. I am also very interessted in gaming. Nearly every two weeks I am serving a small Lan Party at home. I am very interested in everything, that has to do with graphics: e.g. Modelling, Painting, etc...
At the moment I am visiting a school, that teaches marketing elements and graphics design.

Robert:
I am 16 years old. The youngest one ! I am also a fan of gaming. I am very good in producing and cutting films, doing the special effects and so on. I have an eye for the scenes and situations. My biggest characteristic is my love to denmark. I love this land and in some time, I will live there, that's my aim !

So, I think we did talk enough about us ;-)

DreamBuildPlay deadline has been moved

Microsoft has moved the deadline of the competition till today... I guess, because of the technical problems in uploading the Games to Microsoft...

Sadly, I didn't have the chance to use that time, to improve my entry. I had to travel abroad for working.

Download and try !

I got great feedback so far ! Thanks for that. So I sat down and uploaded the DBP -Entry VERSION of this game. (it's nearly finished, some performance regarding the GC should be done, but it is really good playable)

So have a lot of fun in trying and playing it !

CrystalGlyder-Xbox360.zip

It is a file of type ccgame, so you will need "Visual Studio Express Edition 1.0 refresh" and a XBox360 with XNA creators club membership ...

Have a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to your feedback.

Videos available

Now, a video (teaser) is avaible of Crystal Glyder, lean back and enjoy !

Finished - YEAH !!!

Yeah, we have finished. Now as promised, our Screenshots:

Our Logo:

Logo

Menu:

Menu 1
Menu 2

Lava-Level:

Lava-Level 1
Lava-Level 2
Lava-Level 3

Snow-Level:

Snow-Level 1
Snow-Level 2

Mountain-Level:

Mountain-Level 1
Mountain-Level 2

Till the End !

Now, the end is near! No, I don't mean the end of the world ;-) After some really hard weeks/months our DreamBuildPlay-Entry has been finished. I didn't really had much sleep the last nights.

Tonight I have invited some of my friends to play the game in whole. Maybe we do some small fine-tuning, to make the game as nice and best-playable as possible. After that I am going to upload some screenshots of it and maybe a small video.

And now, I really want to thank my wife for supporting me so much. She didn't really set here eyes on me, the last few weeks. So for her appreciaton, I wanted to thank here so much. You have to keep in mind, that the game was produced beside my regular work (I am leading the software development at agorum Software GmbH), my wedding and my honeymoon-holidays.... So you can get a small hint about the time, I did not spend with my wife... And although I spent a lot of time with making this game !

My First Post

Hallo,

this is my first post in this blog. This blog is about CrystalGlyder (Yes it is Glyder, not Glider!). It is a XNA-Game running on the XBox360.

The game is about a glider that is flying around in different 3D locations (Mountains, Snow, Lava) and collecting crystals to get energy. Some of these crystals change the energy-color of your glider. With that energy-color the glider has the possibility to pass gates with the same color. There are also energy-gates that allow mixing the color of the glider with another color to get a color mixture.

With the combination of changing the energy color, passing through laser gates, flying around and on jumping on platforms, you have to find a way to the exit of the levels. But keep always an eye on your energy!

Sounds complicated? It isn't! We have integrated a learning curve, that leads you step by step into the game. The first level begins with a tutorial. An with every further level you learn the different possibilities. You will see: it is easy and making really fun!

With this game, you are getting a fresh and innovative mixture of Jump & Run-, Brain-, Action- and SpaceShip-Elements.

Technical background:
The game is basing on a completely custom created game engine. The models and levels have been designed with the 3D modelling program "Blender". The game has been nearly finished. The only things to do, would be some performance tweaks, shadow integration and maybe highscores and game-saving (at the moment, every level can be choosen, to start from). In whole, there are 9 Levels, that can be played!

We are going to submit this game to the DreamBuildPlay-Competition from Microsoft.

It has been a hard work till now. We are working really hard on nearly finishing the game till next week (this is the deadline of the competition). About 6 monts of really hard work has been put on this game.

We are really proud of our game and we hope, that we win a price at this competition.