Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Showcase : MonoGUI

MonoGUI is a GUI Library for the MonoGame framework that I've been working on for the past year.  The goal was to create an easy to use GUI system that was easy to skin.  I wanted the framework to be used in any game, and to give the developer as much flexibility as possible with how it looked.  On top of this, I wanted to do something new, and give the developer the tools to make the UI look as juicy as possible.  Below is a short video showing the progress made so far.


Seen In The Demo
-Ability to switch between 8 different skins
-Skinned animations when visual state (hovering, pressed) changes (size, position and color)
-Skinned animations on any event fires (OnClick, etc)
-Various different widget types
-Adaptability to different screen sizes

Finished but not Visually Evident in the Demo
-Matrix SpriteBatching:
    This is an extension to the normal XNA Spritebatch, that allows you to push transformation
    matrices without needing a new draw call.  It also handles keeping track of different variables in
    Begin calls as well as clipping rectangles.
-Spritesheet Animations:
    Every Widget is created from defined texture regions, and definitions as to how to respond to
    resizing.  Any source texture box can instead be a spritesheet definition, allowing the skinner to
    include animated textures.  Blinking buttons? flowing gradiants? It's all possible!
-Gradient-Defined Progress Bars:
    Define how a progress bar fills by using a gradient image.  The gradient will then use a fill texture
    to fill from black to white, based on the fill percentage.  These gradients can also be defined as
    animated textures, allowing you to have wavy, bubbly progress bars to use as health bars, or
    whatever you want!

Features to Come
Cross Platform Facade:
    MonoGUI already supports some, but will eventually support more commonly-used Platform
    Specific implementations of features such as In App Purchases, saving data and logging.  This will
    allow the game writer to minimize the amount of platform specific code in their game.
Skin-Defined Sound Effects:
    Allows the skinner to define sound effects to play on various widget events.
Visual Skin Editor:
    A small program (written in MonoGUI!) that allows easy visual editing of Skins.


I'm very excited to start releasing this open source project to the public, and see what cool things are done with it!  It should be ready for its initial release within the next few weeks.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Showcase : Pixel Artist

Pixel Artist is a mobile game I developed for the BYU Mobile App Competition.  I made it over the course of two months.  All of my previous projects being more experimental, this is the first one I truly consider to be "commercially viable".  A gameplay video can be seen below.


Pixel Artist is a puzzle game featuring over 100 levels where you recreate various works of pixel art.  You jump around and swap colors in an effort to complete the level in as few moves as possible.  It features a relaxing soundtrack, and simple calming gameplay.  Give it a try on Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8!

Windows 8: http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/pixel-artist/20d2b726-758e-43c7-ad14-967158aca373

Windows Phone 8: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/pixel-artist/c706c8f3-695a-4074-9955-4950a3fa6927

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Showcase : Santa's Sleigh

Santa's Sleigh is a game I made over a weekend for the One Game A Month website.  I wanted to make something small and simple, while keeping with a holiday theme (so I could maybe pass it off as a present to friends and family ;D )

The gameplay consists of reaction-jumping across rooftops in a randomly generated level.  There are several different 'patterns' of houses to give a varied experience.  On top of this, there are a few ways to get points.  The first is to just travel as far as possible!  The second is bonus points for every present delivered.  Santa will drop a present every time he lands on a roof, so this encourages the player to hit as many roofs as possible, instead of just skipping them and soaring over as large a distance as possible.  The third are small pickups that occur randomly.  These pickups (glasses of milk and cookies!) give a large amount of points when obtained, and occur in between houses.

All in all, this was a fun little project, and ended up being a game that's pretty enjoyable to play.  It can be found on the Windows 8 Store, as well as itch.io for standard desktop computers.

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/santas-sleigh/e3950a20-cdc7-496c-9228-af50e1db5802
http://cardanis.itch.io/santas-sleigh