User:Mishalas

This is my introduction to how I got involved with the XNA Game Studio. I have always enjoyed making games, and have been dabbling with it since about 1994. I have used various languages, but mostly have focused on MS platforms (DOS and Windows).

Just recently, I found out that MS have released a game development platform to work with their Visual Studio line of products which would allow one to make games for both XBox360 and Windows. Well, my interest in game programming was rekindled and I thought I could use it as an exercise to help teach my daughter some things about software design (whether she wanted to know or not).

As I started looking at the XNA Engine, life intervened and I really didn't get very far. Then I saw announcements about the 2.0 version of the engine, and decided to check it out and see if I could do something useful with it. Kudos to MS for providing a very nice service layer for building games. But as I started looking at how to write games with the XNA Framework, I noticed that a lot of the samples seemed to have similiar concepts repeated in them again and again. I decided that if I was really going to build games, it would be better to use some kind of abstract "engine" layer on top of the framework, to reduce the amount of repetitive code I would need to write.

So, the search was on for an engine that would help, would be free, and would be easy enough to learn. On the XNA Creator's Club site there is a link to GarageGames TorqueX engine, so I decided to check it out. Wow, a free engine! But, it wasn't really free after all. The engine was free, but the editor tools to actually do useful things with it was too much for me. After I looked deeper into their engine, I also decided that I did not quite agree with their philosophy of "strict association" rather than "inheritance".

It is my belief that no one design paradigm is right for every situation, and it seemed to me that's what they were touting. So, when I couldn't find an engine for free that I liked I decided to try and build one, and share some of my ideas for free (BSD style) with the community at large.

I figured at the very least it might be an interesting exercise, and maybe even someone would want to pitch in and help. That leads to where I am right now, which is a very ALPHA version of an engine, and a sample game that uses it, which I use for testing the engine.

If you would like to learn more, then you can visit my site at: http://www.logartsol.com/FLC