Site Move

I no longer see the need in maintaining this site along with the IndieDevelopment.co site. All content was being mirrored to this site while the new primary site was being setup and tested. Now that the .co site is launched and underway all the new content will be posted there and will not be mirrored to this site anymore.

Please, head on over to the new primary website and register if you have not done so already. I look forward to meeting new members and welcoming those that are already a part of the community.

See ya there!

- Mike

C# Matching Game Tutorial Part 4

This is the final video in the series and we write the code to create the game board and work with the labels when the user clicks on them to find matches. The game is left open and ready to modify. Also, another good thing to try would be to recreate this using the design view to see how much faster you can create this game with the help of the designer. If you do modify this into something of your own, feel free to drop me a link to the video or do a video response on youtube and show us what you've done.

You can find the code to go along with this tutorial at indiedevelopment.co and while you are there sign up and join the community.

C# Matching Game Tutorial Part 3

In this part of the tutorial we finish out our Form1() and write the Form1_Load() for the game. We look at how to setup labels, add controls, attach an event handler to a form when it loads and some other things.

You can find the code to go along with this tutorial at indiedevelopment.co and while you are there sign up and join the community.

C# Matching Game Tutorial Part 2

In this part of the tutorial we begin coding our game. We setup our declarations and timers and ClearBoard method. Hopefully, the series so far has been easy to follow along with. The next video in the series will finish out the Form1 method and we will code our CreateBoard method and get the game setup and running (time permitting).

You can find the code to go along with this tutorial at indiedevelopment.co and while you are there sign up and join the community.

C# Matching Game Tutorial Part 1

In this part of the tutorial we look at what this series will be about and the different things we are going to be setting up. Starting with the next part of the series we will get into actually coding. Hopefully, this initial video will help everyone understand what we will be covering the the other videos.

You can find the code to go along with this tutorial at indiedevelopment.co and while you are there sign up and join the community.

Justice Redemption 0.09a Released

Finally... The next release has been published and is currently in private testing. The next release will be focused heavily on the level / world editor and we expect to take on a few alpha testers with the .11a release. This will give us time with the new editor to create some potential release ready levels with actual game content, as well as give us time to tweak the engine to make sure it will load in content from the new editor properly. Right now we are unsure on how many testers we will be taking, but probably no more than a handful is what I am guessing right now. Keep an eye out for when the application process goes live to make sure you are considered for selection.

Before getting into the .10a release I will be looking to put up another tutorial series that I posted about earlier. The game now really does not have any actual "gameplay" content in it. We just have test levels made with enemies and such to test out different aspects of the game, but if there is enough interest I can work on getting a video or two up to show what the game looks like currently.

You can see the new update log over at the indiedevelopment.co website.

Upcoming Tutorial

I have been receiving emails wanting another tutorial series dealing with C#. So, I will make the next tutorial series a C# series and it will be about how to make a matching game. I feel that this will be a little more advanced than the dice game, but not so much that those who have completed the dice game would be lost in trying to work with this series. Let me know what you all think… Feel free to email or just leave a comment here on the post.

As for a timeline on the next tutorial series I will look to work on getting it completed and posted after I finish with this .09a update and before I begin working on the .10a update… Which, hopefully, will not be taking me to much longer to get completed.

Race2GED App

I added the Race2GED app that I helped work on to the released app section on the indiedevelopment.co site. Clicking on it on the above nav menu will take you directly to the app. This was part of a college capstone project and my first real go at making an android app. It turned out decent and looking forward to updating this one and making it evolve into something better.

I enjoyed working with the whole team and we had a lot of fun in creating the app and going through the motions of meeting with a client and shaping something into the vision they had. Special thanks go out to our Professor Nasser Maksoud for allowing us the opportunity, help and the freedom to be able to accomplish the tasks that needed to be done.

The Dev Team for this project included (in alphabetical order):

Adams, Jarrod
Hiller, Mike
Meade, Michael
Smith, Bryan

Hopefully, we will all be able to stay in touch and maybe work on some more projects in the future. Best wishes go out to everyone involved and I hope the best for you guys as some of us continue on with college and others go out into the work force.

Update Log Posted

I went back through and found almost all of the update log and have posted it to the update log. We are continuing our work with .09a release. This update will hopefully be a noticable update to what we have currently. There will be some dev videos posted during the .09a development or once it is released.

Also, a forum section has been added to the site and can be accessed from the forum link at the top of the page or you can find a direct link on the Justice Redemption page. It is open to everyone and we encourage all to come hang out and post as we move along with the development process.

Update News

I forgot to post up the recent news onto this site so here it is to get everyone that follows this site up to date that might not visit the indiedevelopment.co site.

Posted on 8 June 2012 (Still here… Kinda)

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am still around and kicking. I have just been really busy working on some projects for a company and getting ready for my daughter to be born here within the next month. Hopefully, I will be able to find time before college starts back up to put up some more content.

Also, I just wanted to let everyone know that I might be working on a game that will be released for PC. Depending on exactly what is decided on for the first release there may be a few openings to fill. The game will be built from the ground up this first go around and will be coded in C# or C++. If this is something that you may be interested in, please, keep a check here and respond to any openings as they become available. I will do my best to post here more often, even if it is just to say hey and let everyone know whats going on.

Posted on 10 June 2012 (PC Game Announcement)

Well… after talking with it over with Steve we have decided to work toward releasing a PC game. It looks like we will be using C# to program the game and possibly look into using XNA. Last year we had fooled around a little with XNA to see what it was all about and ended up wanting to try to produce something with it.

Right now we have a total of three people that will be working on different parts of the game. We will be creating the game and world editor from the ground up which we feel will be a good learning experience. None of us are expecting something that will shatter any records or make any jaws drop. We are just looking to get a somewhat solid game that will provide whoever decides to give it a try some fun and a bit of a challenge.

Since we will be building the game engine and editor ourselves we decided to go with a more retro feel to it… It will probably be a 2D sidescroller type game with some basic hand drawn graphics, a simple particle system, and things along those lines. We expect to learn a lot from this experience and hope that it will lead us into being able to create some more advanced games later down the road.

We plan on looking at getting a few people to help test the game as we go, so if you would be interested in helping us alpha / beta test the game feel free to fill out the form when it becomes available.

Keep checking back for more information on the project as we progress. We will start showing videos of our progress and keep everyone up to date on where we are at through some kind of update log. I will setup a specific page on the site that will have all the information on the game as it unfolds. Let the long nights of hair pulling and caffeine begin…

Posted on 10 June 2012 (Justice Redemption)

Looks like we are going to pick up with the game that we were messing around with a year ago. I have added a section to the main navigation for games and apps that we publish and are working on. You can find Justice Redemption under the PC -> In Development section (of the indiedevelopment.co website). Since we are going to pick this project up and run with it I will attempt to find the old update log that we were using and post up the information.

For some filler information to start the section out with I took some quick pics of the splash screen and menu system in the game currently. More information will be coming forth as it becomes available. Let us know what you think as we go along… Feedback is important to us and we will look over any feedback that is sent our way. Some of the best features in games come from community feedback during the development process and we appreciate all who decide to participate in helping shape Justice Redemption.

----------------------------------------- End Post Update ------------------------------------------------

I will try and make sure that any new information reaches this site as it comes available too.  For the latest up to date news on the game check out its section on the indiedevelopment.co website.  I hope everyone is doing well and will post again soon.

IndieDevelopment.co's New Look

Stop by IndieDevelopment.co and check out the new look. The forums are now starting to be put up as well. So if you are following Indie Development here on blogger and would like to stay in touch with the community, as we grow, feel free to head on over the the forums.

Android Community Question : Using Background Images With Buttons

Here is part 5 of our tutorial series on developing our Tic Tac Toe Game (finally... sorry for the delay).  In this part we look at how to change the icon for our app and add in a menu that will allow us to start a new game and exit our app.  I hope everyone has enjoyed this series and was able to get something from what we have covered.

Tutorial Ideas?

I'm looking to build a list of tutorial ideas that people might find helpful.  Here are some ideas that I currently have on the list:

Android Tutorial : Tic Tac Toe Part 5

Here is part 5 of our tutorial series on developing our Tic Tac Toe Game (finally... sorry for the delay).  In this part we look at how to change the icon for our app and add in a menu that will allow us to start a new game and exit our app.  I hope everyone has enjoyed this series and was able to get something from what we have covered.

Android Community Question : Changing Text Color

This video talks about storing colors in an xml file and then using these values to change the color of text in your layout file and / or in your code.

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TicTacToe Tutorial Delay

The TicTacToe tutorial will pick up after mid-terms are over.  Currently, I am busy preparing for mid-terms and helping put together an app for the local Regional Adult Education Program ( http://race2ged.org/ ).

Hope everyone is doing well, sorry again for the delay.

Next tutorial in the android series

Sorry, for the delay in the android tutorial series.  Trying to keep up with the daily grind, as well as, 22 credit hours this semester.  I will hopefully have up the next in the series if not the rest of the series by the end of the weekend.  If anyone has any ideas on what to do another tutorial or series on, please, leave a comment and I will see what I can do.  Currently, I am not sure if the next tutorial will be on android development or something else.  I just finished up an assignment dealing with android development and it was pretty interesting.  It had to deal with creating dialogs and the different types of dialogs that can be created.  You can view the app up on the market place and see if maybe you would be interested in something along these lines.

I am kind of holding off until I get actual free time to devote to a long series.  I was thinking about maybe doing a series on developing a game in C# using XNA, but I would not want to start on it and then have a big gap in the series.  So, until then I may just continue with smaller projects or some general tutorials.  Anyways, I look forward to any suggestions that you all might have.


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Android Tutorial : Tic Tac Toe Part 4

Here is part 4 of the tutorial series on creating a tic tac toe app for the android. In this part we code our main activity. We are now able to play our tic tac toe game... but how can we go about starting a new game? or maybe add in some additional activities and be able to switch to them?

In the next part of the series we will look at how we can navigate and accomplish starting a new game. We will setup a menu that will allow us to start a new game, switch to another activity, and exit our app. We could just put a new game button and be done with the series, but I believe that learning how to setup a working menu will be beneficial.

Android Tic Tac Toe Tutorial Series

Hoping to be able to get the rest of the Tic Tac Toe tutorial completed and up here soon. Looking to have the next part(s) up sometime Thursday or Friday probably. Once I am able to get started on them again I will try to just get them all done and posted without to much of a gap between.



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Android Tutorial : Tic Tac Toe Part 3

In this part of the tutorial we look at how to setup the layout file for our main activity. Next in the series we will look at how to tie together our layout with the previous java code we wrote for the "behind the scenes" work by coding our main activity.

Android Tutorial : Tic Tac Toe Part 2

In this part of the tutorial we look at how to setup the strings that we will be using in the app.  In the next part of the series we will begin work on our layout file for our main activity.

Android Tutorial : Tic Tac Toe Part 1

This is the first part of our tutorial series on making a tic tac toe app for android.  In this part we code the java file that will be used "behind the scenes" to generate the computer's moves and check to see if there is a winner, if the game is a tie, or if there are spaces available to play in.

Android App : Tic Tac Toe Game (Capstone Class Project)

This is an app that was created for my Capstone class.  Requirements were to create a tic tac toe game out of java from an old console tic tac toe example and then port that into an android app.  The app also had to contain a working menu with a contact and about section.  The about section had to contain sound.
Here is what I came up with for the submission, let me know what you guys think.

Indie Development now has a google+ page setup and you can visit it here.  Hopefully, soon we will be getting up and running with more tutorials and other information.


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Hectic

I have been swamped with college and other work so I have been unable to post up any new tutorials. One of my assignments is to complete a tic-tac-toe game that is easily portable in java and then port it to the android platform. I have the game itself working now, but the assignment requires that there be multiple activites and a menu to switch between them. Once I get everything completed and uploaded to the marketplace I will post here so anyone who wants to check it out can feel free to do so. Also, I can work on putting up a tutorial on the steps taken to complete this if anyone would like to see it.

I will be working on the assignment between other class work. If time allows, I could have it up for review by Friday... But it will be up by Monday if time does not allow.


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C# Tutorial: Simple Dice Game Part 3 (Video)

Part 3 of our Simple Dice Game Tutorial

This is the 3rd and final part of this tutorial series.  I lost audio toward the end of the video and then it came back, so I inserted narration on top of the lost audio to try and explain what was happening.

In this tutorial we will add a second player to the dice game and get the game to compare each persons dice to see if there is a winner or if the rolls tie.  We will be creating a player class and looking at how we can use getters and setters to access and manipulate private data.  Also, we will be looking at how to access public methods from the player class when we are in our form class.

Hopefully the video is easy to follow and can provide some useful information.  Sorry for the audio problems toward the end, but I tried to patch it up and you should still be able to follow along and understand what is going on.

Download the solution file for this tutorial here:  Download Solution

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C# Tutorial: Simple Dice Game Part 2 (Video)

Part 2 of our Simple Dice Game Tutorial:

In this part of the tutorial series we will be adding a label to display our roll results.  We will be basing the results off of a poker hand, with the addition of a five of a kind result.  This tutorial is aimed at helping to better understand using arrays, for loops, if statements, booleans, and switch statements.  The code could be made shorter and optimized.  One of the reasons for making the code a little more lenghty and using different ways to initialize the arrays and using different loops to obtain the results we want is so that you can get some practice using these different tools.

Hopefully, you find this tutorial informative and easy to follow. This is my first tutorial series (2nd actual tutorial), please, leave me feedback on how I can improve. Also, let me know if you would be interested in continuing this tutorial series or starting on something different. Don't forget to +1 and Like this post.

Download the solution file for this tutorial here:  Download Solution

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C# Tutorial: Simple Dice Game Part 1 (Video)

In this tutorial we will make a pretty basic game where a player can press a button and it will roll 5 dice. We will display images instead of numbers to show the state of the dice. As we expand on this tutorial series we will program the game to recognize the state of each of the dice and assign the combine dice a score. We will be treating the dice kind of like a poker hand and will use terms like full house or straight. The only exception would be if all 5 dice landed on the same side and it would need to register that as 5 of a kind.

What you will need to follow this tutorial:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
• Dice Images

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: You can get the free express version here (http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/express)

Dice Images: Right click on each of the below images and save them somewhere that you will be able to find them later.

Hopefully, you find this tutorial informative and easy to follow.  This is my first tutorial so, please, leave me feedback on how I can improve.  Also, let me know if you would be interested in continuing this tutorial series or starting on something different.  Don't forget to +1 and Like this post.

Download the solution file for this tutorial here:  Download Solution

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Upcomming Tutorials

I am planning on putting up some tutorials and such here soon. Since the site has just started and I do not have any community feedback on what would be useful to focus some tutorials on I will try to do some basic tutorials.  Here is my list of what I might look into doing so far, until we get some community feedback and then I will do my best to post up information, tutorials, guides, etc on topics that fall in line with what people are wanting.

Possible tutorials:

• Match Game
• Roll The Dice Game
• The Calculator App from the previous post
• Windows Forms
• XNA (Windows / Xbox)
• Planning before you code
• Object Oriented Programming
• Reading and Writing data to files

Also, I was thinking about doing some mini tutorials that would be on some basic programming.  Some of these things could be like arrays, event handlers, loops, etc.  Hopefully, soon we will be able to get a community base and get some stuff out that way.

I tend to favor C# when I program, but I can also look into putting up some information done in java, c++, html, javascript, SQL, etc.  The bulk of the information will probably fall around C# and Java.  The reasoning behind this is that I use Java for android development mostly (some c++ can be used as well) and for games and windows apps I prefer to use C#.

For creating games, one of the popular things out now is XNA.  You can learn more about it over at the app hub (http://create.msdn.com/en-US/).  This is a good resource for people looking to program games for windows, windows phone, or xbox 360.  Of course you do not need XNA to program applications in C# and I will look at putting up some tutorials on XNA usage and programming applications outside XNA as well.

This is my last semester before I graduate, so I will get content up and respond to any requests as time permits.


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Basic Calculator

     I was assigned to create a basic calculator application in java that would run on an android phone and post it up on the marketplace to allow others to test and use it.  It took about 2 hours or so to get the application up and running.  I created this application using the Eclipse IDE (www.eclipse.org) and the Android SDK (developer.android.com/sdk/index.html).  Figure 1 shows a screen shot of the calculator as it is running in the emulator.

Figure 1 Basic Calculator Application.

     The calculator will do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  Also, it will allow you to store a number in memory and then recall it later to be used in your calculations.  There is a clear button that will clear the calculator input area and any number stored in memory.  The <-- button will allow the user to backspace off the last digit showing in the input box, this can be repeated deleting all digits currently in the input box.

     Being that there are already an abundance of calculator apps out there and that this app met the requirements that was needed for my assignment I probably will not be adding any more features to it.  Unless, of course, there is for whatever reason enough people wanting to use it to justify more time put into it.  I will however do my best to fix any bugs that may be present with this application.  I try my best to make sure any program that I make available to anyone fully works to the best of my ability.

     If you want to test this app you can find it on the android marketplace (https://market.android.com/details?id=edu.mecc.calculator).  Feel free to give the calculator a try and review / rate it.  If anyone would be interested in the java code for the calculator let me know.  If enough people are interested I will try to make a little tutorial or code break down on how to make this application.  As always, I appreciate any comments you may have and if you liked this don't forget to +1 and like.


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