I’m starting to get to grips with XNA, but it’s by no means a walk in the park.  3D-wise, I’ve only really used Ogre and Blitz3D, and only mildly dabbled in shaders in Ogre.  XNA is lower-level than Ogre in most ways, but then again C Sharp is higher level than C++, this means less stress with pointers and free garbage collection, but I have to learn shaders from the ground up, and re-write a lot of Ogre’s functionality.

The good thing is that shaders use the industry standard .x format, none of Ogre’s proprietary stuff to deal with, and I can test things out in RenderMonkey without having to re-code them.  Also, luckily, most of the stuff I want to do has been done already in XNA, shadows and cel-shading in particular, although skeletal animation support is non-existent out of the box and there seems to be little online knowledge about it (although I’m looking into XNAnimation…)

I’ve got the first model by my artist, Lord P.Duncan, and boy is it a beauty (you can see him in the background of the website image.  We call him The Bully.)  I’ve plugged him into the cel-shader and shadow system and he’s looking fine, fine, fine.  The time is not right to post him yet though…

I have the odd cabinet projection working too (think Final Fight perspective), that wasn’t a bit of a headache because I had to re-learn about projection matricies.

The next step is to get skeletal animation up and running, and the overlaying of shadows back onto a 2D image (should be one line in the shader with any luck.)

I’ve also written what may end up being the main musical theme, it’s orchestral, kinda Zelda-ish but dark and foreboding, with only a thread of hope in it.  Look forward to playing it to you guys many moons from now!

superflat.

Welcome to superflat world.  I’m Jasper Byrne, and I make games, audio and visuals.

This is primarily a game development blog for superflat games, although I’ll also be posting about other interesting things in the world of games, music and life in general.

Who I am?

– I like fried food, especially fish.

– I like making stuff.

– That’s my daughter, Aila, in the picture.

– It was probably Jet Set Willy and Lords of Midnight that got me into games.

– I’ve lived in Vietnam, Japan, America, and England.  I now reside in Cambridge, UK.

– For the last ten years I’ve been a drum’n’bass producer / DJ under the aliases Sonic, Sonic & Silver & The Accidental Heroes.  Myspace page. I’ve been lucky enough to sell records and tour the world.

– Nowadays I’m mostly a game designer, but I still write music.

– I think games are the highest level of art being explored at the moment, but are still in their infancy. I feel like we’re on the cusp of something incredible, like the first tentative steps of silent movies into talkies.

* * *

I began writing games on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum at the age of eight (1984, so you can work out my age…) and it’s been a life-long hobby of mine.  I worker with Frontier Developments for close to three years working on Xbox games such as Kinectimals and Kinect Disneyland Adventures.

Some of the independent games I’ve done are listed on Moby Games.  I also have an [edit: very old now] online portfolio that was aimed at a jobhunt. There’s access to a couple of my older games there.

I’ve just release Soul Brother on [adult swim] games, and there’s more games on the front page of the site.  Enjoy them!

For now, take care,

superflat.