Microsoft XNA

With some of the tools I’ve built for XNA, I’ve been prototyping a simple 2D platformer last month. It’s pretty basic so far, very much inspired by Super Mario World, with the character being a combination of Sonic’s Tails and Yoshi’s movement-style. Your browser does not support the video tag. I’ve been studying frame-by-frame how the camera in Super Mario World works, there is an area of “dead space” in the center of the screen where the player can freely move without the camera following, but once you hit the edge of that area, the camera starts moving horizontally on the X-axis to keep up. ...

Recently I’ve been teaching myself C#, together with the Microsoft XNA game engine. XNA is really a freeware toolkit rather than a full engine. Microsoft launched this to make hobby and indie game development approachable. It sits on top of the .NET Framework and can target both Windows and the Xbox 360. For an indie developer these days, XNA feels like the most practical way to getting something onto the Xbox. ...