Controlling your TV using Minecraft: Useless, but Fun!

Version en Français Here are the details of my latest side-project: controlling my TV from inside Minecraft! It’s surely slower than using the remote control, but it was interesting to make and it’s working! You can see it in action in the video, and read about the technical aspects below. How does it work ?… Continue reading Controlling your TV using Minecraft: Useless, but Fun!

How I developed and released a mobile game in 45 hours

Developing a game always takes longer than expected. I made an experiment and tried to develop a simple but descent game quickly, while keeping tracks of time spent on each feature. I also wanted short development times to see if I can make a profitable game, even if I were paid for it (I’m not… Continue reading How I developed and released a mobile game in 45 hours

How to create a shake action in Cocos2d-x (with source code)

While working on my next game Don’t Feed the Trolls, I was looking for a “shake effect”. When the player feeds a troll, I want the whole screen to shake to improve visual feedback. A shake effect is very easy to implement, so I quickly hacked in my code to see if it was un… Continue reading How to create a shake action in Cocos2d-x (with source code)

Android Game Development with libGDX

After selling games on PC, Mac and Xbox 360, I want to develop games on mobile plaforms, and I will start with Android. I chose Android instead of iPhone for two reasons: It’s cheaper: my Mac is a PowerPC and you need a Mac Intel for iPhone development. Also Android phones are cheaper than iPhones.… Continue reading Android Game Development with libGDX

3 Simple Tips to Avoid Memory Allocations with XNA/C#

Long time without posting. I’ve spent a lot of time working on the game, contracting art, buying sound effect and music assets, designing the levels… New screenshots/video should come very soon. Anyway, back on topic: when developing from C++ to C#, I found out very strange that you can allocate memory but you cannot free… Continue reading 3 Simple Tips to Avoid Memory Allocations with XNA/C#

Yes, multi-threading in XNA/C# can be that simple!

Multi-threading is often causing problems for multiple reasons: synchronization, deadlocks, concurrent access to memory… But with my recent experience with multi-threading in XNA/C#, you can really do simple and efficient optimizations. While looking for possible performance improvements in Spring Up Harmony for Xbox 360 (PC), I have seen a simple situation really suited for multi-threading.… Continue reading Yes, multi-threading in XNA/C# can be that simple!

On-screen profiling for XNA

A few days ago, I read an article called Among Friends: How Naughty Dog Built Uncharted 2. The interesting screenshots on the third page gave me the urge to create what I call an “on-screen profiling” tool for Spring Up XNA. I talked before about profilers and how to use them to find which sections… Continue reading On-screen profiling for XNA

Measuring game performance : framerate is not everything

I am currently having a few problems with performance in Spring Up XNA. I have two features that are too expensive in processing power : the background effect and the computation of the preview trajectory of the ball. I know these features are not usable at this cost because as soon as I activate one… Continue reading Measuring game performance : framerate is not everything

NProf : A Simple, Efficient and Free XNA Profiler (3.1 and 4.0)

Update: I have many visitors coming here from search engines. So here is a quick update if you want to use NProf with XNA 4.0. When you run NProf with your game, if the UI of NProf stays empty after running your game, it’s because you are running a XNA 4.0 game. There is a… Continue reading NProf : A Simple, Efficient and Free XNA Profiler (3.1 and 4.0)