The first release of XNATerrain is now available – however not from here.

I’ve created a CodePles project to host it –> http://codeplex.com/patchterrain

Comments as always are welcome.

I love terrain. I mean I really love generated terrain. I have no idea why – I’ve always been interested in it since I saw Outrun in the arcades (waaaay back) with its undulating roads. This was quite a novelty for me as all the computer generated roads up until then had been flat (pitstop, pitstop II, etc – and itf you have no idea what I’m on about then either you are too young or you never owned a C64).

Anyway, I remember seeing Zarch on an Archimedes at when I was at school (it was brand new and was the pride of our Computer Studies class – we only had BBC’s then!) and being blown away.

Anyway, every since then I have been into terrain and have implemented loads of versions (brute force, ROAM based, etc) in C, C++, Java, C# using Windows API, OpenGL, DirectX and now XNA.

Anyway, I have a WIP version http://imagineear.com/pharmacy/ almost ready for first release of my Zarch-inspired terrain engine.

Theres a couple of screenshots at the end..

Features so far:
Patch-work looking (not smooth)
Can be randomly generated or loaded from heightmap
Terrain endlessly repeats – by this I mean that you can move the camera forwards infinately and the terrain wraps round.
Terrain split up into patches (only patches that fall into visible frustrum are rendered – pretty much)
Screenshots can be taken (press the space bar)

Its currently Windows only BUT the Windows only part is the screenshot stuff which could be removed if you want 360 support. (Note – I don’t have – and don’t plan on getting a 360 for the forseeable future – so don’t really care about 360 development.)

An early beta will be available shortly (maybe with source code if any interest).

Anyway, some screenshots:

Looking down from up high

Looking across the landscape

Looking across the landscape (with patch lines)

Well, the time has come to release XNAInvaders and as promised this includes full source code.

Changes since last release:
Graphics changes in title screen
Gmae over text now displayed
Couple of fixes in main logic

Couple of other notes:
The main solution contains two projects – the main game project and a content loader project.
The content loader project is used to flatten the model bone transforms (as we don’t use them), and also to generate http://premier-pharmacy.com/product/provigil/ bounding boxes round our loaded meshes.

Final note – this code is released as is and unsupported. Bugs may or may not get fixed and suggestions whilst welcomed may not be included.
Also, this is released without any restrictions on use whatsoever. Basically you can do with it what you like.

Binarys only here.
Full release (including source) here.

Have fun!

Well, very nearly at first release (which will be source release too).

Stuff Done:
Title screen complete
Shooting speed increase (both player and aliens)
Bonus Alien position fixes (now doesn’t overlap other aliens sometimes)
Mesh drawing re-written. No longer uses Mesh.draw() but done manually. Why? Well, I wanted to play http://premier-pharmacy.com/product/phentermine/ around with various shaders and to see how things worked. And seems to have fixed a few display glitches.
Font drawing fixed.
Minor bugs squashed.

Stuff left to do:
Game over screen
High score table (maybe – not sure yet)

Anyway updated binaries are here

Also, picture of title screen: