New Summer Projects

SwinGame 2 is on the way! New features include:

• Triangle drawing
• Alpha blended primitive drawing
• Volume control
• Bitmap and sprite rotation and zoom
• Simple text drawing without pixel fonts
• Other small changes, and restructured code

We are also developing a new learn to program book using SwinGame and VB... Its in the early stages at the moment, but things are looking impressive!

Time to submit!

Interest in the SwinGame competition has been great, and we are looking forward to seeing what you have been able to create. Its now time for you to finish that final polish for your game, in time to submit. Remember that all entries must reach us by 5:30pm on Monday the 11th of August. Check the competition details for instructions on what needs to be submitted, and how you can submit.

Thank you to everyone who has shown interest in this competition. We hope it has been a fun and rewarding experience, and we look forward to meeting you on Open Day.

Forum Goodness and New Version

The forums are back online! Yay... Once again sorry for the inconvenience caused.

To celebrate the return of the forum we have created a new version of the SDK. This one has some minor additions, and now allows you to end text input, a feature requested several times in the forums. Hopefully this will help you guys out...

Anyway. Thanks for sticking with us, and we look forward to seeing what you can create with the SDK.

Forum Issues

We are currently experiencing issues with the forum software. We are working to rectify the issue which appears to be with the forum permissions.

Version 1.1.4 Released

There has been a lot of activity on the SwinGame forum lately, and this new version corrects several issues that have been raised. Version 1.1.4 includes a number of corrections that mostly effect the .NET and VB 6 versions of the SwinGame SDK. If you are developing with the .NET or VB6 versions of the SDK you are strongly encouraged to update.

Year 7-10 and SwinGame08

Only Year 11 & 12 students that submit entires to SwinGame08 are eligible to win the major prizes. However, we want to encourage all school students to participate! If you are interested in learning more about software development please feel free to submit an entry into the competition. All non Year 11 & 12 submissions will be judged accordingly, and students who submit entries of high quality will receive a certificate of excellence from the judging panel. Some of your games may even be showcased on the web site, and during Swinburne's Open Day.

The creators of SwinGame 08 would like to encourage all students not in Year 11 & 12 to participate, in preparation for formal entries to SwinGame in the years ahead!

Version 1.1.3 Released

A new version of SwinGame has been released. This version includes some important bug fixes and everyone is recommended to upgrade to this version. Read the instructions of each SDK for details of how to upgrade between successive versions of the SDK.

Python is on the way!

Work with Python is progressing really well. At this stage we have a functional Python port of the core SwinGame functionality. Clinton has also ported the AirHockey game from VB to Python. These new extensions are going to be used in the AI for Games subject here at Swinburne, and we should be able to make them available sometime in the future.

We are also making progress on making SwinGame capable of embedding Python scripts within your game. This will allow you to embed code that controls aspects of your game - such as scripts for AI. Progress is looking hopeful, but it is very early days at the moment.

Forum Changes

We are moving to the new version of phpBB at the moment. There are some style issues currently, and we need to get the feeds on the main page. We will look at fixing them over the next few days.

Videos on TeacherTube

YouTube has been great, but unfortunately its blocked for schools in Australia. To get around this issue we have now moved most of our videos to TeacherTube , a site designed for teaching and education related to movies. I hope you enjoy the viewing.

We will continue to publish videos to both Y

New YouTube Videos

Its been a busy weekend. We have now created a new Game Showcase  that shows off some of the SwinGames that were developed last year by the PSD students. Its a great way to get a feel for what kinds of games the SDK is able to create.

There is also a short video showing the evolution of our splash screen. We decided to change the splash screen to better match with the "cog" logo used on the web site. This video shows the old and new splash screens next to each other. Its not that inspiring... but if you have any comments let us know. 

SwinGame 08 is Open

Swinburne University is using the SwinGame API in the SwinGame 08 Competition. If you are a year 11 or 12 student in Australia you can submit a SwinGame for the chance to share in the $6000 prize money on offer. SwinGame 08 will let you show off your technical skills and get some real world development experience at the same time.

Version 1.1 is done...

The SwinGame SDK Version 1.1 is finally finished and we have even created a number of video tutorials to show you how to set up the SDK. The new version of the SDK includes lots of fixes and new features.

As part of the 1.1 release we have created a number of example games. These games can be seen at the gallery page of the SwinGame website. The tutorials showing how these games were developed using the SDK are also available, so you can now start making games using SwinGame SDK, if you have not started already!

Game promo videos for the demo games are available on YouTube. The links are listed in the Gallery page of the SwinGame website.

Design, Design, Design

This week was a design week. The brochure got inspected, printed and showed some issues: If something looks good on the screen that does not mean it looks good printed! So back to the drawing board (computer screen) and try to make it work. It is better now.
The second area was adjusting our Wikimedia style sheety (css). The initial state was a mess coming from 2 or 3 skins, very confusing. I straightened it out and made it look homogeneous. And of course I did Andrew a favour and used heaps of cogs. I like the one in the bottom right most! Fingers crossed, it works in all browsers now. Always prepared for surprises.
The third thing I designed this week was James' Airhockey. For some reason I felt inspired by the game and intended to make it look "hot"! Here is a small sample of it:

Excursion to Print Media

My task is mainly to design the webpage, last week I had a new challenge: design a brochure. This brochure will be made for highschool students who should get aware of Swingame and participate. And maybe get Swinburne Students afterwards? It was fun designing it, it should fit to the design of the webpage, and make clear what it is about on one glance. So we decided to fill it up with Game sprites and gems, jets, a car, and so on. And of course with Andrew's favourite thing: cogs. Here is a preview: The webpage is still under contstant construction, but it is getting there...

My Week

The past week i have been working on my game Air Hockey, I had a few problems with the 3D side of it... so i have given up on that and just went to 2D. So that set me back a bit. The first tutorial for AirHockey is done and the second one is allmost there too, justs need to write down what i have done in the code. One bit of good news this week was exceptions dont require me to do anything to the VB6 code!! The first version of the VB6 SwinGame SDK is now up on our website.
Then yesterday my laptop chose to die on me :(, and would only boot in safe mode, so thankfully i was able to get all my work off before i formated it. Any way that was my week.

Tomato Quest Continues

Hey all,

This week has been a fairly busy week, but an extremely productive week.

The bulk of the RPG Tutorial I've called The Legend of the Tomato Quest is done, and I'm currently working on the AI parts of the game.

There were some hiccups this week, with exception problems appearing again, but they've been sorted out, and now work alot better then they previously did.

I've finished the first builds of the SwinGameSDK for C#.NET and VB.NET which are avaliable at the download page of our website (which I believe isn't actually up yet).

Here's are a couple of Screen Shots of the game so far...

The Player Attacks



The Player meets an Ally


Next week I'll continue on the tutorial, but also I'll be working to finish up the Documentation for the SwinGameSDK.

Thats all for now.

EmptyYourMind Tutorial is Complete

The EmptyYourMind game tutorial is finally finished and the game is playable. However, the game does not have everything I wanted. I am planning to finish the game when I have a time. The current game have enemies, player and enemy bullet pattern. The screenshot of the game:

The bullets are using vector for its movement. Therefore, its movement can be manipulated very easily. I will be adding a complex bullet pattern when finishing off the game. The article for the tutorials is on the SwinGame documentation.

I'm currently working on the SGSDK_Graphics documentation. I will probably able to finish it off by Monday :-)